18

Nightcaps on the Ice Caps

11 November

This week we're discussing the case of Rodney Marks, who died of methanol poisoning on a research base in Antarctica. Joe explains alcohol poisoning and Sandra has trouble pronouncing lebkuchen.

Joe got his information from:

• An article in men's journal, by Will Cockrell
• Early history of Eastman Kodak Ektachem slides and instrumentation, by Henry Curme & Royden N Rand
• Serum Anion Gap: Its Uses and Limitations in Clinical Medicine, by Jeffrey A. Kraut and Nicolaos E. Madias
• Mind the gap: a case of severe methanol intoxication, by Salik Nazir, Stephen Melnick, Shabana Ansari, and Haitham T Kanneh
• Metabolic acidosis, on Wikipedia
• Methanol toxicity, on Wikipedia
• The photo of Rodney Marks is from YouTube

Sandra got her information from:

• An article on allthatsinteresting.com, by Katie Serena
• Mental Floss article, by Michele Debczak
• Rodney Marks, Wikipedia
• An article on ABC News
• Article in New Zealand Herald, by David Fisher
• Science Mag, by Jeffrey Mervis
• The aerial view photo of the South Pole station can be found here

Audio transcription

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

There's lots of old Far Crys as well, the one that we were playing when you were last round, I think that was number four or five. The older ones would probably be cheaper as well and they're all set in different time zones.

Probably.

You could look into them as well.

It was quite nice, the one we played.

I don't think I've played much more of it. It's just not the same, man.

Without somebody dying from a bear attack every time there's a bear.

Or falling down a hill and dying. I did manage to tame a leopard, so now I've got a leopard and a wolf.

Nicely done, nicely done.

Killed a mammoth by hiding behind a tree.

Oh smart, smart.

Yeah. Popped out, stabbed it in the face, hid behind the tree. It attacks the tree. Pop out, stab it in the face, hide again. Great tactic until the mammoth worked out how to move around the tree, then I panicked.

Did it kill you?

No, I managed to kill it, but it took like a good ten minutes.

Yeah?

Of just running around a tree. It's like: "oh! You've gone left, I'll go right. Oh, oh, cheeky mammoth".

Aaaaaand hide.

Aaaaand run away.

[Music]

It's Wednesday, which means that it's time to talk about crime. You're listening to Midweek Murders and I'm your host Sandra!

I'm also your host, Joe.

This week we're going to talk about the case of Rodney Marks and I got my information from ABC News, allthatsinteresting.com by Katie Serena, sciencemag.org by Jeffrey Mervis, Mental Floss by Michelle Debczak and New Zealand Herald by David Fisher.

And I had a lot of sources.

You can find all of our... Oh! I also thought about this on the last episode, that I should say that if we're talking about images like we did on the last episode, you can find them all, as well as the sources on our website midweekmurders.netlify.com. No! Dot app. Fucking hell. Fucked it.

Do you even internet?

Rodney Marks, an australian 32 year old astrophysicist working at the South Pole on the antarctic sub-millimeter telescope and remote observatory, a research project for the University of Chicago, that's who we're going to talk about today. I had some other things about his social life that I thought was relevant, and that comes now. [Laughter]

I've got some information, and it's coming at you now. [Laughter]

He was in a relationship with Sonja Wolter, who had a job as a maintenance specialist at the base where he was working, in Antarctica.

Antarctica. Is that how you say it?

Not quite like that but you've got all the right sounds.

How would you say it?

Antarctica.

Antarctica. That's what I said!

Antarctica. Aaaantarcticaaaa.

Okay. So she decided to spend the winter at the Amundsen–Scott Pole Station... Amundsen, I think he's probably Norwegian, maybe?

I don't know, it was named after the two people to reach the pole at the same time.

So she decided to spend the winter there as well, so that they could be together, and the winter months is especially harrowing because it's like months and months of night. The sun like, never rises. But they played together in the band, this is why it was pertinent, because I just wanted the band name to be in this because it was a great band name. Here it comes: Fannypack and the Big Nancy Boys. Thought it was a good band name. They also planned to get married so some of the articles.... Oh god. Can you hear the fireworks? It's not Guy Fawkes day, but they're still shooting.

Well they're celebrating the election, aren't they?

Hashtag vote Biden.

Hashtag thank you Americans for voting Biden. Fuck you Russian bots.

