Shownotes Transcript
This episode includes discussions of murder, substance abuse, suicide, and sexual assault. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. For mental health support, visit spotify.com/resources. Imagine a place without war, without mineral exploitation, where the environment is fully protected.
A place where peace and cooperation, science and the environment come before money and power. This sounds like an imaginary place, doesn't it? However, this is reality in Antarctica under the Antarctic Treaty System, which was put into place in 1959. The treaty is a very successful example of how governments have worked together to protect this unique continent.
Every word I've said so far has been a verbatim quote pulled from the UK-funded website Discovering Antarctica, which also highlights a line from the treaty itself that states, "...Antarctica shall continue to be used forever for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord."
With that said, this is New Zealand-based investigative reporter Stephen Davis talking about a story that came out of an Antarctic base back in 2000. "We have a man dying suddenly and we don't know why. The organization responsible for him just wants it to wrap it under the carpet."
And they have no grounds for complaining that there are lots of suspicions because they acted in an incredibly suspicious way right from the start. You know, it's appalling. It's appalling that the National Science Foundation and the U.S. government allowed this to happen. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod.
And we would love to hear from you. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. To help us tell today's story, we interviewed Stephen Davis, an investigative reporter, professor, author, and the host of the podcast, The Secret History of Antarctica. We're grateful for his time and insights. Stay with us.
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And was the Titanic disaster truly an accident or part of an elaborate insurance scam? Join us every Monday as we unravel the red web of the unexplained, right here on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Antarctica is much bigger than many flat maps make it seem. It's almost twice the size of Australia and roughly one and a half times the size of the contiguous United States.
And yet, it's one of the few places on our planet that doesn't have a permanent population. That's maybe unsurprising considering it's far and away the coldest continent on Earth, with a record low of -126.8 degrees Fahrenheit . It's also not exactly an easy place to get to.
Stephen Davis says it's well worth a visit. I have been to spectacular scenic places all over the world, and there's nothing like Antarctica. You know, you look outside and the sun is there at three o'clock in the morning, tracking slowly across the horizon because it's light the whole time in the summer. And the next thing you realize after you get over the physical part of it,
is how awe-inspiringly beautiful it is. I remember talking to the guide about the beauty and the dangers of the place, and he said something which really stuck with me. He said, this is the most beautiful place that's also trying to kill you. Dehydration, hypothermia, frostbite, sun damage, and altitude sickness are just some of the concerns.
Even walking from place to place can prove dangerous. Snow-covered cracks can appear in ice overnight. If you're not careful or not tethered to another person, you could find yourself slipping and falling into a cavernous crevasse. But Antarctica's beauty is, in fact, undeniable. Stevens says he's wanted to return to the continent ever since his first visit, but he believes he might face some challenges.
I suspect that after my investigation, the chances of the US authorities letting me go to the South Pole are pretty minimal, to be honest. Stevens referring to his investigation into the death of Rodney Marks, an Australian astrophysicist and former employee of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The base is run by the United States and is still in operation today.
Its location continues to attract leading scientists from all over the world, especially those who hope to study the sky. When people think of the Antarctica and they think of ice and they probably think of snow and things that melt. It's not like that. It's solid ice rock and it's an incredibly dry climate.
You can't just go and find water. You can't just chip into the ice. I am one of those people who thought of it that way. And in addition to being the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica is also the driest. And its lack of moisture and lack of light pollution allows for a particularly uninterrupted view of the night sky.
Rodney Mark served as the sole operator of Amundsen-Scott's Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope and Remote Observatory, work that took place in a separate building, a trek away from the residential facilities.
Stephen says Rodney would spend hours there, often alone, conducting experiments and recording the movement of the planets. His supervisor in Boston, the wonderfully named Tony Stark, who I interviewed, said Rodney was doing well. His science was doing well. He had all the sort of incarnations of a man who was having a successful career and doing what he loved.
Winter is a unique time for all the bases at the South Pole. Exact figures are hard to come by, but estimates suggest the continent's population drops from about 4,000 to 5,000 people in the summer to around 1,000 in the colder months. Stephen says back in 1999, Rodney was one of about 50 employees at the Amundsen-Scott base who would be, quote, wintering over.
Winter over at the South Pole is when all the summer people have gone and a small group stay behind. Rather than being light all the time, when I was down there it is dark 24/7. Exceptionally cold, very difficult to move around. You are effectively trapped.
