The Lets Read Podcast - 181: CONFESSIONS OF A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR | 19 True Scary Stories | EP 169

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Private Investigators, Mining Towns, & Coffee Shops... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. To be continued... before we kicked the British out. That's almost 300 years of calling these hills home. We haven't always had it easy, but we're darn proud of our heritage, and although we keep our fair share of tradition, a lot's changed over the years. To me, the biggest change is what we do for a living.

My dad, may he rest in peace, drove trucks for a living. Me and my brother, on the other hand, we work in fast food and IT, respectively. But our grandpappy, our grandpappy was a miner. He's become kind of a legend in our family for obvious reasons. Dude spent six days a week down in a deep dark pit, working his butt off so all of his kids could have a better life. And you know what? It worked. Not a single member of our family worked the mines after he did, as he basically made it off limits for us. But that's not so much because it was backbreaking work, more because of something he experienced down there when he was still just a teenager.

So like I touched on, grandpappy started working the mines when he was still just a teenager. So like I touched on, grandpappy started working the mines when he was basically still a kid. Sure, I thought 17 was incredibly grown up when I was that age, but then you hit 30 and realize, yeah, 17 and you're still a freaking baby. He was just a kid going to work with grown men, dudes double or sometimes almost triple his age. Not only that, but our family aren't exactly known for our stature. A clan of babyfaces, but tall we are not. So as you can guess, those first few weeks were real intimidating for him. Not only that, but the biggest, meanest SOB in the whole place took an instant disliking to him.

And as bad as that sounds, Grandpap had no idea what kind of doom that spelled for him. This guy's name was like Tex or Rex or something. But everyone called him Arthur since that was his second name. Arthur was a bully. He'd borrow money from guys and they just knew that they'd never get it back. But it was either give it to him or you were the one he was picking a fight with down at the bar come Friday night. Trouble was, there was no firing the guy. He hauled more coal out of that freaking mine than anyone and when Arthur was on shift,

there was considerably less horseplay. So as much as the bosses knew everyone hated him, Arthur was making the owners a ton of cash, so getting rid of him was completely out of the question. As the story goes, Arthur took a creepy liking to my grandpap. The exact nature of that liking is something that's not really gone into detail about, and if you ask me, that's for good reason. But I always got the feeling that it was like a Shawshank Redemption slash The Sisters kind of liking. If you get the reference, cool. If you don't, well, good for you. Never lose your innocence. Anyway, Grandpappy was warned by a lot of co-workers,

never let Arthur get you alone, but they never tell him exactly why. Being a smarter kid, he didn't ask too many questions, he just did as they advised. But from what I understand, it was only a matter of time before his luck ran out. And the way my dad tells the story, at the end of one of their shifts, Arthur walks up to one of the pit bosses, then whispers something in his ear. The pit boss looks like he'd seen a ghost, and then walks right over to my grandpappy, who's still 17 at the time, and tells him he needs to go back down into the mine to fetch a length of cable that someone had forgotten.

Now right away, you can probably tell that something's wrong here. It's just a piece of cable, right? No reason why the next shift couldn't grab it when they went down. And it was a mine, for Christ's sake. They have cable for days, why get all antsy over one little piece? But again, my grandpap wasn't one to ask too many questions, so he does as the pit boss told him and headed back down to the mine to fetch the cable. He walks down into the dark, spends a few minutes looking for the piece of cable, but can't find anything. Then right as he's about to turn back to tell his pit boss that he can't find the cable, his way is blocked by, you guessed it, Arthur. Arthur tells him not to move and not to scream. If he did, he was going to have an accident, quote unquote.

My grandpap knew better than to try and fight Arthur, and he also knew better than to scream loud underground. Besides, Arthur had this absolutely terrifying presence, and almost everything he said had the undertone of, do it or I'll snap your neck. My grandpa must have been shaking like a leaf as he slowly approached, and I imagine he felt sick to his stomach as Arthur told him to close his eyes. He did, and I'm guessing he didn't know what was coming, only that it was going to be bad. He waited, and waited, just hoping whatever it was going to be was going to be over quick.

But nothing happened. Then, he opens his eyes, and Arthur is gone. I'm guessing he breathed this huge sigh of relief thinking whatever just happened was part of some nasty prank. Grandpappy knew that Arthur liked to scare people, so maybe he'd just gotten his fear fixed then sneak back up to the surface to yuck it up with the rest of the crew. He was pretty livid as he walked back up to the surface, thinking he'd just had a prank pulled on him. But when he gets there, he hears the last question he expected to. Hey Watson, where's Arthur? Obviously, Gramp Heavy had no idea and tells the guy he figured Arthur had walked out of the mine. And that's when he realizes no one had seen Arthur re-emerge.

They'd seen him walk down after my grandpa, alright, and they knew better than to say anything or to try and stop him. The thing is, they never saw him come back out. My grandpa was the last one to see him down there. When they're asking him like, where's Arthur, and my grandpappy is saying he didn't know, they all start laughing like, aha kid, but seriously, where is he? But grandpa has to tell them that he doesn't know, that Arthur just basically disappeared. When folks realized that, a gang of miners went right back down into the mine to look for Arthur, all the while my grandpa was interrogated on where Arthur went.

It seemed unbelievable that my grandpa would be able to defend himself against Arthur, so it was no surprise that no blood or body was found down there. But the fact that he just seemed to have totally disappeared had people more than just scratching their heads. People quickly went from head scratching to straight up terrified since, like I said, Arthur had basically disappeared. He didn't have any family, so there's no one to keep up a stink about it. Only folks that really cared here were the mines management, who wanted to prevent more stuff like that happening and then the cops. Cops showed up, questioned my grandpa, but all he could tell them was the same thing he told

everyone else. One second, Arthur was there. The next second, he was gone. They asked him if there was a bang, a fall, a scream, anything that might give them a clue as to what happened, but my grandpa just repeated, there one second, gone the next. The way my dad explains it, grandpa was scared he was going to be arrested for murder or something, so he didn't much care what had actually happened to Arthur, only that he proved he had nothing to do with it. It wasn't until much later that he really started to wonder. It started with one of the other miners telling him something like, Hey, good job with Arthur. Guy was always a bully.

But what is it you did exactly? All Grandpappy could do was repeat the line about him not having touched the guy, but no one in that camp was ever satisfied by that answer. Then there were the old timers who told him that the knockers took Arthur. The knockers are supposed to be these weird little monsters who live in the mines. Some of the older generation used to believe in them like the gospel, but it can't be anything more than a myth. The legend says that the knockers were mostly just mischievous, stealing miners' gear if they put stuff down and turned their back. That's obviously just a cover for miners with sticky fingers, like

it wasn't me that stole your lamp oil, it was the knockers. But the legend also says that they would help lost or trapped miners by guiding them to the surface. They'd do this by knocking on the walls of the mine shaft so all you'd hear in the dark was knock, knock, knock. And if you had the balls to follow the sound, you'd be saved. Basically, knockers are supposed to be little rascals with hearts of gold, and that's why the old timers thought the knockers had saved my grandpappy. Or rather, they didn't just think they saved him, they figured they took Arthur, just like they took stuff that wasn't nailed down. Another reason my grandpa didn't really question the whole thing was that everyone was extra nice to him after that. There was no

more disrespecting the new kid, no more giving him all the terrible jobs or making him the general dog's body. That suited Grandpa down to the ground, and so why mess up a good thing? In the end, no one ever found out what happened to Arthur, and it became a warning that other minors would warn each other about. Act up, bully younger min miners, shirk your work, and the knockers will take you just like they took Arthur. Big, six foot something, two bucks and change Arthur,

who could have crushed Grandpappy's skull with his bare hands, snatched up, disappeared, without so much as a squeak. Honestly, I give my left nut to find out what happened to him, or if the story is even true in the first place. I don't think my grandpa was a killer. In the brief time that I knew him, he seemed gentle and kind. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't something else lurking down there. Something that was more than capable of taking a guy

and making him vanish. At the bottom of the western slope of Wales' Taft Valley lies the small village of Abafan. When Abafan's coal mine was just dug in 1869, the village consisted of just two cottages and a tavern. Yet within just a few generations, the coal industry saw the village's population explode to almost 5,000 people. The first spoil waste from the mine was deposited on the valley's lower slopes just east of the canal. But during the early 20th century, the first spoil tip was started above the canal line on the western slopes of the village. For those that don't know, spoil is the term used to refer to waste material removed during the mining process. These waste materials are typically composed of shale, carboniferous sandstone, and other residues, and take the form of huge black mounds that plunge everything under

them in shadow. By 1966, there were seven spoil heaps surrounding Abafam Village, five of which towered above the village itself. The one in usage during that time was known as Tip 7 and unlike the others, it contained a great deal of what was called tailings. Tailings are another type of waste product, only unlike spoil, tailings consisted of fine particles of coal and ash which took on properties similar to quicksand when it became wet. Combine this with the fact that Abafan receives an average of 60 inches of rain a year, and we start to understand what a delicate, precarious situation began to develop. Between the years 1952 and 1965, there were 11 incidents of severe flooding in the Abafan area.

Residents often complained that the flood water left a greasy black residue when it receded, which suggested that some of the spoil heaps were becoming increasingly unstable. The local council promised a safety review and urged the owners of the coal mine to consider leveling or relocating some of the taller spoil heaps. The owners promised they'd look into the issue, but behind closed doors, profit was placed above people. To them, it made no economic sense to deal with the spoil heaps, as any kind of concerted effort would cut deep into their earnings. Instead of instant and urgent action, the coal company opted for excuses and delays. To them, anything that affected their bottom line was off the table. The British coal industry was under a lot of strain at the time and according to them,

a dip in productivity might mean the end of Abafan itself. Yet little did they know, disaster was already looming. October of 1966 saw six and a half inches of rain fall on Abafan in just a few days. Then, on the morning of October 21st, workers at the Abafan coal mine noticed that Tip 7 had started to shift. A few hours later, the rails on which the spoil was transported to the top of the tip collapsed. Workers reported this to the tip's supervisor, but instead of taking urgently needed action, the supervisor simply cancelled the remaining day's work and declared they'd wait until the following week to decide on a new place to tip the soil.

Miners protested, but management dismissed their concerns, and with that, Abafan's fate was sealed. Just a few hours later, at a quarter past nine in the morning, a thirty-foot-tall wave of spoil barreled down the hillside at almost twenty-five miles an hour. The village's occupants said it sounded like thunder or a low-flying jet, with one witness later stating that the previously solid spoil had transformed into a heavy liquid approximately twice the density of water. Others reported that as the wave of spoil crashed down on the hill, it resembled a dark, glistening wave, or a huge black tsunami that swallowed up all that passed over. The wave first crashed into two farmhouses that sat just at the base of the spoil heap, instantly killing its occupants. It then ruptured two water mains that were buried in an embankment, further saturating the spoil until its consistency resembled quicksand. When the avalanche stopped, so did the noise.

One resident recalled that in that silence you couldn't hear a bird or a child. Almost as if nature herself had been stunned in the silence from the destruction she had wrought. After rupturing the water mains, the spoil wave crashed into Abafan's Moy Road, home of the Pantglass Junior School. Pantglass served almost 250 of the community's children and was staffed by five teachers that day. The children had arrived just a few minutes before the spoil wave hit and were actually due to finish early that day to make the beginning of the half-term holidays. If the spoil wave had crashed onto the school just a few hours before or after, they'd all have been fine. But that was not the

case. Mud and water flowed wildly through broken windows, filling every room in the school with the near-liquid spoil. Exactly 109 children were either crushed or suffocated in a matter of seconds, with all five of the school's teachers losing their lives trying to protect them. The acting headmaster of a nearby secondary school was quoted as saying, The girls' entrance was full of rubble and waste material. I climbed into the rubble in the doorway and when I looked directly in front of me, I saw that the Moy Road houses were gone. When the tsunami of sludge finally came to a stop, and the shock of what happened had worn off, the residents of Abafan Village rushed to rescue. They began frantically digging through the rubble using nothing but gardening tools or their own bare hands.

