Sunday's Article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal
ScubaBoard referenced and linked in article
There is a thread in the Cave Diving forum, but not all of us venture there:
ScubaBoard thread in Cave Diving
Text Posted Below:
Shelby and Patty McDaniel of Collierville believe two things: Their 30-year-old son Ben submerged into an underwater cave in Florida on Aug. 18, 2010.
And he's dead.
What happened in between is tearing them apart.
Other than a couple of clues found a year and a half ago when he vanished, no nook, crevice or cranny in Vortex Spring has yielded a trace that Ben McDaniel died there.
Theories churn with no proof -- armchair detectives guessing that Ben was murdered, he faked his death or maybe someone found his body floating, dragged it out of the water and dumped it, maybe near an alligator pond.
The disappearance, which sparked international attention in the summer of 2010 from the close-knit cave-diving community, will reach a wider audience next month when Ben is featured on the Discovery Channel show "Disappeared." And two documentary producers, including one the most respected female cave divers in the sport, plan to introduce "Ben's Vortex" this summer at film festivals around the country.
With the renewed attention and other developments, the McDaniels increased a reward to $30,000. They want someone to answer one question:
Where's Ben?
'He's not in there'
The mystery of Ben McDaniel's disappearance begins in Vortex Spring, a small vacation destination about an hour from Destin, Fla.
It's just outside the town of Ponce de Leon, in Holmes County. Families sleep in cabins or campers. Children swing from ropes to drop into the spring, which stays 68 degrees year round. Thousands of people fill Vortex Spring every summer.
But on Aug. 20, 2010, a call went out to cave divers around the region: There was a body in Vortex Spring that needed to be recovered.
Three teams of divers searched for Ben for days. They shined flashlights in holes and crevices: No fins, tanks, lights, masks or anything that indicates a panicked diver drowned.
They explored nearly the entire cave, except a dangerously cramped area in the rear of the cave that only someone foolhardy and untrained would enter.
Experienced divers say it would be impossible for Ben to have made it through the narrowest restrictions in the back of the cave.
Edd Sorenson, 52, the most experienced cave diver in the area, went farther in the cave than any of the other divers.
Sorenson, who owns Cave Adventurers, a dive shop about an hour from Vortex, is typically the first responderfor underwater cave recovery in the area, but he was in the Bahamas that August.
When he returned, he dived into the cave three times. He used smaller tanks, secured under his arms to make himself flatter and a scooter that zoomed faster to the rear. He wanted to go where other divers wouldn't go.
He knew that at 210 pounds, Ben, an untrained cave diver could have never gotten his 6-foot-1 frame through the final crevice that Sorenson wriggled through.
"I am 6-foot and 190 pounds, with smaller tanks, and I know what I'm doing and I barely made it through," Sorenson said.
"The last place I searched was pristine, without a mark that a diver had been there. It would be impossible to go through that restriction without making a mark on the floor or ceiling. He's not in there."
'Ben was fearless'
Ben, the brown-haired, blue-eyed oldest of three sons , glowed with a dynamic personality, said his friends. Others on scubaboard.com, an Internet scuba diving forum said Ben was also a braggart and over-confident in his abilities.
He learned to dive before he could drive. Underwater was a refuge, silent and serene. He was four months into a yearlong sabbatical, funded by his parents, when he vanished.
Since he had dived in open water since age 14, Ben was looking for a challenge. He dived headfirst into a dangerous but fascinating sport -- underwater cave diving.
As a certified open water diver, it would have taken Ben about two months and 125 dives with an instructor or diving buddy to get certification to be a cave diver.
Skipping that step is risky, foolish and often dangerous, said certified cave divers.
"Go no farther. There's nothing in this cave worth dying for," a sign says at the entrance to the cave. It was a message to Ben and any untrained cave diver.
The McDaniels are quick to defend Ben whenever divers criticize his arrogance, overconfidence and irresponsibility.
Divers are angry that experienced divers risked their lives to recover Ben's body.
Ben's parents disagree with the criticism. He dived into challenges head-first, no second thought about danger. He led a life of gusto and adventure, they said.
"Ben was brave," Shelby said. "Ben was fearless. He followed his passions."
Final encounter
Early evening, just before sunset on Aug. 18, 2010, Ben suited up, strapped on his tanks and submerged.
