In the summer of 2016, Vanessa Bates received a text message from her son, Max Spiers, in which he told her, “If anything happens to me, investigate.” Spiers, 39, later died on July 16, 2016, in Warsaw, Poland.

Max Spiers was a devoted British conspiracy theorist and was staying with a friend in Warsaw, where he had gone to present his theories at a public conference. These conspiracies attacked government officials, politicians, and those of great power in the entertainment world. Specifically, Spiers planned to expose new information regarding the “government cover up” of the sexual abuse against children at the Presidio military base in California.

Due to the importance of people threatened by his conspiracies and the strange occurrences that preceded and followed his passing, his mother, as does much of the public, believes his death was not an accident. Leading to his demise, Spiers reportedly experienced a high fever and had thrown up two liters of black fluid, so his friend had called a doctor. When the physician arrived at the scene, he witnessed “dark brown liquid spill[ing] out of [Max Spiers],” proving that the friend’s claim was not a fabrication.

The Polish authorities concluded that the cause of death was “natural causes” without completing a post-mortem. How could such a claim be made of a previously healthy young man who had reportedly spit up black liquid without an autopsy?

It took six days for Max’s body to be returned to the UK and until August 30 for “information about [his] death [to reach] the prosecution office,” which is a suspiciously long amount of time. When the British authorities finally completed the post mortem, it came back as inconclusive.

Max Spiers’ family is determined to discover the truth about his fate, but since the perpetrators are most likely those of high political and economic power, they will probably never find it.