Hi Peeps, Hope everyone is keeping safe & well out there. Apologies I have been a bit behind with the admin for the blog & the podcast so am only getting round to posting the research notes and the sources for this episode. Hopefully when we have our well-deserved break for Dani’s Wedding, I can do some much needed catch up.
With that said let’s get to it. This case is the story of the disappearance of Ben McDaniel.
Special hello to all of our regular listeners - as always, we appreciate your continued support for our little podcast.
A big welcome to our new listeners as well - you are in fantastic company.
I am very excited about diving into this week topic.
strong pun start my friend. Well let’s jump in and immerse ourselves in the world of Vortex Springs and cave diving.
this week it’s one of my favourite cases, The disappearance of Ben McDaniel.
30-year-old Ben was last seen in Vortex Springs, Florida on August 18, 2010. Where he disappeared during a dive in an underwater cave.
we mentioned last week that we covered this case way back when -before we were a podcast, so I cracked out my notes and do you know… I’d forgot that I’d included some other diving related cases as well. Tina Watson in particular - may add it to the vault for a future episode.
Speaking of did you see that one of our lovely listeners commented on a story I shared - advising it happened on her doorstep?
bloody hell!
I know right - Hi Sarah, hope you’re okay and not completely traumatised by that.
I’m already off on a tangent. Okay let’s get back to the case.
Diving is a dangerous activity, for obvious reasons. I’m certified for open water diving, I’m a recreational diver, a vacation or holiday diver mainly; and I am happy with that not to mention I can’t afford to be much more (it’s an expensive hobby) but the thought of cave diving or even caving fills me with dread. It just isn’t for me. I’m not particularly claustrophobic or scared by small spaces but I do find confinement sets me on edge - I like to be able to escape, I need a clear way out.
thoughts on caving & cave diving. Please mention Ben’s crevice at lush.
Something that strikes fear into the heart of every diver I think is going down and never coming back up. And it happens, a lot and it isn’t just amateur divers who have accidents, experienced divers do too.
Have you seen a film called sanctum? 2011 James Cameron film about cave diving - one of the stunt divers Agnes milowka - very experienced world-renowned diver died not long after the film’s release in a diving accident, exploring a new part of a cave. Vortex springs, where the majority of the case plays out - 13 people died there in the 1990’s alone.
And that’s what most people believe happened to Ben McDaniel.
Let’s talk a little about Ben. Benjamin Wayne McDaniel was born on April 15, 1980, in Memphis, Tennessee to parents Shelby and Patty McDaniel (nee Baker).
He was the oldest of four brothers (Tim, Brad & Paul) very close-knit family who grew up in Collierville, Tennessee.
The family were affluent, I’d call their house a mansion, and the boys had quite the privileged upbringing. The children were all active, participating in rock climbing, mountaineering and other outdoor adventures.
Ben was an avid fan of water sports; he was said to never be as happy as when he was in the water- I can relate. He started off snorkelling and by his early teens had progressed to scuba diving. His first ever dive apparently took place at the Epcot Centre, which wouldn’t have been cheap I imagine. He became certified as an open water diver at the age of fourteen, with his lifelong hobby taking him on lots of underwater adventures throughout his young life.
As an adult, Ben continued to dive when he could but - you know, life.
Ben got married to Sarah and he built up a construction business as well as being busy with other things, he was somewhat of an entrepreneur - lots of irons in fires.
then in 2008, his brother Paul who was 22 at the time died of an alleged stroke.
Ben found Paul unconscious in the family home and had tried to revive him. It’s fair to say that Ben took his brother’s death badly, understandable. He struggled with the loss , as did the whole family. His parents Shelby and Patsy set up a foundation which is still active today, and Ben became active in the foundation too, raising money for the support into research and prevention of strokes.
