It's our Season Four finale and we wanted to pick a doozy for it! So come with us to Florida in 2005 as we look at how a woman got out of a hotel she couldn't possibly have left without being seen and ended up 8 miles away and left for dead. What happened to her, who did it and just who on Earth is the Mercury Man and might he be the key to the whole affair?This case is covered extensively in (so this episode owes a huge debt to) Mark Bowden's excellent Vanity Fair article The Case of the Vanishing Blonde so be sure to take a look after you've finished listening!And we'll be back soon with Season Five!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mystery on the Rocks

The Vanishing Blonde and the Mercury Man

This week's episode focuses on one of the earliest stories of alien abduction, that of Barney and Betty Hill who claimed to have been abducted by an alien spacecraft while they were driving back home to New Hampshire from vacation in Montreal. And even though our theory for what really happened is one of our most juvenile, we are standing by it!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Zeta Reticuli Incident

This week's episode, as voted for by our awesome supporters on Patreon in our monthly mystery vote, is the tale of John Lang who in 2016 was found dead in his burning home, stabbed three times after predicting his own murder in a series of posts on social media. He had uncovered corruption in the Fresno police department and documented all sorts of suspicious goings on as he became increasingly convinced they would make him pay.So did they?And is Masud secretly a bestselling novelist?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Tale of John Lang

Something a little different this week as we got together in the same (really echoey - sorry!) room and lay out a story suggested just one hour prior to recording by former guest of the show John Robertson. So listen as we all learn about the colourful life and mysterious death of boxing legend Sonny Liston, which takes in organised crime, Muhammad Ali and pecan nuts...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Life and Death of Sonny Liston

A case which has nothing whatsoever to do with 90s movies but which we still managed to make aaaaaallllllll about 90s movies.In 2003, assistant attorney Jonathan Luna is found dead almost 100 miles from where he was last seen leaving his office, face down in a creek with his blood-spattered car idling nearby and 36 stab wounds all over his body, one of which severed his carotid artery.Cause of death? Drowning. What's more, the wounds seem to have come from his own knife. The cases for suicide vs homicide continue to be argued, especially as details of the trial Luna had been working on could point to either...Also, find out how much Masud used to eat in a day as a schoolboy because it's quite something.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dead Creek: The Suspicious Death of Jonathan Luna

Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, intellectual, actor, journalist, novelist, playwright and political figure who created such uproar during his life that he was eventually assassinated in a pretty brutal way in November 1975.To this day nobody knows really who did it but it could be one or more from one or all of the following groups; the mafia, the government, the far-right or even the freemasons. We try to get to the bottom of it at the same time as getting distracted by former heartthrob and current POS Ryan Phillippe...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini

Gloria Ramirez was 31 years old when she was admitted to Riverside General Hospital Emergency Room in February 1994, delirious and speaking gibberish with heart palpitations. She died that night, officially from complications relating to cervical cancer but the story is far more complicated and strange... Many of the health professionals who worked on her that night were all seemingly poisoned by her skin, by her blood and generally just by being in her proximity.This is the story of the Toxic Lady...It's also the story of Chris' idea for a new Batman comic book and the episode where we find out Sooz's fetish...   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Toxic Lady

A big one today. Not including the initial trailer, this week's episode is our big 100!So allow us a little self indulgence as we discuss, among other things, our favourite cases, episodes and cocktails from our ever-growing back catalogue. Thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast (which includes you wonderful people, obviously) along the way, in whatever capacity.Four seasons, a few different formats, loads of cases, hundreds of cocktails, a litany of amazing guests, plenty of ancilliary livestreams and a place on the Guardian's 50 Funniest Podcasts this year. All thanks to you.Because if nobody was listening, we wouldn't do it. Let's face it, we could do the podcast without you, but it'd be shit. Really, you help make this show what it is and are a huge, huge part of why we love doing it so much.Eurgh, enough sincerity now. See you for the 101st episode, Egg Wizards!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

100th Episode

Wonderful comedian, actor and decent bloke Sunil Patel popped by the bar this week to reduce us to hysterics while talking about a Welsh sheep farmer and to assist us with the spooky 19th Century ghost story of Sarah Duckett...You can hear Sunil's podcast Why Is Harriet Crying? wherever you get your podcasts and go see him LIVE this month (June 2021) at the Soho Theatre!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sunil Patel and the Ghost of Copper Hole