Horrified citizens made to the local fire and police departments who rushed to the scene accompanied by gangs of local miners. Yet, when the miners arrived, they discovered to their horror that instead of helping the situation, the amateur diggers were actually making things worse. Without proper planning by qualified engineers, an ad hoc excavation might actually lead to further collapse of the building. The miners rushed to call off the initial dig, before recommencing in organized groups under the control of their pit managers. Not long after digging resumed, the first survivors were pulled out of the black sludge, which by this time had started to re-solidify. They were rushing to a nearby hospital, with the first survivors arriving just before 10am. Within the hour, more than 20 children and 5 adults had been rushed to the local intensive care unit. Rescuers helped to find more, but their hopes were in vain.

After 11am, no other survivors were found, and as they dug, the rescuers began to piece together a horrifying picture of the seconds following the spoil slide. Nancy Williams, the school's meals clerk, had sacrificed her own life when she used her body to shield five children, all of who survived the disaster. When her body was found, she was still clutching a pound note she had been collecting as lunch money. Rescuers then discovered that the deputy headmaster, a man named Di Benyon, had attempted to use a blackboard to shield himself and five children from the slurry pouring through the school. Unfortunately, he had been less successful than his female

colleague, as he and his 34 pupils were found to have perished. In total, almost 150 Abafan residents were killed by the spoil slide, and 116 of those were children between the ages of 7 and 10 years old. Given the extremely tragic and sudden nature of the disaster bbc news led with the story for its 10 30 a.m broadcast the result was that thousands of volunteers traveled to abafan from all over great britain some of which helped set up a makeshift mortuary in the village's small chapel a team of volunteer doctors and coroners began identifying victims, as well as identifying the various cause of deaths. Most had succumbed to asphyxia, fractured skulls, multiple crush injuries, or a combination of all three. As well as the dedicated medical staff, more than 400

embalmers volunteered to assist with the cleaning and dressing of the corpses, and a contingent that flew over from Northern Ireland removed the seats of their plane to help transport child-sized coffins. On October 27th, a mass funeral for 81 of the children took place. They were buried in a pair of 80-foot-long trenches, with attendees numbering the tens of thousands. Queen Elizabeth had initially neglected to visit the village and despite seeming cold, this is common practice in order to avoid any kind of heightened hysteria. Yet the tragedy was so profoundly felt by the British people that the Queen actually reversed her decision and made a rare appearance in order to pay her respects. At the mass funeral, the parents' rage was palpable and when the causes of death were announced by the priest, one man shouted out,

No, sir. My children were buried alive by the National Coal Board. This prompted another person to scream that the National Coal Board killed our children. And as it turned out, this wasn't far from the truth. As Abafan's member of parliament later admitted, he had been afraid to speak out regarding the spoil heap because he feared the entire mine would be closed. As one member of the National Union of Mine Workers put it, if our MP's statement is to be accepted as truthful and accurate, then he bears what must be one of the largest personal burdens of responsibility for the disaster. But without a shadow of a doubt, the real villains of this story are the National Coal Board,

who bore overall responsibility for the mine's safety, along with the national media. In the aftermath of the disaster, the head of the NCB went on a tour of British coal fields, giving speeches that prompted the use of coal and condemning the increasing popularity of nuclear power. It was seen as extremely bad taste, with one prominent Welsh politician calling it a disgraceful spectacle. Even more insulting was the NCB's offer of £50 to each grieving family. When this was met with outrage, the NCB upped the offer to 500 each, calling it a good offer. But as one heartbroken parent phrased it, trying to put a price on the life of my child is something I'll never be able to forgive. Yet instead of at least trying to understand their pain, the NCB claimed that some of the

parents were simply trying to capitalize on the death of their children. However, as the British Journal of Psychiatry later explained, the argument for higher compensation was based around the fact that the Abafan tragedy imparted a huge amount of post-traumatic stress disorder onto the local community. According to them, the survivors of the disaster were more than three times more likely to have developed lifetime PTSD compared to individuals who had experienced other life-threatening traumas. What's more, a third of all survivors still experienced bad dreams or difficulty sleeping due to intrusive thoughts regarding the disaster. And in the year that followed, close relatives of the victims had a death rate seven times higher than the norm. As you can imagine, the psychological effect of the village's surviving children was even more devastating.

One of these children was quoted as saying, We didn't go out to play for a long time because those who'd lost their own children couldn't bear to see us. We all knew what they were feeling and we felt guilty about being alive. Almost 85% of Abafan's children reported sleeping difficulties, nervousness, difficulty making friends, unwillingness to go to school and even randomly wetting their pants. One local doctor later wrote, by every statistic be noted that despite these problems, the birth rate rose considerably in the years following disaster, and remarkably out of proportion to surrounding towns and villages. In short, this is a kind of deep, psychological programming that's normally

triggered by apocalyptic-level disasters, the kind meant to prevent the extinction of the human race. This all played out in the tiny village of Abafan, after a day that for many, really was the end of the world, their world. Alright X, let me give you a story about something freaky that happened in the woods on a farm about 5 years ago. I was a 17 year old farm boy. Our place was about a mile from our nearest neighborhood and 10 miles from the nearest town. My parents had taken a trip with my aunt to Vegas for a week and left me to run the place with the dogs. There had always been some weird stuff going on around the farm. Animals going missing, animals turning up torn up, weird tracks, etc. Dad and grandpa always told me it was coyotes, but

after I had gotten a bit older and they told me that there had also been sightings of bobcats and mountain lions back in the area for the first time in over 50 years, but the DNR boys would never admit to it, even with trail camp footage of them. I had been taking nightly walks for a couple of years but never further than the big lamplight would show. One night I start walking and go away from the farm in the light. It was a full moon and there was a fresh snow on the ground. Everything was clear for miles and you could see it like it was almost daylight. And something possessed my dumb self to go out there in the middle of winter by myself. My dogs would usually come with me on little walks like this, but

they were nowhere to be found. I figured they were out hunting little rodents or something, so I left without them. I walked the path along our empty cornfields and down the path that led to our pasture. It was about a quarter of a mile downhill walk. Down in this pasture there was a canyon and a creek that runs through the whole thing, from our end of the property all the way to the next county. Inside of this there is a pretty sizable forest with huge old trees all the way down. It was one of those places that was perfect to grow up near. I spent a lot of time down there throughout my life and never really had anything out of the ordinary happen. I had my headphones

in and was listening to some Hammerfall, just enjoying how cool everything was and how lit up everything seemed even past the tree line. I figured me being just over 6 foot tall and an overly cocky weightlifter I didn't have anything to worry about out there. So stupid me went down next to the creek bed in the middle of winter alone and unarmed. Mistake number one. I followed the creek for quite a ways until I ended up at a part of the bed where the banks and walls of this little canyon were too angled to climb up and there weren't any paths out. I stopped for a little bit and watched the moon and stars, just admiring it all. Don't think I'll ever forget how pretty everything was. About that time I ended up

turning my music off just to take it all in. I guess it wasn't cold enough for the creek to freeze all the way and every little sound out there in this place just echoed on top of the little sounds of the running water and the whole place just made every one of my senses feel exaggerated. I stood there for about a minute or two when I started to get this horrible feeling in the pit of my gut, like the most terrible thing in the world was going to happen at any second. I looked around a bit and didn't want to freak myself out over nothing so I gave it a short time. That was mistake number two, I should have just walked out of there. And at this point I started to hear something moving through the snow and brush on the other side of the creek. I'm pretty sure if it had been any other time or place I wouldn't have noticed

it. It was so quiet besides that little trickle of water, and I started to look around and spotted a little bit of brush moving a few yards from the side of the creek bed. The only sounds were those exaggeratedly amped up steps causing the thin coat of ice to crack and snap along the long grass near the shore. I won't lie, every horror story and terrible thing I've ever heard was running through my head, and I ended up just being stuck there, unable to move away while this thing continued to creep out along the bank. I hadn't even seen it, and suddenly I just had the worst fear I'd ever had in my life to this day. Finally this thing came out, and by God I almost soiled myself.

This big black dog looking thing came crawling out near the creek on all fours. It was so big I didn't know how in God's name it had moved so quietly. It kept walking along in the open before it stuck its muzzle down in the creek and started to drink. I just stood there, glued to the spot. The whole place seemed to get darker with every second. About this time I felt the cold for the first time that night while this chill ran down my spine. Stupid me shivered. Mistake number three. I had big copper buttons on my coats and a couple of them brushed against each other. It had to be such an insignificant sound, but down there, it seemed like it hit a tin roof with a hammer. This thing perked its ears up and raised its head to look at me. God, its eyes. I've never seen anything that green before.

We stared each other down for a few moments and then this thing growled. At this point I finally snapped out of it and began to back away, trying to get back out of this boxed in space and away from this thing. And this thing started to bare its teeth and growl more aggressively. And then I kid you not, it stood up on its hind legs a bit, raising its front paws up to its sides. Only they weren't paws, they were like hands. I thought I was going crazy or something but I kept slowly backing off, every step getting a little closer to the path leading out of the canyon and creek. But even then I still had a long way back to the house.

This thing just kept washing me like it wanted me to just back away and leave for the first few steps. Then it started walking along the other side of the creek matching my pace, just slowly stalking me as I was making fat dookies and breathing heavily but somehow managed not to lose my head and run. I think if I had done that, I wouldn't have made it out. Finally I made it to the open area, just had to get, I wouldn't have made it out. Finally I made it to the open area, just had to get up this little hill then make it across the pasture. Then it was only a quarter of a mile up another hill to home. I didn't turn my back on this thing and continued to back my way out and up the hill. This thing didn't seem to want to cross over the creek from the position it was at, but it kept walking. About the time I made it to the top and was looking down at this dogman thing, it had made

it to a more shallow spot down at the creek bed and began to cross. At this point I knew I had to pick up the pace. I finally turned and began to quickly walk to the pasture gate as quickly as I could. I scrambled over the gate and looked back again. It was at the top on all fours again, still watching me with those eyes and teeth. All that was between me and this thing was a barbed

wire fence, a panel gate, and twenty yards. That's when I heard the best sounds I've ever heard in my life. Loud padding coming across the field. All three of my dogs were coming full speed down the hill, going insane. I looked back and this thing turned and stalked back down in the smaller hill. I figured I was in the clear and took off like a freaking rocket. I ran a quarter of a mile in nearly four inches of snow in winter

gear. I passed my dogs on the way up and they didn't stop or turn to meet me, they just bolted down the way after this thing. What felt like an hour of running up this hill I made it back to my home and almost passed out on the floor. I locked the doors and ran to grab something to defend myself. I figured that my hunting knives weren't going to cut it, so I went to the gun safe.