So on the 11th of may 2000, Rodney Marks started to feel ill whilst walking between the observatory and the base and visited the station's doctor, Robert Thompson, three times with an increasing amount of distress and disorientation. Rodney's complaints were of shortness of breath and body pains. The doctor sought help via satellite but Rodney died of cardiac arrest after waking up on the 12th vomiting blood, still undiagnosed. I don't know if this is true or not, but in some articles it says that Robert Thompson can't be asked for a comment because they can't find him. And in some articles it says that he has disappeared.

Yeah, I read that he disappeared in 2006.

Yeah. So has he disappeared literally, or has he disappeared from like, the public eye?

He might have died, he might have changed his name.

Yeah.

It could be any number of things. Might have been assassinated by the Russian bots.

That's in our future. Cheers! That's a big question mark, but it sounds like they can't confirm that he's dead or anything. So Rodney's body was stored in a freezer at the station for six months as the weather conditions prevented him to be moved, after which it was transported to New Zealand for an autopsy.

They stored him in a freezer for a bit on base and then his close colleagues and girlfriend decided that they should give him what they could of a proper burial. So some of the engineers made a casket out of some spare wood and buried him formally outside the base, until he could be moved to New Zealand. Yeah, so they dug him back up when flights were allowed again.

Okay. I'm guessing that the conditions of the body is not necessarily deteriorated because of that? Because he was buried in such freezing conditions? He might have been very well preserved even if he was dug into the ground.

Yeah. So like we're finding now in the permafrost of the northern ice cap, the cold almost perfectly preserves tissue.

Yeah. I've seen thousands of years old bodies that have been like, almost perfectly mummified. So at the autopsy they discovered that Rodney had not died of natural causes as the explanation had been at the time, but he had died of methanol poisoning. The forensic pathologist Martin Sage said that Rodney had ingested 150 milliliter methanol, one to two days prior to his death. And that's... I would say, a lot. Yeah?

A glass of wine's worth. Quite a large glass.

You and me kind of glass.

You and me kind of first glass. I'll start with a large glass but just bring the bottle. [Laughter]

So the autopsy showed that Rodney had needle marks on his right arm but that he did not have any drugs in his system. And when I say drugs, because this was confusing as well, I mean like drugs...

Recreational.

Recreational drugs, yes. Because Thompson, the doctor at the base, noticed this when he was injecting him with an antipsychotic as Rodney showed signs of severe anxiety. And he thought that these symptoms that he was exhibiting at the time was alcohol withdrawal.

He also previously injected him with a sedative.

Okay.

Which is where the two marks that the pathologist found, they're completely attributable to the doctor administering at first the sedative and then the second time around an antipsychotic.

Yeah. But also, Thompson, the doctor who treated him at the time said that the needle marks were still there when he did that.

Oooooh. So then he must have had more than two on his autopsy?

Yeah. But he said that he thought it was weird, as drugs were prohibited at the base, and that the needle marks were on his right arm but Rodney was right-handed. If he was using recreational drugs that was applied intravenously, it would have been on his left arm? Probably?

But, you know. And this was also a bit weird, because I read that drugs were prohibited but they also interviewed someone who was working at the base who said that they were growing Mary..Mary gianna. [Laughter]

I can't say it now. Mariana? Mariana.

Marijuana.

Marijuana.

One marijuana cigarette. [Laughter]

At the base. And also one person who said that he knew about at least one person who used heavier drugs and were selling it to other people at the base. So I'm not sure if this was...

Well marijuana wouldn't be injected, would it?

No, no. But that they also knew someone who was using heavier drugs...

Yeah, but that could just be cocaine and that's just [snorts].

No, they mean injectable drugs and were selling it to other people on the base.

Did they mean injectable drugs or did they just say heavier drugs?

I'm not sure. I think they meant injectable drugs, but I'm not sure. So you're saying that there was only two needle marks at the autopsy?

I'm sure I read that somewhere, but I didn't actually see the autopsy report, so don't quote me on it.

Okay. So it could have been there before as the doctor at the base stated, or it could have been his needle marks.

Yes.

So we don't know. Detective Senior Sergeant Grant Wormald of the New Zealand police stated that:

"In my view it is most likely Marks ingested the methanol unknowingly."

