Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and this week on Pushing Up Lilies, we’re setting sail into some of the eeriest and most heartbreaking stories to ever unfold at sea. From natural deaths to suspicious disappearances and full-blown disasters, cruise ships have seen more than their share of loss. We’ll talk about infamous maritime tragedies like the Costa Concordia disaster in 2012 and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which claimed over 1,500 lives. I’ll also share stories of elderly passengers who passed away peacefully - or unexpectedly - during their vacations, and of course, the chilling and still-unsolved disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley. Cruise ships are meant to be escapes, floating paradises. But what happens when a vacation turns deadly? Let’s explore the dangers that lurk beneath the surface, and the mysteries that remain unsolved. * Listener discretion is advised.
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00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, I'm back from my trip. So, I had a cruise to Europe with my amazing high school friends. I say high school. Many of us have known each other since second grade.
00:49
I think a couple of the girls have known each other since kindergarten. Some trickled in around fifth grade, seventh grade, but we are forever friends, and we travel together. We try to go somewhere every year or every couple of years.
01:09
Our trips may not be long, but sometimes we'll just go to like, Fredericksburg and enjoy the wine country. One of the girls has a home in Colorado. So sometimes we'll go to her home in Colorado. And this time we planned this amazing trip, and we started planning about a year and a half ago, but we went on an 11-day cruise on Oceana cruise lines, which is like a luxury cruise line.
01:40
And we flew to London and then we sailed to the Shetland Islands and to Scotland and Norway and then to Iceland. And it was amazing. We had the best time. We did excursions and we went well. watching and we went to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, and we went to Spa Lagoon in Iceland we went to Edinburgh we saw the castles and we saw King Charles and Camilla which to me that was one of the highlights of my trip. And I don't love King Charles, and I don't like Camilla at all, but just seeing them was cool I do like the Royals in general I've watched all the shows. I loved Princess Diana! It was amazing! And so, while we were gone, everyone was… my job comes up. The subject in my job, and of course every time we went somewhere that had a morgue. We were all like, let's go see the morgue, or let's go see the torture chamber. It's kind of funny, but you know we were talking about people dying on cruise ships, and you know it happens. And it's not always accidental, but a lot of people, especially on Oceana are older,
03:00
I think the average age on Oceana is, I mean, 50s to 70s or 80s, it wouldn't be uncommon for someone up in age to have a heart attack or a coronary event or something. And so, we were kind of talking about, you know, what happens on the ship and, you know, how does the family deal with it and how does the crew deal with it?
03:24
In my jurisdiction here in Denton, obviously we don't have an ocean, we don't have cruise lines, so I will never work a cruise line death. But I have worked to death on an airplane where they had to have everyone get off the airplane, someone died in their sleep on the plane.
03:42
So, it wasn't traumatic, and it wasn't like, is anybody a doctor and all the things you see on TV? He just simply did not wake up to get off the plane. And so, it was a very calm death and so I had to come and get him off the plane.
03:59
You know, that happens probably more than we know because it's not traumatic and there's not a lot of drama. It's never going to be in the news. Now, cruise ship deaths, on the other hand, depending on how they occur, might be in the news if someone were to like jump overboard or something like that.
04:19
But of course, we've seen that before too. But again, interesting that people who are near a port are going to have those types of deaths to investigate, whereas I never will. So, I thought cruise ship deaths would be a little bit of an interesting topic to cover because I just got back and it was something that I wanted to research because it just sparked my curiosity.
04:47
But it seems that 623 deaths occurred on cruises between the year 2000 and 2019. So, I have a lot of of statistics between 2019 and now, but these have occurred across various cruise lines. Falls overboard, cardiac events and suicides are among the leading causes of passenger deaths.
05:17
Of course, like I said, among older passengers, a large portion are from natural causes because they have issues. They've got heart disease. They've got diabetes and they're in congestive heart failure.
05:32
Now, we'll tell you one of my biggest fears is a blood clot. I've seen many, many people die after surgery because of immobility of blood clots, and it'll go straight to their lungs and they genuinely die fairly quickly.
05:52
So I guess I've always been kind of scared of that because I've seen many young people die of that. We see that a lot after long car rides where you're not moving and you're not up walking around and your blood's not circulating, and you form a clot or long airplane rides.
06:10
Again, if you're listening, if you've ever had really bad pain in the back of your calf and it's only in one, not two, from walking a lot, but it's usually only on one side, then go get it checked out.