Two divers passed him as they were swimming out.
One of them Eduardo Taran, a commercial diver who works for Vortex, knew Ben was sneaking into the cave by jimmying the gate. Only certified divers are given a key. Taran, who came to know Ben in the weeks he was at Vortex, swam back to the cave and used his key to open it for Ben. Later, Taran and his fellow diver were given polygraph tests. They passed.
Sometimes Ben stayed down so long in the cave that Taran would sit on the bank waiting for bubbles in the glassy water, a signal that Ben was decompressing. No one watched for bubbles on Aug. 18.
Sixteen searchers, 36 days
Ben's truck, the lone vehicle after the spring closed for the day, went unnoticed by staff for two days. It was parked within sight of the dive shop.
Taran realized on the second day that no one had seen any sign of Ben. He called the Holmes County Sheriff's Office. The lawmen immediately unfurled yellow crime scene tape and tied it to trees. Above ground, the clues that he drowned in the cave were the effects he left behind: his truck, a wallet with $681 in cash, a cellphone and other items. The last time the cellphone was used was the night he vanished. He had called his mother.
Law officers suited up and dived into the chamber leading to the deeper cave to search for Ben and clues.
Air tanks were outside the cave entrance, a strange place for them, according to cave divers. When they enter a cave, they place tanks like life-saving bread crumbs along their path as they go in a cave so they have plenty of air when they come out.
The tanks contained only air, which was suspicious. If Ben had read books on cave diving, like his parents said he had, he would have known that diving deep required a gas mix, Sorenson said. Without it, divers will feel intoxicated and their decision-making becomes harder.
The lawmen canvassed the area around Vortex Spring, cadaver dogs sniffed the ground for hours. They found a scent of a decomposed body in two spots, one along the bank and one in the water.
In the first days, Ben's parents paced the banks. They sat at picnic tables. Every time bubbles appeared, they hoped a diver would emerge with news of their son.
Sixteen divers scoured the cave for 36 days, shining flashlights in all the crevices. No sign of decomposition in the water. Ben vanished without a trace.
Anger, frustration grow
The McDaniels' frustration and desperation grew. Cameras taken into the cave couldn't reach the tiny spots. Trained divers didn't swim to areas where the chance of death was greater. The McDaniels became convinced that's where Ben's body was floating.
Out of frustration, the McDaniels offered a $10,000 reward for anyone "brave" enough to swim into the passage.
Incensed cave divers became frenzied on Internet chat boards. Did the family believe money would be a motivation to risk their lives? Did they understand that they were inviting untrained cave divers to venture in to claim the reward?
'Divers panic'
Jill Heinerth and her husband, Robert McClellan, who have produced four documentaries, came to Vortex nearly a year after Ben's disappearance. Heinerth, who has dived deeper than any other woman in history, followed the case through the diver forums and newspaper coverage. The mystery was compelling.
She and McClellan drove to Vortex intending to shoot a documentary. Heinerth and a cave diving partner filmed in the cave. She wanted to show the video to the McDaniels and try to gently explain how cave diving works and give them closure, she said.
Then she read Ben's diving log books. He was mapping the cave. It showed he had made at least one dive to the far reaches of the cave. She changed her mind.
"I explained how divers panic and burrow themselves in beyond the reach of prudent divers," said Heinerth, who produced and starred in a four-part documentary on PBS called "Water's Journey."
"Sometimes they burrow so deep that they can't be found. I simply see no reasonable evidence that he is NOT in the cave," she said in an e-mail.
Other divers who read Ben's log books disagree and maintain he's not there. "Ben could be dead or he could walk in the theater at our movie premiere," Heinerth said.
Faked-death theory
McClellan leans toward the possibility that Ben had a psychotic breakdown and might have compulsively decided to reinvent himself. It was an idea floated on scubaboard.com and bandied about by several scuba divers who pictured the 30-year-old sitting on a beach in Mexico.
McClellan, who is a nurse, worked with addicted and traumatized patients who simply left their lives.
Of all the theories, the McDaniels believe this is the least plausible. Ben wouldn't be so cruel to do such a thing to them. In 2008, the McDaniels' youngest son, Paul, died from a stroke at age 22. The family was devastated.
"We know in our hearts that he would have never faked his death to run away," Patty said. "After what we went through with Paul, we know our son well enough to know he wouldn't put us through that again."