Trapped or not, New Year's Eve 1999 was an especially exciting time to be at the South Pole. Because of its location, it exists in every time zone on Earth, which made for quite the celebration. Every hour on the hour, workers ushered in a brand new millennium with a different part of the world.
He was in a band down there with his then girlfriend. So they celebrated the millennium at the South Pole and his band played a concert. And, you know, they had, as it were, a few drinks and an amazing celebration. Rodney met his girlfriend while working at the South Pole. Stephen says they fell in love and were expecting to get married, but they never got the chance. A few months later, in May 2008,
Rodney fell ill while walking back from a shift at the observatory. Stephen says he didn't know what could be wrong with him. And he spent the next day and a half in a dizzying and terrifying downward spiral. Over a 36-hour period, he made three trips to the doctor's surgery. He was at one stage, vomiting blood. He had severe headaches.
During one visit, he wore sunglasses because he was complaining about his eyesight and the pain behind his eyes. During the night, he was sleepless. He felt scared. His breathing became uncontrollably fast. His joints were painful. At one stage, the doctor injected him with a sedative.
which calmed him down, and he returned to his own bed. On another visit, he became hyperventilating, and the doctor found him to be combative. I think he was desperate to know what was happening to him. He was given an antipsychotic injection to calm him down. But all of this, I think, was a doctor guessing and guessing wrong at what happened to him.
Though the medical facilities were apparently well-equipped, Rodney's life was in the hands of the one doctor on the base. Outside medical intervention or an emergency evacuation were off the table. Stephen says it would have been easier to rescue someone from outer space. And so Rodney sought medical attention right up until the moment his heart stopped. It happened while lying in his girlfriend's arms.
He was 32 years old. The National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the United States federal government which operates the base, quickly released a statement saying Rodney's cause of death was unknown, but he had, quote, apparently died of natural causes. The news of his sudden passing came as a shock to everyone.
Despite the physical exams employees had to pass, some assumed Rodney's death must have been linked to underlying health conditions. How else had his health deteriorated so quickly? What I think was equally or even more shocking is what happened immediately after that. So you can imagine in New York, somebody at a lab dies suddenly for no apparent reason and very quickly.
According to Stephen, his investigation found the National Science Foundation did absolutely none of that.
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Investigative reporter Stephen Davis first heard the name Rodney Marks about a year after his passing. It happened while Stephen was investigating another Antarctic story altogether. In 2001, almost exactly one year after Rodney's death, a physician named Jerry Nielsen Fitzgerald diagnosed herself with breast cancer while working on the Amundsen-Scott base. She then proceeded to treat her own cancer, and she was able to do so in a way that was
with the help of airdrop chemotherapy equipment and untrained colleagues, until she could finally be evacuated months later. It was a fascinating story. But in the course of investigating it, a source said to me, it's very easy to cover things up in a place like this, because access is controlled by authorities and it's a long way away from anywhere.
And you know what, Stephen, you should look at the death of this scientist last year. And that was the start of my investigation, an investigation which has carried on now for 23 years. Over the course of those 23 years, Stephen interviewed Antarctic historians and some of Rodney's colleagues who were working at the base that winter. The ones willing to talk, that is.
He learned what happened after Rodney's sudden passing that May, and perhaps more surprisingly, what didn't. They had a dead man and months to go before he could be taken anywhere. So his body was held effectively in a freezer. And finally, they decided to make a coffin for him and have a ceremony and bury him in the ice.
And then at the end of the winter, dig him up again and ship him back to Christchurch. Christchurch is a city in New Zealand. Stevens says it serves as the gateway for most American and New Zealand missions to and from Antarctica. From Christchurch, Rodney's body was flown back to his family in Australia. All of Rodney's co-workers were allowed to travel back to their respective home countries as well.
The Antarctic Treaty was designed for countries to set aside territorial disputes and all future claims. Under the treaty, there is an intentional lack of a judicial system. Individuals visiting Antarctica are subject to the laws of their home nation, which can blur lines when you have a scientist from one country working on another country's base.
Reporting from the New Zealand Herald suggests that New Zealand police believed U.S. officials had carried out some sort of investigation into Mark's death. But they weren't able to confirm as much or learn how extensive it was because they weren't granted access to case files. It's Stevens' belief, however, that U.S. officials didn't question any of Rodney's co-workers.
