Latest / Stories from the Dark / 4 Terrifying True Search Rescue Stories

Transcript

4 Terrifying True Search Rescue Stories · Stories from the Dark

0:23
Speaker 1: I used to work search and rescue around the Cascades
0:26
Speaker 1: back in the 80s. In the late summer of 87,
0:29
Speaker 1: bright and early one Tuesday morning, we got a call
0:32
Speaker 1: that ended up being one of the scariest I was
0:35
Speaker 1: ever involved in. A solo hiker had been reported missing
0:38
Speaker 1: after heading out on the trails the day before. I'll
0:41
Speaker 1: just call him Robert, and it was his sister that
0:44
Speaker 1: had reported him missing, saying that he'd mentioned hitting the
0:47
Speaker 1: trails near the Black Ridge to let off some steam
0:51
Speaker 1: and make the most of the good weather. Now, she
0:53
Speaker 1: said that he knew the area well, as he'd hiked
0:56
Speaker 1: up there more times than she could remember. But then
0:59
Speaker 1: that Monday, Robert didn't come home, and so she called
1:02
Speaker 1: the cops. It looked to be a pretty standard missing
1:06
Speaker 1: hiker op. The guy was fit, healthy, and experienced, and
1:10
Speaker 1: he knew how to read a map, and he carried
1:12
Speaker 1: the actual equipment necessary with him. And we figured that
1:15
Speaker 1: we'd find him within the first 24 hours or so,
1:19
Speaker 1: most likely with some kind of injury and We did
1:22
Speaker 1: find him alright, just not in any kind of state
1:25
Speaker 1: that we figured we would. And to this day, just
1:28
Speaker 1: thinking about it can send a shiver or two up
1:31
Speaker 1: my own spine. By the time we launched the rescue
1:34
Speaker 1: op in earnest, Robert had been missing for coming up
1:37
Speaker 1: on 72 hours. The weather had turned wet, and while
1:41
Speaker 1: the rain wasn't all that bad, the mud up near
1:44
Speaker 1: Black Ridge was ankle-deep in parts, the kind that tries
1:48
Speaker 1: to pull your whole damn boots off. Now, we started
1:51
Speaker 1: at the trailhead where his truck was still parked and
1:54
Speaker 1: then fanned out as far and wide as we could
1:56
Speaker 1: to cover the most possible ground. And like I said,
1:59
Speaker 1: we were really hopeful given the circumstances, but all we
2:03
Speaker 1: found that first day were just boot prints of the
2:05
Speaker 1: same brand that Robert wore. That was obviously great news
2:09
Speaker 1: because it meant that we had a trail, right? But Jesus,
2:13
Speaker 1: what that trail led us to is something obviously I'll
2:17
Speaker 1: never forget. And the second day, we came to sections
2:20
Speaker 1: of boot prints that had been washed out by the rain,
2:23
Speaker 1: meaning accurately tracking Robert's movements was getting harder and harder.
2:27
Speaker 1: But then, one of the dog teams hit on something.
2:32
Speaker 1: About two miles in, we found Robert's water bottle just
2:35
Speaker 1: sitting off the side of the trail like he'd set
2:37
Speaker 1: it down and forgotten to pick it back up again. Now,
2:41
Speaker 1: there was still a little water in it too. Not
2:43
Speaker 1: a lot, but not so little a person might abandon it.
2:47
Speaker 1: and I guess that looking back on it, that's probably
2:49
Speaker 1: the point that we should have realized that things weren't
2:51
Speaker 1: as they seemed. A few miles away from the bottle,
2:54
Speaker 1: we found one of Robert's gloves, and then not far
2:57
Speaker 1: away from there, the other glove. And that's when it
3:01
Speaker 1: really hit that something was wrong, and he most likely
3:03
Speaker 1: wasn't himself. But leaving things behind like that, in what
3:07
Speaker 1: could have been an orderly fashion, it also suggested that
3:10
Speaker 1: he might be leading us someplace. One of our teams
3:14
Speaker 1: suggested that something might have been pursuing him out of
3:17
Speaker 1: the area he knew that we might search, and so
3:19
Speaker 1: while that shedding gear behavior was definitely the first red
3:23
Speaker 1: flag that we spotted, no one automatically assumed the worst.
3:27
Speaker 1: So we kept on following the trail of scattered gear
3:31
Speaker 1: until we came to the next thing, his pack. It
3:35
Speaker 1: had been dumped in this thicket, the contents spilled out
3:39
Speaker 1: on the ground beside it, and after fishing it out
3:41
Speaker 1: we saw the straps had been cut, Now why he'd
3:45
Speaker 1: do something like that was completely beyond us and the
3:47
Speaker 1: only thing that came to mind was way too creepy
3:50
Speaker 1: to even entertain. One of the guys said it was
3:53
Speaker 1: like something had grabbed him by the pack while he
3:55
Speaker 1: was still wearing it. If it was something big enough,
3:59
Speaker 1: like a bear or maybe even a mountain lion, it
4:02
Speaker 1: made sense that he'd have to cut through his straps
4:04
Speaker 1: to free himself. But there was no sign of any struggle,
4:07
Speaker 1: no blood or viscera to suggest that there had been
4:10
Speaker 1: an attack. And it was while we were scratching our
4:13
Speaker 1: heads over that little mystery that someone called us over
4:16
Speaker 1: to where the bag had been found. And like I mentioned,
4:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of its contents had spilled out apparently after
4:22
Speaker 1: being tossed into the bushes. There were food items, a notebook,
4:26
Speaker 1: and some items of clothing, but each and every one
4:29
Speaker 1: showed signs that our missing hiker was not of sound mind.
4:34
Speaker 1: First off, all of the food left behind had been
4:36
Speaker 1: tampered with. And by that I mean, Robert appeared to
4:39
Speaker 1: have opened and taken a bite out of each item
4:42
Speaker 1: before abandoning it. With some items, such as these individually
4:46
Speaker 1: packaged granola bars, looking like Robert had bitten through the packaging.
4:52
Speaker 1: Now I know what you're probably thinking. Couldn't an animal
4:54
Speaker 1: have come along and bitten through the packaging as well?
4:57
Speaker 1: And while that'd be a great question, the bite pattern
5:00
Speaker 1: showed that it must have been a human bite. Maybe
5:02
Speaker 1: not Robert himself, but definitely a human being. And then,
5:06
Speaker 1: seeing as we were in such a remote area, the
5:08
Speaker 1: chances of it not being Robert were basically slim to none.
5:13
Speaker 1: And then, there was the matter of Robert's notebook. Based
5:17
Speaker 1: on the first half of what had been written, it
5:19
Speaker 1: was clear that Robert had been using it as some
5:21
Speaker 1: kind of trail diary. There were entries of Maple Loop
5:24
Speaker 1: and Diablo Lake, but then as we got into the
5:27
Speaker 1: section which detailed the hike Robert had disappeared on, that's
5:31
Speaker 1: where things got weird. He'd written sentences that stopped halfway through,
5:35
Speaker 1: and then he'd just move on to the next like
5:37
Speaker 1: the previous was finished and made total sense. The handwriting
5:41
Speaker 1: got progressively worse, too, to the point that we could
5:44
Speaker 1: barely make out any of the words. The last entry
5:48
Speaker 1: was little more than looping scribbles with only words like lights, moving,
5:53
Speaker 1: or trees being legible. And then there was this one part,
5:57
Speaker 1: something about being watched from the rocks that sent an
6:01
Speaker 1: actual chill down my spine when I came across the sentence.
6:05
Speaker 1: Robert was clearly in a bad way, and we'd gone
6:08
Speaker 1: from expecting to find a warm body in around 24
6:11
Speaker 1: hours to wondering if we were ever going to find
6:14
Speaker 1: him at all, especially after we found his boots. We
6:19
Speaker 1: came across both of them, laced, untied, with socks stuffed
6:23
Speaker 1: in them, sitting all neatly on a rock. and there
6:28
Speaker 1: was a sort of calmness about how they'd been displayed,
6:31
Speaker 1: an order to it, like Robert wasn't crazy at all.
