Casefile Extra: Ben McDaniel
On Friday, August 20 2010, officers from the Holmes County Sheriff's Department were called to Vortex Spring, a commercially operated dive park just outside the Florida town of Ponce de Leon. A 30-year-old scuba diver from Tennessee by the name of Ben McDaniel had failed to resurface after diving into the narrow cave network under the basin of the spring two nights earlier, and nobody had seen or heard from him since.
When a recovery mission failed to find any sign of Ben, his loved ones and members of the cave diving community were left in shock. Was Ben stuck in an unexplored part of the cave somewhere, or was something else entirely at play?
Casefile Extra features bonus episodes exploring compelling cases, stories and topics beyond our regular weekly releases.
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Team:
Anonymous Host - narration
Elsha McGill - research, writing
Mike Migas - production, music
Anthony Telfer - audio editing
Ben McDaniel case was originally released as a premium episode in October 2025.
Comments (9)
Negligence, irresponsibility and delusion.
Was this one remastered or no
It wasn’t no
Interesting YouTube interview with Eduardo Taran recorded in 2024 and released in July of 2025. Includes the interviewer and friend diving the cave, with one of them going to the 4th restriction. The dive video/audio really gives you a first hand idea of what it would be like to do this dive. - https://youtu.be/xF83kydeNbs?si=bnudw639XtvisSsw
since this episode first came out i’ve always felt that the guy who left without confirming that Ben had actually returned from the cave was being negligent. not that i’m necessarily saying there should be a trial over that, but if Ben’s reputation was being overly confident and circumventing the rules, wouldn’t you want to actually keep an eye on him? here you have a guy who is forcing the gate to a dangerous cave open, and you’re just… okay with letting him do that? that always struck me as strange.
Oh I was recently listening to this and meant to let yall know Vortex springs is a decent ways away from Ocala National Forrest. Vortex Springs is in Ponce de Leon, Florida up on the panhandle and de Leon Springs, Florida is more north central Florida (and right outside of Ocala National Forrest). I don’t know why there are two, but they’re a good 5 hours apart. Wild to have a story from near home though, I never liked Vortex springs too much. Too cold and doesn’t look like the pictures.
Thank you Carlee. We will fix prior to this going out on the regular feed.
still haunting.
This was similar to Rolf Adams, someone I went to Sydney University with, who died while diving in a cave system in 1992. It was also in Florida.