183. Honeymoon Cruise Disappearance: George Smith

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On the bedsheets, so small that you might miss them, were these two streaks of blood. They were each about two centimeters long sitting right next to each other. They almost looked like the number 11. This wasn't a lot. I mean, it was nowhere near the amount of blood that was on the canopy below, but it was blood in the newlyweds bed that no one could explain. It was a little late for this discovery though. The captain had already decided that they needed to keep to schedule. So Turkish police took Jennifer ashore for questioning while the ship got ready to depart. And then she was taken to a hospital for a physical exam. And she describes it as being in a rougher part of town where a male officer looked her over while no female officer was present. By the time she got back to the dock, her and George's luggage was already sitting there waiting for her, hastily packed by the crew. And George's tennis shoes were poking out of the bag. That meant that someone had gone into their room and cleaned it already. The brilliance of the seas sailed off that evening without Jennifer. And she was left in a port city where she didn't speak the language, waiting on her dad to come help her book a flight home. And then when she arrived back home, Jennifer did something no one was expecting. She went completely quiet. George's family expected her to reach out to them and talk about what happened, maybe grieve with them, but no, nothing. She never called them. And this was really confusing and upsetting for George's family, but it also made them incredibly suspicious of Jennifer. Was there something that she was trying to cover up? Is that why she wasn't talking to them? So what was it? Was what the captain said true that George had gone out for a smoke and fallen off the railing? Or did his new bride have something to do with it? Well, they had no idea. They had no idea that the investigation on the ship turned up a lot more than the family was told about. Specifically, it turned up some information about where Jennifer was that night and how what happened to George was likely not an accident. The pages of Royal Caribbean's report painted a much clearer image of the trip that George and Jennifer had taken leading up to his disappearance, starting at the beginning of their journey. On June 29th, 2005, in Barcelona, George and Jennifer walked up the gateway of the brilliance of the seas for the first time. And let me describe the ship to you a little bit more because I think it's important. It's basically a floating city. There's 13 decks, nearly 850 crew. There's restaurants and pools, a spa, a whole casino. And then there's also a nightclub up top. And for the first few days, this 12-day Mediterranean cruise was the honeymoon of their dreams. And they fell into a rhythm on They would spend days off of the ship, exploring port towns. Then they'd be back on the ship at night with a rotating cast of other passengers that they kept bumping into and befriending. If you look at pictures of them at this time, they're tan and they're happy and they're toasting their good luck. By every account, this honeymoon was going perfectly. But two things stuck out to the other passengers on this cruise. The first was that George couldn't really hold his liquor, as evidenced by their second night at sea when their own next-door member filed a noise complaint about the honeymooners. George was incredibly drunk at the time. And the second thing was this group of young men that were on board. They were Russian and they were also traveling on the ship with their families. And they were quietly becoming the cruise problem child. There was Greg Rosenberg, who was 18 years old, his cousin Zach, and their friend, Rusty Kaufman. A few days in, they had gotten written up for cursing out room service over the phone. And on July 3rd, two days before the cruise, they were on the ship with their family. Before George's disappearance, they were caught drinking and smoking by the pool. And when officers asked them to knock it off, one of them shouted back, nobody can stop me. And it got bad enough that the ship pulled their parents aside and laid down an ultimatum for them. One more incident, and the whole group was getting forced off the boat at the next port. And all of this leads us to the day before George disappeared, July 4th. That day, the ship docked at the Greek island of Mykonos, and George and Jennifer had a beautiful day together. They wandered the white and blue streets. They sight saw. They even grabbed a photo with the actress Tara Reid, who happened to be traveling there as well. And that afternoon, they headed back to the ship to have a romantic dinner and toast their marriage, while somewhere below, the captain was charting a course overnight for Turkey. At around midnight that night, the couple drifted into the casino, as most of the adults on the ship did. Jennifer settled into playing blackjack. George preferred crap. So for a couple of hours, the two gambled apart. They were having a really fun time, though, and they weren't ready to call it a night by the time the casino closed at around 2.30 a.m. So George and Jennifer headed up to the Deck 13 Disco, which was basically this big revolving bar. But at that point, there was a group of guys with them who also didn't want the party to end. That group included Josh Askin, who was a 20-year-old from Orange County that they had met days earlier on a shore excursion, and also the three young Russian troublemakers, Greg, Zach, and Rusty. And it's right around then that that group of boys makes another room service call. And this time, at least according to the staff, they threatened to throw the operator overboard if their food didn't come fast enough. At that point, security got involved, and the kitchen was explicitly told to stop taking this group