6:34
Speaker 1: But to walk away from them, to just keep on
6:37
Speaker 1: walking through the woods with, from what we could tell,
6:40
Speaker 1: no footwear to speak of, we knew right there that
6:43
Speaker 1: he'd probably lost his mind. A couple of guys stayed
6:47
Speaker 1: behind to bag up all of Robert's belongings for the
6:50
Speaker 1: benefit of the county sheriff, and the rest of us
6:53
Speaker 1: kept moving, and less than a mile away, we started
6:56
Speaker 1: to find the rest of Robert's clothing. We found the
6:59
Speaker 1: shirt first, buttons were ripped, and then the pants, and
7:02
Speaker 1: his underwear last. All were in a rough line heading
7:06
Speaker 1: off trail towards some limestone outcropping. Now, Command figured that
7:12
Speaker 1: there was a chance that he'd been hypothermic and had
7:14
Speaker 1: stripped off of his clothes in that classic paradox of
7:17
Speaker 1: feeling warm when you're actually dying. It happens more than
7:21
Speaker 1: people think, and it doesn't make it any less concerning
7:24
Speaker 1: but it's true that it's not totally uncommon. And so
7:28
Speaker 1: as we approached that sort of limestone, we widened the
7:31
Speaker 1: grid and said a little prayer that we'd find Robert alive.
7:35
Speaker 1: We had the chopper in the air on day five,
7:37
Speaker 1: and once the weather was clear enough. We try not
7:40
Speaker 1: to put too much faith in the crew, purely to
7:43
Speaker 1: preserve our own sanity. But then that afternoon, they got
7:46
Speaker 1: a sighting way up near that outcrop that I mentioned.
7:50
Speaker 1: The crew had spotted someone up near the outcrop, moving
7:53
Speaker 1: near the mouth of the cave system up on the
7:55
Speaker 1: north face. They seemed to be sure it was Robert.
7:59
Speaker 1: And when our team leader asked why over the radio,
8:02
Speaker 1: they pretty much came back with, because the guy's naked.
8:07
Speaker 1: And that lifted our spirits a little, knowing that he
8:09
Speaker 1: was alive, I mean, but the fact that he seemed
8:11
Speaker 1: to be hanging out in the cave system filled us
8:14
Speaker 1: with dread. And this is why. Now, according to the
8:18
Speaker 1: rangers that we liaise with, Robert had been spotted near
8:22
Speaker 1: some old solution caves, as they're called, and these are
8:26
Speaker 1: the most common sort of cave there is and are
8:28
Speaker 1: formed by acidic groundwater, meaning some damp caverns are way
8:33
Speaker 1: bigger than others and there are plenty of smaller passageways
8:36
Speaker 1: that a person could get stuck in, especially should they
8:39
Speaker 1: panic and get themselves lost. Ariel put eyes on a
8:43
Speaker 1: figure crawling inside, the body very pale against the dark rock,
8:48
Speaker 1: and so if Robert had lost his mind, We knew
8:51
Speaker 1: that we had to get to him before he got
8:52
Speaker 1: himself lost, stuck, or worse. And I was on the
8:57
Speaker 1: team that went in. There were four of us, all
9:00
Speaker 1: equipped with headlamps, radios that half worked underground, and all
9:04
Speaker 1: of our important ropes. I remember how cold and damp
9:08
Speaker 1: the air was, and how there was this sort of
9:10
Speaker 1: metallic smell. Something like rusted iron, really, and I mean,
9:15
Speaker 1: cave systems aren't known for smelling great or anything like that,
9:18
Speaker 1: but I ain't never smelled one like that before. We
9:22
Speaker 1: called out Robert's name every 20 yards or so, and
9:25
Speaker 1: while the passageways and caverns were pretty wide to begin with,
9:28
Speaker 1: they started to gradually close in on us the further
9:31
Speaker 1: that we pushed on. And that's when we found even
9:34
Speaker 1: more signs of Robert's mental deterioration. There were smears of
9:39
Speaker 1: what looked to be mud on some of the walls,
9:42
Speaker 1: obviously fresh as time and the damp would have washed
9:45
Speaker 1: them away had they not been put there recently. and
9:49
Speaker 1: there was also gouge marks in the softer limestone. Four scrapes,
9:53
Speaker 1: then another four, which someone had been scratching at the
9:56
Speaker 1: wall and really hard too, using nothing but their fingers.
10:01
Speaker 1: there were longer scrape marks further down the tunnel where
10:04
Speaker 1: someone most likely robert had pushed their fingernails into the
10:08
Speaker 1: wall before dragging them along there was this little smear
10:11
Speaker 1: of blood on one of them then one of the
10:13
Speaker 1: team looking down to point their headlamp at the ground
10:17
Speaker 1: and there it was one of Robert's fingernails had been
10:21
Speaker 1: torn off by a particular stubborn section of stone. And
10:25
Speaker 1: as we moved deeper, the passageway that we were in
10:28
Speaker 1: opened up into a low chamber, and that's when we
10:31
Speaker 1: first heard movement. There was a scuffling noise, and then
10:35
Speaker 1: the sound of unsteady breathing, and then all of our
10:38
Speaker 1: headlamps were on him at once. He was naked, and
10:42
Speaker 1: covered in mud and scratches with these long red lines
10:45
Speaker 1: down his arms and chest like he'd clawed at his
10:48
Speaker 1: own skin. His hair looked matted into these clumps and
10:52
Speaker 1: his face was streaked with dirt. He looked like an animal.
10:56
Speaker 1: But of all the things that gave me the chills,
10:58
Speaker 1: even all this time later, it's Robert's eyes that topped
11:03
Speaker 1: that list. They didn't blink. He just stared with this
11:07
Speaker 1: look of anger on his face until one of us
11:09
Speaker 1: tried to ID him. Then he came at us, or
11:14
Speaker 1: at least what was left of him did. He didn't
11:17
Speaker 1: scream or shout, he just rushed at us in almost
11:20
Speaker 1: total silence, and the only sound being his heavy breathing.
11:24
Speaker 1: But the look on his face, and particularly in his
11:26
Speaker 1: eyes like I mentioned, it was clear that he wanted
11:29
Speaker 1: to hurt us. A guy named Alan was closest to him,
11:33
Speaker 1: so that's who we went for first. Alan tried to
11:36
Speaker 1: steady himself and grab at him, but Robert slammed into
11:40
Speaker 1: him so hard he knocked him into the wall so
11:42
Speaker 1: hard that his headlamp spun off and rolled away. And
11:46
Speaker 1: then as the beam of light coming from Alan's headlamp
11:49
Speaker 1: circled around us like this weird sort of disco ball,
11:52
Speaker 1: Robert sank his teeth into the flesh of Alan's forearm. Now,
11:57
Speaker 1: Alan was a tough guy. He'd been on maybe 20
11:59
Speaker 1: or so S & R ops by that point, and
12:02
Speaker 1: he'd seen and been through a lot of crap. But
12:05
Speaker 1: the scream that he let out as Robert's teeth broke
12:07
Speaker 1: the skin of his arm, I've never heard a man
12:10
Speaker 1: so terrified in all my life. He was screaming, get
12:13
Speaker 1: him off me, get him off me. while Robert shook
12:16
Speaker 1: his head like a dog trying to tear meat from
12:18
Speaker 1: the bone. We had to apply pressure to both sides
12:22
Speaker 1: of his jaw, almost enough to break it before Alan
12:24
Speaker 1: was able to yank his arm away. And after that,
12:29
Speaker 1: it was a case of piling on and getting him restrained,
12:32
Speaker 1: but he fought us like a man possessed. He was thrashing,
12:37
Speaker 1: trying his absolute damnedest to bite at us, and he
12:40
Speaker 1: even started scraping his teeth against the rock for a
12:42
Speaker 1: second once we had him down. and it was me
12:45
Speaker 1: that had to jerk his head to the side and
12:47
Speaker 1: pin it so he couldn't do his teeth any serious damage.