And that's because suicide seemed unlikely, as Rodney had no financial issues, was almost finished with his academic work and was engaged to be married. And most importantly, and the most importantly is my wording so this might not be true, but I thought that the thing that speaks mostly against him being suicidal was that he sought medical help as soon as he realized that he had fallen ill, and he sought it several times. And he seemed perplexed about like being so ill.

Yeah. I think if he knew what the cause was, having taken it or done it himself, then he would have told the doctor.

Yeah, and also, the doctor said that he had injected him with a sedative and antipsychotic because he seemed extremely distressed.

And if it was a suicide attempt you'd suffer in silence.

Yeah.

Because you wouldn't want anybody to treat you.

And he also seemed genuinely perplexed about like, what was happening. It didn't see like he had any kind of clue...

It's interesting that you thought most significantly against suicide was his seek for help and my first thought was: "well he's on the brink of publishing significant scientific data, why would he want to commit suicide?". [Laughter]

It's also funny that none of us take his personal life in...

Yeah, fuck that. He's writing a paper!

Well it did genuinely, I felt like, seem like he had no intention of killing himself.

I don't think so either.

Yeah. So the New Zealand police has also stated that they didn't get satisfactory cooperation from the base or the people who worked there. And other than Rodney, 49 people worked at the Antarctica station. Rodney was described as brilliant, witty and a steady sort of bloke who drank to excess on occasion. Which I felt like, relatable.

All right, don't criticize.

By a colleague. He also provided the base with free French lessons and did talks on astronomy on a regular basis. He was very outgoing and friendly, and he was described by his colleagues as an excellent scientist. Only 13 of the 49 people working at the base responded to inquiries made by the New Zealand police, so the didn't get a lot of help. And also, a thing that has come up as a theory is that he drank the methanol because he was an alcoholic. But the things that speak against that is that there was a lot of alcohol readily available at the base, like a bar that was always open, and thus it seems unlikely that Rodney had intentionally partaken in methanol or that he had tried to distill his own liquor because there was so much other alcohol available. He had 18 bottles of alcohol in his room, like on his desk. And also, Rodney's family thinks that it's very unlikely because he was a scientist and thus would know about the risks of methanol.

I'm just gonna say that on the point that he wouldn't have brewed his own because there was so much on base, there was so much on base because they had a distillery where they were making moonshine. So the stuff that was on base wasn't necessarily pre-made brought in stuff, it was the moonshine that was coming from their homemade distillery. That was so revered that it was passed down from group to group when they finished their service term. They handed it over and were like: "this is the moonshine distillery, it will be your best friend. Don't fuck it up because we'll be coming back".

Okay. But also, it couldn't be from the moonshine either, because other people would have gotten ill.

And it was tested and came back negative for methanol.

Yeah. So the only methanol that was on base was found in cleaning supplies. It wasn't just like cleaning supplies as cleaning the bathrooms and stuff, he was also using it to clean the telescope.

Yeah. Methanol is very common in labs as a cleaning solution.

And also, the methanol solutions were clearly marked and locked inside a cabinet.

Unless they were the ones on his desk.

Yeah it seems like it wasn't, but I might be wrong.

One of the reports from the base was that he had, like you said, an incredibly messy workspace. And bottles of both methanol and ethanol in their pure forms was strewn about his desk, as well as multiple bottles of generically available alcohol. So not all of the methanol was locked away all of the time, which would kind of make sense in that environment I'd say. Because if you're regularly taking it out of the locked cupboard to clean your telescopes and that's all you do, you're probably at some stage going to get lazy and just leave the bottle on your desk.

Yeah, it could have been there, yeah. So another report that I read was that Thompson had access to an Ektachem blood analyzer, which would have detected the methanol within minutes in Rodney's system if he had put Rodney's blood in that blood analyzer.

That is not strictly true.

Why not?

Well, let me put on my lab coat and talk you through alcohol poisoning. Also interestingly, you know when you first mentioned this over messaging I said I'd never had any experience with it?

Mhmm.

Thank you for confirming. It turns out that the Ektachem was renamed to VITROS, which was actually one of the first analyzers that I worked with when I worked in the lab.

Oh, okay.

So I actually know quite a bit more about this than I thought I did.

