Turned out that $ftph had gone out of scope and was undef. But instead of telling me that, Perl decided to go to

CGI::DESTROY

for some reason, which quickly lead to an exit without reporting anything. and use strict and warning didn't throw anything.

Once I fixed the scope everything was fine. What an odd way to (NOT) report the object was undef!? If Perl had simply said object $ftph not defined, it would have been a 1 second fix.

Thanks for your tip I voted you ++