12:51
Speaker 1: He was really strong for a guy who had been
12:53
Speaker 1: missing almost a week. He'd abandoned all of his food
12:56
Speaker 1: and water in the days before, but he must have
12:59
Speaker 1: been getting sustenance from somewhere, or he'd have never been
13:03
Speaker 1: able to fight us like he did. But from where?
13:07
Speaker 1: It was a struggle, but we got the cuffs and
13:09
Speaker 1: straps on him eventually. We carried them for psych cases,
13:13
Speaker 1: though we usually didn't use them, and after that, he
13:16
Speaker 1: just went limp for a while. He didn't pass out
13:19
Speaker 1: or anything, he just went quiet and stopped moving. Like
13:23
Speaker 1: his eyes were open while we were moving him, but
13:26
Speaker 1: he was just staring off at nothing, like he'd just
13:29
Speaker 1: given up all of a sudden. Three of us hauled
13:32
Speaker 1: him out, with Alan close behind holding his bandaged arm,
13:36
Speaker 1: and he went straight to the medics on scene, who
13:38
Speaker 1: found deep punctures to his arm and then laid it
13:41
Speaker 1: to the hospital for some stitches and a tetanus shot.
13:45
Speaker 1: Robert was placed in a stretcher, wrapped in blankets and
13:48
Speaker 1: then transported down the mountain. He never said a single
13:52
Speaker 1: word the whole way. He just laid there with his
13:55
Speaker 1: eyes wide open, staring up at nothing. I later heard
13:59
Speaker 1: that at one point the stretcher kind of jolted after
14:02
Speaker 1: it hit a root or something. One of the guys
14:05
Speaker 1: walking nearby cursed, something out of a scare anyways, and
14:09
Speaker 1: then they saw Robert smiling. They only saw it for
14:13
Speaker 1: a split second, just this flash of blood-stained teeth, and
14:17
Speaker 1: then it was gone, and his face was blank again. Now,
14:21
Speaker 1: from the hospital, we later heard that he was transferred
14:23
Speaker 1: to the state psych facility once they figured out what
14:26
Speaker 1: kind of state that he was in. They tested him
14:29
Speaker 1: for head trauma, drugs, all kinds of things, but the
14:32
Speaker 1: only explanation was a sort of acute psychotic break, meaning
14:37
Speaker 1: Robert just went out hiking one day, then spontaneously and
14:40
Speaker 1: completely lost his mind. He stayed mute for weeks and
14:45
Speaker 1: then started talking in fragments when they got him on meds.
14:49
Speaker 1: He said he didn't remember anything past a certain point
14:51
Speaker 1: on his hike, but he did remember attacking us. I
14:55
Speaker 1: heard Robert broke down in tears as the memories came
14:58
Speaker 1: back to him, and then when asked why he attacked us,
15:01
Speaker 1: all he said was that he remembered being confused and scared.
15:07
Speaker 1: He was convinced that we were there to kill him,
15:10
Speaker 1: and so he did the only thing he could think
15:11
Speaker 1: to do at the time and attempted to defend himself.
15:16
Speaker 1: I heard his family went to visit him at the hospital,
15:18
Speaker 1: and I heard it was bad. Robert's sister said that
15:21
Speaker 1: she could barely recognize him anymore, and it was like
15:24
Speaker 1: the boy that she'd grown up with and the man
15:26
Speaker 1: that he'd become were just gone. Doctors did their thing,
15:31
Speaker 1: put him through all kinds of tests and examinations, but
15:33
Speaker 1: they never did figure out what had caused his mental break.
15:37
Speaker 1: Something had to be written in his file, though, so
15:40
Speaker 1: the official explanation became survival-induced psychosis. But between you and me,
15:45
Speaker 1: that was just a rubber stamp so the authorities could
15:48
Speaker 1: close the book on it, and all without ever really
15:51
Speaker 1: digging into what happened to the guy. Man got lost,
15:56
Speaker 1: man panics, and then snaps from the sheer stress and isolation.
16:00
Speaker 1: The report barely even mentioned the bite. It just said
16:03
Speaker 1: Robert attacked the S & R team and that one
16:05
Speaker 1: of them required medical treatment. But to us, that didn't
16:08
Speaker 1: cover the extent of what happened at all. We never
16:11
Speaker 1: did get a full explanation. Robert's case got filed away
16:15
Speaker 1: with a thousand others like it was no different from them.
16:19
Speaker 1: But let me tell you, if there ever was a
16:21
Speaker 1: case worthy of opening up a freaking X-file for S
16:24
Speaker 1: & R Ops, it was that one. Because it was
16:28
Speaker 1: unlike any I'd ever been on before and any I
16:31
Speaker 1: went on after. My grandfather was a World War II vet.
16:59
Speaker 1: He had a bunch of medals and stuff from it too,
17:02
Speaker 1: but for the longest time, us kids only knew him
17:04
Speaker 1: as the quiet old guy who sat on the porch
17:06
Speaker 1: and smoked his pipe. Now, he didn't talk a whole
17:10
Speaker 1: lot about the war. Most of those fellas didn't. But
17:14
Speaker 1: every once in a while as we got older, usually
17:16
Speaker 1: after a couple of beers on Memorial Day or something
17:19
Speaker 1: like that, he'd open up a little and tell us
17:21
Speaker 1: a story or two. Now, he kept it all very
17:24
Speaker 1: PG-13 at first and kept the darker stories to himself.
17:28
Speaker 1: But then one Thanksgiving, after everyone else had retired and
17:31
Speaker 1: it was just me and him watching old movies, he
17:34
Speaker 1: told me one that he'd never told anyone before, let
17:37
Speaker 1: alone Grandma or my dad. And let me tell you,
17:41
Speaker 1: it'll be one that I'll remember for as long as
17:43
Speaker 1: I live, and I hope to share it with you. So,
17:47
Speaker 1: just a little backstory. Grandpa enlisted in 1942 after Pearl Harbor.
17:52
Speaker 1: and ended up as a bosun's mate on a smaller
17:55
Speaker 1: vessel doing search and rescue work out in the Pacific. Now,
17:59
Speaker 1: it wasn't the glamorous stuff that you see in the movies,
18:01
Speaker 1: not by any stretch, but it was a very important job,
18:05
Speaker 1: because once they got word a ship had gone down,
18:07
Speaker 1: be it a merchantman, transport, destroyer, whatever they had hit,
18:11
Speaker 1: the enemy that is, he and his crew would go
18:14
Speaker 1: out looking for survivors. They'd be looking for rafts, lifeboats,
18:19
Speaker 1: guys floating in lifejackets, And sometimes they'd find them, sometimes
18:23
Speaker 1: they wouldn't, because Lord knows there's a lot of empty
18:26
Speaker 1: ocean out there. It was a tough gig, too. They
18:29
Speaker 1: had to worry about the heat, the salt, and the
18:32
Speaker 1: way that the sun beat down on everything until their
18:34
Speaker 1: eyes burned. And then there were the days that they
18:37
Speaker 1: came back empty-handed with nothing but the feeling that the
18:40
Speaker 1: sea had already claimed whoever they were looking for. But
18:44
Speaker 1: Grandpa said the toughest day of all came in early 1944.
18:48
Speaker 1: when they happen across something that can only really be
18:50
Speaker 1: described as a crime against humanity. Grandpa and his boys
18:55
Speaker 1: were out looking for the crew of a freighter that
18:57
Speaker 1: had been torpedoed somewhere east of the Marshalls. They searched
19:01
Speaker 1: the whole day, dawn until dusk, and came up snake eyes.
