0:00

Hi. I'm Michelle Shepherd, host of

0:02

uncover Charmini from CBC Podcast.

0:04

In nineteen ninety nine, fifteen year old

0:06

Charmini and Andevale disappeared on

0:08

her way to a job that police believe

0:11

didn't exist. Four months later,

0:13

her remains were found in a wooded ravine.

0:15

I revisit the case that has stayed with me

0:17

for over twenty years. ever since

0:19

I first covered it as a cub crime reporter

0:22

for the Toronto star. You can find uncover

0:24

Charminie on CBC Listen or

0:26

on your favorite podcast app.

0:30

This is a CBC podcast.

0:32

There

0:37

are few remaining frontiers on our planet,

0:40

perhaps the wildest and least understood,

0:43

are the world's oceans too big

0:45

to police and under no clear

0:47

international authority. These immense

0:49

regions of treacherous water play host

0:52

to rampant criminality and exploitation.

0:55

created and produced by the outlaw Ocean

0:57

Project. From CBC Podcasts

1:00

and the LA Times Podcasts, the

1:02

outlaw Ocean Podcast is a seven

1:04

part series that explores a gritty

1:07

and lawless realm rarely scene,

1:09

relying on more than eight years of reporting

1:11

at sea on all seven oceans and

1:13

more than three dozen countries. The

1:15

podcast brings it all together into

1:18

an immersive audio documentary series.

1:20

Now, Here's the first episode of

1:22

the outlaw ocean.

1:27

The

1:28

episode you're about to contains

1:30

descriptions of violence. Please

1:32

take care.

1:34

i

1:36

like

1:37

The

1:41

video came to me from source

1:44

at Interpol, and all

1:46

it had was the subject line brace

1:49

yourself.

1:56

I

1:56

opened it and, you know, it

1:58

was hard to make out what

1:59

was going wrong at first. It was obviously

2:02

shot on someone phone. The

2:09

camera is super wobbly. It's

2:11

at sea and the water is very blue

2:13

and you see several

2:16

large tuna long liners.

2:18

These are big steel ships and

2:21

very early on into the video, you start

2:23

hearing gunshots and that's when

2:25

I immediately stopped everything else I

2:27

was doing and focused

2:35

The guys in the water are clinging

2:37

to this wooden

2:39

wreckage of some sort. It looks like

2:42

a small boat

2:44

that's been destroyed. The

2:46

gunfire is coming at them

2:48

and missing them. You see it sort

2:50

of slice into the water.

2:54

How are you? And

3:01

the guy on the record is now holding up.

3:05

Jesus Christ.

3:07

He holds up his hands, palms

3:09

up, and then he's hit

3:12

and there's blood all of the water.

3:18

the

3:21

shouting you hear more

3:23

predominantly is coming

3:25

from the ship itself where the

3:27

shots are being fired and you can

3:30

hear the captain of the ship

3:32

over a loud speaker yelling

3:34

in Chinese, which once

3:37

translated. You know, I I found

3:39

out was shoot shoot shoot

3:41

over here and over there. but

3:46

you also hear all this yelling among

3:48

those standing on the deck and those folks

3:51

seem like they're just having a

3:53

great time. know, do you hear them say,

3:55

I got one. I got one.

4:04

they're just taking target practice.

4:06

It's just

4:10

And that's the end of him. that last

4:13

shot hit him and now he's a poor blood.

4:19

Okay. Take it. Take it.

4:20

The whole thing ends with

4:23

the sort of capstone moment where

4:26

three of the guys on board.

4:28

Now whether these guys are merely witnesses

4:31

to the crime or culprits. Who knows?

4:33

All you know is that they're smiling,

4:35

they're giving a thumbs up, one

4:37

guy is still smoking a cigarette while he's filming

4:40

the others, and the other guys are sort of hugging

4:42

each other and posing.

4:58

That's the end of that.

5:01

The

5:01

whole scene is just I don't know. It's

5:03

one I've never been able to get out of my head.

5:06

It's just so slow and methodical.

5:09

And then the laughing, you know, behind.

5:13

It's just yeah. It's just

5:15

really dark.

5:27

This is the outlaw ocean. episode

5:31

one, The Murder video.

5:44

This is a much bigger ship. Are they

5:46

on the way? My name is

5:48

Ian Kirby, I'm an investigative journalist,

5:51

and I've been working at The New York Times for

5:53

seventeen years. And I've been

5:55

reporting on Law Assist at Sea for about

5:57

a decade.

6:06

You

6:06

know, the oceans make up two thirds of the planet's

6:08

surface, and they're extremely vital

6:11

to the survival of of the globe,

6:13

fifty percent of the oxygen we breathe

6:15

comes from the oceans and ninety percent

6:17

of the products we consume across the

6:19

oceans. and yet

6:21

we know

6:23

very very little about the oceans.

6:26

The goal of my reporting is to

6:28

shed light on this space to sort of

6:31

help the public reimagine it

6:33

not as some liquid desert, but

6:36

a realm where more than fifty million people

6:38

work and a bustling zone

6:41

where a lot of activity happens, much

6:44

of it bad. about which the public

6:46

lives very little.

6:55

The ocean through history

6:57

has always been a place that people

6:59

go to get away from land of

7:01

life and to get away from other

7:03

things, laws, governments. It's

7:07

been this metaphor

7:09

for freedom. It's

7:11

also this dark, dystopian

7:14

place onto pretty shocking

7:16

in humanity's and

7:19

because of the lack of governance

7:21

of laws of law enforcement, that

7:24

dark set up in humanity's generally

7:27

occurs with community. when

7:35

you're out in that space, what you realize is

7:37

the oceans are ungoverned and

7:39

perhaps ungovernable. I

7:41

do really think the outlaw unshul is

7:43

the last frontier

7:45

on the planet.

7:59

sea slavery, gunrunning,

8:02

murder, race. Overfishing

8:08

and a legal fishing intentional dumping

8:10

of oil and other ways, not just spills.