06:26
Don't mess around, especially if you've been traveling, if you've been on an airplane for a long time, if you've been in a car for a long time, or especially if you've just had surgery. You're not as active and your blood's not flowing.
06:42
Now, many times after surgery, they'll put the sequential stockings on you. They'll have you wear the compression hose and then they'll put the stockings on you that fill up with air to help blood flow in your leg when you're not up walking around a lot.
06:58
Use those and if you've had surgery and you're having leg pain or shortness of breath, be seen immediately. I've seen a lot of deaths from blood clots post-op and it's because people don't recognize the signs.
07:12
Now, there's a history of that in my family. My sister has had one. My dad has had one. So, when I have surgery, I tell my anesthesiologist, I have a family history of blood clots. I tell my surgeon, I have a family history of blood clots and post-op, they will put me on lovinox injections so that it decreases my risk because there's a history.
07:38
Pay attention and know your family history when you travel and when you have surgery and pay attention to those signs. If this can help one person because I've had so many deaths, so many young people had knee replacement, had a hip replacement, placement
07:59
fail. Just got back from a long trip. just had plastic surgery. I mean, it's not uncommon. So, recognize the symptoms. Pain in your lower legs. Swelling in redness in the lower legs. And usually, like I said, one.
08:19
And it can happen in an arm, too. But more typically we'll see it in the lower legs. One calf swollen. One calf red. One calf sore. One calf hurts when you walk. Hurts when you don't walk. Shortness of breath.
08:34
Go to the hospital. Okay. Not off of my soapbox. But anyway, my point to that is when I was on the plane to London, which was a rather long flight, I'm going to say eight hours, I got up to stand in line for the bathroom and there was a lady who was probably in her 70s with very swollen ankles.
08:56
And I looked at her and she looked miserable, and I said, did you bring some compression stockings? And she said, no, I left them at home. And being the death investigator that I am, I had five pair in my carry-on, y'all.
09:11
I went to my carry-on. I gave this lovely lady these stockings and she proceeded to tell me that I was her angel and that she was going to pray for me. And she thanked me over and over and over. And who would have thought, I mean, yeah, you know me.
09:28
I'm going to carry compression stockings in my bag and enough for everybody. So, I did have five pair in there. I was going to give them to my friends. But, it turned out they were too big for me. I put a pair on, and they weren't tight enough.
09:42
So I didn't give them to my friends because I knew they weren't going to fit them either. But they were going to fit this lady. She kind of saved her life, y'all. I strongly encourage that. Compression stockings, if you travel after surgery, just do it.
10:00
I mean, it's a pain. They're not comfortable. They make your legs itch. They're not attractive. But they are absolutely necessary. Back to cruise ship deaths, suicide, murder, and incidents related to alcohol or drug use are also causes on a cruise ship.
10:19
I don't know if you've ever been on one with someone that you got aggravated at, but I could certainly see murder occurring. You're stuck in a small space with somebody that you're not particularly happy to be with.
10:33
And so, I guess that happens too. Primarily, crew members die of suicides and falls. Now over 386 people, this sounded astounding to me, have gone overboard from cruise ships between the year 2000 and 2020.
10:53
Now, going back to a... Costa Concordia disaster that happened in 2012. This was a ship. It was an Italian cruise line. It launched on September 2nd of 2005 and on January 13th, 2012, at 2145 it struck a rock off of the eastern shore of Izzola del, okay pardon me but I'm not good at pronouncing Giglio.
11:24
I'm texting so forgive me for that if I mispronounced. I never heard of Izzola del Giglio but it resulted in 32 deaths so it struck a rock and this one you know didn't know a little rock but obviously this tore a 174 foot gash on the port side of the hull which soon flooded the engine room and cut off power from all the engines.
11:52
As water flooded in the ship the ship leaned and rolled on to the starboard side lying on a very unsteady rocky underwater ledge The evacuation of this ship took over six hours not supposed to take that long We'll talk about that a little bit in a bit.
12:12
There were 3229 passengers and 1023 crew members Like I said 32 died Francesco Shettino the ship's captain was found guilty of manslaughter He was also found guilty of causing a maritime accident and abandoning his ship He was actually sentenced to 16 years in prison and that was back in 2015 now at the vessels launch back when it was being Crissend or whatever they call it.