And that's based off interviews he's conducted with individuals who were there at the time. Their plan was just to have him sent back to Australia with no investigation, no follow-up, no, why did this man die suddenly at the South Pole? And it would have remained a mystery for all times, except a New Zealand coroner
based in Christchurch, who was actually an Antarctic buff, heard about this and said, well, hold on a second. I'm going to intervene here. And a New Zealand police detective was assigned to do an investigation. Here's the interesting thing. When the New Zealand coroner and the New Zealand police officer intervened, the US authorities complained vociferously about
You know, South Pole is our territory. Why are you doing? What's your jurisdiction? They complained and tried to put pressure on the New Zealand government to stop the entire thing. This is the man's employer. This is the National Science Foundation. Why would they be preventing a proper investigation into the death of one of their scientists at the South Pole? Absolutely extraordinary.
Stephen has seen redacted memos the National Science Foundation sent New Zealand officials, and he's spoken with authorities who worked on the New Zealand investigation. Apparently, New Zealand police asked the National Science Foundation for a list of people who were at the base at the time of Rodney's death, and for unexplained reasons, they declined the request.
After years of more attempts, the National Science Foundation eventually agreed to send out a questionnaire to Rodney's 49 colleagues, one that investigators created but the NSF approved all questions for. Ultimately, only 13 people responded.
And key witnesses were not among them, which proved challenging because by that point, the world had learned Rodney hadn't died of any disease, illness, or natural cause. When the toxicology was done in Christchurch, shockingly, it was discovered he had died of methanol poisoning. The question became, how did methanol enter Rodney's system?
Because of their unique circumstances and environments, Antarctic bases often have cultures all their own. Some scientists travel to Antarctica to study space, but other organizations study Antarctica to better understand space travel. NASA, when it wants to observe how people might react on a long mission to Mars, looks at what happens at the South Pole. As with anywhere else in the world, cliques can form.
Workers generally fall into two categories: the scientists, there to do research, and the staff, there for maintenance: cooks, carpenters, electricians, the people who, quite literally, keep the lights on and heat running. Stephen says there's also typically a skewed ratio of men to women. Back in 1999, Stephen estimates it was about 41 men and 8 women.
All of them were stuck in close quarters, for the most part cut off from the rest of the world, and never seeing the sunrise. Sure, they had work to do, but even if everyone worked more than their standard 40 hours a week, it still left them with a lot of time to kill. It's well known that...
that there was a psychological condition of winter over that people really suffer. It's that people have been in conflict, in battle, have a thousand yard steer, which means you're trying to engage with them and they're just looking off like this. And people get that into Antarctica or they become obsessed with things or they become morose or isolated. They also can drink heavily.
Workers apparently provided their alcohol preferences ahead of time and the base made sure to stock up. So much of social life in Antarctica, Stephen says, revolved around the mess hall and the bar. To supplement the already generous stores, base residents also made their own homemade brew along the lines of a bathtub gin, which they referred to as toast juice.
And the term "toast juice" may have given way to another popular slang phrase. "Getting toasty is the favorite saying down there. Getting toasty is where you've kind of gone to another place and maybe you actually need help. You actually need counseling, but there's no counseling available because you're stuck there. So a lot of people get toasty.
And numbers of people come out of the experience of wintering over having to get counseling when they return to the west of the world. Workers who winter over go through psychological examinations and are briefed ahead of time about what to expect. But based on interviews Stephen conducted with people knowledgeable on the matter, he says the general view is the testing could be more rigorous.
There's apparently a lot of emphasis placed on the physical demands of the job and less on psychological, which can also be harder to evaluate. Separate from all the physical and mental conditions workers find themselves in, there are also limitations when it comes to staffing and resources. There generally is no police presence on Antarctic bases, and there's often only one doctor.
And that doctor may or may not have the necessary training to service every need that arises. We spoke to one of the doctors who had been down there. He was a highly competent doctor, but he only discovered on the plane down there. They said, oh, and by the way, you also have to do dentistry, which he'd never done in his life. The breadth of possible emergencies puts a lot of pressure on one person.
And Antarctic conditions mean emergencies can both be more challenging to face and more likely to occur. Now, you might be asking yourself, why haven't I heard of more catastrophes at the South Pole? Well, despite drawing global interest, the scientific communities down there are, as we said, small and rather niche. The average person probably isn't following their work.
But Antarctica does have a sordid history of violence, one that Stephen says has been swept under the rug.
Infamously in the late 50s at one of the Russian bases, this was a story I thought was an Antarctic myth and apocryphal but actually turned out to be true. Two Russians were playing chess and also drinking heavily. One left and came back and accused the other of moving something while he was gone and so he killed him. It was a murder. Then covered up by the Russian authorities
who then, for a long time, I don't know whether they still do, banned the playing of chess in Antarctica. In another infamous incident, again involving Russians and drinking,
Two Russians were at a two-person base in the middle of nowhere. One liked to read books, and they weren't getting on these two guys. And the other man, as his compatriot was getting to the end of the book, would tell him how it ended, give the plot away again and again. Anyway, the other guy had had enough, so he attacked the other man with an axe.