Oh, wow. Exciting

So what the Ektachem would have detected is not the methanol in his blood but it would have been what's called in biochemistry an anion gap. Now the anion gap is basically a calculation, which is the amount of chloride and bicarbonate in your blood subtracted from the amount of sodium in your blood. So it has to do a test for the amount of sodium, the amount of chloride and the amount of bicarbonate, which are all readily available in your blood. No questions there. Methanol poisoning leads to metabolic acidosis, which contributes to low bicarbonate levels in your blood. So the lower the bicarb levels the bigger the anion gap is going to be between sodium chloride and bicarb, and that is what the Ektachem would have tested and detected. And it would have given a clue to the doctor that something was wrong. When you've got a big anion gap, or a high anion gap as it's called in biochemistry, there's only a couple of possibilities that it could be and methanol or ethylene glycol poisoning are one of the options.

Okay. So it would have been a pretty big clue?

Combined with his clinical symptoms and the environmental situation. Knowing that there was a lot of alcohol on base, that all of the people on base would have been tested for conditions like diabetes because diabetes can, when it gets a bit more severe, lead to different anion gap result through diabetes alkalosis. So you can rule that out, that's one of the other options that it could be, so it can't be that because they've all had a health check and a physical and they probably wouldn't have been allowed on site with diabetes. And his clinical symptoms match that of methanol poisoning obviously, because that's what it was, so I think the doctor would have had a pretty good idea had he done that test.

Okay.

But as we know, there were reasons why he didn't.

Yeah. So I don't think I said this, but Rodney had eyesight problems when he first fell ill. So he was having to wear sunglasses inside, and also, when he woke up on the day that he died he also said that he couldn't see.

Which is another big clinical symptom of methanol poisoning.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say as well.

Oh, well. Sorry, but I'm the "not a doctor" here, so I'll do that. Thank you. [Laughter]

So what I mean is that it would probably narrow it down a lot, like the eyesight problems.

Yeah. With the eyesight problems, the shaking, the disorientation. Like, when you know that he was suffering from methanol poisoning it's super obvious. And a lot of the symptoms can coincide with withdrawal, like the doctor thought, apart from the vision issues. You can get shaking, you can be disorientated, you can have sweats. So I can see why he would have thought it would be withdrawal. But that simple test that would have taken five ten minutes to do, if he were a doctor worth his registration he would have been able to say: "this is methanol poisoning". Which is really unfortunate because the cure would have been on sight, ethanol.

Yeah.

Drinking alcohol.

Yeah. I read that as well, which for me sounds a bit counter-intuitive. So I kind of get why they wouldn't necessarily think of that.

The reason the ethanol works as a treatment for methanol poisoning, you have to look into the biological process of how the body breaks down methanol. So methanol gets broken down by a process or... Come on science brain, you know this! Methanol is catalyzed by alcohol dehydrogenase into formaldehyde, which is a common preservative, they use it in postmortems. Then formaldehyde is broken down into formic acid by formaldehyde dehydrogenase and the formic acid is what causes the damage in the body. So it's not the methanol but it's the product of methanol once it starts getting degraded. The reason ethanol is the cure for methanol poisoning is because ethanol outcompetes methanol for the alcohol dehydrogenase. When you've drank methanol, just methanol, all of your alcohol dehydrogenase is going to that methanol to break it down into the toxic formic acid. If you've drunk methanol, or ingested it however, and you're treated with ethanol the ethanol basically pushes aside all of the methanol and says: "alcohol dehydrogenase, take me! I'm super sexy". So the alcohol dehydrogenase prioritizes the ethanol rather than the methanol, which gives the liver and the kidneys time to filter out the methanol and pass it through in the urine without breaking it down into the toxic formic acid.

