December 2025

The world of aircraft of course has its own experts, its own buffs, and aircraft on the fringes represent their own world of mystery. When an aircraft of unknown design is sighted, it’s like the shiver that goes down the spine of the ornithologist spotting a bird thought to be long extinct.

So when a small propeller driven plane, looking a bit unlike anything anyone has ever seen before, is photographed on the tarmac of a small California airport, curious aviation minds want to know.

A bullet shaped plane.

Clear capacity or potential for some alternative, futuristic power source.

Unusual aerodynamics.

And the single small propeller, like what mariners might call a screw, in the back, giving the aircraft the look of a large flying torpedo.

Numbering on the tail led the aviation sleuths to a company which owns the plane. Questions posed to the company—Otto Aviation Group, LLC, led them absolutely nowhere. No comment. We have nothing to share with you in regard to that aircraft.

Questions without answers are the fertile soil in which speculation grows, and unusual phenomena are the fertilizer which grows it faster. The plane, in and of itself, is nothing spectacular. We’ve all seen planes with wings, and propellers. And yet, not exactly like this, not with this bulgy yet aerodynamic shape, not with a single propeller of that size and shape, not one that raises these questions.

A Sherlock of aviation will take a careful look at the craft and want to know:

• Is the plane primarily an aerodynamic experiment?
• Does it have some future military implications that aren’t immediately obvious?
• Is it built a test hydrogen or electricity or some other alternative fuel.
• Yes we’ve all seen airplanes with propellers before, but just what’s this one all about?

Usually the aviation mystery buffs chase the legend of photographs smuggled from a secret air base, or plans bootlegged from a classified source. Radar defeating planes, or aircraft that might fly at Mach 7. Now they’ll be checking for patents on something much simpler, but still very secret. When something is secret we all want to know why.

After the brutal, infamous white colonial regime of South Africa gave way in 1994 to a government run by African hero Nelson Mandela, the new president asked for Truth and Reconciliation, even having a commission established under that name.

The idea: get the atrocities of the past out into the open, but not with the aim of retribution. If a criminal of the race wars in South Africa confessed, and beyond that showed genuine contrition, he or she might be granted amnesty, and afforded a large measure of forgiveness.

The film: The Forgiven, with Forest Whitaker as a compelling archbishop Desmond Tutu, brings us a painfully true story, though the vehicle of both real and fictional events. We won’t attempt here to grapple with all the details of this gripping portrayal.

The story offers up conundrums of the human psyche… how does the psyche transform, become amenable to other ways of seeing, of deep repentance…when and why do some persons just snap, as if moving from night to day?

What does the high sounding aim of “reconciliation” offer the victims, really, after all their loved ones still died horrible deaths. What of their psyches, their tortured souls?

The mystery chaser also asks:

How do you know when someone who’s “come clean” has told you everything?

How will you ever know when political deals covered up a little truth, a lot of truth?

Is there ever a time when political considerations should cover up a little truth, a lot of truth?

In the end, how do you know when you’ve finally burrowed to the bottom of scandal, depravity, of stories with no ending?

The film, for example, does of good job of this, looking at the basic level of abuse of blacks, but also asking a haunting question, as a refrain: just what was operation Hacksaw?

When you go back to the 1990’s and engage with South Africa’s story, there’s much, much to think about.

Developed from Abagnale’s memoir of the same name, the film version of “Catch Me If You Can” claims to be based on that “true story.” It takes us back to the mid-60s and early 70s, where a winsome and ageless Dicaprio pulls some pretty neat tricks as a junior con man. He charms the pants off most anyone, especially attractive women.
It’s a homespun romp where “Frank” is a victim of poverty, neglect, divorce and the need to please, please, please his father by assuming phony professional identities. One of the falsities of the film is that portrayal, because Frank didn’t see his father after his parents divorced early in his life. This is only the first of many departures from the narrative of Abagnale’s book.

And, of course, never one to not comment on himself, Frank sent out a news release:

“I feel it is necessary to make the following statement concerning the book and the film, Catch Me If You Can. The reason for this statement is to provide clarification and accuracy.

I wrote the book, Catch Me If You Can, more than 23 years ago. Obviously, this was written from my perspective as a 16-year old with the help of a co-writer (I’m now 54 and I sold the movie rights in 1980). I was interviewed by the co-writer only about four times. I believe he did a great job of telling the story, but he also over dramatized and exaggerated some of the story. That was his style and what the editor wanted. He always reminded me that he was just telling a story and not writing my biography. This is one of the reasons that from the very beginning, I insisted the publisher put a disclaimer in the book and tapes.