of boys' orders entirely. So after that, that group of boys goes back up to the disco, and the bartender remembered that entire group being up there at around three in the morning. And the bartender also remembered Greg, buying a round of vodka shots, two of them being for George and Jennifer. Josh had a bottle of absinthe that he had smuggled aboard, so everyone in the group was taking shots of that too. But then, just after three in the morning, something happens. George looked over and saw Jennifer leaning on another man, the manager of the casino named Lloyd Botha. Now, George was pretty drunk at this point, and he called his new wife a hussy. Even in the early 2000s, that was kind of a weird and unserious thing to call someone. So there is a chance that George was just joking when he said this, but Jennifer absolutely did not take it as a joke. She was also very drunk. She did not take it well. She went ahead and kneed him hard and told him that she was done, and then she walked off. And according to Josh Askin, she left with the casino manager, Lloyd Botha. George stayed behind though, and he kept drinking. And then at about 3.45 in the morning, he could barely stand up. Those four guys, Josh, Greg, Zach, and Rusty, walked him out of the disco and back towards his cabin, basically holding him upright the entire time. His CPAS registered opening the door of his room, 9062, at 3.52 AM. And as far as anyone has ever been able to prove, those four were the last people to see George Smith alive. When we first started making Hearts, Hearts, Pounding merch, I realized just how much physical presentation mattered. Like the difference between handing someone a sticker that they'll toss and one that they'll actually put on their laptop is everything. It comes down to all of these important details, and you want everything to look really, really good. 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Now, by their own account, George had expected to find Jennifer in the room, still furious with him, but instead it was empty. She hadn't returned. So now he was drunk and worried about his wife. So he asked the guys to help him find her. They said that they checked the solarium, the hot tub area up top, but they didn't see her and they gave up their search pretty quickly. But here is also where we get the one witness who changes everything we know about that night. See, the man in the cabin next door was a deputy chief of police from Redlands, California named Cleet Hyman. He was a guy who knew professionally that what he was hearing that night next door to him was not good. This is Cleet's account of what happened after the men entered George's room. So just after 4 a.m., a commotion in room 9062 wakes Cleet up. Through the wall, he could hear yelling, guys like egging each other on. It sounded like a party, according to him. But then it went quiet for a few minutes. And just when he thought that maybe all of the men had gone to sleep, he started to hear arguing out on the balcony though this time. It was loud and it was not in English. He said it sounded sort of like Spanish, but he wasn't entirely sure. And then he heard someone say good night in English and the door opened. Cleet looked out into the hallway and he watched as a group of men walked towards the elevators. He counted them. One, two, three. And then he checked his watch. It was 4.18 a.m. Now that's three men. A group of four men had admittedly gone into the room with George. So that maybe meant that someone was still in there with him when the other three walked out. But because the men were facing away from Cleet, he couldn't see. He couldn't see who they were. But then the cabin next to him didn't stay quiet. Cleet could hear someone moving around in there. And then he heard a man's voice. He also heard what sounded like furniture being dragged across the balcony area. And then at 4.25 a.m., he heard one heavy thud. And after that, nothing. Silence. Now, a few hours after that, a teenage girl would step onto her balcony, lift up her camera, and see what was going on. He could see the stain spreading across the lifeboat canopy. At around noon on July 5th, almost eight hours after the thud was heard, Turkish authorities boarded the ship and questioned those four men about what had happened that night. But the answers they gave really drove suspicion away from them. They said that George was drunk and passed out on the bed when they all entered the room. So they took off his shoes for him, and they all left the cabin together. And then they went back to one of their own rooms and ordered a of room service. They said that they had a photo of the food that was time-stamped and would prove this. They also told them the story of the night before, how George's wife had left with another man. So maybe the authorities felt like they just had their answer. George, who was known to not be able to hold his liquor, was drunk in his room after watching his wife leave with the casino manager. Maybe he was sad and he threw himself off the balcony. Or maybe he just went out for a cigarette and really did just fall. But what about what Cleet had heard? And what about those two bloodstains on the bed sheets? Well, the investigation was over for now, it seemed. The men were released, and those questions were unanswered. And George's family just had to live with the not knowing of what really happened to him. That is, until years later, when someone finally started to pull on those loose threads. Here's how the threads got pulled. After George disappeared, Jennifer, who was his wife and also his next of kin, settled a wrong death claim with Royal Caribbean in 2006 for a little over a million dollars. George's family was super furious with this. They were his heirs too, and they had no say in that settlement. They thought that she had sold their son short and done it really fast to avoid being deposed. So they decided to hire