okay so what the doctor said

was that the analyzer was shut off

when rodney died and to recalibrate it

would have taken 8 to 10 hours

and the analyzer was shut off because of

a

lithium battery problem or something

like that

i read that there was another doctor

on another base that said that

this wasn't necessarily a problem

the problem comes from the fact that

the ectochem battery was reported

to raytheon the company that oversaw

the whole of the base and took care of

any issues like this

and they didn't prioritize it as a big

issue they thought

it's a machine that's used very rarely

it's the least of our concerns we won't

worry about it

it wasn't an instrument that was used in

the doctor's

everyday routine so for him it was a low

priority to get repaired so he wasn't

pushing raytheon to get it repaired and

they weren't particularly bothered

about it because he wasn't pressing it

okay

so the battery had been reported but it

was seen by all parties as a low

priority

the problem then came in that because

the battery wouldn't

hold the charge every time it shut off

it needed to be recalibrated

and to boot the system and recalibrate

would take nine

hours so for the doctor to be basically

waiting nine hours for this machine to

be available

if you imagine you start your shift at i

don't know six o'clock in the morning

on the polar base you haven't got that

machine for

nine hours you spend all of that time

and effort

setting it up and calibrating it and

running your quality controls

only for it to not be used for the rest

of the day

because nobody needed it you start to

get into the mindset of well

what's the point in setting it up if

nobody's going to need it

so you start to slip into a

laziness or a nonchalance

about even bothering with the machine at

all

because maybe in a two-month period he

would have needed to use it once

so you're like okay well what's the

point in having it set up raytheon

aren't sending me another battery

i have to use it once every couple of

months i just won't bother

it wasn't necessarily the biggest

problem to fix

it wasn't necessarily the hardest

problem to fix

but the combination between it being a

low priority

in practice and a low priority

for raytheon to repair

combined with the fact that they

wouldn't have been able to send out any

replacement parts

anyway because all shipments were

stopped because it was the middle of

winter

means that i personally wouldn't

attribute any blame to the doctor

for having neglected having this up and

running

yeah now i understand that from what i

understand as well

is that it would have probably worked

if he had turned it on if he had turned

it on

and calibrated it every day then yes it

would have worked

the problem is the nine hours that it

would have taken

to set up and calibrate the doctor would

have just viewed it as

a waste of nine hours because the

chances of having

a patient that needed that analysis

were so small that what would have been

the point i mean

clinically if you've got that instrument

there

and it's the only one and it's the only

way to

determine certain tests

then you should be looking at it and

getting it fixed

or going through the effort of having it

up and calibrated

but in practice it's not always that

simple

so what i read was that the other doctor

from the other base

a neighboring base he said that

it was a bit weird because

thompson had said that it was a

difficult machine

to work with he was like it's not that

difficult

and he also said that if he was having

problems with the machine why didn't he

just

call the free support line

for the machine he wouldn't have called

the support line because he knew that it

was

the battery issue and he'd reported the

battery to raytheon

and that basically told him get stuffed

in terms of the ease

of using it the comparison between dry

and wet chemistry is like night and day

dry chemistry is so

easy and wet chemistry is an absolute

nightmare

so i completely agree with the second

doctor in that it wouldn't

have been difficult to use the machine

but

i'm wondering whether that quoted

difficulty

would have been because of the battery

issue rather than the actual

running of the machine because the

running of the machine

is you put a pre-prepared slide of the

reagents

you load that up in the morning and then

when you need to test the sample

you draw some blood you spin it down so

that you've got serum you put the serum

in the machine and the machine does the

rest

i think that the other doctor

reviewed the case and the treatment of

rodney marks

and thought that it was lacking and he

thought that it was lacking because

thompson had said that it was

difficult that the machine was broken

kind of and then he also said that he

didn't have time to recalibrate the

machine

because he was too busy caring for

rodney

to do it which the other doctor also

found a bit

weird because he was like well from

when he first went to the medic

section of the base to when he died

he could have recalibrated the machine

i'm not sure if i'm

understanding this correctly or if i'm

reading into it

but the other doctor seems to be a bit

disappointed with the actual course of

treatment

i can kind of understand the whole i was

too busy

dealing with the patient to recalibrate

but only

in the respect of it being from his

second visit

yeah because from the first visit and

when he

died yeah he went back to bed went to

sleep

woke up again and then went back to the

medical tent

so that would have been plenty of time

for the machine to have been

recalibrated

and be ready to go it kind of seems like

it

because it was during a longer

period from some of the articles i read

it seemed like a shorter period but then

when i

think he slept for the whole night yeah

he went to bed

and he slept and then woke up and then

still was feeling super shitty and

i don't know a lot about it but i would

say that

his symptoms would suggest that there

was something more severe going on than

just alcohol withdrawal but i don't know

the initial diagnosis of alcohol

withdrawal

matches a lot of the symptoms you get

a patient that presents with alcohol

withdrawal symptoms

you treat those with a sedative

he goes off to bed you think the

sedative will give him time

to get over the worst of the symptoms

he'll sleep it through he'll be fine

all based on clinical presented symptoms

at that stage would have been the time

to recalibrate the machine but if you

are the treating physician

and your belief is that he's suffering

from alcohol withdrawal

you've got no reason to need to

calibrate

the ectochem because as far as you're

concerned

upon the clinical picture it's alcohol

withdrawal

all he needs is time then he comes back

the next morning

condition has severely deteriorated

at that point you start to question the

withdrawal but you're too busy

treating the patient and trying to keep

the patient alive

at that point it was probably too late

as well but i think that people

are putting this doctor

into the light of being a bit suspicious

because of the fact that he might have

disappeared

i have an alternate theory

as to how it happened

and what happened the fact that the

doctor disappeared

i think is more than likely down to

what happens with all of the team

that come back off of the base in the

they don't want

their name tainted or associated with

something having gone wrong

because then it reduces their chance of

employment in the future

so the reason why as you say it was 13

yeah responded to the inquiries

is because the more that they get

involved the less

likely it is that they have that

opportunity to be redeployed

and it's all they know so you have a

doctor who's

under suspicion of malpractice

or clinical neglect that's basically a

strike off

for a doctor if you get prosecuted for

malpractice

nowhere is going to hire you ever again

although

it's suspicious and he should have made

himself available

to explain his reasoning and go

through the whole process with the

authorities

i can kind of see why he would change

his name and practice elsewhere

on the risk of having his name

associated with a suspicious death and

run the risk of not being

hired in the future especially if he's

of the opinion that he couldn't have

done more

but his name is splashed all over the

media

and all over medical journals as being

the doctor on charge

in the base then it doesn't matter

whether all of those media outlets and

all of those reports

say that he did the best he could people

are going to be like oh

yeah that's the doctor where the guy

died and the south pole we don't want

him

i should also say that some

articles says 11 some say 12.