It has been reported that I had written $10 million, $8 million and $5 million worth of bad checks. The actual amount was $2.5 million. I was never on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List as this is reserved for very violent criminals who pose a threat to society. All of the crimes I committed were when I was between the ages 16 and 21. I served time in prison in France, Sweden and the United States. In the U. S. Federal Court, I was sentenced as a youthful offender because of my age at the time the crimes were committed. Even so, I was given 12 years of which I served a total of five years. This was considered harsh punishment then and almost unheard of today.

I have been married for over 25 years and I am the proud father of three sons. When I was 28 years old, I thought it would be great to have a movie about my life, but when I was 28, like when I was 16, I was egotistical and self-centered. We all grow up. Hopefully we get wiser. Age brings wisdom and fatherhood changes one’s life completely. I consider my past immoral, unethical and illegal. It is something I am not proud of. I am proud that I have been able to turn my life around and in the past 25 years, helped my government, my clients, thousands of corporations and consumers deal with the problems of white collar crime and fraud.

I know that Hollywood has made a number of changes to the story, but I am honored that Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks participated in the making of the movie inspired by my life. It is important to understand that it is just a movie… not a biographical documentary. ‘’

Frank W. Abagnale
September 3, 2002

In most countries, there is no Statute of Limitations on Murder. Old, cold cases, come back to haunt us. We never stop wanting to know.

The fate of the family of Czar Nicholas, at the hands of the Bolshevicks, has been addressed in hundreds of books. But now,

Nisman died mysteriously in 2015, but the story goes back to 1994…

Jewish center bombing casts shadow over Argentine politics 23 years on. Former president Kirchner ordered arrested on suspicion of covering up Iran’s role in terror attack that killed 85 in return for lucrative trade deals

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The bomb blast that ripped through a Jewish center in Buenos Aires and killed 85 people in 1994 continues to cause shock waves in Argentina’s politics.

Twenty-three years after the bombing, two former presidents have been indicted, a slew of Iranian officials are accused, a campaigning prosecutor is dead from a bullet in the head, but no one has ever been charged in the original attack.

On Thursday, a prosecuting magistrate ordered the arrest of former president Cristina Kirchner and called on the Senate to begin procedures to strip her of parliamentary immunity.

On July 18, 1994, a bomb destroyed the headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), leaving 85 dead and 300 people wounded.

It followed the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires two years earlier, which killed 29 people and wounded 200.

Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terror is accused of the carrying out bombings at Iran’s demand.

Alberto Nisman was appointed special prosecutor by Kirchner’s husband, then president Nestor Kirchner, and he quickly showed his investigation would be far-reaching.

On his request, British authorities in 2003 arrested Iran’s former ambassador to Buenos Aires, Hadi Soleimanpour, but he was released on bail for lack of evidence.

APF.com, 8 December 2017

That’s the triggering event, that second bombing, aimed just as squarely at Jews as the attacks we’re used to seeing in the Middle East On Argentina’s scale it was a 9-11, Twin Towers type of catastrophe. They weren’t used to bombs going off in their largest city, killing scores of people.

The anti-semitic Iranian state is suspected. Thus, for a quarter of a century now, a huge, nasty question mark has hung over that memory. Was it a vicious, sideway strike at the Jewish state by targeting a major Jewish center in South America, as most allege?

And the further allegation is what brings us to Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman. He was chief among those who claimed that the investigation into Iranian involvement was soft-peddled deliberately, in exchange for political favors.

Read on:

Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has appeared in court, where she denied covering up for Iranians accused of involvement in a 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center that left 85 people dead.

Calling the case an “absurdity”, Kirchner, who held office from 2007 until 2015, went on to attack the judge overseeing the case, which is based on charges first levelled two years ago by a federal prosecutor who was found dead in his homeshortly before he was due to present his allegations publicly.

“I don’t expect any justice from you,” Kirchner, reading from a 17-page prepared statement, told the federal judge Claudio Bonadío on Thursday.

Kirchner is facing accusations of treason and plotting a cover-up for signing a 2012 pact with Iran that would have allowed senior Iranian officials accused of the deadly attack to be investigated in their own country, rather than in Argentina.

Senators enjoy immunity from prosecution, although this week congress stripped a former minister in Kirchner’s government of his immunity as part of a corruption inquiry.

“This is a great judicial absurdity,” said Kirchner. “The aim of this judicial persecution is to intimidate opposition leaders in congress. They want a submissive congress.”

APF.com, 8 December 2017

It’s hard enough to judge politics in your own country, figure out what’s a genuine prosecution, what’s a set-up.