Only guns in the house are my great-granddad's old double-barrel 20-gauge, a.22, and an old pump-action Remington.30-06 with a box of 40-year-old ammo that had a horrible jamming problem. I grabbed the shotgun and loaded two shells before shoving a couple of fistfuls into my pockets. I just sat there in the kitchen with a death grip on this gun for hours before I finally heard my dogs barking outside the house. I looked out the window under the porch and saw all three of them without a scratch. I dropped down on my butt and cried like a baby, not sure

what to think. I didn't want to go out there again, and I didn't until the next morning. I stumbled out the door with the gun and looked around. My boys came up panting with their tails wagging, and I loved on them and petted them until my body was numb from the cold. I made sure that they got some hot meat that night as a thank you. I've seen this thing a few more times than this, but this was the first time. The only people who know about this are a couple of my closest friends, and it's a heck of a story. I don't live on the farm anymore at the moment, but that thing turned what was my little retreat into a nightmare.

Dear viewers, if you'd indulge me, I'd like you to close your eyes, listen to my voice, and imagine something. You are crouched in a dark, dank space, barely the height of a large U-Haul moving truck. The air is hot and stale in your lungs, your eyes sting from residual dust in the air, and echoing all around you is the sound of sharp metal slamming against rock. Then, all of a sudden, there's a distinct rumbling in the darkness. The tunnel around you trembles briefly and then there is silence. No voices, no dull sound of a pickaxe against rock. Nothing.

But then you hear a noise. Something like a slow exhale at first, but one that gets louder and louder and louder. Until it's so loud that it sounds like the roaring of a jet engine. It's the sound of more than half a million gallons of water rushing toward you. What follows are the final few seconds of your life. Seconds spent in abject terror as you try and fail to scramble for safety. If you found that extremely anxiety-inducing, it's okay. This is just a story. But on September 15th of 2011, this was a nightmarish reality for the miners of South Wales, Gleeson Colliery.

The subterranean tidal wave instantly took the lives of four unfortunate miners as it tore through hundreds of meters of mine shafts in just six seconds. Three of their comrades managed to escape to the surface before they were drowned, but were forced to endure an agonizing 33-hour wait to learn of their colleague's fate. The tragedy was caused by work designed to improve the mine's ventilation, which would be achieved by connecting two separate shafts. The prospect of flooding is always an ever-present danger in any kind of subterranean excavation, but due to the complex and sophisticated pumping system present in the mine,

this threat was thought to be all but nullified. Underground explosions were also commonplace and a number of safety procedures were in place to prevent any kind of structural instability. Yet on the morning of September 15th, these safety procedures suffered a catastrophic failure. A miner by the name of Nigel Evans had only been employed at the Gleason for three days at the time of the accident. He later described the horror of suddenly hearing a tremendous whooshing noise before feeling an unusual gust of wind flowing down the tunnel. Seconds later he was greeted by the sight of a nearby lamp shaking furiously as the very earth around him began to tremble. Nigel then saw one of his co-workers, Jake Wyatt,

who was crouch-running up the tunnel with a terror-stricken look on his face. Jake looked up, saw Nigel, and screamed, Run! It was all Nigel needed to hear. I didn't look back. I just ran out of the main drift as fast as I could go, he later said. As the two men ran, Jake began to slow down. By his own admission, he was well past his prime, and the lack of proper oxygen in the mining tunnel made the situation even worse. In the end, Jake was on the verge of passing out, and as he slowed to a crawl, Nigel begged him to keep going. I kept trying to drag him with me, but he was so exhausted he couldn't speak a word, Nigel stated. That's when I saw the water rushing up behind him.

I have never felt such fear, and I was convinced we were both going to die. The water rushed towards both men, roaring and frothing as it came, but stopped just short of the exhausted Jake. It was nothing short of a miracle. Jake had collapsed just above the water line. They were saved. The survivors crawled through mud and sludge before they finally saw the light of day. Nigel believed that since he and Jake had gotten out alive, that others might have been lucky enough to escape too.

Yet as they reached the waiting paramedics on the surface, Jake's response was like a gut punch of pessimism. They're gone, he said. There's no hope for the others. The others he was referring to were 62-year-old Charles Breslin, 50-year-old David Powell, 39-year-old Gary Jenkins, and 39-year-old Philip Hill. And despite the fact that the search and rescue team scoured the 100 year old mine for 24 hours, no signs of life were ever found. In a heart-wrenching twist, the families of the missing men asked the rescue teams to call off the search. They were all too aware of how dangerous such efforts could be, and were all too aware of the danger their loved ones operated

under. To them, the only thing worse than losing their relatives was the prospect of more lives being lost in the recovery efforts. They knew their loved ones were dead, and as one family member phrased it, waiting for the inevitable news was almost unendurable. Mavis Breslin, the wife of one of the lost souls, later said that It was a stressful and never-ending waiting

Hoping and hoping that we'd hear something The tension building up, too, was awful Specially trained divers were then sent in to see if they could recover any of the bodies But they were forced back due to silt and debris which made the water far too murky to navigate in. Rescue teams then had the idea to suck out the flood water using huge pumping systems while simultaneously pumping oxygen into the tunnel system on the off chance that there were any survivors. Gary Jenkins' teenage son Alex later said that I didn't sleep for two days and the rest of the family were in constant tears.

The one or two who had hope were in tears themselves. News of the disaster spread rapidly around the world and by noon a veritable media circus had descended on the Gleason mine in order to document the rescue attempts. By the next morning, even the staunchest found their wells of hope were running dry. Mavis Breslin admitted that when they found the first body, it didn't look like they were going to find the others either. You could pick up on the hints. That's when the despair set in.

Down at the local community center, as news of the dead came trickling in, a grim atmosphere of hopelessness began to take hold. Lynette Powell had been waiting for news on her husband David, but was advised to go home by the region's member of parliament. It was the right decision to go home, she later said, because soon after, we were told that he was gone. From then, we were just numb. By 6pm that day, confirmation came through that the last of the four bodies had been recovered, leaving families and rescuers shattered that their efforts were in vain. An incensed public demanded an inquiry be held, but the Welsh Health and Safety Executive said it was too early to determine a possible

cause. However, following the release of the official report into the disaster, the mines manager was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter by gross negligence. Following further investigations, he was charged with four counts of manslaughter by gross negligence on January 18th of 2013. Both the manager and his employers were subsequently found not guilty following a speedy trial, yet he remained a focal point for the community's contempt in the years that followed. The day after the disaster, Welsh poet, laureate Gwyneth Lewis visited the village and would later write a poem describing the atmosphere she experienced. It's a deeply profound and respectful memorial to those that lost their lives, but two lines seem to cry out over the others.

Leaves drift down, but they won't heal. The sentence of the mountain. The Canadian City of Yellowknife During the late 30s and 40s, the Canadian city of Yellowknife experienced its very own gold rush. The city grew from a small village into a fully-fledged metropolis, all due to the presence of the coveted Oris Rock which lay beneath it. The largest of the town's mines, the aptly named Giant Mine, opened in 1948 and is still churning out gold more than four decades later. By 1990, the mine was the basis of Yellowknife's economy and was so lucrative that it was bought up by Peggy Witter, Canada's shrewdest mining executive. Yet just two years later, Giant Mine was starting to run down, and when the miners were forced to accept a pay cut, a standoff at the local miners' union commenced.

The labor dispute turned ugly from the get-go, with almost three-quarters of the miners voting in favor of strike action. Attitudes on both sides hardened, and the mine soon moved to replace its entire workforce. This kind of drastic action hadn't been taken since World War II, and a legal loophole meant strikebreakers could be employed in the Northwest Territories. These tactics undercut the strike and enraged Union members, who hurled insults at replacement workers from the entrance gates and harassed them with air horns at night to keep the crews awake. However, this treatment only seemed to solidify the confrontational atmosphere, and the replacement workers dug their heels in.

Soon after, the labor dispute became even more vicious. On the first night of the strike, striking miners set fire to mine buildings, beat up a security guard, and even risked their own lives by destroying a live electrical line. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police responded by bringing in a riot squad, but miners responded by storming the mine while brandishing weapons and balaclavas. The riot was only quelled when federal police fired warning shots, but to the striking miners, this was taken as a declaration of war. Two men named Al Shearing and Tim Betker formed a group known as the Cambodian Cowboys and began plotting increasingly militant action. Their activities began in earnest when they set off a small bomb on the mine's satellite dish, blowing it to smithereens. They followed up by destroying the mine's ventilation system with an even larger explosive device. Such violent action divided the striking miners, with some even agreeing to take the pay cut before returning to work.

Others begged the Cambodian cowboys to stop the violence before someone got hurt, but as it turned out, they had only just begun. Just before 9am on September 18th of 1992, nine miners were traveling in a mine cart along a 750-foot stretch of tunnel, when suddenly, everything went black. An explosion ripped through the tunnel, with a shockwave rebounding off the tunnel walls with such force that it turned all nine miners into mincemeat in just a fraction of a second. When news of the murders reached the community, literal fistfights broke out on the street. The Cambodian cowboys were the first to be accused, but in turn, they blamed the mining company for a sharp drop in safety standards. However, investigators discovered a blasting cap at the scene, suggesting that the explosion was caused by a homemade bomb.

The mining company was no longer interested in resolving the dispute. They had a killer on their hands. The investigation that followed was perhaps the most intense in Canadian history. Although police found little hard evidence pointing to any individual, Al Shearing and Tim Betker were the prime suspects. Yet it wasn't long before the lens of suspicion turned to 49-year-old Roger Warren. Warren was a veteran miner, known as Ace for his skill in blasting and breaking rock, and although he wasn't a suspect during the initial phases, the investigation soon uncovered some chilling information. Warren once expressed his disgust for the rule that made it illegal for replacement workers to take the striker's job and supposedly boasted of setting the bomb that

killed the nine innocent minors. As a result, Roger Warren was put on trial for murder in September of 1994, and as part in a shock twist, Warren claimed he was completely innocent of all charges and that he had been pressured into the confession by the RCMP. Warren officially appealed his criminal case in 1997, but his conviction was upheld. From prison, he maintained his innocence for almost a decade and made a general appeal for legal aid in his fight for justice. Lawyers with the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted examined his case but ultimately decided against taking up the case of trying to exonerate him. The reasoning behind their decision became abundantly clear in 2003 when Warren confessed to the crime all over again, stating he had recanted his confession at his trial because he couldn't bear to have my family think I could do such a stupid thing. In 2014, after 18 years in jail, and despite vehement objections from some of the victim's

families, Roger Warren was granted day parole and eventually released, aged 70 years old. He told his parole hearing that he was sorry for all the pain he'd caused, but it was pain that should have never been inflicted in the first place. Through the violent tribalism that had arisen as a result of the labor dispute, Roger saw his victims as treacherous turncoats. They betrayed their cause, turned their backs on their brother miners, and in doing so, had forfeited their very lives. But no matter how legitimate the strikers' grievance was, these so-called scabs were

still men just like them. Men who needed to feed their children and provide for their families. Men who sought to rediscover the dignity of hard work. Yet in the end, Roger Warren made sure that all they found down in Giant Mine was wrath, vengeance, and death. I've had some pretty hair-raising experiences while caving, but there was one thing me and my crew found in an old abandoned mine that really had us freaking out. So, picture the scene. We're just about ready to leave this one place near Nuddleburg Mines down in West Virginia when my buddy finds this one crawl tunnel that we hadn't explored yet. He's like my total mini-me, so like a whole foot and a half shorter.

We usually just give him a good ribbing for it, but good god if he can't reach places we can't during caving adventures. He crawls through with his phone in hand, ready to take pictures of anything cool he sees when we suddenly hear, Oh my god, bro. We're all like, what? What is it, dude? But he carries on, What in the actual F?