it was about one a quarter so it wasn't

a good return

no i just want to say that in case

somebody fact

checks this this is i don't know 13

is a overestimate maybe i mean if

anybody fact checks

our podcasts then

they might be i'm gonna have to change

my hashtag okay

so there's two other theories that i

have read

wonder if one of them's the same as mine

maybe

one of them is the one that you kind of

insinuated to oh intriguing

the one that rodney had methanol

maybe in his workspace

and he might have accidentally drank it

mostly

most of the scenes tell me more

almost everyone is convinced

that rodney didn't want to kill himself

and they're saying that it's

almost impossible that rodney dragged

methanol

with purpose because he's a scientist

and he would know that methanol is

poisonous

and the other theory is that he might

have had

methanol on his desk and therefore

accidentally drunk it i would think that

he probably

didn't accidentally drink it so my

biggest objection to the accidentally

having

methanol on his desk and drinking it

theory

picture a bottle of beer it's a beer

bottle

shape it's about 250 milliliters

very specifically and clearly

a bottle of beer and it has a very

distinct

shape yeah or it was an actual like

spirit

bottle which would also be clearly

marked

if it's a spirit bottle then it's clear

yeah it will be in a clear bottle and

again even if it's

a liter they're thin and tall usually

it will be obvious at a glance this

is an alcoholic beverage i would say so

too

to put that in comparison bottles

of methanol ethanol chloroform

whatever that are available to purchase

as reagents from reputable sources

all come in pretty much the same

standard bottle it's a brown bottle

it's short and it's fat it's

one liter and it will have on it a

white label with what it contains

and all of its safety warnings so you'll

have orange

triangles not triangle diamonds sorry

and you'll have skull and crossbones and

an exclamation mark

and a fire symbol yeah which is

the symbol for i didn't know that that's

funny

that's the international symbol for

toxic laugh for everyone

for their established symbol of what can

cause

death no it's good i just thought that

it was mostly like

on radioactive barrels i don't know it

might be

yeah because it's toxic anything that's

toxic has

exactly what you're picturing that skull

and crossbones on

an orange diamond it would have had an

exclamation mark which means it's an

irritant

it would have had a flame which means

it's flammable

it probably would have had a blue

plastic lid

the bottle of alcohol compared to your

bottle of solvents

would have been like night and day yeah

there is no

way as a scientist that uses

methanol regularly as a cleaning product

rodney would have mistaken

his bottle of methanol with his bottle

of

drinking alcohol absolutely no way

categorically that's actually what i

think as well

if he was drunk off his tits

at the time maybe but at the autopsy

they could conclusively prove that he

wasn't drunk at the time of his death

or a day before and if he wasn't drunk

office tits

i could not see him making that mistake

yeah that's what i'm trying to get at so

long story short that's my point yeah

yeah

so another theory is

that he had bought an alcohol from some

kind of tourist

destination that could have been

methanol this is the theory that i find

most believable yeah so continue with

your spiel

and then i will tell you why you're

wrong

sure so there was a bottle that

one of the scientists at the station or

the base

described as having like a shrimp on it

and they guessed maybe

portuguese writing so they thought that

because as i understand it some

tourists liqueurs are sometimes

sold as alcohol but then they're

actually methanol methanol is an alcohol

yeah so they thought that maybe

he was sold this when he was

at some other place and then

he drank it and it was methanol and then

they poured it out

afterwards because they didn't find that

relating to the

evidence because they thought that

rodney had died

of natural circumstances

it's very common particularly in

southeast asia

which isn't particularly applicable for

this case when they thought it was

portuguese writing

to add methanol to their bottles of

alcohol

to enhance the drunkenness

basically because methanol acts faster

and is more toxic

you need less of it to get the typical

effects of being drunk

so a lot of back alley producers

of alcohol will deliberately add

methanol into their bottles of alcohol

