Bob Nelson

In 1972, Bob arranged to take custody of a cryonics patient named Stephen Mandel, who'd been frozen and sealed in a capsule in New York.

It was the Marie Bowers capsule all over again.

He opened it up, added Geneviève and another woman he'd frozen, Mildred Harris, and welded it shut again.

By now, the first capsule was breaking down more or less constantly, and Bob had hit a wall.

The way he describes it, it's as if he was the captain of a sinking ship, throwing cargo over the side to stay afloat.

He couldn't save them all, and so he'd come to a decision.

He would let the first capsule fail.

This much is clear.

He kept it a secret.

The second capsule was practically as bad as the first, constantly malfunctioning, boiling off liquid nitrogen.

But Bob kept it going.

Then a few years later, he had to leave town for a week.

He paid a groundskeeper $100 to babysit the capsule, and the pump broke.

And when the groundskeeper called a company to fix it, they never showed.

Bob says he immediately flew to Montreal to tell Geneviève's father in person.

Next, Bob says he flew to see Terry Harris, whose mother Mildred Harris was in the second capsule with Geneviève, and whose father Gaylord was also in the vault.

Did he understand what it meant?

A few days after Bob told me his story, I talked on the phone with Geneviève's father, Guy.

He was polite and, I must say, very patient with my questions.

But he didn't want to be interviewed on the radio.