Episode Transcript
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energy. The
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following series deals with issues around
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unexplained deaths, trauma and can discuss
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issues of suicide. Please
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take care when listening. A
2:26
man apparently buried in a residential garden
2:29
in Galway. To
2:31
date, he's never been identified. John
2:46
Doe. A person without
2:48
a name. A life story which
2:50
has no ending. A
2:53
body lying on a post-mortem table. An
2:56
investigator searching for answers. Welcome
3:00
to your latest true crime obsession,
3:03
Jigsaw. Told in bite-sized episodes which
3:05
get straight to the heart of
3:07
the unusual circumstances and the possible
3:09
clues that could help identify an
3:12
unknown body. There
3:16
are around 1,000 people found in
3:18
the UK who cannot be identified. They
3:21
were mothers and daughters, fathers and sons.
3:25
Somebody somewhere will likely be wondering what
3:27
happened to them. In
3:29
this series, we present the pieces of
3:31
the mysterious Jigsaw puzzle in the hope
3:33
that someone listening can piece them together.
3:37
So listen carefully as we present the clues.
3:40
Dust off your detective hat as we
3:42
delve into the coroner's case files and
3:44
help us dissect the details that
3:46
try and establish who they are. In
3:51
this episode, can we give a name to
3:53
Dave Dubuska? Brought
3:57
to you from the charity Loke International.
4:01
It's the
4:04
17th of
4:07
April 2002
4:10
on Upper
4:13
Salt Hill Road. It's
4:21
a typical suburban street in Galway Island. There's
4:24
a block of relatively new apartments and
4:26
the other side of the road is made up
4:28
with different colour houses, some grey, some pink, some
4:31
yellow with a dark orange trim. O'Connor's
4:35
self-appointed, most famous pub is at the
4:38
end of the street and
4:40
a local property developer plans to pay it a
4:42
visit later that day, once he's
4:44
finished clearing the garden of number 158, the
4:47
house he's in the middle of renovating. The
4:53
house and the garden are both in a
4:55
terrible state, having been used as a squat
4:57
by homeless people from the local area for
4:59
years. It's
5:01
dilapidated with rubbish everywhere, but
5:04
with a bit of money and some elbow grease,
5:06
the developer is confident he can turn it around.
5:11
The diggers have cleared most of the tree roots and
5:13
shrubs from the garden, but there's some
5:15
old debris of stones and rubble to move to. At
5:19
least the weather is holding out, nothing
5:21
worse than torrential Irish rain turning the garden
5:23
into a mud bath. The
5:28
developer grabs the shovel himself, hoping to speed
5:30
up the process of moving soil towards the
5:32
back of the garden. He's
5:36
still thinking about whether O'Connor's has any food
5:38
on that day, and he hasn't been digging
5:40
for long when his shovel turns up something
5:43
which lands on his excess soil pile but
5:45
allowed to soothe the rest of the dirt.
5:50
Rain which is clearly pale white in
5:52
colour, despite being stained with brown mud.
6:00
The developer shunts it around in the dirt with his
6:02
spade, before quickly dropping it to
6:04
the floor and taking a step back. The
6:09
gleam of white juxtaposed with a hollow
6:11
black of eye sockets is unmistakable. It's
6:15
a human skull. And
6:19
its burial location is our clue
6:21
number one. The
6:35
Irish police had the scene cordoned off in no
6:37
time. A
6:39
discovery of human remains prompts the swiftest
6:41
of responses. And
6:47
as the forensic crime officers get to work, it
6:49
isn't long before more secrets are unearthed from the
6:51
mud. The
6:54
first of these is a blue sleeping bag tied
6:56
with a blue nylon twine. And
7:00
in this sleeping bag contains more
7:02
skeletal remains. Later,
7:05
those will be positively linked to the skull
7:07
found just a few feet away. Inside
7:12
the sleeping bag is some clothes, some
7:14
jewellery, a pair of boots and some
7:16
hair ties. So
7:19
who is the man discovered in the back garden of
7:21
number 158? And
7:23
what events led him to that house and to be
7:25
buried in the garden? The
7:33
police initially suspect foul play. After
7:36
all, finding any kind of body buried in
7:38
a residential garden has all the hallmarks of
7:40
someone committing a crime. But
7:45
once the body is removed and taken
7:47
to the mortuary for investigation, the picture
7:49
changes. A
7:52
post-mortem reveals that the man died of natural
7:54
causes before his body is placed in the
7:56
ground. There's no assault,
7:58
no trauma, no violence. whatsoever.
8:02
How long he's been dead is difficult to
8:05
determine, but investigators are
8:07
confident it's a matter of months, at
8:09
most a year or two, but not much
8:11
more than that. What
8:14
is clear is that the man hadn't simply died where
8:17
he was found. He'd been placed
8:19
in that sleeping bag and buried, and for
8:21
that to happen someone else was involved in
8:23
giving him that burial. So
8:27
why hadn't they come forward about his death? Police
8:36
had a theory. If
8:41
the man had indeed lived in this house,
8:43
his friends would have also been squatters, potentially
8:46
using illegal substances. While
8:50
there's no suggestion that this man died of drug use, it
8:52
may well have been that his friends didn't want to draw
8:54
attention to themselves or their whereabouts when they discovered he'd died.
9:01
Police also speculated that perhaps they didn't realise it's illegal to
9:03
bury someone in unconsecrated ground. So maybe the man's friends thought
9:06
they were doing the right thing, laying
9:09
this man to rest, and not expecting it to cause an
9:11
issue. However,
9:18
in this case, unlike so many others
9:20
in this series, we do have a
9:22
possible identity for our unclaimed man. It's
9:26
just an identity which isn't complete.