for that purpose and it's a recorded

and documented problem the world health

organization have

reported about 300 deaths per

year due to this now it's interesting

that you said

that the amount they found in the

post-mortem

was about 150 milliliters

which as we said earlier is our glass of

wine

yes now you imagine again i take you

back to

the typical bottle of alcohol

250 milliliters no

or 330. yeah a beer bottle yeah 330

whereas i can doesn't matter anyway

seven for a small beer bottle oh

small beers small beers

i'm more of a one liter man sticky and a

stein i'll have it

you do anyway do you have a horn

i have a horn and two steins so

fill me up the horn is very narrow

though

so i don't think it will does it contain

one

pint a drinking water i've never tested

it i'll find out

anyway so 150 milliliters was found

in his stomach during the post-mortem

methanol yes

of methanol assuming a small beer is

about 230

you've got nearly 100 milliliters for it

to be

anything else loads of room to fill it

up with

tasty delicious alcohol the lethal dose

for approximately 50 of the population

is 100 milliliters

so that's all they need to add into

their

beer whiskey vodka to be lethal

so not surprised that he died with 150

but also well within toxicity limits

to have half of their bottle of

miscellaneous alcohol be methanol

and for that to be lethal i could see it

i'm not saying that i think this is the

most realistic theory

because if you think about it he's an

esteemed scientist so he wouldn't have

ingested it on purpose

we've ruled out suicidal intentions

as far as we can he knows the difference

between

bulk reagents and alcohol bottles so

we're ruling out that he

could have accidentally drank methanol

instead of his vodka bottle

we've got this suspicious bottle of

alcohol that nobody knows where it came

from and nobody could test it because

they threw the bottle away before

forensics could get involved historic

and current evidence from the world

health organization

that back alley manufacturers taint

their

alcohol products with methanol to me

it ticks all of the boxes to me it

sounds

likely in one way i think it was someone

at the base that said that he had seen

this bottle of alcohol he

didn't know what it was it was a picture

of a shrimp

portuguese writing something other

than maybe they would have expected

on the baby i'm guessing in that way

i understand it i can't believe it

but i would say because i'm

more probable to believe people's

inherent fuckiness or whatever you want

to call it

i would say that the fact that

rodney marx was outgoing

brilliant he could outmatch

any competition in chess or

poker whilst fist

i would say that some in sell

because i probably spend too much time

on reddit

was annoyed with them some people are

like

i don't have any social skills but

that's okay

because i'm so smart and then they see

this person who's so

smart and so outgoing and so

funny and blah blah blah and they get

annoyed by it

i'm not sure i think that i might

like your theory as well i think

that the selection criteria to be able

to do a winter mission

in antarctica is so precise

and strict that everybody they pick

is gonna be at the top of their field

i don't think anybody that is on that

base

at that time is going to be jealous

of rodney's achievements oh i think you

underestimate the competitiveness of

some people did find him a bit strange

or inappropriate because he had

tourette's which is why he was drinking

a lot he self-medicated for tourettes

and some people took his dry wit

in air quotes the wrong way and then

rodney

being a very friendly person tried to

make

rights so he would give them gifts

he would try to be like oh i'm sorry

if i robbed you the wrong way or if i

insulted you in some way

here's a gift or here's a token of my

appreciation

but i feel like scientists

careful careful can be

somewhat anti-social

so because there was a recorded history

of him

robbing some people the wrong way and

him being

so very generous with

like the french lessons and the

astronomy

lectures and all of the things

some people might have found him

problematic

not because he was just because they

didn't have the same talent

i don't mean that this has to have

happened

i don't mean that i just mean that it

could have definitely happened just

looking

definitely happened

just looking at the people on reddit

like the people who think that they were

so smart

here we go ready is where did that

ready topping this

they're like i'm so smart and people who