But life wasn’t going great for Ben, his construction business failed along with his marriage and Ben had an outstanding tax bill of around 50,000 dollars, he was in debt and had to declare himself bankrupt.
that’s tough.
yeah but, Shelby & Patty wanted to help out they were very gracious, and they took him in and like I said they are wealthy so after a few weeks they suggest that Ben take a sabbatical. They have a beach house at Santa Rosa Beach on the Emerald Coast, Florida. Ben can move in get back on his feet and get the rest he deserves - on them. So, in April 2010 that’s what Ben, along with rescue dog Spooner - did.
lucky bastard.
Ben McDaniel is getting an opportunity that few of us would - his parents are offering to cover this sabbatical financially.
And this suits Ben perfectly, and he starts to revisit his old hobby of diving. Now Ben doesn’t like saltwater diving, he prefers fresh water and so he starts visiting vortex spring.
Vortex Spring, in ponce de Leon is a small vacation destination about an hour from Destin, Florida, so it’s not far from the beach house where he was staying.
Ben starts spending quite a lot of his time at vortex spring, and doing some diving, perhaps looking for more of a challenge than his open water certification offered, Ben decided to try his hand at cave diving. To become officially certified he would have required about two months’ training and 125 logged dives with a qualified instructor or cave-certified dive buddy.
Despite the well-known dangers of cave diving and the necessity of proper training, he went ahead on the dives without it and solo.
so, he’s diving on his own in these tiny caves.
yeah. His dives are evidenced in his logbook, people saw him going in and out of the caves regularly. He liked this life, he had got a new girlfriend, things were going well, and he wanted to fully immerse himself in life at Vortex Spring.
so, he made friends there.
It’s hard to say – sorry for being ambiguous but It’s probably worth talking a little bit more about Ben at this point. Friends describe him as focused when in pursuit of a goal, head strong, confident, and sometimes cocky. His parents idolise him along with their youngest Paul, who sadly died. But People around the Springs have described him as arrogant, inexperienced, ignorant, and sometimes a little aggressive.
As always, we mean no disrespect, but it is important to get a full view of Ben because how you perceive him potentially impacts on what you believe could have happened to him.
In early August of 2010, Ben visited his parents’ house in Tennessee for a week. He told them he was working on getting a diving instructor certificate in order to eventually start a diving-related business. On August 15, 2010, he left Collierville and returned to Florida.
On August 18, 2010, Ben went to Vortex Spring as was usual, for a dive into an underwater cave, fifty-eight feet below the water’s surface. After resurfacing from this dive, he refilled his tanks at the nearby dive shop and spent the afternoon alongside the spring testing equipment and making notes in his dive log.
Later in the evening Ben McDaniel entered the spring just before sunset, unaccompanied by a dive buddy. On his way into the cave, he was passed by two divers on their way out, one of which was a commercial diver who works for Vortex Spring.
Eduardo Turan had come to know Ben in the weeks leading up to his disappearance as a regular diver at Vortex and knew that he was gaining access to the cave by jimmying the locked gate that separated the cave from the common areas of the spring.
Only cave-certified divers are given a key to the gate, which Ben was not.
That particular day in August, Eduardo Turan turned around and unlocked the gate for Ben,
he began descending again for another dive around 7:30 pm.
On previous dives, Eduardo Turan would sometimes wait for the sight of ben’s bubbles at the surface, as an indication that he was decompressing/ surfacing, and all was okay. Turan and the other diver did not wait to see those bubbles this time, and no one knows if there ever were any. Ben never returned to the beach house and has not been heard from again.
Two days later - on August 20, 2010, employees from the nearby dive shop noticed that Ben’s GMC pickup truck still parked in the shop’s parking lot and concerned contacted the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office.
A call went out to cave divers in the region surrounding Vortex Spring, Florida that a diver was missing, and in all likelihood, a body needed to be recovered from the cave within the spring.
Three teams of 16 divers accepted the call and searched for the body of Ben McDaniel for 36 consecutive days, finding not so much as one indication that he had indeed drowned in the cave or the surrounding spring. Every crevice and opening of the cave were fastidiously searched, with the exception of a constricted, dangerous area in the rear of the cave that even highly experienced expert divers had encountered difficulty entering.