And the death of Nisman just before his much-anticipated speech?

Propaganda, that’s what we call it, that’s what we remember. But so many questions are left unanswered whenever propagandists offer us their alternative version of the facts.

The NY Times offered an article a few months ago under the title “The Mystery of Hanoi Hannah.” She was the Tokyo Rose of her war, always telling the opposing troops on the radio how they’d been duped, how they really worked for evil, how they were really losing the war.

The story’s absorbing, but many elements of human mystery left unexplored.

The relatively small quantity of water makes modest contact with the edge of the river, the phrase just a drop in the bucket comes to mind. Yet many yards in to the center of the water, you’d think that a torpedo had exploded and stirred up some violent sea monster.

Experts think that manatees–a protected species–were startled and reacted. Officials are looking in to the water tosser, prepared to give him a hard time.

But if manatees spook from that light a disturbance, wouldn’t they go nuts whenever any creature, or falling branch, disturbs the water anywhere remotely near them? And if so, what’s the big deal about this guy bailing water from his boat, disturbing them just a little more?

The more you think about that video clip the less sense it makes. If you accept the startled-manatee theory, then those animals should all die of heart attacks before they could even reproduce. They all over-react in ridiculous fashion.

Just what does cause the explosion in the water, from only a few drops tossed in?

A mature, learned man named William Patterson can be seen on a long, high-quality video tape (YouTube) speaking about his journey with Carlos, or more nearly with his books and his “truths.” His audience are mature people, captured on camera with intimate clarity, perhaps of a median age of 50, and they are…rapt. They could be devout Catholics listening to the Pope, or Tibetan Buddists learning of teachings of the Dalai Lama. The whole phenomenon is striking.

Patterson makes some reference to the collapse of Castaneda’s credibility in most circles, but treats that lightly. He merely thinks Carlos would have been amused, delighted, at all the confusion and controversy, at how many angels try to dance on the head of his spiritual pin.

If reality is expanded, yet reduced, to intense beams of light, how much can the ephemeral twinking of something like a doctorate in anthropology really mean? How can you call a man’s statements untrue, if we’re all still grappling for that sense of what “truth” is?

And yet, at some point in his talk, Patterson asserts that you can’t “get at the truth through a lie.” A description, it would seem, of what Carlos attempted his entire life, but it’s not clear that Patterson caught the irony.

Carlos himself is not the only enigma here, rather the way countless people react to his life and writings offer up an enigma sandwich–several slices of cheese thick–as well.

And what do we really know of this phenomenal man?

His adopted son remembers, as a very young child, travels with him, down highways and byways, sometimes encountering Natives in his journeys. He remembers as well his father surrounded by boxes and boxes of documents. Notes from books? Notes from the field? We’ll never know.

As near as we can determine, the written works of Castaneda, are based on light experiences in the Southwestern US and Northwestern Mexico, with Natives, but on heavy time spent reading and borrowing ideas.
Don Juan Matus, as we know him, was much more fiction than fact.

(We’ll always wonder, when did it dawn on him that he was a decent anthropologist, but a born novelist? Why, and when did he move, surreptitiously, into his true calling?)

But what of the life and trajectory of Carlos Castaneda himself?

He lived out of the limelight, sometimes teaching some workshops related to his beliefs, but more and more, as the years went by, simply living off the grid, not easy for anyone to locate. No one was going to be able to do any “enthnographic research” on him, he was harder to track down than the proverbial Don Juan. Early on, he would give an occasional interview in his thickly accented English, to a a journalist who was still thoroughly credulous. On YouTube you can stream a long talk with Carlos and the noted writer Theodore Roszak.

As time went by and the questions would have been more and more skeptical, he simply ducked the challenge. If you wanted to put it charitably, he was too deeply involved in higher spiritual quests to wish to fritter time away answering unenlightened questions.

Spend even a short time in the study of Castanology, and you’ll soon encounter the phenomenon of Carlos and his…spiritual harem, for lack of a better term. The crowd of women, substantially more than men, that became cultish followers, often living in the same home, often sharing Carlos’s bed.

(Those who hated their influence on him—though it was more the other way around—dubbed them “the witches.” Then again, so did many in the inner circle.)

Couldn’t we simply interview those intimates, and construct his later years from their accounts? A few devotees are still heard from, some worshipful of their time with Castaneda, and many who feel they fell for a con. But learning from that closest cohort of women isn’t possible, they’re generally either deceased, or at least unaccounted for. As one Castaneda cynic put it, “four of the five women closest to him” died soon after he did.

