Disappearances and deaths that happened far from home.
Unknown Passage follows disappearances and murders of people who were abroad when it happened, such as an Argentinian missing in the Scottish Highlands and a Frenchman found dead in his San Francisco apartment. Each case opens with a dated scene and a list of sources, and then the host talks through the evidence in a loose, conversational way.
PRESS PLAY
Unknown Passage is a true crime show about people who went missing or were killed while away from home. That premise is built into the titles, which pair a name with a nationality and a destination: 'Episode 165: Rodrigo Falcon - Argentinian Missing In Scotland Since 2022', 'Episode 232: Francesca Matus & Drew DeVoursney - American & Canadian Murdered In Belize In 2017'. The public episodes all start the same way. A date and a place come first. Then the core facts are stated plainly, followed by a question, such as what happened to Hugues de la Plaza. After that comes a list of primary sources, anything from Police Scotland and missingpeople.org.uk to the San Francisco Chronicle, 48 Hours, Yad Vashem and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The Falcon case is set in Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands in December 2022. The last confirmed CCTV footage shows him walking the opposite way from home after leaving a nightclub, and the cold open also serves as an appeal for information. Hugues de la Plaza, a Frenchman living in San Francisco, was found dead in his locked apartment in 2007. His death was ruled a suicide despite objections from many experts, and his family and friends have kept pushing for answers. Once the opening is over, the tone changes. The host tells the story conversationally, with tangents, second thoughts and running commentary. In the Falcon case, that means wondering why anyone would stay out in freezing weather without a coat, then comparing a friend's account of the missing man's phone with what a couple of articles had printed. In the de la Plaza case, it means reading out an old rental listing for the apartment and reacting to the rent. These asides make each case sound like it is being worked out aloud rather than read from a script. The show also covers more than recent disappearances. A multi-part story on Herbert Cukurs follows a Mossad team sent to Uruguay in 1965 to kill a man accused of taking part in the murder of tens of thousands in Nazi-occupied Latvia, and it spends time on Latvia's upheavals and Soviet occupation. Other titles cover cases with a less obvious travel link, including 'Episode 233 [Part 1-3]: Suzanne Jovin - The Yale Murder' and a two-part look at the murder of Julia Wallace in the UK. At the end of one part, the host asks people not to start theorising yet, since the next part may answer their questions. The host has said that everything from episode 169 onward is Patreon-only, and several later entries in the public feed play that notice instead of a case. For free listening, the complete cases are in the lower-numbered episodes.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants unsolved disappearances and deaths abroad retold with the sources named, and who likes hearing a host think out loud more than a polished script.
What sets it apart: Distance from home ties the show together: titles name the person's nationality and where the case happened. A tight, sourced cold open gives way to a loose retelling that checks press accounts against people who knew the missing.
Welcome to Unknown Passage, a podcast telling the stories of those who have gone missing or been murdered while travelling abroad.
The locked apartment has a disputed suicide ruling; your theories can wait until the autopsy reports.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A vanished room becomes a dispute over seized art, revived by a claim with no exact location.
The Amber Room's disappearance shifts into a question of ownership in a second part focused less on spectacle than on competing claims. The host widens the story from amber-lined walls to the furniture and artwork that belonged with the room, then follows a Seattle Times account…
A careful look at a violent death ruled suicide, and the family and friends still challenging that answer.
Unknown Passage looks at the death of Hugues de la Plaza, a 36-year-old Frenchman found dead in his locked San Francisco apartment after a night out in June 2007.
A Mossad operation in Uruguay frames a stark portrait of Herbert Zuckers, the man known as the hangman of Riga.
The 1965 operation in Uruguay gives the episode a lean historical true-crime frame, following a Mossad team sent to execute Herbert Zuckers, remembered during the Holocaust as the hangman of Riga.
A missing man, a disputed departure time, and a phone that may have gone dark with him.
Rodrigo Falcon's disappearance turns on an unsettling mismatch. After a night out in Aviemore, the last confirmed CCTV shows him walking away from home in the early hours of December 11, 2022.
A stark, focused account of Irma Grese's path through the camps and the violence tied to her authority.
Part two of Unknown Passage follows Irma Grese from a farming family in a northern German village to guard duty at Ravensbruck and then Auschwitz.
Evidence first, rumors on trial.
This episode is a Patreon promotion explaining that new episodes are exclusive to Patreon supporters.
This episode is a brief Patreon promotion, explaining that new episodes are exclusive to Patreon supporters.
This episode is a brief Patreon update, explaining that new episodes are now exclusive to Patreon supporters.
Unknown Passage Episode 155 Part 2 follows Irma Gresse from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen, where the narrator says her power peaked in 1944 and 1945.
Unknown Passage episode 151, part two, follows the Amber Room from the Catherine Palace at Pushkin to Konigsberg Castle and its disappearance under Nazi control.
June 2007, Hugues de la Plaza, a 36-year-old Frenchman living in San Francisco, was found dead in his locked apartment after a night out.
Unknown Passage episode 159 follows Herbert Zuckers, the "Latvian Lindbergh" from Liepāja, through Riga, Uruguay, and the postwar Mossad search that linked him to the "hangman of Riga." The narrator draws on the Times of Israel, Yad Vashem, The Guardian, the CIA, and Stefan Talty’s 2020 book "The Good Assassin" to trace Zuckers’s prewar fame and wartime notoriety.
Rodrigo Falcon, a 33-year-old Argentinian in Aviemore, disappeared after leaving The Vault nightclub on December 11th, 2022.
Unknown Passage Episode 155 Part 1 opens the story of Irma Grese, nicknamed "the hyena of Auschwitz," with her upbringing in Wrechen, Mecklenburg, after her 1923 birth.
Hutu rebels who took responsibility for the March 2, 1999 attack on the Bohoma camp in Bwindi National Park targeted American and British tourists, killing eight of the 31 people they abducted.
Unknown Passage Episode 162 Part 2 tests the Khamar Daban incident against medical literature, starting with how trauma affects the memory of 17-year-old survivor Valentina.