19:06
Speaker 1: But then on the way back, they suddenly spotted something
19:08
Speaker 1: on a beach on a little atoll that wasn't supposed
19:11
Speaker 1: to have anybody on it. And they decided to sail
19:14
Speaker 1: a little closer to get a clearer picture. and then
19:17
Speaker 1: after looking through the ship's telescope, they saw that it
19:20
Speaker 1: was a big piece of shipwreck, washed up right there
19:23
Speaker 1: on the shoreline. Now, they were under orders to investigate
19:27
Speaker 1: any potential signs of life, so even though the wreckage
19:29
Speaker 1: didn't appear to belong to the freighter that they were
19:31
Speaker 1: looking for, they diverted to go check it out. They
19:36
Speaker 1: make landfall, and then head into the jungle to go
19:38
Speaker 1: looking for survivors, and while they found people, they found
19:42
Speaker 1: them in unimaginable conditions. because it wasn't the crew of
19:47
Speaker 1: the freighter, but the survivors of a civilian transport that
19:51
Speaker 1: had gone down months earlier in the same general area.
19:55
Speaker 1: It was a passenger ship, so the survivors were a
19:58
Speaker 1: mixed bunch and included about a dozen families, some government folks,
20:03
Speaker 1: along with merchants trying to get somewhere safer. Apparently they
20:07
Speaker 1: got caught in a storm which had blown them way
20:09
Speaker 1: off course, and after hitting some rocks, some of the
20:12
Speaker 1: survivors washed up on that tiny little island that they
20:15
Speaker 1: were on. Grandpa said it was maybe half a mile long.
20:19
Speaker 1: Coral and shrub, really nothing much, just rocks and thorns
20:23
Speaker 1: and the constant sound of the waves chewing at the edges.
20:27
Speaker 1: They had no radio, no real food beyond what they
20:30
Speaker 1: could scavenge, and their fresh water was limited to a
20:33
Speaker 1: couple brackish pools and whatever rain they could catch. Things
20:37
Speaker 1: were tough, and there were a lot of worried survivors,
20:41
Speaker 1: but we were told that there was also a kind
20:43
Speaker 1: of commonly shared hope that sooner or later they'd be found.
20:47
Speaker 1: And by the time my grandpa's boat got there, things
20:49
Speaker 1: had gone bad, really bad, worse than anyone could make
20:53
Speaker 1: sense of at first. We were told that around 70
20:57
Speaker 1: people survived the wreck and successfully made it to the
20:59
Speaker 1: island without drowning in the surf. But by the time
21:02
Speaker 1: my grandpa showed up, there were no more than 40.
21:06
Speaker 1: Some died as a result of injuries sustained in the wreck,
21:09
Speaker 1: and some of the weaker ones just gave out from
21:11
Speaker 1: thirst and heat. But not everyone died that way. The
21:15
Speaker 1: ones my grandpa found had broken off into something that
21:18
Speaker 1: wasn't a group of survivors anymore. It was more like
21:21
Speaker 1: a tribe. A brutal little kingdom built out of desperation
21:25
Speaker 1: and a complete lack of hope. Apparently, there came a
21:29
Speaker 1: point where some survivors realized that they were too far
21:33
Speaker 1: off course for the search parties to find them. meaning
21:36
Speaker 1: that they had to just wait to get lucky. It
21:39
Speaker 1: turns out the probability was way higher than they thought,
21:42
Speaker 1: because obviously they only spent a few months on the
21:45
Speaker 1: island before they were found. But I guess at some
21:47
Speaker 1: point they worked themselves up into such a frenzy of
21:50
Speaker 1: despair that they ended up losing all hope of being found,
21:53
Speaker 1: and that's when things got really bad. After a brief
21:58
Speaker 1: power struggle, it was the stronger ones, mostly the younger men,
22:01
Speaker 1: who took over completely. At first, they did it through
22:05
Speaker 1: controlling drinking water, but they expanded by gaining control of
22:08
Speaker 1: the hunting and foraging that went on, meaning people either
22:11
Speaker 1: worked for them or they didn't eat. And this was
22:15
Speaker 1: all done in the name of survival, of course, with
22:17
Speaker 1: the new elites claiming everything was for the benefit of
22:20
Speaker 1: the collective, but the only people who seemed to benefit
22:23
Speaker 1: were them. The island's workforce was mostly women, kids, and
22:28
Speaker 1: older folks, and it was them that did all the
22:31
Speaker 1: gathering and the foraging and most of the fishing, too.
22:34
Speaker 1: The younger men either hunted wild pigs, which they were
22:37
Speaker 1: apparently very successful at, or sat around drinking liquor that
22:40
Speaker 1: they made out of coconut water or something. I never
22:43
Speaker 1: quite got the details on that or how they did it.
22:46
Speaker 1: But having them all drunk all the time meant that
22:49
Speaker 1: if someone below their station talked back or even tried
22:52
Speaker 1: to take more than their share, they got beaten. Or
22:56
Speaker 1: sometimes they got worse, which also explained why they were
22:59
Speaker 1: only around 40 survivors instead of the full original complement
23:03
Speaker 1: of 70. Grandpa said he and his buddies could see
23:07
Speaker 1: the hierarchy among the survivors the second they found them.
23:11
Speaker 1: The ones in charge sat in the shade of the
23:13
Speaker 1: only real trees, looking thin and mean-eyed, while the others
23:17
Speaker 1: moved like they were already half-ghosts. Some of the survivors
23:21
Speaker 1: just about lost their minds with joy when they spotted
23:24
Speaker 1: a bunch of Americans, but Grandpa said the scene was
23:27
Speaker 1: still anything but happy. He remembered how broken everyone seemed,
23:31
Speaker 1: how they cried, but he also said that he remembered
23:33
Speaker 1: the stench, Not just the usual island rot or the salt,
23:37
Speaker 1: but something heavier. Like fear, unwashed bodies, and old blood.
23:42
Speaker 1: All mixed up to something far more terrible than the
23:45
Speaker 1: individual parts. Some of the survivors looked at the landing
23:49
Speaker 1: party like they weren't sure if the sailors were real
23:51
Speaker 1: or just some kind of hallucinations. No crying, no questions,
23:56
Speaker 1: just sort of watching. Grandpa said that he didn't understand
24:00
Speaker 1: why at first, that he thought everyone would be happy
24:02
Speaker 1: to see them. But after he and his boys pieced
24:05
Speaker 1: everything together, their muted reactions started making a horrible kind
24:10
Speaker 1: of sense. They were told that any kind of conflict
24:13
Speaker 1: between survivors was settled with fists, and if the grievance
24:17
Speaker 1: was big enough, whatever sharp piece of coral or driftwood
24:20
Speaker 1: was handy. About a dozen people died that way, murdered
24:25
Speaker 1: in what were basically these gladiatorial fights that everyone gathered
24:29
Speaker 1: around to watch under pain of death. Grandpa said he
24:33
Speaker 1: saw the survivor of one of those fights, lying in
24:36
Speaker 1: the shade of a tree just waiting to die with
24:38
Speaker 1: his wife and one surviving kid kneeling near him. His
24:43
Speaker 1: bruises up and down his broken ribs had gone red
24:46
Speaker 1: and swollen from where infection was settling in, and he
24:49
Speaker 1: had cuts that hadn't healed right and were still weeping.
24:53
Speaker 1: There was also a couple of men who had some
24:55
Speaker 1: real bad limps from legs that had been broken and
24:57
Speaker 1: never set. but Grandpa was told the breaks had been
25:00
Speaker 1: inflicted as punishments for stealing food. One of the survivors
25:05
Speaker 1: later told them that two of the original group had
25:08
Speaker 1: been killed in fights over the water supply early on.
25:11
Speaker 1: One strangled the other to death, but the dead man
25:14
Speaker 1: hit his opponent so hard over the head with a
25:15
Speaker 1: rock that he died less than a day later. Another
25:19
Speaker 1: man had been left out in the open sun for
25:21
Speaker 1: a full day as punishment for stealing a handful of fish,
25:25
Speaker 1: and he didn't make it through the night after that.