8:13

Ring was signed.

8:13

Let's say they have identified more than twenty

8:16

five thousand

8:16

barrels. Mhmm. So you see it's coming

8:19

all the way there? No. That's restricted.

8:21

Any variety of piracy

8:23

from stealing or fuel

8:26

by siphoning it off to boarding

8:29

ships and taking hostages. It's

8:36

sort of

8:36

a wild west,

8:38

a watery wild west.

8:50

Yeah.

8:50

Through my career, much of my reporting

8:52

has focused on people and quite especially

8:54

the darker side of people. Specifically,

8:57

labor abuses, how workers of various

9:00

sorts are typically taken advantage of

9:02

and abused. have covered coworkers,

9:05

truck drivers, sex workers, garment

9:08

workers. Most

9:10

of these workforces have

9:12

pretty brutal conditions, but

9:14

nothing compared to

9:17

what I found in fishing industry.

9:24

These workers are

9:26

so far from land and so invisible

9:29

to the people that benefit from their labor.

9:31

They're moving from one place

9:33

to the next. so it's not a stationary factory.

9:37

And the workers themselves typically

9:39

are undocumented and

9:41

usually from developing countries.

9:43

So for all these reasons, they're distinctly

9:46

vulnerable. You find yourself

9:48

thinking of what Upton Sinclair might

9:50

might have thought, felt, seen as he

9:52

looked into meatpacking industry. The

9:55

working conditions and the wages and the

9:57

level of violence, you know, were

9:59

were so extreme

10:02

that it really did feel like something

10:05

out of the nineteenth century.

10:29

When this video came to my source

10:31

at Interpol, he immediately

10:34

knew it was perfect to send

10:36

to me because this is exactly the sort

10:38

of brutality that I wanted

10:40

to report on. I

10:43

called my source who had sent it to me and

10:46

asked him to tell me what that was about,

10:48

what he knew about that. And what I found out

10:50

then was this footage had been

10:52

found on a cell phone that had

10:54

been left in the back of a taxi

10:56

in Fiji. my

11:00

suspicion was that one of the deckhands

11:03

at the scene of the crime when the

11:05

captain collected the cellphones from

11:07

everyone else he held on to his. And

11:09

then when he got back to shore, he went out for

11:11

night drinking, and forgot his phone,

11:13

you know, in the back of a taxi. And so

11:15

my suspicion was that the culprits of this crime

11:17

probably or in Fiji at some point, and

11:20

the ship might have even docked there. So

11:22

I I went to the Fiji ins and talked

11:24

with the police inspector and and

11:26

what the Fijians told me was that they

11:28

determined that the guys in the water were not

11:30

Fijian, the ships were not Fijian,

11:33

and from what they could tell none of the

11:35

deck cans or crew nor Fiji

11:37

in. So their interest in

11:39

the case was over.

11:46

There's a strange disparity. On

11:49

the one hand, you had this trove

11:51

of evidence. You

11:54

had actual video footage, which is rare

11:56

at sea because cameras are often confiscated.

11:59

You have definitive proof

12:02

of murder, you know, in that footage.

12:07

You had, at the end of the footage,

12:09

the faces of witnesses or

12:11

culprits. So on the one hand, you've

12:13

got really strong evidence. On

12:16

the other hand, you have no

12:19

clue who the guys in the water are.

12:21

No clue who the guys firing the gun

12:23

are. No clue where

12:25

this happened. When it happened. you

12:28

have no physical evidence from the

12:30

scene like the the bullets or

12:32

the the weapons. You don't

12:34

even know what ship registries, ship

12:36

owners, fishing companies to begin

12:38

honing in on. In

12:43

the video, you're also hearing at least three,

12:45

maybe four different languages. And

12:48

so you can hone in on

12:50

the language of the cactus and that

12:52

might give you a sense of where to look,

12:54

but not necessarily because the

12:56

transnational, international nature of

12:58

the industry means that captains from all

13:00

nationalities are working on ships that belong

13:02

in countries, not their own. So

13:06

that was the very first priority

13:08

is to try to figure out where the

13:10

incident happened and also who

13:12

ships those are, where they're ships were flagged.

13:27

I figured if I just watched the video enough

13:29

times, I could start finding clues.

13:33

And eventually, I

13:35

noticed that there was a ship in the background

13:37

and you can make out some of

13:40

its identifying numbers. And

13:42

so with help from sources, I

13:45

was able to identify that one vessel

13:47

and that was probably the biggest initial

13:49

break in starting to hone in what country

13:52

they were from and what fleet they were part of.

13:54

The

13:58

vessel that emerged was the

14:00

tune e two seventeen, and

14:02

this was a Taiwanese owned

14:04

tune a long line vessel. What

14:07

that enabled me to do is

14:09

immediately go for the corporate records

14:11

of that ship and ideally

14:14

figure out whether it was part

14:16

of a fleet. I

14:18

was able to hone in on the company

14:20

that owned the two seventeen. figure

14:22

out who ran that company, the CEO,

14:25

lo and behold, the CEO of that company

14:27

was a pretty big player within Taiwan

14:30

her asked him a bit, took a while of calling,

14:32

and finally, he was able to get on the phone with him

14:34

and through translator, asked

14:36

him about this in incident. And

14:39

what I learned was he was aware

14:41

of the incident. The captain

14:43

from that vessel had reported

14:46

the incident to him and the

14:48

CEO had asked the captain to

14:50

write up a report about it so that he

14:52

could alert law enforcement. But

14:55

the CEO wouldn't give me the name of the cap

14:57

and wouldn't hand over the report he'd given.

14:59

He also said that the 217

15:02

was just a witness to the crime and

15:04

that the captain was still out see, and therefore, he

15:06

couldn't be interviewed. That's as much

15:08

as I got.

15:15

So I turned next to the prosecutor's

15:17

office in Taiwan and the fisheries

15:20

agency that oversees fishing. and

15:23

I was stonewalled far more.