9:31
Clue number two, a man called
9:33
Dave. It's
9:37
that time of the year. Your
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banner to go to monday.com Ryan
10:09
Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price
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of just about everything going up during inflation,
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we thought we'd bring our prices down. So
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to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which
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is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. You
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per month. Slows. mintmobile.com. The
11:13
clothes, jewelry and hair ties found in the
11:15
sleeping bag left the police to believe the
11:17
man whose body they'd found was a well-known
11:19
busker about town, a man everyone
11:21
knew as Dave. Dave
11:29
was well-known in Galway City with
11:31
his long hair and friendly face. Dave lived
11:34
as a new age traveler and he played
11:36
the tin whistle and sometimes the guitar. He
11:42
could usually be found on Shop Street,
11:44
the main pedestrianized thoroughfare in the city
11:46
center. Surrounded by the footfall
11:48
of shoppers heading into the brightly colored
11:50
storefronts. Dave
11:54
hadn't been seen in recent years, in
11:56
fact his absence in the city had been noted by
11:58
many. But
12:00
it was assumed that he had departed for
12:02
passengers new, such was the want of a
12:04
traveller with no specific ties to Galway. Nobody
12:08
had jumped to the conclusion that he was
12:10
dead. Until now. Dave
12:16
himself wasn't Irish, having arrived in the area
12:18
a few years before. Investigators
12:22
narrowed that time down to around August
12:24
1998. In
12:27
fact, people remembered Dave the busker as
12:29
speaking with an English accent, and
12:31
anecdotally there were stories that he was from
12:33
Tunbridge, Wales.
12:36
Because Dave was well remembered, and because he
12:38
had friends in the busking and homeless community,
12:41
various pieces of information continued to
12:43
be forthcoming. Things
12:46
like the fact that Dave had been trained as a
12:48
classical musician in London, and that
12:51
he might also have a sister in Exeter. Friends
12:55
told police they also thought he'd been married at one
12:57
point. There
13:00
was one story of when Dave purchased a
13:02
dog license for his collydog, and
13:05
that he used the name Dave Rawson, although
13:07
this suggestion has never been corroborated.
13:11
A few other people said that Dave sometimes went
13:14
by the nickname Tang, and
13:16
all of this information feels as though it should
13:18
lead somewhere, that someone can join
13:20
the dots between a musician, the name
13:22
Dave Rawson, and the nickname Tang. What
13:27
did become clear from all the people the police
13:29
spoke to was that Dave hadn't been seen for
13:31
years before his body was discovered, since
13:34
1999 in fact, and
13:36
neither hit his collydog, or his
13:38
guitar and the tin whistle that he was never seen
13:40
without. So
13:48
what happened to those things? Was
13:50
it the case that Dave had passed away sometime after
13:53
1999, and been
13:55
buried in that residential garden by the people he
13:57
was living with? of
14:00
possessions lost to time. Finally,
14:06
Dave was known to carry a small
14:08
notebook containing addresses and phone numbers, and
14:10
he carried it everywhere he went. That
14:13
wasn't found with his body either, or
14:16
anywhere else in the garden. Where
14:18
did it go? The
14:23
story of Dave the Busker is one rich
14:25
with potential clues. There are
14:27
a huge number of individual leads here,
14:30
clues about Dave's lifestyle, places in the
14:32
UK he might have connections with, a
14:34
love of dogs, potential previous
14:36
education and training, and
14:39
investigators assure that they must mean
14:41
something to someone. More
14:46
than that, it's one of the few cases
14:48
where investigators know that someone else was involved.
14:51
Someone else had a hand in laying Dave to
14:53
rest, and it feels likely that
14:55
the answer lays in the homeless community of Galway,
14:57
back in 1999. So
15:02
do you know anyone who was sleeping rough back then?
15:05
Anyone who might have some answers in this story?
15:12
As yet, none of the leads we've mentioned
15:14
have led to Dave being formally identified by
15:16
a relative or next of kin, and
15:18
nobody has come forward to admit that they have any
15:21
knowledge of what happened to him, or who he really
15:23
was. So
15:27
as you go about your day to day business, don't
15:30
forget the case of Dave the Busker. Think
15:34
about the clues you've heard today. The
15:36
streets of Central Galway, the connections to
15:38
Tunbridge Wells and Exeter, the
15:40
dog, the name, and Dave's
15:42
final resting place. Could you
15:45
hold the missing piece of the puzzle, which
15:47
might allow investigators to complete this jigsaw? work
16:00
to reinvestigate missing people's cases with a
16:02
mission to give a name to the
16:04
unidentified. You can see
16:06
images related to this case on their website www.locate.international.
16:14
On that website you'll also find a
16:16
forum, a discussion board where listeners can
16:18
share ideas and information. You
16:20
can discuss each case with other listeners,
16:22
go deeper into the story and provide
16:24
details which investigators can follow. That
16:27
address again is
16:30
www.locate.international. Locate
16:36
International believe that everyone deserves dignity in
16:38
death. If you have
16:40
any relevant information or ideas you'd like to
16:43
share with their investigators, please get in contact
16:45
with them. The information you give
16:47
us can be anonymous and your
16:49
information alone could help identify this man and
16:52
reunite him with his name. We'd
16:55
also really appreciate if you share it with your
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friends and family and leave a rating and a
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review that will help other people find this series.
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