Mystery on the Rocks

This week is a rundown of the events of the final few years of the Cold War, ultimately bringing it to an end.

Masud couldn't be with us this week so rather than do a mystery without him (it felt naughty doing one without Sooz a little while ago) we took the opportunity to chronicle something rather momentous in the geopolitics of the 20th Century.

Which is what this season is meant to be about of course...

Enjoy Sooz and Chris punctuating monumental historical events with their own misinformed childhood memories of it actually happening.

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We're hurtling towards the end of the Cold War and into the final decade of the 20th Century with this tale of intrigue concerning a Soviet double agent.

Espionage, treason, a potentially mysterious fate and a recipe for coot...

What happened to Dmitri Polyakov, a.k.a Top Hat????

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It's Episode 150!

And it's the nuclear disaster which cast an almost literal cloud over the latter half of the 1980s - Chernobyl!

We look at what happened, the causes and the effects, some of which continue to this day. Panicking about how to sensitively handle this subject on a comedy podcast, we distract ourselves with a lengthy chat about breakfast cereals, another disaster by the name of Moonfall and there's also a bit about how the Chernobyl accident affected the local vole population..

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In 1986, the Swedish Prime Minister is shot dead walking back from the cinema.

His long career in politics saw him make a lot of international enemies but even so, the case has never been solved. Maybe because there are so many damn suspects and possible motives?

Including Yugoslavian intelligence, an arms deal scandal, Chilean extremists and more...

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Two out of three ain't bad, right?

Not a full house this week guys as our schedules are still tricky to align. While we have decided to record if two of us can make it, this isn't a permanent arrangement so don't worry!

This week we take a look at an unsolved murder mystery which also happens to be a love story taking in movie stars, gulags and Stalin's inner circle...

It's the incredible story of Zoya Fyodorova!

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This week's episode sees us back to our current season and bidding farewell to the 1970s in...

Cambodia!

Malcolm Caldwell, a Marxist writer from Scotland, is killed in mysterious circumstances very shortly after meeting Cambodia's leader, the infamous Pol Pot. Despite being a vocal supporter of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, uncommon in the West, could Caldwell have been murdered for something he said in his audience with the despot?

Or for something else entirely?

We also go in (too much?) depth about jalapeno margaritas...

If you want to avail yourself of the lavender gin be sure to check out Lavinia's Mystical Caves!

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An update to one of the earliest cases we covered and one of the most enduring mysteries of all time... The Somerton Man!

A study believes they've unearthed the mystery man's identity so we take a sidestep from our current season and have a quick chat about the updates to this famous case...

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September 11 1978, Georgi Markov dies in hospital in Balham, South London. Markov was a Bulgarian journalist working for the BBC, having recently defected to the West earlier that year. He had developed a fear after something resembling an insect bite appeared on his thigh.

An autopsy found a small pellet in the area, most likely filled with ricin. Before he died Georgi told his wife that when he felt the 'bite', he was on Waterloo Bridge and a man behind him was picking up an umbrella.

Was Georgi assassinated for his defection by the Bulgarians or the KGB? And did they use a modified umbrella to do it?

One of the most famous Cold War murders gets the Mystery on the Rocks treatment, which basically means bickering about the size and shape of the bullet, arguing about a 69 joke and getting distracted about little Masud watching Last Action Hero...

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Content Warning for this week: graphic descriptions (ie, direct quotes from witnesses) of mass murder...

July 14th 1976, a house is torched in eastern France. The charred remains of its owner, a man named Rainer Buschman, are found within holding a pistol and a .22 calibre rifle in a defensive position.

Not only is Rainer Buschman not who he first appeared to be, but there is also doubt from the French police that the body found is of Buschman at all. What's more, the core elements of this mystery stretch back decades previously.

Buckle up, it's a heavy one...

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This week's episode, we pop to Africa and gross ourselves out by having to say 'Rhodesia' a lot. In 1975, Herbert Chitepo was assassinated by a car bomb, which was so powerful it also claimed the lives of others. Herbert was the first black barrister in Rhodesia and a prominent figure in the fight for independence and the reclamation of Zimbabwe.

However, some thought he was too moderate which means the list of suspects isn't just limited to his political enemies and the Rhodesian administration, but also potentially more militant rivals ostensibly on the same side.

So who planted the car bomb?

We also get sidetracked about the semantics of a head transplant (still not sure how) and give Timmy Mallett some props.

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