'Look above the water'
With all the experienced divers saying Ben's not in the cave, the McDaniels seized on a darker fate: foul play. They hired Lynn-Marie Carty, a Florida private investigator who operates a business called Reunite People, to explore that.
She's gathered criminal records of several people associated with Vortex, including its former owner, Lowell Kelly, who died under suspicious circumstances last month. When Ben disappeared, Kelly was awaiting trial on charges that he drove a temporary employee into the woods, accused him of stealing $30,000. Kelly beat him with a baseball bat. Kelly pleaded no contest and was given a fine and probation.
Carty is frustrated that authorities aren't aggressively investigating the case as a homicide.
"There is just as much reason to look above the water for Ben's body as there was to look below it in the cave," Carty said.
The Holmes County Sheriff's Office still lists Ben as a missing person. There was evidence he entered the cave, but none that showed he exited, Captain Harry Hamilton said. Investigators interviewed Kelly and found nothing suspicious, he said.
Kevin Carlisle is one of the cave divers who searched for Ben. "We may never know the truth of where he is, but we do know where he isn't and that is because of a lot of talented and qualified divers," he said.
No peace
The mystery haunts the McDaniels. Closure hides in an unopened grave. Its headstone features an etching of Ben in his diving suit.
Whether he drew his final breath from his diver's tank or the evening air doesn't matter any more; they are certain that summer night in Florida was his last.
His parents cling to their Christian faith -- glue to hold them together in the silent parts of the day when Ben creeps into their minds. Losing one son broke their hearts. Losing a second one nearly broke them.
Hurtful thoughts churn in their heads, cruel images of death and a body waiting to be claimed. Until what remains of Ben is buried next to his brother Paul's grave, there's no solace.
Grief is their vortex.
-- Cindy Wolff: (901) 529-2378
-----------------------------------------------------
More about the case
Here are some websites that provide information related to Ben McDaniel or cave diving:
■ bensvortex.com
■ scubaboard.com (search for Ben Mcdaniel)
■ intotheplanet.com
Anyone who may have information about Ben's disappearance can contact the Holmes County Sheriff's Office at (850) 547-3681.
ScubaBoard referenced and linked in article
There is a thread in the Cave Diving forum, but not all of us venture there:
ScubaBoard thread in Cave Diving
Text Posted Below:
Shelby and Patty McDaniel of Collierville believe two things: Their 30-year-old son Ben submerged into an underwater cave in Florida on Aug. 18, 2010.
And he's dead.
What happened in between is tearing them apart.
Other than a couple of clues found a year and a half ago when he vanished, no nook, crevice or cranny in Vortex Spring has yielded a trace that Ben McDaniel died there.
Theories churn with no proof -- armchair detectives guessing that Ben was murdered, he faked his death or maybe someone found his body floating, dragged it out of the water and dumped it, maybe near an alligator pond.
The disappearance, which sparked international attention in the summer of 2010 from the close-knit cave-diving community, will reach a wider audience next month when Ben is featured on the Discovery Channel show "Disappeared." And two documentary producers, including one the most respected female cave divers in the sport, plan to introduce "Ben's Vortex" this summer at film festivals around the country.
With the renewed attention and other developments, the McDaniels increased a reward to $30,000. They want someone to answer one question:
Where's Ben?
'He's not in there'
The mystery of Ben McDaniel's disappearance begins in Vortex Spring, a small vacation destination about an hour from Destin, Fla.
It's just outside the town of Ponce de Leon, in Holmes County. Families sleep in cabins or campers. Children swing from ropes to drop into the spring, which stays 68 degrees year round. Thousands of people fill Vortex Spring every summer.
But on Aug. 20, 2010, a call went out to cave divers around the region: There was a body in Vortex Spring that needed to be recovered.
Three teams of divers searched for Ben for days. They shined flashlights in holes and crevices: No fins, tanks, lights, masks or anything that indicates a panicked diver drowned.
They explored nearly the entire cave, except a dangerously cramped area in the rear of the cave that only someone foolhardy and untrained would enter.
Experienced divers say it would be impossible for Ben to have made it through the narrowest restrictions in the back of the cave.
Edd Sorenson, 52, the most experienced cave diver in the area, went farther in the cave than any of the other divers.
