{"id":10762,"date":"2024-01-10T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10762"},"modified":"2024-02-14T08:32:25","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T13:32:25","slug":"whats-down-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10762","title":{"rendered":"What’s Down There?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In the last few weeks, a Missouri man (described as a \u201cYouTuber\u201d) discovered the car and body of a man missing since 2013 in the waters of a Missouri pond. It reminded me of a New Yorker<\/em> story last summer titled \u201cHidden Depths,\u201d by author Rachel Monroe, who dived (sorry!) deep into this particular specialty in the true crime cold case genre\u2014underwater crime-solving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story focuses on a group called Adventures with Purpose (AWP). These are volunteer salvage divers who search lakes and rivers for missing cars\u2014sometimes long-missing, and sometimes with the drivers still in them\u2014and share video of their results for a YouTube audience that numbers in the millions. (Yet another massive social trend I\u2019ve completely missed.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jared Leisek of Oregon founded AWP in 2018 intending it to feature treasure-hunts, but found it hard to compete with other dive sites that had much bigger audiences. The next year he found two handguns in the water, and a light bulb went off. He could build a bigger audience by focusing on the cold cases and missing persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once he solved the case of missing man Nathaniel Ashby (a video about the discovery has been viewed more than ten million times), AWP was deluged with requests from friends and family members of other missing people. Responses from local law enforcement cover the gamut. Some welcome the help they can\u2019t afford and the resources (dive equipment, trained divers) they don\u2019t have; other not so much. Cause-of-death also varies. Many of the cases are the result of accident or suicide, but some may be actual crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, Leisek told Monroe he hates the true-crime community. Perhaps because of its voyeuristic love of sensationalism can lead to excess<\/a>. As Monroe said, the true-crime fandom has \u201ca tendency to assume that the official story of a tragic death obscures a more horrific reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Naturally, in the \u201cno secret is secret for long\u201d in the social mediaverse, AWP is criticized on numerous fronts and long-ago accusations that the teenage Leisek raped his cousin emerged, which at least for a time resulted in lost viewership for his YouTube channel.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Missouri case was resolved through the work of independent investigator James Hinkle, a local videographer who has his own YouTube channel, Echo Divers. Although there\u2019s room for abuses here, the families Monroe interviewed are grateful that their days of wondering can come to a close.

Photo by Aviv Perets<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last few weeks, a Missouri man (described as a \u201cYouTuber\u201d) discovered the car and body of a man missing since 2013 in the waters of a Missouri pond. It reminded me of a New Yorker story last summer … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"True crime and cold case investigation: underwater edition. Peace for families or social media bonanza?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1335,366,35,104,1596],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-drama","category-real-life","category-the-morgue","category-true-crime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2NA","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10765,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions\/10765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}