12:50
They swing and break a champagne bottle onto the ship When they swung against the hull the champagne bottle Failed to break and that's considered a bad omen. Apparently I wasn't aware of this But a lot of people blame that 2012 sinking on the fact That it had a bad omen the ship had a bad omen because this champagne bottle didn't break against the hull at the launch when it very first Went into service This ship costs five hundred and seventy million dollars.
13:27
It had 1500 cabins, 505 of them had private balconies. There were four swimming pools five Jacuzzis, 13 bars and five restaurants International Maritime Law actually requires that all passengers be Evacuated within 30 minutes of an order to abandon ship.
13:52
But like I said, this evacuation took over six hours. The body of the last missing person who was a crew member was actually recovered over two years later on November 3rd, 2014. And it's funny because I don't even remember that.
14:11
I feel like I was old enough at the time to know that that would have been big news and my parents watched the news all the time so I feel like I would have heard about it. Events like that are definitely televised.
14:25
That's a big deal. Ship hits a rock and sinks and 32 people die after a six-hour evacuation and then the last bodies not recovered until after two years later. Y'all remember the Titanic and you know it's bad.
14:41
I mean we all think about what can go wrong when we're traveling but when you're a death investigator and you've seen so many things sometimes you tend to be a little bit paranoid. I want to think I'm not but...
14:53
things crossed my mind. What's the worst that can happen? It crosses my mind. The Titanic. Y'all remember when the movie came out? I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, who's now 26 if you can believe the movie came out that long ago.
15:08
And she thought it was hilarious that every time I listened to that soundtrack, I cried like a baby because I was pregnant and very hormonal. But that movie was so sad. And the saddest part of it is that it was a true story.
15:23
So the Titanic sunk in 1912. And it resulted in over 1500. They're estimating at 1503 deaths. It was the largest ship of its time. And it was on its maiden voyage, ironically, from Southampton, England, which is where my ship left from to New York City.
15:43
Now we were going to Iceland, but it had a little bit of a different path. Thank goodness. That would have really freaked me out. But the ship was thought to be unsinkable. The Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
15:59
The wreck was discovered like they found the wreckage in 1985. There were approximately 2,224 passengers on board. And this liner carried some of the wealthiest people in the world. The Captain Edward John Smith actually went down with this ship.
16:23
The ship was apparently scantily equipped with only 20 lifeboats, which could only hold about 1100 plus people, which is half the number of the people on board, which I can assure you that the people on board weren't aware of that.
16:40
Nor did they think it was an issue. I mean, most of us don't ask when we get on a cruise ship, are there enough lifeboats to support everyone getting off safely if we were to strike an iceberg? I mean, not very me.
16:53
People are going to think to ask that question. Now when the ship sank, the lifeboats were only filled with 60% of passengers and crew. The Titanic received warnings from other ships of drifting ice, but Captain Smith apparently ignored them.
17:11
The crew had not been trained either on how to carry out an evacuation. As a matter of fact, I think many of the crew members were hired on the spot the day of the launch. They weren't trained at all.
17:26
Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves. Now the water was also 28 degrees, which definitely contributed to the rapid death of many of the passengers that were on board. The last living survivor, Melvina Dean, who was only nine weeks old at the time.
17:51
died at the age of 97 on May 31st of 2009, and she doesn't even remember being on the ship. Thank goodness, you know, it was women and children first, basically. They concentrated a lot on getting first class out first.
18:09
They felt like that those were the more well-to-do people who had estates to deal with, and they concentrated largely on women and children in first and second class. And again, like I said, third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves.
18:27
I mean, fight your way onto that lifeboat, and you can bet I'm going to do that. I will arm wrestle you to the death if it means that I'm getting on that lifeboat instead of you, and it's going to be one of us.
18:42
I mean, could you imagine just the sheer and utter panic and not knowing like, how much time you have is the scariest part of it. There's definitely a sense of urgency. You don't know how long you have to get off the boat before it completely sinks, and as it's taking in water, you're trying to get on this lifeboat that everyone else is trying to get onto, and being overlooked as a third-class passenger,
19:12
I don't know what I would do, y'all. I don't know what I would do. I can only imagine. I mean, I don't even want to think about it. After the ship sank, health regulations, and I thought this was interesting.