15:26

The fisheries agency said

15:28

that they couldn't say anything about

15:30

the case except that they

15:32

didn't even know whether this was murder,

15:35

this may have been self defense. It's

15:37

too hard and early to

15:39

tell and that struck me

15:41

as strange, you know,

15:43

for anyone who had watched the video.

15:50

the CEO had said that these

15:52

were pirates in the water from what

15:54

his captain had told him. But

15:57

that just struck me as a little bit dubious.

15:59

And the more I talked with experts about

16:02

whether the men being shot in the water

16:04

look and seemed like somali pirates,

16:06

I I became more skeptical.

16:10

Number one, you can make out a

16:12

flag on the wooden wrecked

16:15

ship, and pirates don't fly flags.

16:17

there's no reason for them to have identifying

16:20

marks on their ships. So that made

16:22

no sense whatsoever. You see no

16:24

weapons anywhere in the water

16:26

or in the boat itself. And

16:29

then just the the nature of the kind

16:31

of boat that had been wrecked, which is is most

16:33

likely a wooden dow. these are

16:35

kind of traditional Pakistani, Somalia,

16:38

Indian fishing boats. And they're

16:40

really solid. They don't flip easy, but

16:42

they're slow. They're really slow. And

16:45

hijacking a a big Taiwanese steel

16:47

sided tuna long liner from

16:50

a Dow didn't make any sense either. There's

16:57

such a clear disparity between

16:59

the people firing the gun and

17:02

people being hit by them. The guys

17:04

in the water are ten to

17:06

twenty feet below the deck of

17:08

the ship. flailing about

17:11

open handed, unarmed.

17:13

There are fishing nets in their boat.

17:15

No weapons to be seen in the boat.

17:17

the boats sinking anyway. This

17:20

is pure murder. There's no scenario

17:22

in which that would be justified.

17:34

When j polos

17:36

have asked Indipoll to help them unravel the

17:38

mystery surrounding what appears to be

17:40

the brutal murder of foreman

17:43

at

17:43

sea Men shot at sea and YouTube video,

17:45

most likely some moly pirates.

17:46

The New York Times series shows how

17:48

little we know about the lawless seas.

17:51

Ian Urbina reported this series and he joins

17:53

me now. Ian. Welcome. Thanks. In

17:55

the first part of your series, we run the article.

17:58

It runs on the front page of The New York Times

17:59

and gets a lot of attention,

18:02

a lot of traffic, immediately

18:04

my phone and email are lighting up with

18:06

all sorts of interesting tips from

18:08

various sources about the case, which

18:10

is in some ways wonderful and

18:13

terrible at once because you're supposed

18:15

to move on to the next story.

18:17

You've done that and now move on and some

18:19

of the best information was starting to

18:21

come in and sources I didn't know to exist.

18:23

And furthermore, I just felt haunted

18:25

by the fact that didn't really move

18:28

the ball down field as much as I wanted to

18:30

in solving the crime.

18:31

So I couldn't put it down. That

18:36

law enforcement agencies or governments

18:38

in general would wanna back away from

18:41

a gruesome murder and

18:43

not burden themselves with any more responsibilities

18:46

makes total sense to me. I mean, it's not

18:48

good, but it's not shocking. But think

18:50

what's distinct here is that

18:53

normally when crimes like this happen on land,

18:55

it would be much harder for this story to go

18:57

away. You know, there'd be reporters and advocates

19:00

and lawyers and families that will

19:02

be all over it. But

19:04

at sea because, you know, the evidence

19:06

disappears. There are no skid marks on

19:08

the sea. It's what one caught mention

19:11

to me, you know, like bodies stay disappeared.

19:13

They don't get unearthed and autopsy

19:16

is conducted on them. They get eaten by

19:18

what's below. You know, that the reality

19:20

of what happened out there makes it

19:22

much easier for countries and

19:25

law enforcement and governments to simply

19:27

turn the other way.

19:35

I've worked on coal mining and

19:37

oil and gas industry and you know,

19:39

industries that don't particularly love

19:41

investigative reporters. And even

19:44

in those realms, you

19:46

can always find people

19:48

who will engage in some

19:50

level. And what was

19:52

so striking in this realm

19:55

was every person

19:57

who even answered their phone at the

19:59

fisheries agency or the flag registry

20:02

or the law enforcement a navy

20:05

would point me to someone else and

20:07

just sort of give me this constant runaround.

20:13

You know, getting the runaround is an occupational

20:15

hazard of being a journalist, but

20:17

I'd never experienced this to this degree.

20:19

And at one point, I was converging

20:21

about it to a maritime lawyer, and he said,

20:23

oh, you're getting the maritime merry-go-round. There's

20:26

a term for it. And, you know, if you

20:28

try to ask hard questions in our industry, they

20:30

to point you to someone else and so

20:32

on and so on. We

20:35

reject groundless or unwarranted

20:38

accusations.

20:39

Critically denying

20:41

all the information contained in

20:43

the two reports that I had

20:45

mentioned. Statistics are jected by

20:48

industry officials here who question

20:50

the sources and the liability.

20:59

There is this truly Leather

21:02

World sense about international

21:04

waters. You cross

21:06

the line at twelve miles

21:09

from shore, and suddenly you're

21:11

in this outer space of

21:14

international waters or high seas and

21:17

what laws apply their shift.

21:21

The overall all outlook by

21:23

governments of that space is that

21:26

because it belongs to all of us,

21:28

no one takes responsibility for it. No

21:30

one feels ownership of it. And therefore, it's

21:33

in some ways the most neglected, least,

21:35

least ground on the planet.

21:43

Laws are tough to enforce out there

21:45

because no one's patrolling the seas.

21:47

even in national waters. When you look

21:50

around the globe, most countries

21:52

don't have the resources to have

21:54

navies or coast guards, so they have no vessels

21:56

they can actually put on the water to

21:58

do police work. And then

22:01

if you move out to the high cease.