25:28
Speaker 1: All of their bodies were just pushed out into the
25:30
Speaker 1: lagoon for the sharks and the tide. Overall, Grandpa said
25:35
Speaker 1: it was the women who had it the worst. To him,
25:38
Speaker 1: it seemed like they were seen more like property than
25:40
Speaker 1: people by those in charge. And it makes my skin
25:44
Speaker 1: crawl to write this, but they got shared around among
25:47
Speaker 1: the ones in charge like tools or rations. Any man
25:52
Speaker 1: who tried to protect his wife or daughter got beaten
25:54
Speaker 1: until he couldn't stand or worse. made to watch while
25:58
Speaker 1: the leaders reminded everyone who held the power. He said
26:02
Speaker 1: one of the older men had tried to organize a
26:03
Speaker 1: kind of strike where the workers didn't work until conditions improved.
26:08
Speaker 1: They broke his hand so he couldn't work or fight
26:10
Speaker 1: and then denied him water until he died. After that,
26:15
Speaker 1: nobody argued much. There was no law but the fist
26:18
Speaker 1: and the threat of being cut off from the only
26:20
Speaker 1: things that kept you alive. When Grandpa and his crew
26:24
Speaker 1: first came across the group of survivors, their Quote-unquote leaders
26:28
Speaker 1: tried to play it like they were just survivors holding
26:30
Speaker 1: things together, doing what they had to do. Grandpa was
26:34
Speaker 1: later told about one of them who tried explaining the
26:36
Speaker 1: terrible conditions with the excuse that it was what people needed.
26:41
Speaker 1: He talked about how they'd only been so brutal to
26:43
Speaker 1: keep order and how the weak had to make way
26:46
Speaker 1: so the strong can survive. He tried to make out
26:50
Speaker 1: that they were the good guys, but Grandpa and his
26:52
Speaker 1: boys saw the fear in the eyes of the others.
26:54
Speaker 1: The way people flinched when certain men raised their voices.
26:58
Speaker 1: One of the women managed to whisper something to a
27:00
Speaker 1: corpsman while they were checking her over. Something about how
27:03
Speaker 1: the younger men decided who lived and who didn't when
27:06
Speaker 1: the water got low. And that was all it took
27:09
Speaker 1: for sailors to start asking questions and the whole rotten
27:12
Speaker 1: setup started coming out in pieces. Accusations, names, stories that
27:18
Speaker 1: made the hair on your arm stand up even in
27:20
Speaker 1: that heat. And it didn't end quietly. Three of those
27:24
Speaker 1: self-appointed bosses decided that they weren't going to give up
27:27
Speaker 1: control and one of them, who had a knife made
27:30
Speaker 1: of sharpened metal taken from the wreckage of their boats,
27:33
Speaker 1: straight up attacked them. Grandpa was right there when it
27:37
Speaker 1: happened and said the fight was as short as it
27:39
Speaker 1: was ugly. The man came at one of the sailors swinging,
27:44
Speaker 1: screaming that the island was theirs now and that no
27:46
Speaker 1: one had the right to take it away from them.
27:49
Speaker 1: They had to shoot the guy with the knife and
27:51
Speaker 1: then as he went down, Another charged them and so
27:54
Speaker 1: he was shot dead too. The third tried to grab
27:58
Speaker 1: a woman and drag her off into the jungle to
28:00
Speaker 1: do God knows what to her, but he was pursued, surrounded,
28:04
Speaker 1: and then talked into giving himself up before anyone else
28:07
Speaker 1: got hurt. Once all the leaders were detained or dead,
28:12
Speaker 1: the rest of the survivors went through a kind of
28:14
Speaker 1: emotional collapse. Some started crying and not like soft weeping either.
28:20
Speaker 1: Grandpa said that they were loud, broken sounds that sounded
28:23
Speaker 1: like they were being held in for weeks at that point.
28:27
Speaker 1: Others just stared at the ground, completely empty, like all
28:30
Speaker 1: that violence at the end had burned what little humanity
28:33
Speaker 1: they had left in them. Now, a few of the
28:36
Speaker 1: stronger ones who hadn't been part of that sadistic ruling
28:39
Speaker 1: class helped the survivors get everybody up and onto the boats.
28:44
Speaker 1: More turned up to help ferry the survivors, and they
28:47
Speaker 1: too couldn't believe what they were seeing. There also wasn't
28:51
Speaker 1: enough room for certain families to travel together and thanks
28:54
Speaker 1: to the language barrier, it was hard to explain that
28:57
Speaker 1: they were being separated. Some refused to let go of
29:00
Speaker 1: each other and even tried fighting us when we tried
29:03
Speaker 1: prying them apart. But somehow, and thankfully, some kind of
29:07
Speaker 1: communication was established and things calmed down enough for the
29:10
Speaker 1: evacuation to commence. The survivors ended up being taken to
29:14
Speaker 1: a hospital ship. There, they were found to be severely dehydrated,
29:18
Speaker 1: with infected wounds and broken bones that had set wrong,
29:22
Speaker 1: and that was just the physical damage. The psychological damage
29:25
Speaker 1: was a whole other mess entirely. Grandpa said a few
29:29
Speaker 1: of them seemed like they weren't coming back from it.
29:32
Speaker 1: They were the ones who had nightmares about the island,
29:34
Speaker 1: who woke up in their hospital beds in the middle
29:36
Speaker 1: of the night thinking that they were still there and
29:38
Speaker 1: they could never escape it. One guy used to cry
29:42
Speaker 1: almost constantly, saying in broken English how the weak ones
29:45
Speaker 1: were left for the sun, and the rest acted like
29:48
Speaker 1: the sailors taking care of them were just as bad
29:50
Speaker 1: as the elites on the island, and even the politest
29:53
Speaker 1: interaction seemed to imply the threat of violence to them.
29:58
Speaker 1: He said the Navy ended up classifying a lot of
30:00
Speaker 1: the details, so the only info on the island spread
30:02
Speaker 1: by word of mouth, and even then it only spread
30:05
Speaker 1: through whispers and rumor. They made it sound like a
30:08
Speaker 1: standard rescue op to recover storm survivors. Officially, the ones
30:12
Speaker 1: who died in the fighting were listed as Japanese-aligned enemy combatants,
30:17
Speaker 1: which meant that there was never any formal investigation into
30:20
Speaker 1: their deaths like there would be for any other civilian.
30:24
Speaker 1: Once they'd been treated and all made recoveries full, The
30:27
Speaker 1: survivors were scattered to different places. Not their countries of
30:31
Speaker 1: origin either, just the closest convenient ports. And so even
30:35
Speaker 1: after all that, they still had to struggle to make
30:37
Speaker 1: it home once the war was over. At least that's
30:40
Speaker 1: what Grandpa assumed happened, and they didn't just decide to
30:44
Speaker 1: make their homes elsewhere. I guess I'm not great with
30:47
Speaker 1: the details on this, but you can't blame me. Grandpa
30:50
Speaker 1: only ever told me the story probably one time. He
30:54
Speaker 1: said it stayed with him more than anything else. Because
30:56
Speaker 1: while war was one thing, it was something else to
31:00
Speaker 1: see people having turned into something less than human, and
31:04
Speaker 1: all because they simply run out of hope. He never
31:07
Speaker 1: mentioned the island again, but he often remarked on how
31:10
Speaker 1: thin that civilized line was and how quick it could disappear.
31:14
Speaker 1: I think about it sometimes when people talk about how
31:17
Speaker 1: civilized we all are. Grandpa would just shake his head,
31:21
Speaker 1: said the ocean doesn't care about civilizations. And neither does
31:24
Speaker 1: a man who decides the only law left is the
31:27
Speaker 1: one he can enforce with his fists. People ask me
31:55
Speaker 1: all the time what's the worst call I ever worked,
31:57
Speaker 1: and most of them expect some story about a kid
32:00
Speaker 1: who fell through ice or a hiker who just gave
32:03
Speaker 1: out from exposure. Now don't get me wrong, those can
32:06
Speaker 1: be bad. In fact, anything which involves kids ends up
32:09
Speaker 1: coming back to visit you late at night when the
32:12
Speaker 1: mind's not quite as strong as it is during the daylight.
