The Unsettling and Unexplained Disappearance of Gaia Pope

Hey guys, Top Mysteries here. So we're going to do something a little bit different today. I often get asked the question, what is the strangest disappearance that you've come across? And one of them has definitely got to be the disappearance of Gaia Pope. So at the time of her disappearance, Gaia was 19. This happened on the 7th of November 2017 and it took place in Swanage, located in Dorset in the UK, which is, it's the very south of the UK. So before we get into the circumstances, there's some important information first. So Gaia was severely epileptic and she suffered from mental health issues, which came about as a result of indecent assault two years prior. And I'm phrasing that carefully because YouTube doesn't like certain language these days and you've got to be a little bit careful, but it was, yeah. I'm sure you can imagine what that might have been. So this resulted in Gaia having PTSD. Now at the time, this was an alleged assault, but the same person was arrested three years afterwards for committing the same crime against someone else, where enough evidence existed to get a conviction. So I think it's reasonable to say that this wasn't just an allegation, but this actually did happen. So epilepsy is a neurological disorder marked by sudden, recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance and loss of consciousness and things like that. So these epileptic seizures happen when a sudden burst of electrical, of intense electrical activity occurs in the brain. So PTSD on the other hand. Some of the symptoms of PTSD include things like re-experiencing the traumatic event. This can be through things like flashbacks or nightmares. It's probably important to say as well at this point that these symptoms normally develop during the first month after the traumatic event has occurred. That's in most cases. So the person who suffers from PTSD will often display behaviors such as avoidance. So they'll avoid things like places, people or other things that may remind them of what took place of that event. They also display emotional numbing. This means they will try to feel nothing at all essentially is what they'll try to do. And they'll try to just numb themselves to everything. Others display hyper arousal or feeling on edge. So they'll often get really irritable. Perhaps they'll feel angry and things like that. They might have sleeping problems or difficulty concentrating and things like that. So another problem with PTSD is that there's a very high comorbidity rate with things like depression and anxiety and things like that. So if you suffer from PTSD you might also be found later to be suffering from something like that as well. And it's probably worth pointing out that when medication is administered to a patient with PTSD they'll often be prescribed antidepressants. So to get into the circumstances. Gaia lived with her boyfriend at the time Nathan and his grandmother Rosemary. So on the day of the disappearance Gaia returned to that house and Rosemary stated that she was pounding on the door and she said that she was in a distressed state asking for help. Another newspaper that I was reading about this incident also kind of showed some other unusual behaviors that Gaia was exhibiting at the time. So allegedly she removed a piece of clothing. I'm not sure what she removed but I think she removed a piece of clothing and threw it on the floor. I can't confirm that to be sure because I only found that on one source and I didn't find it in other newspapers. But they seemed pretty certain that that happened. It was also described that she was shouting incoherently. So she's obviously displaying unusual behaviors now. I'm not sure why but she might have been having a potential, you know, mental breakdown or something like that. So the last time she was seen was at 3.40pm and she was running on CCTV and after that she was just never seen again. Now it's not really clear why she was running. I don't know if she was just distressed. But she certainly wasn't running from anyone else because there was no like cars following her. There was no no one else came onto the scene afterwards. It was just her running and then she was never seen again. So the authorities said that they didn't believe that she'd left the area meaning that they didn't think she'd just gone to another city or another town or she was visiting someone else. They firmly believe that she was still in the area. So on November the 13th, so that's six days then after the disappearance, the Detective Chief Inspector Neil Devato, I may have butchered that last name, but he was leading the investigation and he said that he and his team believe that she may have come to harm. So at this point Rosemary and Nathan were both arrested. Now it's important to know actually, just in the interest of balance, the pair of them gave the police their phones, their keys, their car keys and everything like that. And they said, look, you know, we had nothing to do with this. We don't know where she is. And they were later released because the police just couldn't find any evidence to suggest that they had anything to do with it. So at this point, I think it might be worth backtracking just a little bit because I found something that's fairly interesting by the Guardian that was talking about Gaia and her sort of mental state at the time. So Gaia's declining mental and physical health. First drove her out of college and then work. And in this article, the Guardian wrote, now it was the turn of the welfare system to relentlessly interrogate her trauma and to undermine her sense of self-respect. So that information is actually crucial because it highlights just how low she may have been feeling at the time. And, you know, that's always important to understand someone's decision-making process, which is, you know, obviously going to be essential to the buildup of the disappearance and understanding it. So obviously, soon after the disappearance, there was a massive police investigation joined by an even bigger public search effort, actually, it was all over the news and people from all over the country were watching this. And because of that, thousands of people were mobilized who joined the search and they, you know, made their way down south and they were searching the area with the police. So helicopters with thermal imaging technology were deployed alongside highly trained sniffer dog teams. Now, despite being equipped with this sensitive thermal imaging technology, they never found her once. They never found a heat signature. And the dogs also didn't pick up a scent at any point during the search, which in all fairness, people did find unusual because it is. Okay, so at this point, things do take a bizarre turn now, like things get really weird. So on the 16th of November, this is nine days after the initial disappearance. Gaia's clothes, including her shoes, were found scattered across a nearby coastal path at around 3 p.m. that day. The location was between Dancing Ledge and Anvil Point Lighthouse. This is slightly to the southwest of Dalestan Country Park and National Nature Reserve. So the police obviously pinpointed the location where the clothes were found and they established a radius around that point. And that's where all the search effort was zoned in now and it focused there at that point. But still, nothing was ever found. The dogs still didn't pick up a scent and the helicopters, they still never found her. They never got a heat signature. They never spotted her while they were flying or anything like that. And they should have done. So two days later now, on November the 18th, Gaia's completely unclothed body was found nearby on a cliff top. This was still on a field. Now, what's interesting about this is there's no tall grass or there's no forestry that