One example of the ultimate devotee was Patricia Partin, an adopted daughter as well as lover—yes, you read that correctly. Of his women followers who are missing and unaccounted for, Partin is a special case in point, her bleached bones finally found in Death Valley. Speculation: she believed, as Carlos taught her, that in the raw desert you could cross over to the other, metaphysical side of consciousness. As she wandered the Valley, heat and dehydration took her down as they will any mortal soul. In time hikers found her bones, we may never know what happened to her spirit.

That’s a tragic, intriguing cult-mystery, all it’s own.

In the end, we’re left to construct impressions of what the older Carlos became. Consider this:

Certain types of famous writers become reclusive, shy of even being seen, photographed. They live cloistered in some corner that only a few intimates know about, with every possible detail of their lives screened from view. Check, that was Carlos.

Some celebrities stop seeking public adulation, preferring to spend time with a tight group of disciples, people available at their beck and call, people who hang upon their word as the word of God. Often, for a certain type of male, his admiring entourage is largely female. Check, that was Carlos.

Certain celebrities claim to have eschewed the shallow things in life, money and the material, casual sex, and the like, while indulging in private. Check, that was Carlos.

And savvy celebrities of the spirit, they know just how to scratch the spiritual itch of potential followers. They broker superpowers, sure roads to inner peace, nirvana, even ecstasy. Think about it, a method to achieve a spiritual magic–flying as the crow far above pedestrian cares, one of the oldest dreams of mankind. A metaphysical discipline leading to immortality, a life of utter serenity, without end, or rather ending in an eternal beam of consciousness.

The spiritual product for sale could hardly be more attractive, could it?

Are we left with an irony—that this most unique of individuals was also a sad stereotype? A “spiritual leader” who took not a vow not of poverty, but of wealth. A being who soared above mere worldly pleasures, and did so with a bevy of live-in lovers. A being who claimed to offer the highest, most etherial of truths, who couldn’t manage to meet the basic truths of his chosen profession. A being followed in hopes of receiving his great gift, which was often a gift of sheer abuse.

More than a decade ago, Salon weighed in with an interminable article: “The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda.” It begins:

“The godfather of the New Age led a secretive group of devoted followers in the last decade of his life. His closest “witches” remain missing, and former insiders, offering new details, believe the women took their own lives.

For fans of the literary con, it’s been a great few years. Currently, we have Richard Gere starring as Clifford Irving in “The Hoax,” a film about the ’70s novelist who penned a faux autobiography of Howard Hughes. We’ve had the unmasking of James Frey, JT LeRoy/Laura Albert and Harvard’s Kaavya Viswanathan, who plagiarized large chunks of her debut novel, forcing her publisher, Little, Brown and Co., to recall the book. Much has been written about the slippery boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, the publishing industry’s responsibility for distinguishing between the two, and the potential damage to readers. There’s been, however, hardly a mention of the 20th century’s most successful literary trickster: Carlos Castaneda.

Salon.com, Robert Marshall, April 12, 2007

Although this article’s so “thorough” it drops clarity and focus, those willing to hang in and read a long while learn about the gradual collapse of the hoax, and the miserable history of his cult. Cult, there’s no other word for it when the guru assumes demonic powers, and incites demonic acts. Take your pick from a hundred examples. Our “favorite:”

Carlos tells one young woman, for no reason that’s clear, to go home and whack her mother, a holocaust survivor, in the face. Which, fearing Carlos’s disapproval, she does.

What more do you really need to know?

Air Force Lieutenant William Mitchell passed two people walking west as he was running east along the towpath that day. The first person he claims to have seen was a woman whose description closely matches that of Mary, and the second was a man walking in the same direction, about 200 yards behind her. Mitchell described the man as being about the same height as him, and “wearing a light colored wind breaker, dark slacks, and a peaked golf hat” (Nobilem and Rosenbaum 22).

Henry Wiggins, who worked at the M Street Esso station, was called to the area of the towpath that day in order to jump start a gray Rambler with a dead battery. As he got to the vehicle on Canal Road, he heard a woman yell, “Someone help me, someone help me,” from the towpath down below (Nobilem and Rosenbaum 22). He then heard two gunshots and ran to the edge of the wall overlooking the towpath. He “saw a black man in a light jacket, dark slacks, and a dark cap standing over the body of a white woman…” (Nobilem and Rosenbaum 22). According to Wiggins, the man then placed a dark object in the pocket of his windbreaker and disappeared into the wooded embankment leading down to the Potomac.

Officer escorting Ray Crump Jr.

Wiggins jumped in his truck, sped back to the Esso station, and called the police department. Within five minutes of the phone call, police converged on the towpath and sealed off all of the five well-marked exits. Convinced they had the murderer trapped, police began to scour the towpath area.