Who, who would? And we're going crazy, asking him, dude, what are you seeing? Take seeing take a picture barely able to contain our excitement but he calls back I don't think y'all want to see this we thought he was hyping it up so naturally we did want to see what he was talking about we see some flashes of him taking pictures, then he crawls back to us like, we need to get out of here, right now. We're basically demanding he show us the pictures, and he's totally refusing until we're safely out of the mine. Then, we're out, and he still refuses, looking over his shoulder like, let's go, let's go, we gotta move. Only when we're at a safe distance away and kind of near the car does he actually get his phone out to show us what he'd seen. And yep, he was right.

In fact, I don't think we ever should have gone near that place in the first place. The first thing he shows us was this, and I'll do my best to describe it, but forgive me if it sounds totally nuts. Pictures of a bunch of crow's wings arranged like a star. Maybe eight or nine of them arranged in a circle and tied or glued together somehow. Then in the middle was an eye, maybe a sheep or a goat's eye, and it looked like it had been embalmed somehow. Like it was all glassy, shiny, and kind of yellow from age, but it had obviously been preserved somehow. It looked like a talisman or something. But what came next was even worse. Someone had caught and killed a bunch of small animals.

Mice, frogs, fish, small birds, all kinds of things. Then they'd skin them, debone them, and embalm them somehow, all before either tying or gluing them back together in ways that were far from random. I remember seeing a dried fish head that had been stuck to the body of a rat or mouse, and whoever was crazy enough to do that had stuck on frog's legs near the mouse's tail. It was weird, but it looked kind of dumb, so it had this nuts-but-harmless-mad-scientist vibe to it, something that brought on a few nervous giggles. But the next one, the next one changed the mood completely. Ted, the guy who crawled and took the pictures, his name is Rob, but we called him Stunted, so Ted for short Ted was still freaked out because he'd actually saw everything with his own eyes

So he was pretty focused to show us the next one So we'd all be in the same headspace And by God, did it do the job The guy had made some kind of doll I mean, I'm assuming it's a guy It's usually guys who make messed up stuff like that Did it do the job? The guy had made some kind of doll. I mean, I'm assuming it's a guy. It's usually guys who make messed up stuff like that. Just how it's mostly guys that end up as serial killers.

It looked like he'd rearranged a rat skeleton to be standing more upright, straightening the legs out, bending the spine back, stuff like that. I don't know how, but the skull seemed to be smiling or something. I figured that was just the natural way the jaw was set, but even so, it wasn't nearly the creepiest thing about it. The hair on its head, the bushy little fro type thing, I'm almost certain it was made of spiders, or at least some kind of crawling insect. Then, and this bit really screwed with my ex, I think the guy had skinned and tanned the skin of whatever rodent it was, then had dressed things up again with the skin, gave it like a little dress and a tube top type thing.

I swear to God I've never seen anything so freaky in my entire life, not even the most messed up Korean gore fest horror movie. Ted was so messed up by it that he actually deleted his own photos of the things. I asked him if he'd send them over since my brother didn't believe me. Come to think of it, you guys probably don't believe me either, but he deleted them. He said even having that kind of stuff on his phone was like a curse or something. That it might lead whoever made them back to him. I told him that was just paranoia talking, but I don't know.

I think if I had found them and been face to face with them, that it might have made me a little paranoid too. Someone doing that kind of stuff to animals, they have to just be itching to do it to a person. And that's the big lesson from serial killers anyway. People who do stuff to animals, it all just is a test run or a build up to doing it to bigger animals. Then it's bigger and bigger until boom. One day it's a person getting snuffed out, skinned then embalmed.

All before getting toyed with like some rotten life-sized doll. Like I said earlier, there haven't been many people who have actually taken me at my word on this. I suppose it makes too good of a creepy campfire story or whatever. Honestly, I don't really care if people believe me or not. I have nothing to prove and I'm not insecure enough to feel the need to prove it. Besides, I'm always satisfied with getting the listener to promise that they'll never go near abandoned mines in West Virginia or anywhere else for that matter. Because I can promise you, there's way worse stuff than coal dust and pitfalls out there.

Stuff that I'm not even sure the smartest psychologist could ever explain. I've been into caving for quite some time now, but not in the way you might think. I got stuck a little while back and it really scared me, so I only ever explore things like abandoned mines now. Places where I can actually walk through without fear of getting stuck. I find it just as creepy and exciting without all the dangers. So this one time, me and my girlfriend, now wife, were exploring an abandoned lead mine located in the old lead mine belt here in our home state, Missouri. We entered via an adit, what we call the entrance to a mine, much lower down the hillside than the regularly used entrance, and did so in order to see the lower workings that are not normally accessible from the higher adit.

After a few minutes walking deeper and deeper into the mine, I came to what I thought was the base of a stope, think like a thin step, that I had seen before from the upper entrance. Making my way along this for a little under 20 or 30 yards, I found myself marveling at the flowstone deposits, but I should have been looking where I was going because I suddenly felt the floor of the stope start to buckle under my weight. The stope was covered in centuries of mud and debris as is normal in mines, but solid mud or earth doesn't just buckle, right? What does buckle like that is wood. Old, rotten wood.

It suddenly hit me that I wasn't at the base of the stope. I was actually on an old wooden false floor. Not just that, I had absolutely zero clue how far down the drop was. Like it could have been 4 foot or it just as easily could have been 40. Either way, I got this quivery, sick feeling all over me that screamed, I'm about to die, or at least get extremely hurt. It took everything I had in me to keep calm and gently retrace my steps back up the stope. I felt like I was on a frozen lake and all the ice around me was slowly cracking, and it's just a matter of time before I fall and everything goes black.

Looking back, it's hard to get my head around the fact that all that stood between me and the great beyond was a bunch of hundred plus year old half rotten wood, and how or why I didn't just crumble into splinters under my weight I'll never know. All I know is that when I suddenly felt solid rock underneath me again, it was like all the birthdays I've ever had combined. It was being high on life, pure relief, like nothing I've ever felt before or since. After that, me and my wife backed away from the stope and back up towards the surface. I was still shaking when we walked back out into the daylight, so scared I could barely get the words out to tell her what had

happened. She was pretty freaked out too, asking me like, what happened? What did you see? And when I could finally tell her, she just brought me in for this big hug because she knew exactly what I must have been feeling. I already knew I wanted to marry her, but that little incident just confirmed it, the fact that she was there for me after the scariest moment of my life. Anyway, I hope I managed to paint a picture of how terrifying that day was for me. But even if this story sucked and me and Emma, my wife, are so grateful for all your hard work, let's read, we are and always will be proud members of the Buttersauk Cult. I've always been into caving, and some of the best caves you can explore happen to be

either abandoned or half excavated mines. This usually happened when a silver or gold deposit was much smaller than the diggers first imagined, or if a mine turned out to be vulnerable to flooding or gas sink. Anyway, about an hour into this one mine I was exploring, I was going through a narrow chasm that was just wide enough to turn sideways and slide through it. If you took a cross section of the chasm, it would look like a series of hourglass shapes stacked on top of each other. The cave ceiling was wide. It narrowed greatly near my chest, wide by my hips and then narrow by my feet. About 30 feet or so into the chasm,

the bottom totally drops away and I have to press my feet outward against the walls of the chasm to hold me up. All the while I'm still turned sideways sliding through the upper narrow portion. I can't really see my feet or what I'm pressing against to hold me up so I kind of just am feeling my way forward. Eventually one of my feet slips immediately followed by the other and I drop down a few inches catching myself on my wrists and elbows along with the bottom of my ribcage on the skinny part of the hourglass. The position won't give me enough leverage with my arms to pull myself up, so I'm feeling around with my feet for something to stand on. I'm concerned but not freaking out, but I'm also not able to find something to stand on. Eventually my arms start getting tired and I start sliding deeper

into the skinny part of the hourglass. As I slide lower I realize that each time I exhale I drop down an inch or so and the skinny part of the hourglass is starting to prevent me from fully inhaling. That realization that I can't breathe really triggered a bit of panic and I start frantically kicking looking for something to stand on, which just causes me to slide deeper. I'm starting to freak out by this point, and I'm stuck taking half breaths, and I'm thinking I'm either going to get stuck and suffocate, or possibly even worse, I'm going to pass out and drop down into the chasm that I can't see the bottom of. I don't know why it dawned on me, but I put one foot against one wall and the other foot against the opposite side and just pressed as hard as I could to give myself leverage to push myself up and catch my breath. I ended up just using my feet against the wall method to scoot my way forward until I got to where the floor came back

up and I could stand and rest. Only then did I actually have room enough to maneuver to get out of there, and the whole thing put me off caving for a long time afterward. To be continued... In the early hours of June 7th, 1998, a brutal home invasion in Barberton, Ohio sent shockwaves across middle America. 58-year-old Judy Johnson and her grandniece, 6-year-old Brooke Sutton, had been attacked by the violent intruder while they'd been sleeping. Judy had been sleeping on the TV room couch at the time, allowing the intruder to ambush her with a horrifyingly bloodthirsty attack. It only ceased once he'd strangled the life out of her, but in turn, the commotion had woken up six-year-old Brooke,

who was nothing short of traumatized by what she saw. I got out of bed, went to the kitchen. Then when I looked, I saw that there was a guy in the kitchen, Brooke later said. But it scared me, so I ran back to the bedroom. Brooke then said that she hid under her duvet, pretending to be asleep, but her ruse didn't save her from the evil that had forced its way into her home that night. The mysterious intruder entered the bedroom and struck Brooke in the face. Once she was unconscious, Brooke was continually beaten, suffering a small cut to her throat in the process.

This is believed to be from her attacker intending to kill her, yet going through a change of heart at the very final moment. By some miracle, Brooke survived an attack so horrendous that she'd had to compartmentalize it in order to preserve her mental health. Essentially, she had no memory of the attack, and awoke around seven hours after the attack to discover that her great aunt's lifeless corpse was still laying on the couch where she'd been sleeping. Not knowing what to do, Brooke telephoned a neighbor, leaving the following message on one of their answering machines. I'm sorry to tell you this, but my grandma died and I need somebody to get my mom for me. I'm all alone. Somebody killed my grandma.

Now please, would you get a hold of me as soon as you can? Bye. Brooke then walked to the home of neighbor Tanya Brazel, who told the bruised and bloodied child to wait on the porch for around 45 minutes until she was free to drive her home. When she did, she too was greeted by a scene of grotesque violence. When the police arrived at the scene, they immediately began questioning Brooke, and to their horror, when they asked the young girl if she had any idea who her attacker might be,

she answered in the affirmative. Brooke said her great aunt's killer looked like Uncle Clarence, a reference to Judy Johnson's 35-year-old son-in-law, Clarence Elkins. She repeated the claim on numerous occasions, even claiming that her attacker sounded like Clarence, yet years later, she admitted that she wasn't so sure. I just wasn't sure if it was Uncle Clarence or not, Brooke said, but I was too afraid to say anything. Based on her testimony, Clarence Elkins was arrested as the primary suspect in the murder of his own mother-in-law. At his trial, the state's prosecuting attorney argued that Clarence murdered his mother-in-law after her repeated interference in his marriage to her daughter, Melinda. Once again, the testimony of six-year-old Brooke was used to identify Clarence as the attacker, and prosecutors hammered the looks-like-him-sounds-like-him angle until the jury was dead set on a conviction. As a result, Clarence Elkins was convicted on a plethora of charges in June of 1999

and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms by a judge who has absolutely no prior experience with murder trials. Somehow, the jury had completely overlooked the fact that the prosecution's star witness was a six-year-old child. They'd also overlooked the complete lack of forensic evidence linking Clarence to the crime scene. In fact, hairs were found on Judy's body that were determined to be the killer's. However, the prospect of them being Clarence's was completely ruled out after a DNA test came back negative. The jury also seemed to ignore the fact that Clarence had an airtight alibi.