22:03

Forget about it. You know, that that

22:05

realm is utterly unpatrolled.

22:21

The old saying is crime is only

22:23

countered as much as it is countered

22:26

and at sea that's not much.

22:28

not only is there no central

22:31

database for this kind of

22:33

information, most language, she's actually

22:35

don't even want it. because if they

22:38

knew it, they might be required to do something about

22:40

it. So there's just this general

22:42

structural discouragement for the collection

22:45

centralization making public

22:47

of this kind of data.

22:50

Putting a number to

22:52

a lack is always tough. I mean, especially

22:54

when you're talking about black market activity.

22:57

But the estimate I get from Navy

22:59

folks who do these investigations is less

23:02

than one percent of all crimes at sea

23:04

are ever investigated, much less prosecuted.

23:17

Uncover from CBC Podcasts

23:20

floors a different high stakes true crime and

23:22

justice story each season from

23:24

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23:27

Panic of the nineteen eighties, or

23:29

the investigation into a serial killer

23:31

targeting gay men in the village, find

23:33

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23:36

or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:59

After the story ran, I went and

24:02

watch the video again and just found

24:04

myself no less disturbed

24:06

by it. And I just

24:08

couldn't put it away even though I was supposed

24:10

to move on and my head or had told me

24:12

and no uncertain terms to stop

24:14

investigating it because I just didn't

24:17

see what I hoped would happen, which

24:19

is law enforcement would spring into

24:21

action and feel embarrassed that this was put

24:23

on the front page. And suddenly, they'd be

24:25

holding a press conference and saying they're gonna do

24:27

something about it, and I'd feel like my job here done.

24:29

They're gonna take it from here, and that wasn't

24:31

happening at all. So I just

24:34

found myself haunted

24:36

by it.

24:54

and then came the major break.

24:58

My name is Duncan Copeland. I'm

25:00

the executive director of

25:02

trademark tracking. probably known as TMT.

25:06

Duncan got in touch with me after he published

25:08

the murder story and said that he

25:10

too had been working on that case on behalf

25:12

of client. Canadian

25:15

guy, ex military, and

25:17

he runs a firm called Trigmac

25:19

tracking, which is this Norwegian based

25:21

firm that specializes in maritime

25:24

crime.

25:24

TMT is an organization

25:27

that essentially works as an in intelligence

25:29

support unit to coastal

25:31

states, to inter government organizations,

25:34

and and other partners. This video was

25:36

sent to us by one of our

25:38

partner countries with

25:40

a request to investigate a

25:42

little bit more on a few key questions

25:44

about it.

25:45

He had a huge database of

25:48

photographs and videos of

25:50

ships from around the world that were high risk

25:52

vessels. and his team

25:54

had, through some algorithmic help,

25:57

narrowed down vessels that

25:59

were in the database

25:59

with vessels that were in my murder

26:02

video. What

26:03

we did was we pieced together

26:05

from the very grainy and very shaky

26:07

footage, different areas of the vessel.

26:10

And while many fishing vessels

26:12

that are targeting the same kind of species

26:14

and using the same type of gear are

26:17

broadly similar. Most vessels

26:19

do have small unique features. And

26:22

this boat that was in the video

26:24

had a couple of interesting features that were

26:26

not that common. So

26:27

there's something called a chalk. This is

26:29

where they run the lines through when they're tying

26:31

up to a dock or to another ship. Mhmm.

26:34

And the configuration of that was a little bit

26:36

different. irritable count the number of ports

26:38

in part of the boat, and so on.

26:41

We then ran a comparison through our systems

26:44

And in the end, we looked at over three

26:46

thousand photos of around

26:48

three hundred vessels. And

26:50

luckily, we were able to hit

26:53

on two vessels that matched enough of the

26:55

features and one in particular that had

26:57

a fairly high confidence level. And that

26:59

boat was a vessel called the Ping Shin number

27:01

101

27:04

The Ping Shin 101 was completely

27:06

new to me. I did not know that vessel.

27:09

And furthermore, that same

27:11

ship had been in the equally violent,

27:14

potentially deadly film clash,

27:17

a couple months earlier

27:19

that TMT had the video for.

27:23

We

27:23

were scarring YouTube for other examples,

27:25

either involving this vessel or related

27:28

incidences and became

27:30

across a video involving the same vessel.

27:33

In this one, it didn't involve a shooting,

27:35

but what it did show was essentially the

27:38

vessel very aggressively trying

27:40

to run down a smaller

27:43

wooden boat. Yeah. Oh.

27:50

i've always medical Okay.

27:53

Yeah.

27:54

In the background, you can hear a lot

27:56

of noise.

27:58

And that noise is

27:59

very much one of excitement of the Chase.

28:02

You know, they're

28:02

documenting it and not because they're documenting

28:05

a crime. They're documenting it because they're

28:07

having an exciting time.

28:25

Over the past ten years, More

28:27

and more the videos have been surfacing

28:30

that have been taken by crew onboard

28:32

fishing vessels. Everybody's got

28:34

camera phone now. and more and more they

28:36

love mediums like YouTube and Facebook

28:38

and so on. And so it become a really interesting

28:41

intelligence source. So we'd had a lot come

28:43

across our desk.

28:47

But

28:50

this one was this one was different

28:52

it's it's very very graphic

28:55

in what it shows. It's as

28:57

cold blooded as any crime that I've ever come

28:59

across in the course of our work. And it's

29:01

hard is for us to be able to make

29:03

an analysis like we were doing, like who

29:05

is this mode? You're not watching it once.

29:07

You're watching it twenty five times fifty

29:10

times, a hundred times. I

29:19

don't feel like I'm in a position to judge all the

29:21

time. I I've never been a crew, I'm born a long

29:23

liner, stuck out and see for a year plus

29:25

in the most difficult and the most dangerous

29:27

profession in the world, particularly

29:30

one who might have been under indentured labor

29:32

with a brutal captain. knows

29:34

emotionally where you go in that kind of place. But

29:37

there's a cold bloodiness that sort of comes through

29:39

this video that's it

29:42

starts to haunt you a little bit.