Officer Warner came across the only live person on the towpath: a black man named Raymond Crump Jr. who was dripping wet. He was wearing dark slacks and a peaked golf cap. Even though it was a brisk day, he had no jacket with him and his pants zipper was open. Crump said he had gotten wet when he lost his fishing pole and went into the river to try and retrieve it. Moments later, when Crump was showing Officer Warner where he claimed to be fishing, Henry Wiggins saw the two of them down by the river and started yelling to police that that was the man he saw kill Mary Meyer. Raymond Crump Jr. was then arrested. When asked why his fly was down, he said the police did it.

Ben Hayes, macadams.posc.mu.edu, posting date unknown

This post from a serious, Marquette University faculty blog on mystery analysis, hints at the complex semi-urban, but semi-rural scene. Were the exits really sealed off, did law enforcement have their perpetrator trapped? At this distance of years, and lacking firm documentation, we consider that an open question.
There’s a score or more of IF this, THEN that turning points in the Meyer story.

IF there really were “help me” screams for several moments from Meyer, that does lead away from the theory of a contract-type hit. Professionals usually shoot quickly, silently, and then leave immediately. But IF the remarks were only the squeak of a second when Mary quickly perceived violent intent, they could be consistent with a professional, who knew how to place shots to kill.

IF Raymond Crump really had no alibi for why he was wandering around wet, far from his home turf, lots of circumstances look bad for him. IF he choose the remote spot for clandestine, illicit sex, and the shy woman took off at the first sign of trouble, that could make some sense. We are carrying the weight of much speculation, many an IF…

IF Crump met a woman for an escapade that day, how likely is it that a rape attempt would be on his mind, either before, or after? A rape gone wrong merits frequent mention as the panicky motive for Crump’s supposed crime. Or was he not bright enough to see that a woman walking in her neighborhood with no pocketbook really offered nothing to steal, so he attempted a botch robbery? That also doesn’t seem quite right.

And normally we reject thinking that assumes too much brilliant planning on the part of nefarious conspirators. But IF Crump was somehow set up, he would be the perfect fall-guy– black, poor, confused, vulnerable to pressures.

We can swim in IF’s in these cases for a long, long time.

Mary and her sister, Tony Bradlee, had been good friends of John and Jackie Kennedy. Before John became President, they all lived in the same neighborhood in Georgetown, taking many walks together on the towpath. Bill Bradlee, Mary’s brother-in-law, gives an account of the events that followed Mary’s death in his book A Good Life:

“Two telephone calls that night from overseas added new dimensions to Mary’s death. The first came from President Kennedy’s press secretary, Pierre Salinger, in Paris. He expressed his particular sorrow and condolences, and it was only after that conversation was over that we realized that we hadn’t known that Pierre had been a friend of Mary’s. The second, from Anne Truitt, an artist/sculptor living in Tokyo, was completely understandable. She had been perhaps Mary’s closest friend, and after she and Tony had grieved together, she told us that Mary had asked her to take possession of a private diary ‘if anything ever happened to me.’ Anne asked if we had found any such diary, and we told her we hadn’t looked for anything, much less a diary. We didn’t start looking until the next morning, when Tony and I walked around the corner a few blocks to Mary’s house. It was locked, as we had expected, but when we got inside, we found Jim Angleton, and to our complete surprise he told us he, too, was looking for Mary’s diary”.

Ben Hayes, macadams.posc.mu.edu, posting date unknown

So, What does this tell us? Mary had lots of connections, which could mean a lot, and could mean nothing.

And that “diary,” as it kept being called? We know at least that Mary considered it somewhere on the scale of very private, to absolutely explosive. Where on that range, we don’t know. But we do know that absence makes the curiosity grow fonder, if not the heart. Those papers are long gone, it seems.

Were there explicit revelations of her affair with President Kennedy? Which would now, after all these years and other revelations about his appetites, seem rather tame.

Or did her speculation, even knowledge, of government affairs go well beyond the bedroom? IF we knew, we’d know where to go with that part of the puzzle.

“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.”     Marilyn

Who was the bundle of contradictions we call Marilyn Monroe, so innocent-seeming a blonde with such a sharp mind, so genuine a person yet a pure creation of tinseltown, so intensely famous and pursued yet so lonely, so well known, around the world, yet hardly known at all?  She was, herself, a gorgeous mystery in high heels.

“I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.”

“I don’t look at myself as a commodity, but I’m sure a lot of people have.”

“I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.”

“Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.”

“Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.” 

“I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.”