19:26
Of course, I'm going to look into this being who I am and doing what I do. Only embalmed bodies could be returned to the port, which I thought it was interesting. So, the C.S. McKay Bennett, which was the first ship to reach the site, quickly exhausted all of their embalming supplies.
19:46
They were actually in the ocean, embalming bodies, so, they that they could go back to port, according to these health regulations. And they quickly ran out of supplies. So, it was decided. Again, only the bodies of first-class passengers were preserved.
20:05
I find it interesting that they actually took the time to determine who was a first class passenger, but only those bodies were preserved. Again, third class, I mean, it's kind of a death sentence for the poor third-class passengers.
20:22
Third class passengers were buried at sea. So, guess what? You're not gonna get on the left boat and you're not gonna get embalmed. So, you're going to be buried at sea because you're not first class and you're not second class.
20:37
It doesn't mean that these people didn't still pay a lot for their trip. They just didn't have the money to be in the penthouse. I mean, bodies were numbered as they were brought aboard. And physical characteristics, this is kind of what we would do as death investigators in a mass casualty incident.
20:59
We would document physical characteristics, clothing, any identifying marks, and any personal effects. And personal effects were removed and placed in a bag and numbered accordingly, with the number that the body was given.
21:16
So, I just feel that very interesting. We didn't really hear a lot of stories about what happened as they found people, but I did not realize that the bodies had to be embalmed before they could be taken to the port, which is kind of weird because, I mean, that sounds challenging.
21:33
It sounds very challenging. Like let's take a boat out there full of embalming equipment and just embalm people all day long so they can go to port. It really doesn't make sense, especially immediately after, but I don't know.
21:50
333 bodies of victims were recovered, but most of the bodies and clothes were consumed by sea creatures and bacteria, leaving pairs of shoes and boots. Many times things that sea creatures and bacteria could not consume were left on the bottom of the sea, basically.
22:18
So, they would find pairs of shoes and boots that they knew belonged to someone that they may not have known who. Also, they were unsure of the exact number of people that were on the boat, which I find interesting.
22:35
I think they said that of all the people who were supposed to be on it, there were around 50 people who weren't that were supposed to be. Like either they no showed, they missed the boat, something happened last minute, they decided not to go, but they didn't have an exact count of the number of passengers.
22:54
I found that to be interesting too. Anyway, they do have the Titanic on display here in Dallas now. I have not been yet. I would like to go. I just have not had a chance to go yet, but it is supposedly interactive tour of the Titanic, and they have recreations of the interior and exterior.
23:23
You can visit the dock, not the real dock obviously, but recreations of where the Titanic first sailed. You can look through galleries and boiler rooms, take a look inside what the millionaire suites would have looked like.
23:40
You can see the grand staircase, and this is going to be at 14-9-0-2 Preston Road, number 386 in Dallas. This started back, I think, on Valentine's Day. It says it takes around an hour to do the tour and adult tickets start at 29.50.
24:04
You can book school visits and educational groups, groups up to 14 people. You can do team buildings there. I don't know for sure how long it's gonna be there. But I think that that would be kind of cool to see.
24:21
We've all seen the movie and we've all seen documentaries, and I mean, they probably have some of the relics that were on the ship on display. I'm sure they do. And y'all remember the Titan that imploded back on June 18th of 2023, and it doesn't seem like it's been two years since that happened.
24:42
It literally seems like it's been two months. But the Titan was the small little, I don't even know what it's called, vessel. We'll call it a vessel that was carrying tourists to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
24:58
That imploded killing people back just a couple of years ago. If you're ever on a cruise ship and you hear them, say Operation Rising Star, that means that a passenger has died on the cruise ship. And typically, bodies are stored in the morgue on the ship until it reaches the next port.
25:20
And I recently just watched the movie “Amy Bradley is Missing”. I don't know if y'all have seen that, but it's a story. Gosh, I can't remember when it happened. It was 30 plus years ago where a girl actually went missing on a cruise ship and they never found her and her poor parents are still looking.
25:39
And I can't imagine spending my whole life waking up every day looking for my missing child. But the sweet couple, they still have her car And they keep it clean and, in the garage, and ready for her to drive when she returns home.
25:53
And they think she's been sex trafficked, and people said that they saw her in Barbados. And you can bet your bottom dollar; I'd be in Barbados every day hoping to run across her. I don't know. It's horrifying.
26:08
But anyway, they think she's alive. Many people think she jumped overboard. Many people think she fell overboard. There's all kinds of stories about what may have happened to her. It's called Amy Bradley is Missing and it's on Netflix now.