Sorenson, who owns Cave Adventurers, a dive shop about an hour from Vortex, is typically the first responderfor underwater cave recovery in the area, but he was in the Bahamas that August.
When he returned, he dived into the cave three times. He used smaller tanks, secured under his arms to make himself flatter and a scooter that zoomed faster to the rear. He wanted to go where other divers wouldn't go.
He knew that at 210 pounds, Ben, an untrained cave diver could have never gotten his 6-foot-1 frame through the final crevice that Sorenson wriggled through.
"I am 6-foot and 190 pounds, with smaller tanks, and I know what I'm doing and I barely made it through," Sorenson said.
"The last place I searched was pristine, without a mark that a diver had been there. It would be impossible to go through that restriction without making a mark on the floor or ceiling. He's not in there."
'Ben was fearless'
Ben, the brown-haired, blue-eyed oldest of three sons , glowed with a dynamic personality, said his friends. Others on scubaboard.com, an Internet scuba diving forum said Ben was also a braggart and over-confident in his abilities.
He learned to dive before he could drive. Underwater was a refuge, silent and serene. He was four months into a yearlong sabbatical, funded by his parents, when he vanished.
Since he had dived in open water since age 14, Ben was looking for a challenge. He dived headfirst into a dangerous but fascinating sport -- underwater cave diving.
As a certified open water diver, it would have taken Ben about two months and 125 dives with an instructor or diving buddy to get certification to be a cave diver.
Skipping that step is risky, foolish and often dangerous, said certified cave divers.
"Go no farther. There's nothing in this cave worth dying for," a sign says at the entrance to the cave. It was a message to Ben and any untrained cave diver.
The McDaniels are quick to defend Ben whenever divers criticize his arrogance, overconfidence and irresponsibility.
Divers are angry that experienced divers risked their lives to recover Ben's body.
Ben's parents disagree with the criticism. He dived into challenges head-first, no second thought about danger. He led a life of gusto and adventure, they said.
"Ben was brave," Shelby said. "Ben was fearless. He followed his passions."
Final encounter
Early evening, just before sunset on Aug. 18, 2010, Ben suited up, strapped on his tanks and submerged.
Two divers passed him as they were swimming out.
One of them Eduardo Taran, a commercial diver who works for Vortex, knew Ben was sneaking into the cave by jimmying the gate. Only certified divers are given a key. Taran, who came to know Ben in the weeks he was at Vortex, swam back to the cave and used his key to open it for Ben. Later, Taran and his fellow diver were given polygraph tests. They passed.
Sometimes Ben stayed down so long in the cave that Taran would sit on the bank waiting for bubbles in the glassy water, a signal that Ben was decompressing. No one watched for bubbles on Aug. 18.
Sixteen searchers, 36 days
Ben's truck, the lone vehicle after the spring closed for the day, went unnoticed by staff for two days. It was parked within sight of the dive shop.
Taran realized on the second day that no one had seen any sign of Ben. He called the Holmes County Sheriff's Office. The lawmen immediately unfurled yellow crime scene tape and tied it to trees. Above ground, the clues that he drowned in the cave were the effects he left behind: his truck, a wallet with $681 in cash, a cellphone and other items. The last time the cellphone was used was the night he vanished. He had called his mother.
Law officers suited up and dived into the chamber leading to the deeper cave to search for Ben and clues.
Air tanks were outside the cave entrance, a strange place for them, according to cave divers. When they enter a cave, they place tanks like life-saving bread crumbs along their path as they go in a cave so they have plenty of air when they come out.
The tanks contained only air, which was suspicious. If Ben had read books on cave diving, like his parents said he had, he would have known that diving deep required a gas mix, Sorenson said. Without it, divers will feel intoxicated and their decision-making becomes harder.
The lawmen canvassed the area around Vortex Spring, cadaver dogs sniffed the ground for hours. They found a scent of a decomposed body in two spots, one along the bank and one in the water.
In the first days, Ben's parents paced the banks. They sat at picnic tables. Every time bubbles appeared, they hoped a diver would emerge with news of their son.
Sixteen divers scoured the cave for 36 days, shining flashlights in all the crevices. No sign of decomposition in the water. Ben vanished without a trace.
Anger, frustration grow
The McDaniels' frustration and desperation grew. Cameras taken into the cave couldn't reach the tiny spots. Trained divers didn't swim to areas where the chance of death was greater. The McDaniels became convinced that's where Ben's body was floating.