would obscure this. They should have found her. Realistically speaking, it was so strange that it took two days to find her because there's nothing to obscure her body. And she was found within view of the clothes. It's also worth pointing out she was found uninjured as well. So her cousin Mariana said this. Police told us they had dogs out and helicopters up with thermal imaging equipment so sensitive it could pick up a signal from a body even 48 hours after passing. One of the officers said to me if she was out there, we'd have found her. When she was eventually found, I could not believe it. If there were helicopters flying overhead, how did they not see her on foot even? If they stuck to the path, they would have seen her if they were looking. So that struck me as being highly unusual because Mariana seems to be suggesting that the location of Gaia's clothes, her body was clearly visible from that location. Even if they just had to follow the path a short distance, they should have found her. Reports by the press also seem to suggest that she should have been visible from the point where the clothing was discovered. So the question then follows is why was she only discovered at that location two days afterwards? Why was she not visible to the search and rescue teams on the 16th but she was on the 18th? Was she placed there afterwards? So again, it's probably worth reiterating that the helicopters never found her. They never found any evidence of her. They never found a heat signature or anything like that. They never spotted anything out of the ordinary. The search dogs were up and down this area and they never picked up a scent which that is beyond strange. You would have thought that the dogs would have picked up her scent as well, right? Especially since that area, that particular area where she was now found, that was well within the radius, you know, that they intensively searched that area and they didn't come up with anything. So what this means is that Gaia was essentially found in an area that had been previously searched many times over. So what took place on that cliff exactly? So the coroner ruled that she must have passed as a result of hypothermia. You know, she was missing for 11 nights, cold temperatures set in, maybe she suffered from hypothermia and then later paradoxical undressing. There are a few inherent problems with this approach though, if you like, because that doesn't explain why the search dogs never picked up a scent. They should have been able to track her movements if that were the case, if she was just wandering around aimlessly in that area. Similar situation with the helicopters, they should have found her because if she was found on the 18th and the police officer was saying that the technology should be able to pick up a heat signature in two days after passing, then there's no explanation as to why she wasn't found by the helicopters. Also, paradoxical undressing takes place during the final stage of hypothermia. So, you know, movements are really slow, groggy, confusions onset at this point. So she really shouldn't have been able to evade the searches at this point, especially so close to the clothing pile. When you're in this stage of hypothermia as well, once, you know, you've entered that stage of paradoxical undressing, it doesn't happen in every case, by the way, but in this case, they're saying it did. So once you've taken the clothes off like that, you now have absolutely no defense to the elements at all. So you don't have much time left as it is. And in theory, now that you've got no protection at all, you should have even less time. So I'm not sure the hypothermia suggestion completely explains what happened here. Another suggestion was that was she placed there after the fact? A couple of problems with that suggestion, to my knowledge, the coastal path has no vehicle access. Now, the problem with that then is that that means that she must have been carried to that spot. So you're essentially suggesting then that someone must have picked her up and carried her there, except even someone with a lot of strength would have found it difficult to carry her uphill. Not to mention that would be very risky. You know, police are in the area. You've got helicopters up, dogs out, thousands of volunteers. And, you know, that's very risky. Would someone do that? I don't know. Another suggestion, was she simply missed by the searchers? This suggestion to me is simultaneously the Occam's razor event, whilst also being the least likely outcome, which I understand that doesn't make sense, but conventionally, perhaps she was just missed, even though she was so close, like it really, she really shouldn't have been missed. That's why it is, you know, Occam's razor, but also I just don't see how that could have happened, in all fairness. Because if you're assuming that they just missed her, well, how do you explain the dog search failure? You know, they're relying on their nose, if you like, they should not have missed her, especially being so close to the clothing. It also doesn't explain why the helicopters didn't find her. And also at that point, you're suggesting that she was also missed by thousands of searchers so close to the clothing. You know, I'm just not sure. Or did something else entirely happen? And at which point, well, what was it? This is one of those disappearances where it would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall in the police department at that point, because I imagine there was a very strange conversation that probably took place between detectives working this case, because nothing about it makes sense. She wasn't injured, so it didn't look like a struggle had taken place. It literally just kind of looked like she'd been wandering around and then she ended up there, despite searchers being out constantly in this area with the dogs, you know, I mean, after all the clothing was found there, so they were constantly at that point within that radius, they were looking and they just never found her. So it's worth mentioning that the family did blast the police for this. They sort of said that, you know, the police weren't thorough enough with the search and their investigation. And I think that you can kind of appreciate their position on this one, because at the end of the day, you know, they found her clothes and then two days later, they found her body with an eye view, just a stone throw away. So you can understand why they were a bit frustrated with the police. But yeah, just to conclude this, this is a disappearance that's bothered me for ages. Since it happened, actually, this is one that I always go back to and look at just to see if there's any new information out. But there just isn't. There is obviously a piece of missing information here. Something happened and then she was found. What was it? Because as I said, even if she did have hypothermia, then that doesn't explain why she wasn't found by the search dogs or, you know, anyone else there. There's problems with being placed there afterwards, because then you have to explain how that happened. And I just don't know. And the suggestion that she was just missed, that to me, I just don't believe that she was missed. I don't know. But then if you're saying that she wasn't missed, well, then you are suggesting that something else happened, right? And then it's like, well, where do you go from there? I have no idea. But yeah, do share your thoughts if you have any suggestions or opinions or anything like that on this one. Did I miss something? Is something just glaringly obvious that I've missed, that the search has missed, that the police missed? Just do let me know your thoughts. I'm definitely interested in hearing what you have to say on this one. So yeah, thank you very much for watching, guys. And I'll catch you on Friday with a normal video. Cheers.