He told police that on the night of the murder, he'd been drinking with friends before returning home at around 2.30am, something that both his friends and his wife Melinda confirmed. Given that the murder occurred between the hours of 3am and 5am, this basically ruled Clarence out as the murderer. Yet the prosecution weaved such a compelling argument that the jury ignored substantial amounts of evidence in favor of a scandalous but questionable narrative. To Clarence and Melinda Elkins, it was a waking nightmare.

Each knew Clarence was innocent and that a horrendous miscarriage of justice had occurred. But knowing the truth was one thing and proving it before the law was one thing and proving it before the law was another thing entirely. Following the conviction, Clarence and Melinda began their own investigation into Judy Johnson's murder and went on to hire a private investigator by the name of Martin Yant. Martin had gained something of a reputation for assisting with the exonerations of numerous wrongfully convicted defendants, and the Elkins hoped he could do the same for Clarence.

Over the course of their own private investigation, the Elkins uncovered evidence that proved beyond all doubt that Clarence was innocent of the murder. This new evidence healed the fractures in the Johnson and Elkins families, which had been bitterly divided since the day of the conviction. Three years after the original trial, Brooke Sutton filed an official statement saying that it couldn't have been Clarence. The person that hurt me and Meemaw had brown eyes and Clarence has blue eyes. The prosecution's prime piece of evidence was now utterly defunct, yet the families were horrified when their request for an appeal was denied. Despite the overwhelming evidence of Clarence's innocence, the presiding judge was convinced that the family's reconciliation had prompted them to coach Brooke into reversing her testimony, and on those grounds, he refused to allow a retrial. Clarence and Melinda were left

shell-shocked by the development, but their determination was unwavering, and even as those around them were left despondent by the decision, the couple continued to work towards the justice they so richly deserved. Following the failed appeal, and on the advice of the private investigator Martin Yant, the Elkins commenced a lengthy legal battle that would see him win the right to access the DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene. Melinda Elkins then brought the samples to a DNA laboratory in Texas, who tested them out at half their normal asking price of $25,000. These tests conclusively excluded Clarence from the crime scene as not a single strand recovered from the scene matched his own.

However, in another nauseating bureaucratic blunder, Judge Judy Hunter ruled that because a jury convicted him without DNA evidence, they would have convicted him even if it didn't match. Essentially, Clarence would only be exonerated if the actual killer was identified and apprehended. For all intents and purposes, Melinda Elkins has been given a task that no one should have to undertake. She was faced with solving the murder of her own mother. Many others might find it a task too grim to bear, but Melinda Elkins was resolute. She knew in her heart of hearts that her husband was innocent, and that their

perseverance would one day pay off. Besides, it was now not simply a case of clearing Clarence's name, she had to find the monster that murdered her mother. Melinda visited her initial investigation into the murder, re-questioning Brooke regarding the events of that morning. It was around then that Brooke mentioned her interaction with Tanya Brazel, the neighbor whose home she'd wandered up to in her grief-stricken days. Tanya had made Brooke wait on the porch for almost 45 minutes before finally driving her home and this is after the little girl had made it clear that there had been a murder Tanya's excuse was that she had to finish cooking breakfast for her kids

and that there was no point in just dropping everything if Judy Johnson was beyond saving This obviously threw a giant red flag for Melinda Elkins It was determined to get to the bottom of why Tanya was so seemingly unshaken by the arrival of a bruised and bloodied six-year-old on her doorstep. Melinda discovered that despite Tanya living alone with her three children, she had a common-law marriage with a person named Earl Mann. Born in Melbourne, Florida, Earl had a history of committing violent robberies and had previously been convicted of child abuse. Tanya apparently said that she wanted nothing to do with Earl and that she hadn't heard from him in years, but Melinda kept on digging. She eventually discovered that Earl was an ex-con and not only had been convicted of murder, but he had been

released from prison just two days before her mother was killed. Melinda set about tracking Earl down and learned he was incarcerated at the Mansfield Correctional Facility, about 60 miles southwest of Cleveland, the exact same prison where Clarence was serving his own sentence. Melinda promptly got in touch with her husband and issued him with a very unusual mission. He needed to steal one of Earl Mann's possessions, more specifically, something which would have his DNA on it. Clarence took his time observing Earl's habits and behaviors, and initially planned to swipe an item of his clothing from the prison laundry. But Clarence quickly noticed something about Earl,

something which could well mean the answer to his prayers. Every time he was in the exercise yard, without fail, Earl smoked cigarettes. Clarence knew there was an excellent chance that Earl's saliva would leave traces of DNA on the butts of his cigarettes. But finding them among the scores of others, and swiping one without raising any suspicion, that was another thing entirely.

One day, out in the exercise yard, Clarence nonchalantly wandered in Earl's direction as he puffed away on his smoke. Once he was nearing the end of it, Clarence watched him like a hawk, fixated on the butt that Earl had dropped into the dirt. Then, as the convicted murderer walked away, Clarence moved into the position, then pretended to tie his shoelaces as he snatched up the still warm butt. Clarence passed the cigarette butt to the family's attorney who, in turn, sent it away for testing, and the results that came back changed everything. It was a match, proving once and for all that Clarence Elkins was innocent of his mother-in-law's murder. Following Earl Mann's arrest, police re-questioned his

common-law wife, Tanya Brazel, and were particularly interested in why she'd taken so long to respond to the traumatized young Brooke. It turned out she'd not just been busy with breakfast, because Earl Mann had been in the house that morning when Brooke came looking for help. Tanya told the police that, as much as she wanted to call 911, Earl threatened her with violence if she even let little Brooke inside the house. Tanya later claimed that the only reason she'd remained silent regarding her husband's suspicious behavior was because Brooke had named her uncle Clarence as the killer. Yet despite arguably being an accessory to murder, Tanya was never charged with any crime. Unbelievably, even in the face of compelling DNA evidence,

the local district attorney refused to release Clarence Elkins from prison. A press conference was held, with high-ranking law enforcement officials lambasting the terrible miscarriage of justice. Media coverage continued to generate public outrage, until finally, on December 15th of 2005, Clarence Elkins was officially declared innocent before being released from prison shortly afterward. Three years later, Earl Mann pled guilty to charges of aggravated murder in the death of Judy Johnson. He was sentenced to 55 years to life in prison and will not be eligible for parole until he is 92 years old. Clarence Elkins received compensation from the state of Ohio to the tune of just over a million dollars, but later sued the local Barberton Police Department, securing an additional $5 million in restitution. Sadly, his marriage to Melinda didn't survive their ordeal,

and they divorced in September of 2006, less than a year after his release. However, it should be noted that the split was a very amicable one, and that the pair remain close friends to this day. Frankly, it's a miracle that they stayed together at all after one was accused of killing the other's mother, and the fact that Melinda basically solved her own mother's murder is a testament to her strength of character. We can only hope that both Melinda and Clarence have found the peace and the justice that they've so richly deserved. Born in Chicago on August 25th of 1965, Mia Catherine Zapata showed a passion for music from a very early age. Originally influenced by jazz and R&B singers such as Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, and Sam Cooke, Mia would go on to be possessed by a very different kind of music, punk rock.

In 1984, Mia enrolled at a liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and it's here that she and three of her close friends started a band they called The Gits. Within no time, The Gits had developed a loyal following amidst the local underground punk scene, and the band saw such success that they decided to pursue their musical ambitions full-time. In late 1989, the Gits relocated to Seattle, Washington to engage in the city's burgeoning grunge scene, with fellow musicians saying that their approach warranted immediate respect and interest. Mia herself was described as an extraordinarily vibrant and talented girl who had a way of bringing people of different interests and backgrounds together. For a while it seemed as though the Gits were destined for great things, as their music had drawn the interest of grunge titans such as Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.

But their dreams were violently cut short one night, in an incident that would send shockwaves through the Pacific Northwest, as well as the wider musical community. On the night of July 7th, 1993, Mia had been drinking at the Comet Tavern in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. She had been renting a studio apartment in the basement of a nearby tenement building, and the Comet was just a block away, so after stumbling back home, she briefly stopped in to see a friend who lived up on the second floor.

This was the last time she was ever seen alive. A few hours later, Mia's body was found near the intersection of 24th Avenue and South Washington Street in Seattle's Central District. She had been beaten, violated, and strangled, with her time of death said to be around 2.15 a.m. Since she had no ID on her at the time, EMTs had no idea who she was. It was only when being examined by the coroner that Mia was recognized, and that was only down to him being a huge fan of her work. The coroner had actually been to see the Gits in concert just a few months prior.

Then there was Mia, lying on an autopsy table, cold to the touch. Mia's murder stunned the Seattle musical community, with some saying that an overarching atmosphere of fear and defeat lingered following her death. The Seattle Times was quoted as saying that, The Seattle scene has lost its sense of invincibility, with one reporter calling the incident a reality check. We were all really strong, outspoken, hard-hitting women and we refused to see ourselves as victims, a close friend told the media. But I think Mia's death shattered that myth of invincibility for us. It showed us that these things happen to all types of women. Others describe her as a kind of feminist martyr, stating that she became this icon of feminism in all kinds of things, like she was a riot girl before riot girls were even

a thing. Grunge Trio Nirvana was so affected by the incident that they helped raise $70,000 to fund a private investigation that would span the next three years. When the funds dried up, most expected the head PI, Lee Heron, to simply give up the ghost. But she too had become so attached to Mia's story that she continued to investigate free of charge. Yet in 1998, after five years of intensive police and private investigation, one police detective was quoted as saying, Mia's fans and loved ones would have to wait 20 years for a solid break in the case,

and that break came in 2003, when Florida fisherman Jesus Mezquia was arrested and charged based on corroborating DNA evidence. Mezquia had a history of violence towards women, including incidents of domestic abuse, burglary, assault, and battery. All of his ex-girlfriends, including his wife at the time of his arrest, had filed reports against him. There was also a report of indecent exposure on file against him in Seattle within two weeks of Mia Zapata's murder. The only problem homicide detectives faced was that there was no known prior link between Mezquia and Mia. Yet unlike the decades before, detectives had a relatively new tool at their disposal, DNA evidence. A DNA profile was extracted using traces of saliva found in the bite marks of Mia's body. This biological profile was then kept in cold storage until the proper technology was developed for full extraction and analysis.