32:16
Speaker 1: But one that sticks with me even more than the
32:18
Speaker 1: others was what happened to those three campers up in
32:21
Speaker 1: the Rockies during the autumn of 99. I was on
32:26
Speaker 1: the county search and rescue team by then, and I'd
32:30
Speaker 1: been out of the army for about six years at
32:32
Speaker 1: this point. I did one tour of Iraq, two tours
32:35
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan, and then decided three tours would do me
32:38
Speaker 1: just fine and separated. I tried doing some private security
32:42
Speaker 1: stuff after, just to pad that little nest egg that
32:45
Speaker 1: I had left over from the military, but that felt
32:48
Speaker 1: like I was wearing down my luck a little too thin,
32:50
Speaker 1: so I quit. Shopped around for a while and then
32:54
Speaker 1: settled on search and rescue. Now it seems simple. You
32:58
Speaker 1: go out, you find people, you bring them home. Now
33:02
Speaker 1: most days that's exactly what happens, and even on the
33:04
Speaker 1: days that it didn't, it was better than getting shot at.
33:08
Speaker 1: But then with this Rockies operation back in 1999, while
33:11
Speaker 1: the search itself was pretty simple, the aftermath has stayed
33:15
Speaker 1: with me ever since. The call came late one afternoon,
33:19
Speaker 1: saying three guys in their 20s, I think they were
33:21
Speaker 1: college buddies, had failed to check in after their weekend
33:25
Speaker 1: of hiking and camping. The cars were still parked at
33:28
Speaker 1: the entrance to the trail, with no notes or anything
33:31
Speaker 1: slid under the wipers. And then since the weather was good,
33:34
Speaker 1: we expected to find them relatively quickly. Unless, of course,
33:38
Speaker 1: something had gone horribly wrong, which it had. Now we
33:43
Speaker 1: staged at the trailhead that evening, got the dogs out,
33:46
Speaker 1: waited for volunteers, the whole circus. And then I was
33:49
Speaker 1: assigned the primary search grid along with two other guys
33:52
Speaker 1: that I'd worked with for years by then. And like
33:55
Speaker 1: I said, we were confident that we'd find our missing
33:58
Speaker 1: hikers and we found one of them that very next morning.
34:02
Speaker 1: He just wasn't anywhere near the condition that we were
34:05
Speaker 1: hoping for. We found him about four miles in, sitting
34:09
Speaker 1: on a rock beside a lake like he was just
34:11
Speaker 1: out there waiting for us to find him. And I
34:14
Speaker 1: guess everyone's waiting to be found in that kind of situation,
34:17
Speaker 1: so let me elaborate. When we find people, their reaction
34:21
Speaker 1: is usually along the lines of, oh my god, thank you,
34:24
Speaker 1: thank you so much. They cry, they laugh, heck, sometimes
34:27
Speaker 1: they pass out with exhaustion and from knowing that they
34:31
Speaker 1: were finally saved. But this guy, Rob or Bob, I
34:36
Speaker 1: think his name was, he just raised a hand, very
34:38
Speaker 1: slow-like and sort of something similar to a kid in
34:42
Speaker 1: a classroom saying, present or here, and I guess it
34:47
Speaker 1: had to be in his early 20s, clean-shaven with his
34:50
Speaker 1: clothes a little dirty but not completely torn up. He
34:54
Speaker 1: didn't have any injuries, but he didn't look great, and
34:56
Speaker 1: he was just sitting there staring at the water. But
35:00
Speaker 1: above all else, I remember his face more than I
35:02
Speaker 1: remember his name or what he was wearing. The first
35:05
Speaker 1: thing that hit me was how calm he was. Like
35:08
Speaker 1: I said, people get super emotional, but There was Rob
35:11
Speaker 1: or Bob, just looking like we'd walked in on his
35:14
Speaker 1: coffee break. We asked where his buddies were, these two
35:18
Speaker 1: guys named Mark and Ben. But Rob said he had
35:21
Speaker 1: no idea, that he just woke up one morning and
35:23
Speaker 1: found both of their tents were just empty. There were
35:27
Speaker 1: no tracks leading away that he could see, no gear
35:30
Speaker 1: missing except what they were wearing, and so he went
35:33
Speaker 1: looking for them. Said he searched for hours, too, just
35:36
Speaker 1: yelling until his voice gave out. It wasn't long before
35:40
Speaker 1: he was lost, and then when he realized it, he
35:43
Speaker 1: just stopped where he was and stayed put because he
35:46
Speaker 1: heard that that's what you're supposed to do. We tried
35:50
Speaker 1: to find his friends, and we worked the grids hard, too. Dogs,
35:55
Speaker 1: drones even, ground teams, even a helicopter for aerial photography.
36:00
Speaker 1: But we found nothing, not even a scrap of clothing
36:03
Speaker 1: or so much as a footprint that didn't belong to
36:05
Speaker 1: Rob or us. and all the tents were still pitched
36:09
Speaker 1: in their original spots. Sleeping bags rolled like each of
36:12
Speaker 1: the missing dudes had just stepped out for a piss.
36:15
Speaker 1: Their food was still there, their phones left behind with
36:18
Speaker 1: batteries completely drained, and it was like the two of
36:21
Speaker 1: them had been lifted straight out of their bags by
36:24
Speaker 1: a goddamn UFO or something. Now Rob's story never changed.
36:29
Speaker 1: He gave the same details every time the detectives talked
36:31
Speaker 1: to him. He woke up alone, hadn't heard anything the
36:35
Speaker 1: night before. No arguing, no fighting, just poof, and they
36:39
Speaker 1: were gone. Now way weirder stuff has happened to me,
36:43
Speaker 1: search and rescue and military that I can't directly point
36:46
Speaker 1: to as weird, but this one had something about it
36:49
Speaker 1: and not in a good way. It's not the setup
36:52
Speaker 1: that really bothers me, it's how Rob acted once we
36:55
Speaker 1: got him out of there. I've seen men after they'd
36:59
Speaker 1: taken a life, not in the Hollywood hell yeah brother
37:02
Speaker 1: we got him kind of way, And not in that dumb,
37:04
Speaker 1: oh god what have I done kind of way either.
37:07
Speaker 1: That's total fakery too. It's something quiet. Kind of intangible
37:13
Speaker 1: and unmistakably heavy all at once. And it's like it
37:17
Speaker 1: sits on a person and hangs over them like a
37:19
Speaker 1: dark cloud you can see long before you take a
37:22
Speaker 1: look into their eyes. There's that seen too much look
37:26
Speaker 1: in the eyes. A voice that's just a little too steady.
37:29
Speaker 1: And then these rehearsed answers a person falls back on because...
37:32
Speaker 1: They don't want to think about what they just did.
37:35
Speaker 1: And Rob had that exact way about him. He sat
37:38
Speaker 1: on that rock, arms were folded, describing how his two
37:42
Speaker 1: best friends had vanished into thin air, and there wasn't
37:45
Speaker 1: a single crack in the delivery. No tears, no I
37:50
Speaker 1: should have done something, just the facts, like he'd practiced
37:54
Speaker 1: reeling them off. I mentioned it to the lead detective
37:57
Speaker 1: later and told him the only time that I'd seen
38:00
Speaker 1: a man act like that was after he'd done something
38:03
Speaker 1: permanent to another human being. Like what was done was done,
38:06
Speaker 1: and he was already living with the psychological consequences. The
38:11
Speaker 1: guy nodded and said that he'd look into it. And
38:14
Speaker 1: for a while there, I hoped that there was something
38:16
Speaker 1: to it and I wasn't just being paranoid. But Rob
38:20
Speaker 1: had a clean background. No history of violence, and there
38:23
Speaker 1: certainly hadn't been any insurance policies taken out on the
38:26
Speaker 1: two missing guys. Now, what with them being fairly young
38:30
Speaker 1: and fitter and healthier than the average. And on top
38:33
Speaker 1: of that, they found no blood, no signs of any struggle,
38:36
Speaker 1: nothing like that. And it really was like the two
38:39
Speaker 1: guys just vanished from the face of the earth. Eventually,
38:43
Speaker 1: the search scaled back, and officially speaking, Mark and Ben
38:46
Speaker 1: are still missing. But unofficially... I don't think anything but
38:50
Speaker 1: their remains are going to be found, and probably not
38:53
Speaker 1: anytime soon either. Rob walked out of the hospital the
38:57
Speaker 1: next day. He gave a couple of statements, thanked us
39:00
Speaker 1: for finding them, and then that was that. The world
39:04
Speaker 1: just moved on like there was nothing at all wrong
39:07
Speaker 1: with Rob's supposed lack of knowledge. Last I heard, he
39:11
Speaker 1: moved out of state, and it seems crazy, but he
39:14
Speaker 1: was never charged with a single thing. No bodies, no evidence.