The owner of Cave Adventures edd Sorenson, a dive shop located about an hour from Vortex Spring, made his way into the area in 3 attempts, and found no evidence that any divers had been in there. With the effort it took to gain entry, he speculated that a diver of Ben’s stature, over 6 feet tall and 210 pounds, would not have been able to secure access.
For the record Edd, who is a world-renowned cave diver and rescue diver still maintains he’s not in the cave. Kevin Carlisle is one of the cave divers who searched for Ben. “We may never know the truth of where he is, but we do know where he isn’t and that is because of a lot of talented and qualified divers,” he said.
Although no evidence was found in the cave that would suggest what had happened to Ben, there were some odd clues.
Full air tanks were discovered outside the entrance of the cave, which was confusing to investigators for two reasons. The first was that the tanks were filled with regular air, which is inconsistent with what Ben would have presumably learned by reading up on cave diving, as his parents and girlfriend of the time insisted, he did, because cave diving often requires a special gas mix, depending on certain factors, such as depth.
Secondly, cave divers place extra air tanks along their way inside the cave, so that it is within ready reach if the diver should need it in the cave.
Other questions were raised too – why it had taken staff two days, to notice the truck despite being parked well within their view. Inside the truck was McDaniel’s wallet with almost $700 in cash, a cell phone, and various other personal effects. The last call placed on the cell phone was to his mother the previous evening where Ben had sounded positive and his usual self.
Police searched the area around vortex springs, cadaver dogs sniffed the ground for hours, they did find the scent of decomposition one on the bank and one in the water. But nothing that warranted further investigation.
Ben McDaniel’s parents, Shelby and Patty, attended the searches vigilantly, hoping against hope that one of the divers would surface with answers about their son. They offered a reward of $10,000 to any diver who would brave the incredibly dangerous passage where other experienced cave divers refused to search out of fear for their own lives. So convinced where they that that’s where Ben’s body may be.
“Ben’s body is about 170 ft. down and around 1600 ft. in the extreme end of the cave somewhere past the fifth restriction”.
This didn’t go down well within the diving community; this could make inexperienced divers push themselves for the money. The McDaniels eventually raised the reward to 30,000 dollars and sadly that’s what happened – a man called Larry Higginbotham lost his life and Edd had to go back into the cave to recover his body. His family said that he had been following the story and had decided to give it go.
Dani – that’s awful but I understand that as a parent they were willing to do anything to try and locate their son.
mmm, yeah, I do get it, but I also should add they were warned by the community at large this would likely happen, and they kept putting the money up. Just a few weeks after Larry’s death the McDaniels withdrew the reward.
Their interaction with the diving community is perhaps what led Jill Heinerth in 2012 to produce a documentary about the mystery. focused on his disappearance, and to call it “Ben’s Vortex.” Worth a watch if you are interested in this case for sure.
Heinerth is a world-renowned cave diver and her husband, Robert McClellan, is a documentary film maker. Initially Jill wanted to dive and film within the cave system at Vortex Spring to demonstrate to the McDaniel’s the inherent dangers of cave diving and help them to get closure.
But after reading McDaniel’s logbooks, Heinerth discovered that he was mapping the cave, and had made at least one dive to its furthest reaches.
She explained how divers can get panicked and/or lost how they can sometimes burrow into the silt and are never found explained how divers panic and burrow themselves in beyond the reach of prudent divers. I simply see no reasonable evidence that he is NOT in the cave,” she said in an e -mail.
But lots of people disagree they think there is lot of evidence to suggest he is not in the cave that he is elsewhere. So, let’s go through the other theories.
Her husband who helped her research Ben, spoke to the family at length floated some other ideas, that perhaps Ben had a psychotic breakdown and might have compulsively decided to reinvent himself. It was an idea floated on scubaboard.com and bandied about by several scuba divers who pictured the 30-year-old sitting on a beach in Mexico.