The original 2001 entry failed to generate a positive result, but Mezquia's DNA was entered into the National CODIS database after he was arrested in Florida on burglary and domestic abuse charges in 2002. At his trial, Mezquia maintained his innocence, stating he was nowhere near Seattle in the evening in question. But DNA evidence was irrefutable, and it was argued that there was only a 1 in 100 million chance that Mia's attacker had an identical DNA profile to Jesus Mezquia. The prosecution argued that the attack was one of pure opportunity, that Jesus had spotted Mia leaving the bar, visibly intoxicated, and had decided on a spur-of-the-moment attack. Since Mia was wearing a pair of headphones, she was completely unaware that she was being crept up on until it was too late, and it's likely that she

was in the back of Miskia's vehicle before she even knew what was happening. After assaulting and murdering her, Jesus simply dumped Mia's body at the side of the road, then proceeded to flee the area. On the back of the prosecution's DNA evidence and the defendant's extensive criminal history, Jesus Mezquia was found guilty of Mia's murder in 2004 and was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. He would eventually pass away in a Washington State Hospital on January 21st of 2021 at the age of 66 years old. Mia, on the other hand, is interred at the Cave Hill Cemetery in her adopted hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and his grave is his grave. Mia, on the other hand, is interred at the Cave Hill Cemetery in her adopted hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and her grave is still frequented by fans of the Gits, as well as those touched by her wider legacy. In the aftermath of

Mia's murder, friends and fans founded a self-defense group they called Home Alive. Home Alive was a female-focused charity that offered a range of courses from basic urban safety to the use of pepper spray and the application of martial arts, the idea being to teach women and girls how to not only defend themselves, but avoid dangerous situations in the first place. Home Alive raised funds through benefit concerts, as well as through the financial contributions of a wide variety of musical acts including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Heart. And all those that passed through the program were reminded of Mia, and how her death would inspire others to defend their lives and freedoms from those who'd wish to take them away.

But there is one person we should remember regarding Mia's case, and that's Lee Heron, the private investigator who continued to work her case long after the funding had run out. It was Lee who pushed for DNA evidence to be collected and stored, and it was Lee who insists on retesting the DNA after the initial failure to match. Essentially, if it wasn't for the empathy and generosity of one plucky private investigator, Mia Zapata's killer might well have gone unpunished. And of all the weird jobs I've worked as a private investigator, there's one that tops the list when it comes to weird, creepy calls.

I knew right away that it wasn't going to be your average Monday as soon as the client mentioned an old clock. It had been in the client's family for a few generations and was obviously a very important heirloom, so the client wanted to know more about it. Only trouble was, they had no idea where to start, so their logic was, why struggle as amateurs when we can pay a professional? Thankfully, I rely on that kind of thinking to keep my lights on, so even though the job was a little out of left field, I was grateful for the work. The shift from professional to personal curiosity occurred when I actually laid eyes on the thing for the first time.

I've never been into antiques or watches or anything like that. Cars have always been more my thing, but let me tell you. Before we knew anything about it, that old clock was something to behold. It was about the same size as a toaster, perhaps not too small, not too big, but the work that had been put into it was seriously breathtaking. It looked as old as it was pretty too. I'm talking ancient in appearance. And even though the owner said it was made in the 1800s, it looked way, way older. Like it might fall apart in your hands. But in spite of that, it was actually surprisingly sturdy and seemed to be made of a pale kind of wood,

maybe a kind of maple that had been treated with something to make it almost bright white. I couldn't even begin to describe how incredibly intricate the inlay of the clock face was, with all this ivory and pearl, or rather, I assumed was ivory and pearl. The owner mentioned that it might have come from over in Europe around the same time their family did. They were German and Czech. And since I factored lab fees into my pricing package, I just took the old clock to my lab guy to run a few tests on it. That kind of analysis is very expensive, but my guy told me that with the tests he'd be running, he'd be able to tell me exactly where the wood came from, along with a rough idea of when it was cut down. It's pretty impressive, right? And he says he can do all that from just a scraping of the wood. So much it won't affect

the integrity of the clock's facade. It's an incredibly technological method with incredibly accurate results But boy does it take time So after my guy got a sample of the wood He said that he'd get back to me probably in about a week He calls me up two days later and tells me that it's not wood at all It's bone Human bone Not just that

Almost every single part of the clock consisted of some variety of human anatomy. Remember the ivory and pearl I was telling you about earlier? Teeth. Human teeth. With some of the more delicate parts of the clock being made of a combo of human hair and fingernail fibers. Now, this put me in the unenviable position of having to tell the client that I was going to call the cops. There's a criminality clause in all my contracts, meaning that if some aspect of my work leans onto the wrong side of the law, I have the right to absolve myself of all criminal responsibility by going directly to the

police to fill them in on what's going on. I've only ever had to do that once before, and it involved a case that's frankly not fit for discussion here, but through an investigation, I'd basically made myself an accessory to kidnap and murder, and let me tell you, that was a scary time for me. Anyway, I informed the client of my intentions, and they were fine with it. They were just as shocked as I was to hear that the clock's casing was made of human bone. Compressed human bone, I should add. Looked a lot different than just regular old ribs or wing bones, so naturally they were keen to absolve themselves of any guilt too. After that, it was just a case of heading down to the local PD to turn the clock in,

because at that point, it was less of a case of where the clock came from and more who it came from. Ironically, the clock got sent right back to my lab buddy's place of work because he texts me saying, guess who's reunited with your bone clock? This gave us something of a chuckle, but it was also one heck of a boon. If the cops were intent on keeping us in the dark, we'd have a way of knowing what was going on. A few days later, I get a call from my lab guy saying all the tests had been run, and there's no DNA to match any profile at the CODIS or at the National DNA Index System. In fact, the guys at the lab figured whoever the bones had belonged to had died before America was even a country. So, unless my client had a time machine,

it was safe to say that they were innocent of any foul play. After that, the cops were at something of a crossroads. Apparently, they could have gone ahead with charges, something about an old federal statute regulating the transportation of human tissues, but since there didn't seem to be any ill will or shadiness with my client, no charges were filed. But then it was a case of what to do with the remains, and officially speaking, my client was basically this dead person's legal guardian. They had to decide whether to just take the clock home again, or if they wanted the remains cremated and interred as a John Doe at a nearby cemetery.

Personally, there was definitely a time in my life when I'd have thought, forget it, take the clock home, and put it on eBay for antiques. Something like that has to exist, right? After all, human remains are not, and at the risk of sounding like Indiana Jones, that thing really should have been in some kind of museum or something. But the way my client saw it, either the bones belonged to an ancestor of theirs, in which case they should be laid to rest, or the bones weren't anything to do with the family, in which case they still deserved to be laid to rest. I think that was most definitely the right decision. All greed aside,

I wouldn't want my remains passed around and ogled at as some piece of curios. So that was that. The bone clock was cremated and interred under the name John Doe, and for all intents and purposes, the case was solved. The only thing that's left to wonder is, how the heck the bone clock was created in the first place? Honestly, I'm hoping it was some dying clockmaker's last wish, to have his body refashioned into something that'd last for three or four lifetimes. And if that was the case, he sure did get his wish.

For a while, anyway. But then there's the much weirder thoughts that creep in when I let my mind take over. Because what if this guy wasn't dying when they took his bones? What if the whole thing was to turn a perfectly healthy person into a godforsaken clock? Maybe it was a punishment. Maybe it was like a ritual or something that was performed against their will. I'd rather not consider the second option. In fact, I try not to think about the bone clock too much at all, because every time I do, that same old thought creeps into my head. How the chimes that clock must have made at some point were less like chimes and more like screams. In all my years of law enforcement, two things have never ceased to amaze me.

Number one, there are no laws a criminal will not stoop to in order to come out on top. And number two, even the most seemingly peaceful situations have the potential to explode into violence. My most recent example of this is February of 2020, right before the Rona hit, when I was working on a pet recovery PI job. I served almost 20 years at the Oakland PD and I've been working private investigations for the last three. But if you think being a PI was a step down in intensity from actual police work, you'd be wrong. But don't worry, cause that'd make two of us I thought being a PI would be an easy way to pad my bank account So I'd still have something left over for the kids

Turns out, it's all the grind of a detective's job And the perps are even less afraid to point a gun at you But work is work, so I stuck with it Anyway, back to the pet recovery job Something that became my bread and butter for a few months back in 2019 and 2020. You might be surprised how willing people were to steal each other's dogs, and even weirder was how a rare crime like dog napping experienced a huge spike. It was mainly thoroughbred pups being stolen, but there were definitely a few cases

where a mutt was passed off as a pedigree and that basically meant that no dog was safe. So I get a call from this nice polite elderly couple who tell me their brand new French bulldog pup had been stolen. If an animal gets stolen, finding them is easy and it's usually an issue that uniformed cops can deal with. If not, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. And due to the large amount of dog nappings, us private investigators got to soak up the overflow. So, I take down all the details of the robbery, get a photo of the dog, then hit up the likes of Facebook Marketplace to see if there are any French Bulldog pups for sale. I didn't get one right away, but about a week later, I see a listing for a one-year-old French Bulldog pup at some rock-bottom price.

Now, I'd worked dog nappings before, so I was already somewhat familiar with a dog napper's mindset. They'll always give out some terrible excuse as to why they're selling, like how they just can't afford to feed the dog anymore or that they're moving to an apartment that doesn't allow animals. But then, when you ask to meet in a public place, say a dog park, they suddenly can become very insistent that the exchange takes place at a private residence or in a suspiciously private location. And bingo, when I asked the seller to meet at a nearby dog park, they gave me some excuse about being disabled and asked me to meet them at their home. I was 90% sure at this point that this was my guy, and my usual game plan was just to roll up and explain that it was either me or cops and cuffs. This was usually all it took. After all, people who prey on tiny dogs and

elderly couples tend not to be so brave or tough. Anyway, later that day I roll up to the guy's house, knock on the door, and tell him that I'm there for the dog when he opens up. He brings the dog out on a leash and I can tell right away that it's the exact same dog I'm looking for. It's grey with white patches, these bright green eyes, just about the cutest looking thing you'd ever seen. The guy's right in the middle of apologizing for having lost the dog's vax paper as well, assuring me it's had its shots, when I straight up just say the dog's name. The guy had been calling him some other name and I noticed the dog didn't seem to be responding to it, but when I called it Oscar, what its owner has been calling it for the first year of its life, the dog literally perks up and cocks its

head as if to say, do I know you, sir? Immediately, the dog napper senses something's wrong, but at the same time, he's totally committed to making the sale. So instead of just telling me to get lost and going back inside, he responds by saying, you want the dog or not, man? I tell him no, and I know a couple of old folks who'd be very interested in being united with their beloved Oscar. It was a total bluff, like I said. I was only 90% sure it was the dog I was looking for, maybe only 95% after the dog responded to its name. But then came what I can only describe as an impressively convincing performance from the dog napper in question. The guy was completely indignant, told me he knew what I was implying and that he had the paperwork to prove it was his dog. If I just wait a minute, he'd go fetch it and then I'd owe him an

apology. It got to the point where I really started to doubt myself. Anyone else would have given up the act by this point, but here was this guy, throwing my bluff right back at me with finesse, to the point that I actually just stood there like an idiot, waiting for him to bring back some papers that didn't exist in the first place. A minute later, he re-emerges, and I have expected him to actually have the papers. But no. I instinctively reacted as he swung at me, and in the millisecond that his fist flew past my face, I saw he had something shiny in his hand. I kept on backing up, hand moving toward my holster, and the next thing I know, he's running back into his house as I have my pistol pointed at him. If I'd have been an inch

closer to that guy's door, I'd have been a dead man. I called it in, and since I still had a few connections to the department, I managed to get a squad car out to me pretty fast. The guy had like 25 dogs in the back room of his place, all stolen, all kept in some of the most inhumane conditions imaginable. What I thought was going to be an afternoon's work turned out to be a huge thing, with animal welfare and a few CSP officers joining the circus of vehicles parked outside the house. Oscar was eventually returned to his owners and the perp eventually agreed to a plea deal which involved returning the rest of the dogs to their owners. It didn't eventually agreed to a plea deal which involved returning the rest of the dogs to their owners. It didn't end well for all of them though. Some of the dogs

had already been sold on so not all of them were able to be returned. The impact it had on people is horrendous too. Like if you think people get upset over a stolen TV, just imagine how they get when they actually love the thing that's being stolen. Almost makes you feel bad taking people's money when it works out like that. But you gotta put food on the table somehow. It just helps when doing the right thing is what brings home the bacon. To be continued... My parents hired a private eye to track down my sister, who'd run off with her much older boyfriend. Turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes they'd ever made. She was just 18 at the time, legally an adult, so as much as my mom and dad begged the cops to bring her home,

there wasn't a darn thing that they could do about it. So that's where the PI came into it. I was pretty young at the time this all went down, so my only real memory of the whole thing was when the cops showed up on our doorstep and my mom started wailing when they gave her the news. The private investigator pulled up to the apartment he thought my sister and her boyfriend were at. He was supposed to just contact our parents once he'd done this, but the cops figured he wanted to make a positive ID, so he walks right up to the room and knocks on the door. No one knows exactly what happened next.