their own attorney, a man named Mike Jones, and they went after the cruise line themselves. Royal Caribbean and the FBI wouldn't hand Mike anything at first. So for years, Mike had to build the case against the cruise line the hard way. He subpoenaed his own witnesses. He worked off of public reporting. He had to chase the last four men to see George through their own lawyers. And when he was finally able to interview them, it was horrible. It went basically nowhere. When he got to Josh, he basically pled the fifth and wouldn't say anything to Mike. The Russians weren't much better. But Mike kept pulling at these threads. And George was able to do that. And George was able to pull at these threads. And the more he learned about that night, the less it looked like a man falling off of a balcony by accident. And the more it looked like something had intentionally been done to George. The family's case finally settled in 2010 for $1.3 million. And sure, the money was part of it. But there was something else that they got in that settlement that they wanted more than the money. Royal Caribbean had to hand over all of the case files to the family. Key card logs, phone records, room service tickets, security reports, crime scene photos, their own interviews with the passengers and the crews. This was massive because it let Mike reconstruct that night minute by minute. And that's when he learned some key pieces of information that changed everything he knew about that night. Let's start with Josh, the 20-year-old from Orange County. Remember, Josh had helped investigators piece together Jennifer's night, the parts that she couldn't remember. He insisted that she had left the disco with a casino manager, a South African man named Lloyd Botha. Except that had been a lie. Mike looked at the key card logs from that night and realized that was impossible. Lloyd Botha had swiped into his girlfriend's cabin at around 3.25 a.m. before Jennifer had even left the disco. He was in for the night with someone else. Jennifer had left the disco alone at around 3.30 in the morning. A member of the cleaning crew actually watched her go and confirmed the time. He watched her stumble out so drunk that she clipped her head on the wall. And he was worried enough to ride the elevator down with her just to make sure that she got back all right. And what this crew member saw actually helps us fill in some of the gaps that Jennifer didn't remember herself. See, he watched Jennifer turn and walk down a hallway and he assumed that she was going back to her room. But what he didn't know was she was headed in the wrong direction. She never made it back to her cabin. She actually just wandered lost around the halls until eventually she dropped down and fell asleep in the middle of the hallway. Another crew member would later find her and help her back to her room just before 5 a.m. And that's where she was when she had that flash of a memory of being in bed without George. But Jennifer had left the disco by herself. George did not go with her. The most she was guilty of that night was getting blackout drunk and kneeing her husband for calling her a hussy. So Mike wondered why Josh had invented that story if he knew it wasn't true. So he decided to look deeper into those four men's alibi. Remember, it was that room service feast. Mike went looking for that order and the crew's record, the call logs, the kitchen's handwritten ticket book. The phone logs did show that there was a short call placed from one of the men's rooms at 4.13 in the morning. But the kitchen records show nothing was delivered. And actually, remember, the kitchen had been told specifically to not deliver to these men. Earlier that night, they had called and threatened to throw one of the employees overboard. And at another point in the trip, they had cussed out the staff that was taking the room service order. So the men had called about 10 minutes before the thud was heard, but they hadn't received a room service order. One questioned, the men insisted they had received that order. They could even tell investigators what they had, tuna sandwiches, cheeseburgers, the works. They said maybe the staff had forgotten to write the order down. But here's another problem. The keycard logs show Zach and Rusty swiped into their cabins at 4.05 in the morning, and Greg swiped into his at 4.07. But CPAS doesn't record when a door opens from the inside or when someone leaves a room. So those swipes don't prove that they stayed put and didn't go to George's room afterwards. Which could have lined up with what Cleet heard, the arguing between 4 and 4.18. Three men leaving, the dragging sound, and then the lone male voice and the thud at 4.25. Then there was Josh's own behavior after George disappeared, which was documented in this file that Mike had. It turns out that at one point, Josh asked a crew member whether there were cameras in the hallways. And when the crew member said yes, Josh asked to be shown exactly where they were. This was very strange to the crew member who refused to show him. A few days later, a cleaner overheard Josh in an elevator talking to his girlfriend, saying things like, assholes almost got me arrested in Turkey, and I know more than they think I know. And the way the cleaner told this story, the girlfriend saw that the cleaner was listening to them and kissed Josh mid-sentence like she was trying to shut him up. So now, some of the suspicion that had been placed on Jennifer in the past had swung even harder onto the four men. 