29:49

So at this stage, we've pieced together a

29:51

couple of things. One, We now

29:53

knew the pink shoe 101 was likely our shooter

29:55

vessel, the shoe knee 217 was

29:57

a witness vessel. We also

29:59

now

29:59

were able to hone in on who the captain

30:02

on the Ping Ching 101 was, which we

30:04

did that through other maritime documents

30:06

and who was a guy who was a young

30:08

Chinese national heard for a while, I've

30:10

been working on time with these vessels, and he was

30:13

the captain at the time of the Pinching one hundred and one,

30:15

and we also knew that the Pinching one hundred and one

30:17

seemed have been involved in other clashes.

30:21

So Taiwan was the flag state, but

30:23

had also been licensed by

30:25

sayshelves for some time to operate their

30:27

waters. So we had a number

30:30

of different avenues now of authorities who

30:32

were related to this vessel. we

30:35

put out three reports to the countries

30:37

that we worked with, so not just Norway, but also

30:40

the Indian Ocean States and two

30:42

states like Taiwan. But

30:44

it ran up against a roadblock in the

30:46

sense that there was no one country

30:49

that was willing to step forward and identify

30:51

itself as taking a lead role in this.

30:54

We can't do enforcement. We're we're non

30:56

governmental organization. And it's our role

30:58

to help those processes, but country

31:00

has to do them. And

31:03

so the inaction on this one

31:05

was particularly frustrating.

31:12

A

31:12

really important point of context

31:15

for understanding the murder video is to

31:18

realize how the seas have

31:20

been weaponized over the last twenty

31:22

years.

31:24

Previously, the presence of semi automatic

31:26

weapons on fishing vessel would have been a

31:28

telltale sign of criminality. The

31:31

only entities that were allowed

31:34

to have arms were states. In

31:36

other words, navies. Ships, other

31:38

than that, we're not really supposed to have arms on board.

31:40

And that was sort of an agreed upon cultural

31:42

norm then

31:44

Somalia piracy happened. Breaking

31:47

news this morning, pirates off the coast

31:49

of Somalia have struck again.

31:51

Nearly three hundred attacks reported last

31:53

year. More than a third have taken place

31:55

near the coast of Somalia. Four more ships including

31:58

the Greek managed Irene had been hijacked

31:59

by Somalia prior in the last two days. It's

32:02

a US flag cargo ship called

32:04

the Maersk Alabama. It was taken

32:06

over apparently by Somalia hijackers

32:08

in the India an ocean about three hundred

32:11

miles off the Somalia coast.

32:14

You look at the story of the Mariscala banner,

32:16

which the ship upon which the movie Captain Phyllis

32:18

was based. And just bear in mind, this is the first

32:20

time in the twentieth century that

32:22

an American flagship had been boarded

32:24

by foreign hostile party by pirates.

32:27

The pirates hijacked the container ship, Mersk,

32:29

Alabama on Wednesday. They seized

32:31

captain Phillips and escaped to a

32:33

lifeboat after the ship's gauge

32:35

control of the vessel. The Marisk,

32:38

Alabama was an American flagship, and that's

32:40

one of the reasons it got such a heavy response.

32:42

But the month when that happened

32:44

in two thousand nine, there had

32:46

been a hundred and fifty other vessels

32:48

that had been attacked by pirates. So

32:51

this was a booming industry by

32:53

two thousand nine, two thousand ten, and

32:55

we're talking hundreds of millions of dollar is

32:57

being made on the ransom and theft of cargo

33:00

and the ransom of crew. This is our twenty

33:02

seventh day in captivity.

33:04

Our kidnappers are losing patience.

33:07

Please help us. Please help

33:09

us before we die. Please.

33:13

Tell them the government you tell the

33:15

company to pay to pick and

33:17

get home, please.

33:22

Companies and insurers then

33:25

began requiring that

33:27

any vessel that go through high

33:29

risk areas that were mapped on the globe

33:31

had to have private maritime

33:34

security on board. And overnight, you

33:36

had the emergence of private maritime security

33:38

industry that grew to, you

33:39

know, twenty billion dollars. My

33:43

first job on a ship. I flew out

33:46

to Gibouti, which is a small country

33:48

next to Somalia. And then

33:50

within six hours, I was

33:52

getting taken out into the sea on a speed

33:55

though not really knowing anything

33:57

apart from the Empire School.

33:59

You got to stop them. It

34:01

was in the middle and hitched a ride

34:03

with a transport vessel that was picking up

34:05

private maritime security guards. And there

34:07

was this one guy who have Thompson.

34:10

I'm Kevin Thompson. I've been in maritime

34:12

security since two thousand and eight.

34:14

Jovial, pretty weather,

34:17

warring with a kinda glint in his

34:19

eye and we got the talking and immediately

34:21

hit it off. And this is guy who had

34:23

seen a lot of things. He was a pair

34:25

trooper. He had done tours in Iraq

34:27

and Afghanistan, and then he'd done private protection

34:29

services. And now he was doing maritime security.

34:32

It

34:34

was pretty a rock star lifestyle at first.

34:36

We was getting paid to make a big bucks for

34:38

it. We used to call it footballers, wages.

34:42

All we were doing basically is other

34:44

drinking beer in Jabouti and beating

34:46

up Legionnaires or going on

34:48

ships waiting to get attacked by

34:50

pirates.

35:02

If they got within eight hundred meters

35:04

of view, that is when we would fire

35:06

warning shots. Most of the time,

35:09

that's when the prior pirates do leave because

35:11

they realize that there's an armed security

35:13

team onboard the ship. But

35:16

some of the pirates, you know, they wanna

35:18

have a fight and they'll come closer

35:20

and then they'll stop shooting at us.