One year, a Chilean doctor at the South Pole burned down an entire base when told he had to stay for winter. Roommates have tried to kill each other with hammers over seemingly harmless drunken antics. Sexual assaults and rapes have historically been all too common and underreported. As for Rodney Marks... There are only three potential ways that Marks died.
at his own hand, accidental poisoning or deliberate poisoning. Now, having spent a long time and many interviews and many years thinking about it, I think he was deliberately poisoned. Stephen Davis says in the days after Rodney Mark's death, rumors immediately began to circulate around the Amundsen-Scott base.
I know for a fact that there was a conversation in the canteen about a day after it happened where people who knew Rodney were speculating that something quite untoward had happened. Because generally speaking, healthy people in their 30s don't suddenly die. Some rumors were fueled by an observation made by the base's doctor. He found needle marks on Rodney's arm.
Whether it was intentional or not, the needle marks became a red herring in the case. Suspicion grew around whether they were somehow connected to Rodney's sudden death, but Stephen doesn't believe they were. Though Rodney had used intravenous drugs in the past, no illegal drugs were found in his system. I personally think it was another excuse, really. The rest of the key evidence, sadly, it's gone now.
I mean, whatever he drank, touched, ate, whatever was at his workstation and at his sleeping station was deliberately sanitized. Rather than seal off the area where he worked, somebody, one of his fellow scientists, went in and disposed of everything. You know, potential evidence in a crime.
A fellow scientist cleaned Rodney's workstation before any investigation could happen. According to that scientist, it was an honest mistake. It didn't cross their mind that they could be disposing of useful evidence. They were just trying to help clean up in a time of grief. Rodney's station, they claimed, was filled with empty liquor bottles. As for what evidence may have been lost...
Some attention has been drawn to a strange-looking bottle Rodney kept at his station. Stephen says he was given it as a gift, and it apparently had a memorable label.
He had been sent a bottle on his shelf with a strange prawn motif. Nobody really knew what was in it, some kind of spirit or liqueur, but this other man threw it away. By the way, since the podcast came out, I've had people from all over the world contact me to say, "We think this is the bottle," including some people from South America who said, "This is a liqueur we have in Peru and it has a prawn motif on the side."
But the point is that the area was sanitized. As you might imagine, the lack of information in this case has given rise to multiple theories. All related to how Rodney ingested the methanol that killed him. One of the earliest suggested that he drank the methanol himself on purpose and died by suicide. Something Stephen disagrees with. He didn't know what was wrong with him. He kept saying to the doctor, I feel terribly ill. Find out what's wrong with me. Methanol, by the way...
would be the last thing you would swallow if you wanted to kill yourself because it would be a horrendous way to die. It burns you inside, makes you blind. I found the fact that somebody quickly floated a suicide rumor very suspicious. Often the first version of the story is the one that's believed. New Zealand officials drew a similar conclusion more than six years after Rodney's death.
The chief investigator working the case held an inquest. They announced that their investigation concluded it was highly unlikely Rodney knowingly ingested the methanol, which left open the possibility that he drank some by mistake. Toast juice has played a role in this theory. Some have wondered whether one of the batches of homemade liquor accidentally had traces of methanol.
Maybe Rodney, in a state of insobriety, used the wrong bottle to make himself a drink. Stephen doesn't give this theory much weight either. Of note, it wasn't a small amount of methanol that killed Rodney. It was more than half a cup. Stephen also spoke with Rodney's supervisor, who said that all of the scientists on the base were incredibly safety-conscious.
They knew the risks of methanol because they worked with it all the time, and everything was labeled. Not to mention, methanol and alcohol interact with one another in a unique and relevant way.
Ironically enough, your listeners might not understand that if you poison yourself with methanol and you find out, ethanol is the solution. As in, regular old alcohol can counteract methanol's poisonous effects. If the basis doctor had made a proper diagnosis, Rodney presumably could have been saved by a product that, by all accounts, was readily available.
But Rodney never received a proper diagnosis. And there's one major reason for that. One of the things that you absolutely ought to do in making this diagnosis is run a blood test. That's, you know, Medical 101. There was a machine there called the EktiChem machine for blood testing, but it wasn't working. It needed batteries and maintenance and had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Because it wasn't working, the...