are oh don't do you subscribe to i am

very smart

no but i've seen a lot don't because

those guys will

irritate the out of you yeah

there's

so many people who think they are

geniuses and then there's other people

who

are social or extrovert

and they feel like they're personally

offended

by the extrovertness of someone who is

smart i don't think that poisoning

is way out there because a lot of people

think

they are brilliant or geniuses aren't

really geniuses

he wasn't a self-prescribed genius he

was described

that by other people i mean other people

on the base even if they are

psychologically

evaluated before going there

there's a lot of cases on

remote bases and stuff where people go

crazy

i think that that might be probable

no was the mystery bottle mate

people are murdered for less grievances

than that i do subscribe to your theory

as well because i do

think that this is the correct one

i do think that it might have happened

but i also think that

because he was so outgoing and social

and had a girlfriend and stuff other

people on the base might have been

like oh excellent scientist you say

girlfriend you say

it's weird for me to see that 11

12 or 13 of the 49

people working at the base they don't

even answer

a police questionnaire i would be like

i will give you everything that i have

ever noticed

i think the reason most of them didn't

respond was because

the agency that was behind

the contracts wanted it all hushed up

and so if they would have put their name

to these police

requests they would have been less

likely to get hired in the future

if they've got nothing to report and

there was nothing suspicious that they

knew of then why would they report

anything

i think that i'm more inclined to

believe that because

i don't think that people are good

necessarily in general if you were

murdered why would

so few people respond to

the survey because of the fact that

you told everyone about that was like if

you're not gonna get hired

you're just molding your

evidence now

no i'm just saying that if it wasn't

shaping it like a little plasticine

then nobody would answer because it's a

murder

and you want to get hired

if it's not a murder then

you have nothing to say and you still

want to get hired so you don't

answer the inquiries because you don't

have to

because it was in new zealand and the

people who worked at that

well the base in itself was american

the land that it was on was new zealand

yeah because uh the americans don't

accept

any other country's claim to the south

pole

yeah well i think seven different

countries

have a claim to certain areas of the

south pole and then america are like

no it's ours you don't get any of it

space falls

baby i just think that if it was a

murder

then the person who did the murder would

be like i don't know

about if it wasn't a murder

then still people would be like i don't

know about

except for the friend who was like oh it

might have been

the weird alcohol bottle the doctor

might have been the murderer who knows

he disappeared tell you who was the

murderer

whoever made that bottle of alcohol

we still don't know about

it's a mystery for yourself i know a lot

about

what are you gonna do now eat dinner

oh i'm sorry it's so late yeah you've

been about

what are you gonna eat

the uh christmas gifts have arrived so

i've got lots of laboration lots of lint

chocolate what is slip cushion

a bad pronunciation of labe cuchin

lame cushion did i get it that time your

ch

sound is too soft okay do it again

leave cushion labe cushion no

now what i thought i got it that time

wait

no that was a labe cushion labe cushion

lab cushion no

you're fine it's all fine apart from the

ch

which you're pronouncing as an sh okay

lab kitchen

it's the same sound as ich okay cushion

that was closer

you sounded like a tentative child

okay let's

that's the closest you've been so far

what is the dessert the germans describe

it as gingerbread

but it's not gingerbread the texture is

kind of a mix between

gingerbread and a biscuit it has no

flavor of gingerbread lib

yes okay i'm gonna have dinner now

because this could go on all night

okay have a nice dinner bye

ciao

kiss kiss

you

Topics

• methanol poisoning
• Rodney Marks
• Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station
• Methanol toxicity
• Metabolic acidosis
• murder in Antarctica
• death at the South Pole
• forensic science explained
• true crime comedy podcast
• ReAgents
• methanol in liquor sold to tourists
• r/imverysmart
• Unresolved mysteries
• Unsolved mystery
• Ektachem