Ted Braden’s Missing Years and 7,000-Mile Crime Spree

You Should Not Know This

S1 E8 - Melon Felon

0:00

-46:42

S1 E8 - Melon Felon

“The Witnesses Won’t Talk”

Dee Rog

Aug 25, 2026

Listen to this episode BEFORE the Premium Episode 8 Roundtable Review (Free for a limited time.)

For much of the 1970s, Ted Braden seemingly did not exist.

However, he does turn up in Chicago.

A penthouse. New Mercedes-Benz cars. Expensive restaurants. Fine clothes.

Ted Braden was living like a wealthy man.

But no one, not even his family, could explain where the money came from.

Episode 8 enters the black hole in Ted Braden’s life, uncovering rare evidence of where he was, how he lived, and what he may have been hiding.

A handwritten letter offers a glimpse inside his marriage.

A surviving photograph shows a man who could look remarkably different from one image to the next.

And the scarcity of records raises a disturbing possibility: Ted may have been living under names investigators have yet to discover.

Then, in 1979, he explodes back into view.

One truck. Two trailers. Nineteen states. Seven thousand miles.

What follows is an audacious interstate crime spree involving valuable cargo, missing property, people who won’t talk, and consequences that are difficult to explain.

What was Ted Braden doing throughout the 1970s, and where did everything go?

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This is an active investigation. There is more to find.

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