26:23
I actually had watched it before I left on my cruise. No, I didn't. I watched it as soon as I got back. I paid very little attention because I was exhausted. And so, I rewatched it last night because I hate stories with no ending.
26:38
I mean, I just want them to find her. And the family would rather keep believing she's alive. and have that uncertainty than to know for sure that she's deceased. They don't know if she's alive, if she's being held somewhere against her will or willingly.
26:56
Don't know, don't know. Anyway, I encourage you to watch that. It's a very interesting eye-opening story about how the FBI kind of loses jurisdiction in international waters. It's kind of scary when you think about it, though I say if you want to kill somebody or if you want to do away with them, that on a cruise ship is the best place because the person in charge is the captain.
27:21
I found that interesting as well. But anyway, I'm not at all trying to discourage anyone from going on a cruise. We had so much fun. I will say I get seasick. I had everything in my arsenal to prepare myself.
27:37
I had Finnegan, I had Zofran, I had scopolamine patches to put behind my ear. I had Dramamine. I used my scopolamine patch because we rode the little tender boats from the boat to the shore a couple of times because the water was too rough for us to get close.
27:57
There are smaller boats and the water was rough. And so, I kind of got queasy. So, I did put my scopolamine patch on for about three days. It messes with my vision and makes my mouth really dry. So, I'm not a huge fan, but in desperate times require desperate measures.
28:15
And so I did put that on. But the last night for some reason, I took a Finnegan before I went to bed and my friend said that the boat rocked so much, they had to tuck their sheets in to keep from rolling off.
28:29
Had I woke up and felt that I probably would have gotten sick. And sometimes once you start getting sick, it's hard to get a grip on it. I don't know why I thought to take a Finnegan before I went to bed, but I did.
28:40
So thank goodness. I want to remind y'all, October 11th is our first annual. pushing up Lily's murder mystery dinner at Prairie House Restaurant and Crossroads, Chicken and Beef Fajita Buffet, and it's going to be amazing fun.
28:55
It's not going to be me putting on the show. It is a murder mystery company who is going to bring actors and do this for me. So, I will get to enjoy the get-together. I will not be working. I will be getting to visit with everybody.
29:10
And so, I love that because I did not want to be a part of the show. I wanted to be able to actually enjoy the event and not be completely stressed out about whether it's going to come together and all the things.
29:23
There will be giveaways that night. It is going to be so much fun. There are only a limited number of tickets. I had to allow enough room in the room for the actor to die. So, we have limited seating, and the tickets are going super fast.
29:40
I can tell you they're almost gone. If you want to go log on to, I'm sure you can buy tickets on my website, I'm pretty sure, www.pushinguplilies.com. You can also go to Eventbrite, and you can type in murder mystery.
29:56
You can search Pushing Up Lilies. You can search Crossroads, Texas. It will pull up and you can purchase the tickets on Eventbrite. They do add a little bit of a fee for them, sales, but that's the only way to get tickets is to purchase them on Eventbrite.
30:12
Don't private message me and tell me you're coming. Don't instant messenger me and tell me you're coming. And don't text message me and tell me you're coming. And don't call me and leave me a message to tell me you're coming because I won't get it.
30:25
You have to buy tickets on Eventbrite. There are only a small number of tickets available. Get them and get them quickly. I am waiting to get some more orders before I mail out that first subscription box.
30:42
The cereal box. I don't have very many orders. If you want that, I would love, love, love to sell you one. And you can purchase those on my website as well. Pushing Up Lilies is going to be a proud sponsor of the North Texas Overdose Awareness Day, which is going to be on the Square and Denton on August 31st.
31:03
I will have a booth there. I will have giveaways, and I will be giving away Narcan. Again, I will have special overdose awareness, pushing up Lilies bags that I'll be giving away. And so I would love to see everyone there.
31:18
This is a big problem everywhere and a big problem here in North Texas. So, anything I can do to help, I love doing. Anyway, I hope y'all have an amazing rest of your week. I'm in the process of moving.
31:32
We just bought a house. So, it has been hectic, and school started again yesterday. So, you know how my life is going. It's always this way. It's always this way. I do it to myself. Anyway, have a great rest of your week.
31:44
Have a great. evening tonight and I look forward to talking to you next week. Bye, y'all.