Out of frustration, the McDaniels offered a $10,000 reward for anyone "brave" enough to swim into the passage.
Incensed cave divers became frenzied on Internet chat boards. Did the family believe money would be a motivation to risk their lives? Did they understand that they were inviting untrained cave divers to venture in to claim the reward?
'Divers panic'
Jill Heinerth and her husband, Robert McClellan, who have produced four documentaries, came to Vortex nearly a year after Ben's disappearance. Heinerth, who has dived deeper than any other woman in history, followed the case through the diver forums and newspaper coverage. The mystery was compelling.
She and McClellan drove to Vortex intending to shoot a documentary. Heinerth and a cave diving partner filmed in the cave. She wanted to show the video to the McDaniels and try to gently explain how cave diving works and give them closure, she said.
Then she read Ben's diving log books. He was mapping the cave. It showed he had made at least one dive to the far reaches of the cave. She changed her mind.
"I explained how divers panic and burrow themselves in beyond the reach of prudent divers," said Heinerth, who produced and starred in a four-part documentary on PBS called "Water's Journey."
"Sometimes they burrow so deep that they can't be found. I simply see no reasonable evidence that he is NOT in the cave," she said in an e-mail.
Other divers who read Ben's log books disagree and maintain he's not there. "Ben could be dead or he could walk in the theater at our movie premiere," Heinerth said.
Faked-death theory
McClellan leans toward the possibility that Ben had a psychotic breakdown and might have compulsively decided to reinvent himself. It was an idea floated on scubaboard.com and bandied about by several scuba divers who pictured the 30-year-old sitting on a beach in Mexico.
McClellan, who is a nurse, worked with addicted and traumatized patients who simply left their lives.
Of all the theories, the McDaniels believe this is the least plausible. Ben wouldn't be so cruel to do such a thing to them. In 2008, the McDaniels' youngest son, Paul, died from a stroke at age 22. The family was devastated.
"We know in our hearts that he would have never faked his death to run away," Patty said. "After what we went through with Paul, we know our son well enough to know he wouldn't put us through that again."
'Look above the water'
With all the experienced divers saying Ben's not in the cave, the McDaniels seized on a darker fate: foul play. They hired Lynn-Marie Carty, a Florida private investigator who operates a business called Reunite People, to explore that.
She's gathered criminal records of several people associated with Vortex, including its former owner, Lowell Kelly, who died under suspicious circumstances last month. When Ben disappeared, Kelly was awaiting trial on charges that he drove a temporary employee into the woods, accused him of stealing $30,000. Kelly beat him with a baseball bat. Kelly pleaded no contest and was given a fine and probation.
Carty is frustrated that authorities aren't aggressively investigating the case as a homicide.
"There is just as much reason to look above the water for Ben's body as there was to look below it in the cave," Carty said.
The Holmes County Sheriff's Office still lists Ben as a missing person. There was evidence he entered the cave, but none that showed he exited, Captain Harry Hamilton said. Investigators interviewed Kelly and found nothing suspicious, he said.
Kevin Carlisle is one of the cave divers who searched for Ben. "We may never know the truth of where he is, but we do know where he isn't and that is because of a lot of talented and qualified divers," he said.
No peace
The mystery haunts the McDaniels. Closure hides in an unopened grave. Its headstone features an etching of Ben in his diving suit.
Whether he drew his final breath from his diver's tank or the evening air doesn't matter any more; they are certain that summer night in Florida was his last.
His parents cling to their Christian faith -- glue to hold them together in the silent parts of the day when Ben creeps into their minds. Losing one son broke their hearts. Losing a second one nearly broke them.
Hurtful thoughts churn in their heads, cruel images of death and a body waiting to be claimed. Until what remains of Ben is buried next to his brother Paul's grave, there's no solace.
Grief is their vortex.
-- Cindy Wolff: (901) 529-2378
-----------------------------------------------------
More about the case
Here are some websites that provide information related to Ben McDaniel or cave diving:
■ bensvortex.com
■ scubaboard.com (search for Ben Mcdaniel)
■ intotheplanet.com
Anyone who may have information about Ben's disappearance can contact the Holmes County Sheriff's Office at (850) 547-3681.
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