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It's one daily pack of gummies that covers my greens, vitamins, minerals, and even has 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. So I don't need to juggle a complicated wellness routine on top of everything else. They taste amazing. They're easy to toss in my bag on the go. Plus, they're vegan, gluten-free, and HSA, FSA-eligible for reimbursement. Save up to 52% off with Code Podcast at grooms.co. That's codepodcast at g-r-u-n-s dot c-o. Two days after George disappeared, while the ship was still at sea, an 18-year-old passenger went to the ship's nurse for a morning-after pill. She disclosed that the night before she had been sexually assaulted. When asked who the assailants were, she was able to name them immediately, and it was that same group. Greg? His younger brother, Zach, and Rusty. And this woman also said that Josh had been in the room, but hadn't taken part. She said that she was very drunk, and the men offered to take her back to her cabin, but instead brought her to theirs. And she also mentioned that the assault had been filmed. The ship's lawyer called the FBI. The captain summoned the families of everyone involved to a meeting, and the men were confined to their cabins under guard and removed from the ship at the next port in Naples. Their families marched, as the other passengers watched them from their decks. And here is the part that really makes me want to scream, but Italian authorities apparently reviewed this tape and declined to bring charges. The tape was then sent to the FBI, and no charges were ever filed in the U.S. either. But even though the tape wasn't used to persecute that crime, it did have something else on it, something that the men had filmed before the assault. So earlier that same day, hours after, George had vanished, the men had filmed themselves having lunch. They were all laughing with each other, and they were joking about George. On the recording, one of them says that George had gone parachute riding off of the balcony. And at the end, Greg looks straight into the camera, throws up a hand sign, and says, told you I was gangsta. To Mike, this was proof of what he felt like he already knew to be true. The men knew exactly what happened to George, and they had partaken in it. I mean, it sounds like Greg is admitting to throwing him off of the balcony. And then, years later, Greg himself handed investigators a motive almost by accident. By the time Mike Jones deposed the four men in 2010, three of them gave him almost nothing. Two of them took the fifth, and one said over and over and over that he didn't remember anything. But Greg, Greg talked. Greg talked a lot. He actually wouldn't shut up. He was, by then, sitting in a Florida prison on a drug trafficking charge. And he was happy to talk smack about all of his former friends. I mean, at one point, he even called Josh a spoiled crybaby type dude. And he insisted that no, he hadn't hurt George, but somebody had. Dude did not kill himself, he said. Someone hurt the dude. Greg's own polygraph test had come back inconclusive, but he said that that was because of his ADHD. And yes, I'm sure I have a bunch of listeners with ADHD. ADHD gang rise, but please don't go committing crimes and then say that Kaylin told you that you could beat a polygraph test because that's not really how it works. But Greg denied the sexual assault to Mike's face. And Mike knew that that was a lie. I mean, he knew that the FBI had the tape and he knew that it had changed hands multiple times and multiple agencies had watched the assault. And Mike knew that ADHD does not make you a lying asshole. So there was something else going on. But then Greg had this rare moment, where he said something that was actually true. And it was something that made Mike's blood run cold. When Mike asked Greg how he had ended up in prison, Greg said, I'm a fanatic with clothes, jewelry, watches, and that's why I'm in here, man. Watches. The night George went overboard, he was wearing a Breitling watch. It's a brand that can run a few thousand dollars or many times that. And here's the strange thing about Greg's read on George. And that's because he was wearing a Breitling watch. In that same deposition, Greg kept calling George a millionaire. Now, George was not a millionaire. His dad owned a liquor store. But you can see how the illusion got built. I mean, the guy's name was literally George Smith IV. That's the most millionaire name I've ever heard. He had a big Newport wedding, the same place where the Kennedys got married. He was wearing a Breitling watch. And he and Jennifer had been heard talking all week about the wedding gift cash that they were carrying to go play in the casino. Jennifer was wearing her engagement watch, her engagement ring, and her wedding rings to a stranger. George looked like money. Now, none of the jewelry that the couple owned was ever reported stolen for what it's worth, but you don't have to successfully rob someone for a robbery to go wrong, which brings Mike Jones back to those two little streaks of blood on the sheets. His theory is that the blood didn't come from a fight. It actually came from someone working a watch off of George's wrist while he was passed out. The metal bands clasp, maybe nicking the skin. And so according to Mike, the night probably went something like this. Three men left the room like Cleet saw, but one stayed behind to rob a drunk, unconscious man. George woke up at some point, there was a struggle, and a man too drunk to even stand went over the railing. Now, I wanna be clear that this is just a theory. Nobody was ever charged with this crime. There's no confession. George's body was never found. And the watch was never recovered. But it's the version that fits the blood on the bed, the missing fourth man, and the alibi that falls apart the second you check it. And also, it fits a guy who was obsessed with watches. But this is where the story stalls out pretty much forever. In the days right after George vanished, there was at least a search for his body. The ship was in the Aegean Sea at the time, so the Greek coast guards sent divers and helicopters out over the water to look for him. After about four days, they called it off. They never found anything. No George alive or otherwise. The FBI investigated for nearly a decade and spent millions of dollars by the family's count. The file ran to something like 97,000 pages. And in January of 2015, they just closed the case. There were no charges filed, not enough evidence to bring to anyone. George's sister, Bea, spoke to the family, and her question was one that a lot of people have. How do you put together 97,000 pages over almost 10 years only to land on the idea that maybe this was just an accident? 