And the Faked-death theory kind of has legs because he was skint wanted a new start etc. did, he places the tanks there set up his truck etc.
Of all the theories, the McDaniel's believe this is the least plausible. Ben wouldn’t be so cruel to do such a thing to them. In 2008, the McDaniel's’ youngest son, Paul, died from a stroke at age 22. The family was devastated.
“We know in our hearts that he would have never faked his death to run away,” Patty said. “After what we went through with Paul, we know our son well enough to know he wouldn’t put us through that again.”
Ben also had a dog, which was left behind. I believe his parents looked after it when he didn’t return.
What if he met foul play?
With all the experienced divers saying Ben’s not in the cave, the McDaniel's seized on a darker fate: foul play. They hired Lynn-Marie Carty, a Florida private investigator who operates a business called Reunite People, to explore that.
She’s gathered criminal records of several people associated with Vortex, including its former owner, Lowell Kelly, who died under suspicious circumstances last month. He died of blunt force trauma, and it is alleged he fell off his balcony or down some stairs. When found his friends/employees put him in a bath and left him, the next day he was unconscious and taken to the hospital where he died a month later!
When Ben disappeared, Kelly was awaiting trial on charges that he drove a temporary employee into the woods, accused him of stealing $30,000. Kelly beat him with a baseball bat. Kelly pleaded no contest and was given a fine and probation. he fact that Lowell Kelly said he was in the office at Vortex late on the night of Ben’s disappearance and mentions seeing a rough looking character come into the dive shop and the guy was allegedly talking about doing a late-night dive. -I also think that it’s interesting that Kelly said he had talked with Ben before and exchanged phone numbers at some point. -Kelly’s death in 2012 also stunned me a bit, but alcohol can cause all kinds of accidents, I guess.
Carty is frustrated that authorities aren’t aggressively investigating the case as a homicide.
“There is just as much reason to look above the water for Ben’s body as there was to look below it in the cave,” Carty said.
Did Ben piss off the wrong person?
Or wrong place wrong time?
Was Ben moving in other circles? Dangerous circles?
The lack of acknowledgement of Ben’s surprisingly long criminal record. Including drug charges. Does anyone have the full list of his record in Tennessee? I have found assault/threatening bodily harm, theft of property, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of a controlled substance with intent to manufacture, del, sell.
Ben worked in construction, and unfortunately had left more than a few customers unhappy with his work as well as suppliers unhappy regarding his payments.
I think it’s important to go over the McDaniel family here and the dynamic because as I said before it potentially impacts on the way you view this story.
They are a very affluent family, and they clearly have money and love their children. They are unwilling to entertain certain versions of events and do seem to brush over or edit any events that don’t support it.
Case in point Paul McDaniel, Paul actually died of a drug overdose. And Ben has a long list of criminal offences - the majority of which have been settled out of court.
Police found no evidence, means or motive for foul play in Ben McDaniel's disappearance.
He was declared legally dead by the state of Florida in 2013.
The circumstances of Ben McDaniel’s disappearance remain unclear
Captain Harry Hamilton ‘There was evidence he entered the cave, but none that showed he exited.’
Foul play is the one I can’t get fully behind. The former owner has been questioned and while he may have had some previous bad behaviour, this doesn’t make him Bens killer. In fact, there’s nothing at all indicating that anyone has hurt Ben McDaniel. If Lowell Kelly was worried about his probation and worried about a body being found it would have been cleaner, I feel to just have left the cocky diver in the cave.
Eduardo and another colleague took a lie detector there’s some controversy about them being only asked limited questions, but I honestly think ben died in the cave or faked his own death.
. Leaving cash, phone, and incorrect cave dive maps in a truck in plain sight are all indicative of someone that wants to walk away and start over. As hard as it is for those of us that are left behind to grasp, some folks need a new start.
Ben had form for setting up fake Facebook profiles for getting girls, not full catfishing them but telling them he was single when he wasn’t – I think he could probably sort out a fake passport and dye his hair.
What do you think happened?
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