35:29

One of the ones that sticks in my

35:31

mind I had a guy with a Manchester

35:34

United football shirt on. he

35:36

had a hat on that looked like he

35:38

had ears on it as well, like a leopard

35:40

print ear and a pair of shorts

35:43

and flip flops. but, you know, but then

35:45

he's got an AK forty seven and

35:47

he's decided, right, we're gonna attack

35:49

this vessel now. every

35:52

single time we've had a firefight with the pirates,

35:54

I've always honestly been the winner. That's

35:56

why I'm still here. And we

35:59

just leave them

35:59

in the water and we continue

36:02

on our way. Can you hit it?

36:07

You have this really intense

36:10

pressure cooker situation emerging. On

36:12

the one hand, you have decades of overfishing

36:14

causing the air shore stocks to disappear.

36:17

Right? you've got local artisanal fishermen

36:20

who are doing subsistence fishing for local

36:22

communities in five man boats that are

36:24

having to go much further out from shore.

36:26

And then you have a growth of the

36:28

industrial, commercial often foreign

36:30

vessels also coming

36:33

near shore in the same

36:35

general areas. And so that creates

36:37

a very intense situation in

36:39

which the big industrial boats are often

36:41

running over, not just the nets, and

36:43

the gear of the small boats, but the boats themselves,

36:46

you know, and stranding and killing guys

36:48

without even knowing it. And in the opposite

36:50

direction, you have these smaller

36:53

boats seemingly posing a threat

36:55

to bigger boats because they're armed and they're

36:57

hard to discern as to whether their pirates are

36:59

competitors or whatnot. And so

37:01

you have more of a clash between

37:04

these two players occurring

37:07

as the marine resources

37:09

get more strained and

37:11

and now everyone's armed.

37:27

Okay. Take care. Take care. Take care. So

37:32

on the one hand after two thousand eight, you had

37:34

governments of the world realizing they couldn't do anything

37:37

about this, so the private sector had to deal with

37:39

it. And so everyone arms up. On

37:41

the other hand, you have in the post nine eleven

37:43

moment, the opposite trend where countries

37:45

are becoming even more nervous

37:48

about attack. You know? And so they

37:50

are passing often with US

37:52

prodding a lot stricter rules

37:54

about port security. And what that means

37:57

is a bind. Everyone's got guys with guns,

37:59

so as to

37:59

get through dangerous neighborhoods, but no one's

38:02

allowed to have guys with guns onboard when

38:04

they need to drop off their cargo. So

38:06

what do you do? can't just throw them overboard. So

38:08

thus emerges that clever solution,

38:11

which is these floating armouries.

38:14

Shipping companies looking for protection

38:17

bought excess patrol boats,

38:19

converted those to act as private

38:21

escorts, and started hiring

38:24

them out to provide anti

38:26

piracy. security.

38:28

They tend to be these converted

38:31

ships that have storage lockers,

38:33

huge storage facilities where all the guys keep

38:35

their weapons and check them upon arrival

38:37

and then bunking quarters and they might

38:40

have twenty, thirty, forty guys or

38:42

dropped off there they're floating

38:44

literally just a mile or two across

38:46

the line from national and international runners.

38:49

No. You'll just leave your resolution. Now request

38:51

permission come along starving sides to conduct

38:54

transcript. Ship,

38:56

you know, unloads its cargo, comes back out and

38:58

heads to a new neighborhood. Maybe it's a new dangerous

39:00

neighborhood so they pick more guys up or

39:02

maybe it's not, so they don't pick guys up.

39:04

So these security guards stay on these

39:06

armories and wait for their next mission.

39:09

So it's this weird weird realm. The

39:18

minute I heard about it, I thought I

39:20

have to get there. It's like, to me, I envision

39:23

the bar scene in Star Wars, you know, like,

39:25

it's just this border town

39:27

or you would get to encounter all these

39:30

see characters and indeed it was.

39:43

On this ship, there was an open air

39:45

area with boxing bag

39:47

and weights and jump ropes and pull up

39:50

bars. You know, the the guys are shirtless

39:52

and humming weights and boxing.

39:57

Yep. you

39:59

know, you've got

39:59

the macho testosterone

40:02

concentration coupled with

40:04

intense boredom coupled with

40:07

an industry that employs these

40:09

guys that often treats them like shit.

40:12

The longest ever spent on an armory

40:14

is ten days, and that was definitely

40:16

enough.

40:17

All men and and all ex military.

40:20

I mean, all that is testosterone everywhere.

40:26

There's a multitude of personnel

40:28

on these ships. You know, you got Indians,

40:31

you got Nephilis, you got bulgarians. You've

40:33

got Americans. You've got English. South

40:36

Africans. The overcrowding is

40:39

absolutely ridiculous. you

40:41

know, it's it's it's just just imagine

40:43

going to the hottest, dirtiest

40:46

pub that you've never been to

40:48

and you never wanna go in but you've got

40:50

to stay in that pub for the next two or three

40:52

weeks basically. You know, that's

40:54

the kind of environment that you stuck in.

41:02

Your

41:04

weapons, raw sleep, shall be

41:06

bought into the armory. It all get bar

41:08

coded, scanned, and it performs

41:10

the system. And then we'll sort of ship with you.

41:12

Yeah. We we'll give you a scanned operator, of course.

41:16

It probably

41:18

would be a conservative estimate

41:21

to say each armory is got maybe

41:23

between five hundred and a

41:26

thousand rifles on, and that could

41:28

be different types of rifles from

41:30

AK forty seven f infos,

41:33

g threes, browning b a

41:35

r's, obviously then got all the ammunition

41:38

for them weapons, you know. So that would

41:40

be ten thousand rounds of ammunition good.

41:44

If one of these armories was to get

41:47

hijacked themselves, then

41:49

thank you very much. You just arm the whole of

41:52

Yemen or Somalia basically.