97,000 pages is like 65 Bibles. It's a ton of pages. But the accident theory is still the cruise line's official version. The captain believed from the first morning that George had stepped out onto the balcony for a cigar, lost his footing, and as far as we know, the captain has never changed his mind on that. George's family has never believed that story for a single, they think that their son was murdered, and that at least one person who knows exactly what happened chose not to say. Jennifer, for her part, eventually moved on. She remarried a few years later, became a parent, and she stayed out of the spotlight. She declined to take part when a true crime show revisited the case. And after everything, she just wanted out of the story. And I don't really blame her for that. She thought she was going to be spending her life with George, and he was taken from her just a few days later. The whole story is a story that I don't want to tell. The whole story is devastating. George's family went in the other direction, though. They've kept his case alive online for years, still pointing at both the Russian passengers, and, you know, sometimes they also do point at Jennifer, and the one man who always seemed willing to talk, unfortunately, cannot anymore. On December 23rd, 2019, 14 years after George disappeared, Greg Rosenberg was shot and killed in the driveway of his home in DeVee, Florida. Police released surveillance, surveillance footage of a vehicle fleeing the scene and called it a targeted hit. And his murder in an almost ironic way. ironic twist of fate, is also unsolved. No one has ever been charged with the death of George Smith. And there's a lot of unanswered questions. Who was in the room with him that night? And was there someone in there when he fell overboard? Is there a chance that this was just an unfortunate accident? Well, I'm going to leave you with this because there's one detail that I keep coming back to. And that is the bloodstain on the canopy. It was the thing that might have shown investigators what actually happened to George. It got hosed off the side of the ship at around six that evening, per the captain's orders, before the FBI ever stepped foot aboard. The stain was scaring passengers and the ship had an image to uphold. Then George's room got cleaned and the ship set sail right on schedule. And once you understand how a cruise actually makes money, it starts to look less like incompetence and more like incentive. Cruise lines run on really thin margins on the seafront. And it's not just the seafront. It's the seafront. It's the seafront. The real money is everything that you buy once you're on board. So a ship held in port for a death investigation is a ship full of thousands of paying passengers whose vacations are ruined, who want refunds, who will miss their flights home. A murder is a catastrophe. An accident is just paperwork. And out in international waters with the FBI and a foreign government, both technically in charge, it's way easier if a problem just drifts away. But it is a little bit hard for cruise lines to ignore the deaths of passengers now. And that is in part thanks to George's case. The outcry was loud enough that by the end of 2005, cruise executives were getting hauled in front of Congress to answer for how passengers' disappearances were handled. Jennifer herself submitted a written statement about how she felt Royal Caribbean had treated her. And that pressure helped push Congress to pass the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act in 2010, which finally required cruise lines to report disappearances and serious crimes in the United States. And that pressure helped push Congress to pass the Cruise to the FBI and Coast Guard. The industry also signed onto a voluntary cruise passenger bill of rights, none of which brings George back, but it means that the next family gets answers instead of a hosed off deck. And now I turn it over to you guys. Was this just an unfortunate accident or was someone responsible for George's death? Was the investigation that was done handled well? You guys can leave a comment wherever you listen. As always, I will be here next week with another episode for you. If you want more, we have bonus episodes that are available on Patreon and also to Apple Podcast subscribers. And we also have a weekly show available on the High Council tier on Patreon, where you can listen to more information on the episodes that we cover each week. Sometimes it's stories that didn't make it in. Other times it's extra context or whatever true crime story we're thinking about that week. You can join us over there. I will see you next time. And until then, stay curious. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Greg Castro. Sound design and mix by Red Room Creative. Video editing by Creative Step. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request, check out heartsartspounding.com. This episode is brought to you by Bavarian Meats. These days, every day is basically a heart pounding. A series of sprints. At some point, I'll look up and realize that I haven't eaten anything real in hours. That used to mean that I would just grab whatever was closest. Typically, it was something with no protein that wouldn't actually keep me full for very long. But now I keep Bavarian Meats zero sugar meat sticks in my bag, and they are so good. They have great taste and zero sugar. 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