39:19
Speaker 1: just a story that didn't add up in a demeanor that,
39:22
Speaker 1: if you knew what you were looking for, stank to
39:24
Speaker 1: high heaven. Crazy things happen in the woods, I know
39:28
Speaker 1: that all too well, but two grown men don't just
39:30
Speaker 1: evaporate in the middle of the night, and a guy
39:33
Speaker 1: who supposedly spent a day and night alone, terrified his
39:37
Speaker 1: friends are hurt or dead, doesn't sit on a rock
39:40
Speaker 1: looking like he's already made peace with whatever happened. I've
39:44
Speaker 1: pulled people out of way worse situations who still had
39:47
Speaker 1: fight left in them, Some of them even demanded to
39:50
Speaker 1: help search for their friends. But there was Rob, looking
39:54
Speaker 1: like he'd already checked out. And above all the other things,
39:57
Speaker 1: I remember that look in his eyes, that calm, like
40:01
Speaker 1: the hard part was already over. I used to volunteer
40:28
Speaker 1: with Seattle Mountain Rescue back in the 80s, and my
40:32
Speaker 1: HQ was up in the Cascade foothills outside of some
40:35
Speaker 1: little logging town in Washington. I was mostly volunteers back then,
40:39
Speaker 1: with a team made up of a bunch of us
40:41
Speaker 1: who knew the woods from hunting, fishing, or just living
40:44
Speaker 1: out that way. I was in my late 20s at
40:47
Speaker 1: the time and worked construction during the week. But when
40:50
Speaker 1: a call came in for a missing kid, we dropped
40:53
Speaker 1: everything and came running to the rescue. In my five
40:57
Speaker 1: years volunteering, I worked more than 300 S & R
41:00
Speaker 1: operations in total, and every single one of them is memorable.
41:04
Speaker 1: Most are memorable because we found our missing people, brought
41:07
Speaker 1: them home, and saved the day. But some are memorable
41:11
Speaker 1: for all the wrong reasons, like this one I'm about
41:14
Speaker 1: to tell you about right now. The girl's name was Lisa.
41:17
Speaker 1: She was 14 years old when she went missing, and
41:20
Speaker 1: she was last seen walking home from school on a
41:23
Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon. Her usual route took her down about three
41:27
Speaker 1: miles of gravel road and then a stretch of trail
41:29
Speaker 1: that cut through the trees to her folks' place. Then,
41:32
Speaker 1: since it's not often someone gets lost on an open
41:35
Speaker 1: stretch of road, gravel or no gravel, we mustered up
41:39
Speaker 1: on the trailhead around dusk. Now the sun was going
41:43
Speaker 1: down early that time of year as it was October,
41:45
Speaker 1: so we moved as fast as we could, mostly with
41:48
Speaker 1: just the standard stuff at first like grid searches, looking
41:51
Speaker 1: for footprints or anything that she might have dropped, along
41:55
Speaker 1: with the really old school stuff like just calling out
41:57
Speaker 1: her name. We had a little daylight to work with
42:01
Speaker 1: at first, but it wasn't long before it was full
42:03
Speaker 1: dark and no stars. About an hour in, fog was
42:08
Speaker 1: starting to settle in these low spots. I was on
42:11
Speaker 1: the ground team with three other guys and we'd been
42:13
Speaker 1: out maybe two hours when I first noticed him. Now
42:16
Speaker 1: at first he was just this figure off to the
42:18
Speaker 1: side of the search line, standing in the trees maybe
42:21
Speaker 1: 80 yards out. He had a dark coat, dark pants
42:25
Speaker 1: and a baseball cap on and he was just sort
42:27
Speaker 1: of standing there, watching us. I shone my flashlight that
42:31
Speaker 1: way and he stepped back into the shadows like he
42:34
Speaker 1: didn't want to be seen. And while that might ring
42:36
Speaker 1: alarm bells for a lot of you, it's actually not
42:39
Speaker 1: all that rare. You sometimes get locals who hear about
42:42
Speaker 1: a search and they'll drive over to start rubbernecking. Some
42:46
Speaker 1: do it out of malice, convinced that we're not doing
42:48
Speaker 1: our jobs right. Others do it just because they're curious
42:52
Speaker 1: and even try to volunteer sometimes. But this guy, he
42:56
Speaker 1: stayed way back. I called over to the team leader
42:59
Speaker 1: on the radio and said that there was some dude
43:01
Speaker 1: watching us. He radioed back to keep an eye on
43:04
Speaker 1: him but otherwise stay on task. Now as always, the
43:08
Speaker 1: missing kid came first. We kept on working and moving
43:12
Speaker 1: from place to place, but every time we'd shift the
43:15
Speaker 1: line or circle back toward the road, there he'd be again,
43:18
Speaker 1: still tracking parallel to us. Not helping, not calling out
43:22
Speaker 1: the girl's name, just watching us, all quiet. Now once,
43:28
Speaker 1: when we stopped to rest and pass around the thermos
43:31
Speaker 1: of coffee, I saw him closer, maybe 40 yards that time.
43:35
Speaker 1: His face looked strange under that cap. And I'm not
43:38
Speaker 1: trying to make out that I saw it coming or anything,
43:41
Speaker 1: but he sure did give me the creeps the time
43:44
Speaker 1: that I saw him closer. One of the older guys, Pete,
43:47
Speaker 1: muttered something about damn ghoul journalists. And we all laughed
43:52
Speaker 1: a little, and the way you do when you just
43:54
Speaker 1: shake it off. It hadn't occurred to me that he
43:57
Speaker 1: might have been a local journalist who wanted to write
43:59
Speaker 1: a story on the girl's disappearance. But as it turned out,
44:03
Speaker 1: Pete was wrong on that one. Dead wrong. By midnight
44:08
Speaker 1: the ground search was winding down for the night and
44:10
Speaker 1: we'd still found no sign of her. We set up
44:13
Speaker 1: a base camp near the trailhead with generators and lights
44:16
Speaker 1: and tried not to put all of our hope into
44:18
Speaker 1: the aerial unit which was supposed to come in at
44:21
Speaker 1: first light if the weather held. I remember I was
44:24
Speaker 1: on overnight watch rotation just keeping the radios hot and
44:28
Speaker 1: the coffee going and then around two in the morning
44:31
Speaker 1: I stepped out to take a leak and there he
44:34
Speaker 1: was again. He was further down the road this time,
44:38
Speaker 1: standing by the tree line under a streetlight that barely
44:40
Speaker 1: cut through the fog, and once again it looked like
44:43
Speaker 1: he was just observing us. I was tired and in
44:47
Speaker 1: no mood for him by then, and so I yelled out,
44:50
Speaker 1: asking if he needed something in that sort of passive-aggressive,
44:53
Speaker 1: loud kind of way. I thought he might try to
44:55
Speaker 1: explain himself, especially if he was a reporter or something,
44:59
Speaker 1: but he just turned and walked off into the dark
45:01
Speaker 1: without a word. I told the deputy on scene, and
45:05
Speaker 1: he said that he'd keep an eye out, but we
45:07
Speaker 1: both knew resources were thin. Morning came, and since the
45:12
Speaker 1: weather held, Ariel went up at around seven. They were
45:15
Speaker 1: doing expanded circles, looking for stuff like clothing or movement
45:20
Speaker 1: or disturbed ground. Then about an hour in, the pilot
45:24
Speaker 1: radioed that they'd spotted a man walking a ridge about
45:26
Speaker 1: two miles east of the search area, one with almost
45:29
Speaker 1: the exact same description to the guy who'd been shadowing
45:33
Speaker 1: our search. Dark coat. Dark pants, baseball cap. They tracked
45:38
Speaker 1: him for a while from the air and he looked
45:40
Speaker 1: at them a bunch of times to show that same
45:43
Speaker 1: pale face as he walked through the brush. Ariel then
45:47
Speaker 1: said that he reached a gravel road, turned down it,
45:50
Speaker 1: and then walked until he reached some isolated property a
45:53
Speaker 1: few miles down. The crew said it was this old
45:57
Speaker 1: two-story place with peeling paint and no neighbors for at
46:00
Speaker 1: least half a mile. And then after watching him go inside...