Even after watching the security camera footage, the cops couldn't quite tell who drew or shot first. But someone did, and once it started, that was it. My sister's boyfriend had a revolver, but the private investigator had 17 rounds in his clips. So, six bullets went one way, but 17 went the other. When it was over, the PI was dead, the boyfriend was dead, and the cops found my sister in the bathroom. She'd taken one in the arm and one in the neck. She lasted until the hospital, but coded when they were trying to stabilize her. Not long after that, I woke up to the sound of my mom screaming with the blue and red flashing lights outside.

I had a thing about emergency lights for a long time after that, and they still give me a little zap of anxiety whenever I see them, because I always think that wherever they're going, there's someone screaming, just like my mom did. I've been meaning to send you my brother's story for a while now, but writing this turned out to be much harder than I first thought. I lost my brother a few years back. He was a cop for most of his life, but took an early medical retirement after being stabbed almost 20 times while on a traffic stop. According to him, the guy played drunk as a skunk so he could get close enough to pull his knife, and then managed to almost turn my brother into a pincushion before he could defend himself.

I don't think he ever really had to work again, but he also wasn't ready to completely retire, aged just 41. So he took up private investigator work with a small firm outside Sacramento. Not exactly adrenaline-fueled run-and-gun stuff, but it was enough to feather his nest egg while keeping idle hands from the devil's work. Anyway, the last job he ever took was

something pretty close to his heart. According to his old boss, the company had been tasked with tracking down a former cop, one who had a bizarrely similar story to my brother's. He too had been handed an early medical retirement after a traffic stop gone wrong, but the incident was considerably worse than the one experienced by my brother. Not only had this guy lost his patrol partner in the shootout that followed, he coded multiple times from his own wounds that left him with a complex form of post-traumatic stress disorder. He'd gone through an identical therapy program to my brother, it just hadn't worked for him

like it worked for Marty. I think that's what affected Marty so greatly about it, how in his mind it could have just as easily been him losing his mind and vanishing, all the while scaring the life out of his family in the process. So from what I heard, Marty spent a lot of time or so tracking the guy down. How in God's name he managed it when law enforcement had been unable to, I'm not quite sure, but he must have gone out to have a face to face with the guy around September, because that's around the time that he stopped answering his phone.

Marty used to get pretty absorbed in his work so it wasn't all that unusual not to hear from him for a few days at a time. Back when my sister-in-law called to tell us that he hadn't reached out to her either, that was when we started to worry. The guy he was looking for might have gone off the grid but Marty always had his cell on him while he was working. All it took for the cops to find him was to ping his phone, then bingo, they found his body. Marty had been killed by a rigged shotgun shell that someone had strung up in a tree. The cops think it was the guy he was looking for, but it could have just as easily been someone with him. They'd rigged their dirty redneck shack with booby traps and all over the surrounding

woods too. It's actually something of a miracle that Marty went up there on his own. A lot more lives might have been lost otherwise. That's how I rationalize it to myself anyways. That even in death he was out there saving lives and protecting people. I just don't get what would drive someone to booby trap their home like that. Like what are you so scared of that you need to rig shotgun shells to trip wires or whatever he was doing? As far as I know, he hadn't actually done anything wrong, so the cops weren't looking for him outside of being listed as a missing person. I totally get that he was suffering with mental health problems and that he wasn't exactly behaving in a rational way, but what if he

wasn't as crazy as people were making him out to be? What if he was actually being pursued by people that warranted such a level of defense and precaution? Look, I'm not excusing the role the guy played in the death of my brother, but after all the sadness and anger and hatred has passed, all I have left is unanswered questions. Obviously the guy caught to charge for death by reckless endangerment, but the cops think he either heard the shell going off or he found Marty's body, because he got out of that area not long after. I know Marty was dealing with something big, he wouldn't have been so obsessed with the case otherwise. He had a rough idea of the guy's location, why not just pass that on to the family? And this is in the age of drone technology too, something I know Marty was a fan of, so why bother hiking all the

way out there when he could have just gotten a few drone pictures? Marty was easily the toughest person I ever knew and he was like that ever since we were kids. He was crazy brave but he was crazy smart too and I don't believe he'd ever put himself at risk unless he absolutely had to. The whole thing just doesn't sit right with me, and maybe it's just the way the grief manifests now, but I can't help but think that something much darker was going on than just some traumatized ex-cop. Worst thing is, I don't think any of us are going to get any solid answers until they catch the guy, which between you and me could well be never. I'm sorry this doesn't have some grand conclusion or whatever, lord knows I wish it did too, but to me, this is a horror that I've learned to live

with on a daily basis, that my brother is gone, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it at all. To be continued... afraid I have some bad news regarding the disappearance of your daughter. As per my last email and thanks to the information you've already accumulated, I tracked Wendy down to Washoe County, Nevada. It seems you were correct in your assumption that she is traveling with others, although Topeka PD may have been correct in their assertion that she is in their company of her own free will. I know you firmly insisted on multiple occasions that your daughter was kidnapped, but I'm not ruling out that her previous statement wasn't coerced or made under duress, but some further details have come to light that you may wish to consider before continuing your efforts to bring Wendy back home. I understand that the past year has been very upsetting for you,

and that all you desire is been very upsetting for you, and that all you desire is your daughter returned to you. But at this stage of the investigation, I think the priority should be minimizing the distress of all parties. So while this is not strictly a plea to discontinue the investigation, I implore you to consider for the sake of your collective sanity. Based on communications with the Topeka Police Department, I managed to determine both the description of the vehicle she was traveling in as well as those of

her companions. After that, it was simply a case of tracking her phone's cell data until I had a rough idea of where she was, which turned out to be a small town named Sutcliffe on the western shores of Pyramid Lake. I understand that I'm not the first private investigator that you've employed, and that Wendy had reacted poorly to them in the past, so I made sure not to reveal my presence until it was absolutely necessary. I had the vehicles in sight, a girl matching Wendy's rough description. All I had to do was make a positive identification. I even had that recent picture you provided me with, just as a visual reference for when contact finally occurred. And the girl in question was even wearing the same hiking boots that Wendy left Ohio with.

And I was 99% sure it was her. But when I tried to make contact, I began to notice certain anomalies. Wendy doesn't respond to her name anymore, and it doesn't seem to be an act of defiance. In my experience, it takes a long, long time, sometimes years for someone to rewire their brain when it comes to their birth name. So for Wendy to be visibly confused when it comes to their birth name, so for Wenny to be visibly confused when I called her her birth name, that's something I've never experienced before. It's worth noting that she and her companions insisted that her name was Chontico. I'm not

sure if this name has any significance to you, but the choice might provide an insight into her thought process and motivations, or that of her companions. As far as I can tell, the name is Central American of origin, but that is pure speculation on my part, as I am certainly no linguistics expert. He also told me that Wendy's height was just above 5'1", but the girl I spoke to wasn't an inch below 5'5 or 5'6". My own daughter is 5'6", and Wendy now appears to be a very similar height. I can assure you that this was not due to any kind of misidentification on my part, nor was Wendy wearing any kind of height-elevating hairstyle or footwear. She was wearing the same hiking boots she left Ohio with. There are only a handful of explanations for how this could be the case,

and some are considerably more feasible than others, but instead of speculating, I think I'd be more prudent of me to respect the limits of my own knowledge as not to further confuse the investigation. As per our communication on May 24th, 2013, you told me Wendy's eyes were blue. Yet she seems to have suffered some kind of optical infection as the iris and pupil of her right eye had turned black. I understand there are contact lenses you can buy that achieve a similar effect, so this might not be anything to worry about. It's also possible that her right pupil was extremely dilated during the interaction, which gave me the impression her eye had changed color. I'm not an optometrist, so I'm not trying to draw any conclusions from that.

I only mentioned it in case it becomes pertinent later on. You also informed me that Wendy could be identified by the small pink heart-shaped tattoo on her wrist. In the end, this was the only real way of me knowing it was the same girl. She had the tattoo covered up with a bandage, but whether or not the tattoo is in the process of removal or she's simply covering it up, I'm not sure. I'd have made a solid ID attempt to gain visual of the tattoo, but like you warned me, my attempt at contact was immediately met with hostile response. As such, contact was broken immediately and I removed myself to a safe, observational distance. The last I saw of Wendy and her group, they were heading up into the mountains, on the roads towards Granite Peak. They may still be in Nevada, but there's just likely a chance that they crossed state lines

into California following their departure from Sutcliffe. If you wish to continue your investigation, you're obviously free to do so, but I'm afraid it will be without my participation. Frankly, I don't believe this is a case that I'm qualified to be involved in, although exactly whose expertise you'd wish to seek, I'm afraid I can't say. It seems impossible to even consider, but it seems on top of the drastic emotional changes Wendy has endured, that there have been some sort of physical changes too. There might well be rational explanations for this, but as I previously stated, they're not explanations I feel I'm qualified to give. Mr. and Mrs. Werner,

in all my years of law enforcement and detective work, I've only ever come across two cases that have truly, genuinely frightened me, and this is one of them. I understand that all you want is to have Wendy home again, and I say this not to alarm you but to give you a realistic expectation of what might occur in the future, but I think you're overestimating just how much of Wendy you'd be getting back. This is the first time in my investigative career that I have ever had to do this, and please believe that I do so with a heavy heart. But I implore you to stop looking for Wendy. I fear you're chasing answers that few people are equipped to deal with and having gotten to know you both personally over the past few months,

it pains me to think that you're trying to endure the unendurable. Good luck and I hope you both find peace in the future. Apologetically yours, Robert Clancy, Senior Associate, Taylor Pay you about one of the nicest, most generous, and honorable people I ever knew in my entire life. His name is Miguel Algenid, and he was my manager at the coffee shop I worked at up until the spring of last year. Miguel's father was Lebanese while his mom was from Colombia, and although they were different religions and backgrounds, they fell in love because of their mutual love of coffee. Together, they opened up a small but successful cafe over in Brooklyn, and once they retired, they passed it on to Miguel. I started working for Miggy, our cute little nickname we had for him, back during the summer of 2019, and he was by far the best boss I'd ever worked with. He mostly employed college students

like myself on a part-time basis and understood that we needed flexibility as well as finance in order to live semi-comfortably while completing our studies. As a result, we worked our butts off for him. We wanted him to succeed. We wanted his business to succeed, not just for him or us, but in honor of his parents, who had one of the most magically romantic stories I'd ever heard. But then, the virus which shall not be named hit, and like so many other businesses in New York City, the cafe's profits began to dip before disappearing altogether. We tried to make things work, adapting to becoming a mostly delivery-based service, but a combination of fear and hardship made things almost impossible. One by one, Miggy had to let us go. Until in the end, there was only myself and two other employees working in rotation to keep the cafe running. And when I say rotation, I mean heavy rotation. By the summer of 2020, I was down to two three-hour shifts a week,