Blood tests was never done and a proper diagnosis was never made. And I've been informed by other experts who I've subsequently talked to that a blood test would clearly have shown what was wrong with him. Interestingly enough, I have spent years trying to find the doctor who seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.
And there were several things about his treatment which you might have questioned. If anybody out there knows where Dr. Robert Thompson, formerly of the South Pole, is, please contact me and let me know. A doctor isn't the only missing link Stephen's been trying to track down all these years. He says he's still fighting to get those memos that the United States sent New Zealand authorities unredacted.
he wants to learn more about why in his view the u.s and the national science foundation seemingly wanted to stonewall an investigation now in 2009 a spokesperson for the national science foundation stated that they had cooperated fully with new zealand authorities
They also mentioned that their bases have a zero tolerance policy for drug use and that alcohol consumption is regulated. Both statements that seem to contradict other reporting and accounts from both workers and Antarctica experts Stephen interviewed. What's true and what's not? No one can say for sure. Stephen believes the reason behind the agency's reticence is multifaceted. I think there were two things at play here.
First off, there was the odd territorial issue of Antarctica. Under the Antarctic Treaty, nobody can make territorial claims. You can have a base there, but it's not really yours. It's just a base that countries zealously guard their rights under.
for what might happen in the future. So the Americans would genuinely cross that little old New Zealand was asking questions about something that had happened at their base at the South Pole. And that seems to be the tenor of their complaints to the New Zealand government. The other important point is that the National Science Foundation is publicly funded and the scientists who rely on grants
The people that pay for these things, the image that they want you to get of Antarctica is this wonderful, pure, pristine environment and this wonderful, pure, pristine science going on. Not murders, rapes, axe attacks, heavy drinking, parties, sexual shenanigans. If Rodney's death wasn't an accident and it wasn't suicide...
That just leaves the possibility that someone intentionally meant him harm. Now, whether he was deliberately poisoned just to make a meal or as a prank or to kill him, we may never know. I got several other people who were there, some on the record in the podcast and some off the record,
to clearly state there was a case for investigating a deliberate attempt to poison or kill him. Stevens identified a few individuals he believes could have had motive to cause Rodney harm. He won't be naming names. He says he's not that kind of journalist. But he does believe, even after all these years, a new investigation should be launched—
The majority of witnesses are still alive and able to answer questions. Here's his message for the National Science Foundation. You owe the family of Rodney Marks a proper investigation. It is not too late to get to the bottom of what really happened to him, and you should do it. Twelve countries first signed the Antarctic Treaty back in 1959. Today, there are about 30 with scientific bases in Antarctica.
What, if anything, has changed at the South Pole since Rodney Mark's death? Stephen says he's spoken with experts who say that due to cost-cutting measures, employee briefings and exams have only gotten worse. As for the Antarctic Treaty's ban on military activity and its promise of peaceful cooperation in the name of science, some have expressed serious concern for its future.
One of the things in the Antarctic Treaty is if you built a base there, you're supposed to allow your base to be inspected so people can check what you're up to. But in fact, the Chinese are refusing to let their bases be inspected. In the last few years, they've announced the building of a very large base, their fifth Antarctic base, and yes, they've refused to allow it to be inspected. And the Russians have a base there
in a place called Vostok, which is literally the hardest place to get to in Antarctica, the coldest place in the world, Vostok. And nobody's been there for a long time to inspect that either. It's not a place where you can just pop over to your neighbors to see them. And so it leads to a lot of mystery and speculation. If nothing else, it seems like there's no shortage of that.
in Antarctica. Our team reached out to the National Science Foundation for comment on Stephen Davis's allegations. A spokesperson responded with the statement released by then-director Dr. Carl Erb on May 12, 2000, the day of Rodney Marks' passing. I wish to extend my deepest condolences to the family, friends, and many colleagues of Rodney Marks, a distinguished astrophysicist,
He was a member of the close-knit community at Amundsen Scott South Pole Station for several seasons, and I know his loss will be felt very deeply there. Rodney was also an important member of the larger community of Antarctic researchers who were searching for answers to enormously important scientific questions. That community, and that search for knowledge, were enriched by Rodney's presence.
They are diminished by his passing. They had no further comment. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Or email us at conspiracystories at spotify.com. Until next time, remember...
The truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth. Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written and researched by Connor Sampson, edited by Mickey Taylor, fact-checked by Laurie Siegel, with video editing and sound design by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.