46:04
Speaker 1: He hadn't come out again. Now, that was enough for
46:08
Speaker 1: the sheriff's office to get a warrant signed by a judge,
46:11
Speaker 1: and then as soon as the paperwork came through, they
46:13
Speaker 1: dispatched two of their deputies to go check it out.
46:17
Speaker 1: I was still at the command post when the call
46:18
Speaker 1: came over the radio that they were at the house,
46:21
Speaker 1: and from what I heard later, and from the after-action
46:24
Speaker 1: talk as well, the guy who answered the door seemed
46:27
Speaker 1: perfectly calm and perfectly reasonable. They asked why he'd been
46:32
Speaker 1: shadowing the search, and he gave some... once again acceptable
46:35
Speaker 1: answer about having heard that there was a missing girl
46:38
Speaker 1: and wanting to help the deputies asked why he'd acted
46:41
Speaker 1: so skittish such as walking off into the dark when
46:45
Speaker 1: i called out to him but he said he just
46:48
Speaker 1: didn't want to get in the way i heard that
46:51
Speaker 1: both deputies figured that it was probably a false alarm
46:54
Speaker 1: but seeing as safe is always better than sorry they
46:57
Speaker 1: asked if they could take a look inside and the
46:58
Speaker 1: guy said sure the deputies followed him into his kitchen
47:03
Speaker 1: Said the place was kind of cluttered too, dirty dishes,
47:06
Speaker 1: old stacks of newspapers, empty cans of ham that would
47:10
Speaker 1: have had flies buzzing around them in the summertime. One
47:14
Speaker 1: deputy was talking to him, the other was looking around,
47:16
Speaker 1: and then out of the blue, the guy just moved.
47:21
Speaker 1: He lunged for a drawer, pulled out a pistol, and
47:24
Speaker 1: then opened fire on each of the deputies from point blank.
47:28
Speaker 1: The first shot hit one deputy in the shoulder and
47:31
Speaker 1: spun him around like a top. The other deputy threw
47:34
Speaker 1: himself back to avoid the guy's shots, then drew and
47:37
Speaker 1: returned fire. I heard at least four of the deputy's
47:40
Speaker 1: five shots rip through our guy, sending him back against
47:43
Speaker 1: some cabinets with a crash and then down onto the
47:46
Speaker 1: floor with some big thud. And with his wounded co-worker
47:51
Speaker 1: lying on the kitchen floor, the deputy that shot the
47:53
Speaker 1: guy went about clearing the house before he called for
47:55
Speaker 1: backup and medical. And he then went about treating the
47:59
Speaker 1: wounded man's injuries and then there was something he noticed
48:03
Speaker 1: during that clearance. The basement door was locked from the
48:06
Speaker 1: outside with a padlock, and when the cops came to
48:09
Speaker 1: open it, they heard something faint coming downstairs, something like
48:14
Speaker 1: metal on metal. They forced the door, went down into
48:18
Speaker 1: the dark with their flashlights, and that's where they found her. Lisa,
48:24
Speaker 1: the girl we'd been looking for chained by the ankle
48:26
Speaker 1: to a pipe in the corner of this unfinished cellar.
48:30
Speaker 1: The guy had turned it into a prison cell. Concrete floor,
48:34
Speaker 1: bare bulb that barely worked, mattress that looked like it
48:38
Speaker 1: had been down there a long time. She was alive,
48:41
Speaker 1: thank God, but was scared out of her mind, and
48:44
Speaker 1: I heard she didn't start really calming down again until
48:47
Speaker 1: her mom and dad arrived at that staging area to
48:50
Speaker 1: come get her. She was half-starved and severely dehydrated, but
48:55
Speaker 1: by some miracle, she hadn't been, well... Let's just say
48:59
Speaker 1: she was intact enough that the doctors said that she'd
49:02
Speaker 1: recover physically. Mentally, I don't know how any young woman
49:06
Speaker 1: could get over something like that. But time heals all wounds,
49:09
Speaker 1: I suppose. We never got the full details on exactly
49:14
Speaker 1: how long he'd had her or what he had planned.
49:17
Speaker 1: The house had no other kids' clothes or toys just...
49:20
Speaker 1: tools and that chain that looked like it came off
49:23
Speaker 1: of a logging site but whatever he had planned thank
49:27
Speaker 1: god we got to him before he put it into
49:29
Speaker 1: action you know i didn't see the inside of the
49:32
Speaker 1: house myself sar doesn't do that once it turns criminal
49:37
Speaker 1: but I heard the radio traffic and saw the ambulance
49:39
Speaker 1: leave with Lisa and the wounded deputy. And then later
49:42
Speaker 1: that day, when the debrief came around, there was a
49:45
Speaker 1: huge pile in because everyone wanted to know what the
49:48
Speaker 1: heck the cops found up there. The guy they shot
49:51
Speaker 1: had no record to speak of. He was apparently just
49:54
Speaker 1: a quiet, lonely guy who worked odd jobs and lived
49:57
Speaker 1: out there alone. Neighbors said that he kept to himself
50:00
Speaker 1: and that he sometimes walked the woods at odd hours
50:02
Speaker 1: and No one had any idea why he liked doing that,
50:06
Speaker 1: but I guess the whole incident with Lisa let people
50:08
Speaker 1: know that there had been a sort of quiet monster
50:11
Speaker 1: living among them. If Ariel hadn't spotted him heading home
50:16
Speaker 1: that morning, well, I don't like to think about it.
50:19
Speaker 1: Another day or two and who knows, maybe we would
50:22
Speaker 1: have found her body. Lisa's poor family moved away not
50:26
Speaker 1: long after and then, from what I heard, the house
50:29
Speaker 1: was boarded up and torn down years later. People ask
50:33
Speaker 1: if it changed how I see people, and if I'm
50:35
Speaker 1: being honest, it made it harder to trust strangers. And
50:39
Speaker 1: I keep people at arm's length until I really know them.
50:42
Speaker 1: Because sometimes, you never really know someone until it's far
50:47
Speaker 1: too late. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification
51:15
Speaker 1: bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release
51:18
Speaker 1: new videos every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern Time,
51:21
Speaker 1: and there are super fun live streams every Sunday and
51:23
Speaker 1: Wednesday night. If you got a story, be sure to
51:25
Speaker 1: submit them over at my email at letsreadsubmissions at gmail.com,
51:30
Speaker 1: and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video.
51:33
Speaker 1: And if you want to support me even more, grab
51:35
Speaker 1: early access to all future narrations and bonus content over
51:39
Speaker 1: on Patreon. Or click that big join button to hear
51:42
Speaker 1: about the extra perks for members of the channel. And
51:45
Speaker 1: check out the Let's Read podcast where you can hear
51:47
Speaker 1: all of these stories in big compilations located anywhere you
51:50
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. I also have a true crime channel
51:52
Speaker 1: called Saturn Soul. All links in the description below. Thanks
51:56
Speaker 1: so much, friends. And remember... Joel's gay. Now... No, no. Okay. Bye-bye.