41:55

I'm actually quite surprised that it hasn't

41:57

happened already that one of these armies

41:59

hasn't been

41:59

home you.

42:12

My visit to the armory was

42:14

part of the period when I was investigating

42:17

violence in general and the murder video

42:19

in particular. So I wanted to talk with

42:21

him about that murder video and just see, did anyone

42:23

know anything about it and what their take on that in general

42:26

was? And really on my last day that I

42:28

had a rapport with a bunch of them and

42:30

said, hey, I wanna show you something. And so they

42:32

crowded around. I showed them it.

42:39

They watched all in silence and no one said ending

42:41

in kind of awkward, quiet,

42:43

filled the space. And after it was all

42:46

over, one finally said, you

42:48

know, not how I would have

42:50

handled it, but sometimes that's how things

42:52

get handled.

42:54

That's all he would say.

43:01

I decided that point to do something that

43:04

I might have gotten in trouble for, which was

43:06

published my own stuff, on my own

43:08

channels. Even though I was on staff

43:10

of The New York Times, I knew that couldn't

43:12

get more of this reporting into the paper, but

43:14

I felt like I needed to put it

43:16

out there. And so I just began

43:19

compiling these intelligence reports

43:21

and then putting them up on Facebook and

43:24

pushing them out and Twitter and hoping that

43:26

someone would take note.

43:29

We identified the pension number 101

43:31

We still didn't know at this time whether the incident

43:33

might have taken place, say, in the station was

43:35

waters or somali waters or it was

43:37

on the high seas. But we certainly had countries

43:40

who had relations to this visit. But

43:42

in terms of investigating the

43:44

crime itself. Nobody

43:47

really was willing to pick up and run with the ball.

43:49

And we sort of at

43:51

at a bit of a stalemate in terms of

43:53

what happens next.

43:58

A year later, I heard

44:00

that Nat Gio and this

44:03

investigator, Carson von Hoesen, were

44:06

intensely looking into the story and

44:08

picking up where I'd left off and

44:10

trying to solve who the culprits and

44:12

and victims were.

44:14

Clearly, the boat level

44:16

investigation was going nowhere. So

44:19

Carson went after people who were

44:21

on board the vessel. Here there

44:24

are avenues that you can take because

44:26

there are, for example, crew agencies, there

44:28

are certain ports and certain trees

44:31

such as Indonesia where the majority of crew

44:33

may originate from. But nonetheless,

44:35

to track down, the crew who were

44:37

on board a particular vessel during a particular

44:40

period is an extraordinary but there's

44:42

a tactical work. He

44:44

tracked the captain of the

44:46

Ping Sheen 101IE

44:48

the person who ordered the killing and

44:51

with real scrappiness was able to

44:53

locate for witnesses who were

44:55

on the vessels at the time of shooting in

44:57

interview those guys in the Philippines and elsewhere,

45:00

and he put names to

45:03

the various players to the extent that I

45:05

I was not able to do it.

45:11

There's one main guy in the video in the

45:14

selfies at the end who's wearing a shirt

45:16

that says hang ten on it. and Carson

45:18

was able to find that guy and his name was

45:20

Maximo and he sat down and

45:22

interviewed him extensively.

45:26

What Maximo said was that he

45:28

did not believe these guys in the water were pirates.

45:31

They had fishing nets. They were not armed. They

45:33

were yelling for help. Another

45:36

big revelation from oxymoron was

45:38

that the captain not only ordered

45:40

the security guards to fire, but at one

45:42

point actually took the weapon and fired

45:44

himself. The security

45:47

guard had hesitated and said, I can't

45:49

shoot these guys their Muslim and

45:51

the captain grabbed the gun from him

45:54

and opened

45:54

fire.

45:58

Maximo said that it was

45:59

certainly more than the four

46:02

people killed that you see on camera

46:04

that died that day. And more likely,

46:07

the number of men killed in the water was

46:09

closer to ten or fifteen.

46:19

the captain before everyone went

46:21

back to work, told them to hand over their cellphones,

46:24

he wanted to wipe any footage

46:26

off, but clearly not everyone followed

46:28

that order since one cellphone still

46:30

with the footage on it ended up in the back of

46:32

a taxi and Fiji.

46:41

Karsten compiled his evidence.

46:44

I compiled my subsequent reports

46:47

and the original reporting. We both separately

46:49

called meetings with the Taiwanese government,

46:52

submitted to the prosecutor's office, and

46:54

we're met with just

46:56

dead silence.

47:06

And then yet another wrinkle

47:08

emerge, and that was that

47:10

the Ping Shane 101 which

47:12

again is the ship that we now know the

47:15

shooters were shooting from, mysteriously

47:18

disappeared, and it disappeared to

47:20

the bottom of the ocean.

47:23

what this seems to point to is

47:25

that some player tied to the Pinching

47:28

101 wanted that ship gone. And

47:30

maybe that's because it was a

47:32

crime scene or a multiple crime scene,

47:35

or maybe it's also because sometimes

47:38

ship operators attempt to file insurance

47:40

claims to get rid of ships and

47:42

get paid for it. But for whatever

47:45

reason, this sinking was not accidental

47:47

according to the crew, and what

47:49

little evidence might have existed on that ship

47:52

is now at the bottom of the ocean.

48:04

What makes the lack of

48:06

investigation and prosecution even more

48:08

egregious is that this murder

48:11

was not an isolated case.

48:13

We have not only the emergence of

48:15

a different video of a similar

48:17

violent clash with this vessel.

48:20

But then in interviews with crew

48:22

from the vessel, they recount a third

48:24

incident that did result in murder

48:27

of other fishermen. And so there's

48:29

reasonable suspicion that that captain

48:32

is engaging in a pattern

48:34

of extreme violence.

48:40

We have to assume that for every

48:43

camera phone video that makes it onto

48:45

a social media platform like YouTube. There

48:47

must be many cases that were never

48:49

documented at all or were

48:52

and the and the phone was or an overboard or

48:54

just sitting on someone's camera phone somewhere.