After an 11th hour guest cancellation we decided to discuss the case between ourselves anyway and had a fun conversation about the oft-repeated story of Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett disguising Princess Diana as a gay man in the 1980s and taking her out to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern...So is it true or just an urban myth? No real evidence exists to back it up beyond the initial account in Cleo Rocos' late-90s autobiography and the three main players are no longer with us to confirm or deny the tale... Yet it all sounds so plausible!Find out where we place our bets...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Freddie, Kenny & Lady Di's Big Night Out

A couple of weeks ago, we got together to do Mystery on the Rocks in the same room for the first time in over a year and did a live show from Angel Comedy's brilliant venue The Bill Murray. Restrictions still prevented us having audience in the room with us and so we livestreamed a slightly chaotic show where we got super giddy at being together for the first time in a long time. During the shenanigans, we did touch upon the story of the terrifying ghost ship SS Ourang Medan, and thought why not edit together an episode from the live show? So we did!An eerie distress call from the doomed ship caused two vessels in what was the Dutch East Indies to investigate, whereupon they found the Ourang Medan's entire crew dead and, disturbingly, all in the same pose. But is it actually a horrifying true story or just an urban myth? The jury has remained out ever since the story first surfaced in the 1940s... And find out if there is anything cool dude Masud can't style out...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Live From The Bill Murray: The Ourang Medan

The brilliant comedian, director and man behind all those TV intros you have seen re-imagined as stock footage Matt Highton poked his head round the door of the bar for a lot of film chat and to possibly help us reach a solution to the enduring mystery of just who was it that wrote The Circleville Letters?Love, death and bus drivers feature in this curious tale of some of Circleville, Ohio's residents in the 1970s and 1980s being plagued by a persistent and sinister letter writing campaign...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Matt Highton and the Circleville Letters

Juliette Burton is an absolutely top-drawer comedian, writer and actor as well as being one of the country's foremost speakers and advocates on the topic of mental health, an ambassador for the mental health charity Rethink Mental Illness no less!She also happens to be one of the most fun human beings, as evidenced by the laugh we had when she turned up with ample cocktails of her own and managed to flirt outrageously with each one of us in the course of helping us out with the mystery of the Sonora Aero Club - a mysterious group who would meet decades before the first plane ever flew to design driveable flying machines and whose existence only became known almost a century later when these designs were discovered in the 1960s...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Juliette Burton and the Sonora Aero Club

Stuart Laws isn't just a fantastic comedian in his own right, he is also behind some of the best online comedy content of the past few years. His company Turtle Canyon are responsible for some absolutely stellar productions, including James Acaster's four 'Repertoire' Netflix specials and many more besides. We were very lucky that he visited the Mystery on the Rocks bar to help with another mystery, pitch a brilliant sequel to 1996 Arnie action flick 'Eraser' and maybe, just maybe, steal the podcast from right under our noses...This week's case is the murder of businessman Eric Tamiyasu in rural Oregon in June 2001, a tale which may seem very simple on the surface but which begins to complicate itself by having no less than four suspects - each with an apparently compelling motive for murder...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Stuart Laws and the Murder of Eric Tamiyasu

This week the fabulous Vix Leyton, stand-up comedian and host of the awesome Comedy Arcade podcast, swung by and was even generous enough to get the round in herself! We drank lovely pre-mixed cocktails from Nio, because when the three of us did the exclusive livestreamed Comedy Arcade show Vix had kindly bought us all cocktails. Alas, we were prohibited from drinking them on stage so we had them in this episode instead!And we had a very winding saunter through the intriguing case of Richard Lancelyn Green - the world's foremost Arthur Conan Doyle scholar who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in 2004. Can a wooden spoon point to who killed him and why? Or is it a springboard for a lengthy tangent about Zippy?Or is it both...?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Vix Leyton and the Case of the Sherlock Holmes Scholar

At the Mystery on the Rocks bar you’ll find a retired sleuth, the bartender trying to settle his tab, and the down-on-her-luck lounge singer, solving mysteries and drinking cocktails. Each week a new guest enters the bar and attempts to solve an unsolved mystery alongside the regulars. Hosted by Masud Milas, Chris Stokes, and Sooz Kempner. Whilst this comedy and true crime podcast is set in a fictional crime-solving bar, the mysteries and the cocktails are very real. From true crime and bizarre occurrences to X-Files and the paranormal, all with a whodunnit or WTF happened question hanging over them. Masud makes the drinks, Chris tells the mystery and Sooz sings and plays live piano – and everyone chats and chimes in with their theories. So come in, pull up a chair, and let's crack this case.This is a Studio71 production. Producer - Jack Claramunt Exec Producer - Tom Payne & Jody SmithProduction Support - Phie McKenzieStudio71 is a Red Arrow Studios Company.

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Mystery on the Rocks

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