0 Days Since Last Accident (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

On the evening of Monday, June 21st, 2004, a woman named Tracey Donnelly was sitting in her parents' kitchen near Auckland, New Zealand, anxiously staring at the landline telephone, waiting for her husband's friend, Steven, to call her back.

So earlier that day, Steven, the friend, had called her and said that he had tried to reach her husband, Jim, at the Glenbrook Steel Mill where he worked, but Jim's coworkers had said he wasn't actually at work.

Apparently, he had arrived at work around 6:30 AM like usual.

He had dropped his lunch on his desk and changed into his work uniform like he's doing all the normal things.

But then at 9:00 AM, he had inexplicably missed a pretty important meeting.

And so the assumption amongst colleagues was, well, Jim must have just gone home.

However, Steven had called Jim at home.

He had called his landline phone, and Jim didn't answer, and Tracey, she was at her parents' house.

And, you know, Steven didn't know that, so he's, he's calling this number.

Nobody answers.

And so because he's, again, starting to get worried about, about Jim, Steven had just gone to Tracey and Jim's house to effectively do a welfare check.

And when he got there, he confirmed that Jim was not there.

So now basically nobody knew where Jim was, and Tracey knew that right at this moment Steven was actually calling the mill back to see if maybe by now he had turned up or if there was just more information about where he went.

And Steven had obviously told Tracey that as soon as he hears back or as soon as he learns anything, he would call her 'cause he had learned she was at her parents' house.

He would, he would call her there and keep her up to date.

And so she's sitting here waiting for the update.

Just then the phone finally rings, and Tracey, she immediately answers it, and it's Steven.

And Steven did have news, but it was, you know, neutral to bad news.

So he said they had discovered that Jim's car was still in the parking lot of the steel mill, so theoretically that meant that he was still at work.

But the other part of the update was, you know, his coworkers literally couldn't find him.

Like, nobody knew where he was at the steel mill, if he was really there.

And so at this point, Steven told Tracey that considering, you know, the situation, she really ought to consider reporting her husband missing.

And at first, Tracey's hearing this, and it was like she couldn't actually process what she was being told.

Jim had worked at this mill for 19 years as an engineer, and nothing like this had ever happened before.

And so right away Tracey goes to worst-case scenario, and she's thinking, "He's gotten, you know, hurt on the job.