48:57

And this again goes to

48:59

the narrative that there is a lot happening

49:01

and see that we never ever hear about,

49:03

particularly on the high seas, so

49:06

very much out of sight, out of mind of any

49:08

country. I

49:11

think huge factor in

49:13

understanding why impunity is

49:15

so prevalent is the

49:18

nature of the victims Typically, the

49:20

victims of these crimes are

49:22

migrant

49:23

undocumented and often from developing

49:26

nations. And as such,

49:28

their lives are valued less. And

49:31

that means that when things go wrong,

49:33

you're less likely to hear about them. And even if

49:36

you do, there's less leverage money political

49:38

import for anyone to do anything about

49:40

it. If

49:42

the victims had been Americans

49:45

or Germans or, you know, Norwegians.

49:48

I think there wouldn't have been a story for me to

49:50

tell. It would have already been known the footage

49:52

would have already bubbled up immediately to law

49:54

enforcement. And then certainly, what

49:56

would have happened after I put it on the front page,

49:59

my phone would have been ringing off the hook.

50:01

and I feel pretty confident saying

50:04

that captain once he was named

50:06

would have been pulled off the seas within

50:08

days.

50:12

You know, the story has been put on the front page

50:14

in New York Times and there's been documentary series

50:16

about it and huge global attention. and

50:19

yet seven years later, this

50:21

captain had not been arrested even

50:24

though they know where he is and he's not been

50:26

prosecuted for a crime for which do you have any

50:28

silver lining?

51:04

There was a real reckoning that occurred

51:06

heard with the murder video investigation.

51:09

Number one, it confronted me with just

51:11

how impenetrable the

51:13

maritime merry go round was. and

51:16

the other realization was that on

51:18

the other side of that bureaucratic wall

51:20

where the victims, the culprits, the witnesses

51:23

the actual players themselves who

51:25

are on the vessels. And if you could

51:27

get to them, you could unpack

51:29

this world.

51:34

When you're

51:36

in front of someone, there's all

51:38

sorts of language that gets

51:40

conveyed. Right? You know, there's how

51:42

fast they say things, where their eyes

51:45

go, are they willing to stop working

51:47

as answering that question or they're making eye

51:49

contact.

51:53

You have to witness the way that a room falls

51:55

silent when certain officers walk in

51:58

the way that you never sit at certain tables

51:59

or you never look at certain officers

52:02

when they're speaking.

52:05

Understanding what a boiling

52:07

pot of Eso can become because

52:10

of the cramped quarters in smell and the

52:12

boredom and the crappy food

52:14

and the rats and roaches and, you know,

52:16

unless you've been in the space, you

52:18

can't put your finger on the

52:20

depravity and the intensity, but

52:23

also the humanity and camaraderie

52:25

and the beauty and the allure of

52:27

that open realm, you

52:30

really have to get out there and see

52:32

it to understand some of these emotional

52:35

and ambient intangibles.

52:50

the fishing industry in the Ocean Realm in

52:53

general is a very insular

52:55

closed culture. And

52:57

so more impenetrable than,

53:00

you know, other industries I'd covered before.

53:03

The topic was getting under my skin. I was developing

53:05

a certain fluency and expertise. and

53:07

and I realized more than ever that

53:10

I should stick with it, you know, I should

53:12

use the momentum I had acquired to

53:15

go after all these other stories, I

53:17

was now able to see that no

53:19

one was covering.

53:21

It's important to remember that we only

53:23

knew about the murder video by a pure

53:25

happenstance. I mean, it ended

53:27

up in a taxi and fiege and someone

53:29

happened to hand it over to someone that knew

53:31

to get it to me. So

53:33

if that's the case or something as egregious as

53:35

this, what other incredible

53:37

stories, egregious stories were out there

53:39

still to be discovered.

53:51

On the next episode of the

53:53

Outlaw Ocean, Tell him surely understands

53:56

I'm gonna take into account his crew

53:58

and my crew. He's attacked

53:59

me. His crew have gone out with ski masks

54:02

and thrown things out of me. I suspect

54:04

that the thunder tapped and refuses to leave the boat

54:06

because it's probably sinking his own

54:08

ship for all know. I saw some of the boats

54:10

myself and they're very

54:13

there, they're very spartan. Some of them

54:15

also wash ashore with bodies

54:17

on board, and some of them are so

54:19

badly decomposed. that one

54:21

coast guard investigator told me he couldn't

54:23

even identify their genders.

54:29

From CBC Podcast, and the LA

54:31

Times, this series is created

54:33

and produced by the Out Low Ocean Project.

54:35

It's reported and hosted by me,

54:37

Ian Irvina.

54:39

written and produced by Ryan French, editing

54:42

and sound design by Michael Ward,

54:44

sound recording by Tony Fowler, Our

54:46

associate producer is Margaret Parsons.

54:49

Additional

54:49

production by Joe Galvin and

54:51

Marcella Bele. This episode

54:54

features music by antarctic wastelands,

54:57

Earth and Sea, Kodomo,

55:00

machine fabric, and Appleblin,

55:03

Sewers Man, Darwin,

55:06

Louis Vuitton, Stoneface,

55:08

and Terminal. Alessandra Chiletti,

55:12

Melarman, and Alberto

55:14

Tre. Their music is available

55:16

online at the Alba Ocean Music Project

55:18

website and wherever you stream

55:21

music. Please check out their work.

55:23

Additional music by Scott Cote Sports,

55:26

Britt Brady, Matthew Stevens,

55:28

Gamatone, and Fabio Naciemann.

55:39

This has been the first episode of

55:41

the outlaw ocean. You can listen to

55:43

more episodes on the CBC Listen

55:46

app and everywhere you get your

55:48

podcasts. For

55:49

more CBC podcasts, go

55:51

to cbc dot c a slash

55:53

podcasts.