Warning: This is a long, dark and disquieting post. Do not click “read the rest” unless you think you are in an optimal mindset.

On July 4, 2018, Jeffrey Epstein sent his girlfriend Karyna Shuliak a link about that day’s Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest. That competition had 3 final results that were radically altered from the onstage counts and each revision is associated with a disappearance or death. The email lacks a subject and its body consists solely of a URL for a CBS News web page about the contest. It can be found in two formats in the archive: one with a clickable link (EFTA00545110), the other as plain text (EFTA02308973). The shared article remains online and appears to be standard competitive eating coverage. There is no email respnose to it from Ms. Shuliak in the archive and no other competitive eating related documents can be found in the accessible files. She received another cryptic hot dog related message from “Renato PB” on July 7, 2018: “Hi Karina, hot dog is here, kitchen.” (EFTA00516019 page 16). There is speculation that Epstein used food types as code words for illegal activities.

With no additional information, Epstein’s interest in the Nathan’s 2018 competition remains a mystery. He was from Coney Island, and Nathan’s Famous might have sponsored his 1961 Pee Wee baseball team. But he was not a sports fan, and expressed his disdain for athletics in an email to AI pioneer Marvin Minsky. (via Pablo Torre Finds Out)

While the 2018 Nathan’s finals are best remembered for a 10 hot dog post-contest boost to Joey Chestnut’s initial count of 64 to give him a then record total of 74, that was not the largest alteration. Carmen Cincotti received a 19 hot dog increment to bolster his final count to 64, That result remains the third highest Nathan’s Famous personal best, exceeded only by Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. Instead of being inspired by that benchmark, Carmen Cincotti immediately terminated his Major League Eating career and withdrew from the sphere of competitive eating altogether without explanation. In the 2021 competitive eating documentary “Scarf Face”, a mystery figure claiming to be a top competitive eater claimed that Major League Eating contests were fixed in Joey Chestnut’s favor. MLE legend Ed “Cookie” Jarvis also questioned the 2018 results in the film.

Longtime Houston Chronicle columnist Ken Hoffman served as Joey Chestnut’s judge and took the fall for the miscount in a CultureMap post. In 2019, Hoffman announced his retirement from competitive eating judging after serving 11 years as an contest official. In July 2024, Ken Hoffman passed away suddenly Major League Eating made no acknowledgement of his passing, not even a one line RIP.

Instead of post-contest boosts, the women’s division saw the complete disappearance of a result. Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas appeared to have finished 3rd, but did not appear anywhere in the official results, written out of history as if she was a Stalin rival. Ken Hoffman claimed that Sonya had a “reversal of fortune”, but no video or photo evidence for that claim has emerged. She completed all ten minutes of the event and there has been no explanation for whatever disqualification ruling that was made. On July 7, 2018 Sonya Thomas made one final update to her website about the contest, but did not address her lack of an official result. Since that date, she has done no eating contests, interviews, social media or other public appearances. The most recent information I could find about Sonya Thomas was a reddit.com thread from 2022 in which a commenter claimed that she had moved on from her longtime job at the Andrews Air Force base Burger King several years ago.

Juliet Lee battled Sonya Thomas for third place in the 2018 contest. On September 9, 2019, her shock passing was announced. Numerous aspects of that tragedy remain a mystery. Several social media comments claimed that her fatal incident occurred on August 16, 23 days before its announcement. An entry in the Montgomery County, MD 911 database entry from Germantown appears to match that tragedy: “SUDDENDEATHUNDETERMIND” (search for 190039103 to bring up this result). With the disappearance of Sonya Thomas (1st) and the shock fatalities of Juliet Lee (2nd) and Stephanie Torres (3rd) in 2015, nothing has been heard from the top three in the inaugural Nathan’s Famous womens division of 2011 since 2019.

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