and all I'd do was go in, clean, prep for deliveries, and then go home. Miggy and one delivery driver would then run the business for a full 15-hour day. Then, out of business hours, Miggy would perform a full antiviral clean down in order to pass inspection from city officials. If he failed them, the cafe would be shut down indefinitely. For a while there, Miggy was working 19 hour days and was barely sleeping at night due to the stress of potentially losing his business. I know this was quite the introduction and I guess you're probably asking out loud by now, yeah, this is grim, but how is it scary? Well, the scary part of this story isn't so much the

loss of the cafe, which I'm almost certain is being turned into a Starbucks or a Shake Shack or something by now. It's that I watched a man lose his mind in real time. Miggy was almost at a breaking point by the end of the summer, but time after time he refused help from us as he simply didn't have the money to pay the wages. At one point we even offered to work an extra hour for free just to help him keep going. But as you can imagine, he said he'd rather close up entirely than accept slave labor. His words, not ours. He lost weight, he became emotionally and mentally distant. It was soul-crushing to behold. We all wanted to fight the virus, so I'm not saying all this is some kind of anti-lockdown,

anti-masker type stuff, but the costs the measures were incurring were truly painful to bear witness to. Things started to look up around the beginning of fall as the mayor or the governor or whoever it was began the whole reopening phase. We were actually allowed to reopen to an extent, and although capacity was cut to like 25%, we all got more hours and Miggy actually started to make a profit again. I remember him just not showing up to work one day and we all got pretty worried and began calling his cell phone. When someone finally picked up, it was his cousin. Miggy had passed out for almost 18 hours, the first time he'd slept more than 8 hours in almost 7 months. We just ran the cafe as best we could, hoping we'd do Miggy proud, then figured he'd show back up at work when he was able to.

When he did, he wouldn't stop apologizing for his no-show. In our minds, he'd done absolutely nothing wrong, and we were just happy that he'd had a chance to get some real rest. Besides, with the loosening of restrictions, things were looking up for the cafe, and we all figured that we were over the worst of it. But then, on the morning of October 6th, we got some very, very bad news. I remember it was like yesterday, even what day of the week it was, a Tuesday. Due to a spike in recent cases, the governor introduced what was called a micro-cluster strategy in order to contain the problem. The cafe happened to fall into one of the red zones, which were subject to the harshest kind of restrictions. Previously, because we were delivering food and coffee, we were deemed in a

central business, and were allowed to stay open, even if we weren't allowed to have any customers inside. But under the new microcluster thing, the little baklavas and obleas weren't enough to be considered substantial foodstuffs. Therefore, we were forced to close again. Miggy was holding back tears when he called me about an hour after the news was announced. As much as I tried, I just couldn't find the words to reassure him. Honestly, I knew we were in trouble and I was terrified for him. That cafe was his entire life and once again it looked as if though it was going to be taken away from him. As you can guess, due to a lot of people working from home,

the demand was absolutely enormous. So, once again, Miggy went back to working 19-hour days, mostly all alone, in order to keep deliveries running. A co-worker of ours, Ronnie, attempted a kind of intervention and went in during his days off to try and talk Miggy into getting some rest, and Miggy fired him on the spot. To fire someone like that just wasn't in Miggy's character. We knew he was grieving, but to think it was having that much of an effect on his personality was just devastating for us. Ronnie wasn't even mad,

he was just sorry, and figured he'd go talk to him once he was feeling more like himself. Now we know that day might not ever come. After the holidays, I knew I might have to walk on eggshells around Miggy, that he was cracking up from being stressed and overworked. But the reality was so much worse. Miggy had never been particularly religious, so I remember the shock I felt when I saw that he'd mounted a large wooden cross in the cafe's office. That might not be anything to worry about with anyone else, but when I walked in and saw the way he was just staring at it, it was a bizarrely disturbing sight.

When I asked if he was okay, he gave me this really faint, uh-huh, like although he was right there in front of me, his reply came from somewhere very, very far away. Then he asked if I wanted to pray with him. You know, I said yes, and despite me being a pretty staunch atheist, I bowed my head and held Miggy's hand while he said a little prayer. I honestly thought it would be some generic, Lord let us be grateful for all we have kind of thing, and I never have remembered the exact words if he didn't mention which book of the Bible he was quoting it from. It was from Hosea, and I just had to look it up to find exactly which one, but it's Hosea 13.16. Miggy said, Samaria shall become desolate, and for she hath rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword, their infants shall be

dashed into pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. Amen. I didn't even know the Bible contained things like that, and I literally didn't know what to say, so I just added a weak amen before I walked out of the cafe to carry on with my work. The rest of my shift passed without a vent and it wasn't until I got a text from a coworker the next day that I actually got scared for Miggy's mental health. The text came through in the early afternoon, accompanied by a picture message. Miggy's been drawing these for hours, it said. I thought he was doing work on the books, but no, he's been drawing these. At first I had no idea what I was looking at, but I remember feeling this deep chill run through me when I saw just how many there were. Miggy had drawn maybe 50 or 60 of these huge, lidless eyes, and surrounding each larger were rings of much smaller eyes. They were rough sketches, not too much detail to them, but it was clear that they were literally hundreds of little

eye rings covering several sheets of paper. I asked Elena, the girl who had sent the pictures, if she could ask Miggy what they were, but she said that he was acting really weird and was too scared to confront him about it. She then followed up by asking me if I could see if he was okay. So next time I was working, I did just that. I know this sounds crazy, but his explanation actually eased my mind a little. It was obvious that Miggy had found a new passion for religion due to the stress of his ordeal, and I figured it helped him cope, then who was I to interfere? So, when he explained that what he was drawing were angels, let's just say I was confused but

open to understand. When I asked why he'd envisioned angels to be so, well, disturbing, he produced a small leather-bound Bible and began quoting from the book of Ezekiel. I've managed the exact verse he was quoting from and I've chopped it down so you get an idea of what he had in mind. As I looked, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. They sparkled like topaz and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. Their rims were high and awesome and all four rims were full of eyes all around. Wherever the spirit would go, the wheels would rise along with them

because the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved. When the creatures stood still, they also stood still. And when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. Just like the weirdly bloodthirsty Samaria quote from Hosea, I had no idea that that kind of thing was in the Bible. We're raised to think that all angels are winged babies or beautiful Caucasian folks in long coats, but the reality is much, much different. Go ahead, look up cherubim. They're basically animal-human hybrids. If heaven is real, it could be way more terrifying than blissful in my mind. Once I explained all that to Elena, she was still pretty anxious about

Miggy's mental health, but she definitely wasn't straight up scared as she'd been before. Again, it was a case of whatever helped him cope, and I know for a fact that he was terrified of his parents at the time, as both were elderly and living in an upstate nursing home. If you know the story of New York's nursing homes during 2020, well, you understand why Miggy was so scared for them. We didn't think that we'd have to make any further intervention. We loved Miggy. All we wanted for him was to be okay. And if that meant backing off while he tumbled down the religious rabbit hole, so be it. Now, I know we should have taken action long before he ever started to slip.

Elena started to get scared when Mickey asked her to pray with him. She texted me after her shift was over, the message full of spelling and grammatical errors where she'd obviously just hammered it out in a horrified frenzy. She told me that he'd talked about the dead coming back to life, which is pretty standard for the Bible I imagine, but it was the language he'd used that had really freaked her out. She said he talked about a valley that was covered in bleached human bones, like every inch covered in skeletal remains. I looked up the verse in question and wasn't surprised to find it was from Ezekiel. Obviously, Miggy had been focusing on that part of the Bible when it read like this.

And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, Come, breathe from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them. They came to life and stood up on their feet, a vast army. Then he said to me, son of man, those bones are

the people of Israel. I can imagine how terrifying that must have been for Elena to hear. I don't think she'd been to church since she was in junior high and even then her parents were Greek Orthodox so all the sermons were in Greek. Heck, she might have heard the exact same passage in Greek and never once batted an eye. But right up close in plain English, talking about an army of the living dead during the pandemic, I completely sympathized with her when she said she was thinking of quitting. I just promised her that I'd try to have a talk with Miggy the next time I was on shift and that hopefully he'd understand why everyone was getting so scared. Little did I know, it was about to be my turn to be so scared I'd want to quit. I remember the morning I showed up to find something staining the door to the cafe. I figured

it might be vandals or something, someone who might have objected to us trying to stay open when we were in the middle of a red zone. I had no idea what it was that was smeared on the glass of the door, but as you can imagine, I was in no mood to try sniffing at it or touching it. I'd just go tell Miggy and we could get it cleaned off. But as soon as I walked into the cafe, this hot, coppery smell hit me hard. I knew what it was right away. The cold had stopped me from smelling it on the door, but inside, with the heat and steam of the coffee machines warming up the air, I knew what it was. Trust me, a guy might not be able to recognize it right away, but a girl with her monthly visits from the old shark week, we know the smell of blood when it hits our nostrils.

Sorry if that sounded a little gross, but it's true when it's true. Anyway, after I realized what I was smelling, I basically went into full panic mode. I thought Miggy might have hurt himself, that he'd finally exhausted the last of his stamina and just decided to check out early. Besides, if he was so convinced of resurrection of the flesh, so convinced that he was a son of Israel, it'd be the rest that he needed before being reassembled by the breath of the Lord. I ran through the cafe, ducked under the counter hatch then ran toward the back office, all the while shouting Miggy's name. When I reached the door I found it was locked and right then I was just

convinced that he was gone. The best boss I'd ever had, the most caring, gentle, passionate person I ever knew, was now nothing more than just another casualty of the pandemic. I remember hammering on the door, finding my own sense of religion as I prayed that Miggy still had the strength or the will to help me save him. And when I heard the lock click open, it felt like God had answered my prayers. But in actual fact, it was more like the devil had answered them. There stood Miggy, covered in blood, and I mean from head to toe. And he was smiling. I remember pulling my phone out to dial 911, but

again, he smiled and just said something like, it's okay, it's not my blood. I think he expected me to put the phone down, but the piece of info just made me even more terrified. Had he heard a delivery guy? Maybe Elena or a prospective hire? I just remember taking a few steps back, feeling myself trembling while I gripped my phone, knowing I better not hang up on 911 given the circumstances. After that, he just sort of laughed at my reaction, backed up out of the door frame, then showed me that this empty coffee bean bucket that had been half filled with blood. Cassie, it's lamb's blood, he said. You got nothing to be afraid of. Only then did I actually hang up the phone after telling the waiting operator that it was nothing

but a false alarm. Well, only kind of a false alarm, because although it was definitely an emergency it was nothing the cops or EMTs could fix. There was one person I knew I could call but not until I was in the free and clear. But in that moment I needed to know what in God's name he was thinking. I guess it sounds kind of dumb that I didn't make the lamb's blood to religion connection right there and then

But you try in thinking straight when you're surprised by your blood-soaked boss after thinking he tried to finish himself I asked him again, straight up What in God's name are you doing, Miggy? And after playfully telling me not to take the Lord's name in vain That same disturbingly warm smile, he quoted the final Bible verse I'd ever heard pass his lips. Again, I had to look this up to get it word for word and this is what he said. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony. For they love not their lives, even unto death.

I just ran out of the cafe, down the block, and pulled up a number I'd saved in my contacts about a month prior. Remember I told you about Mickey's cousin picking up the phone when we tried to call him that time and he was passed out? Well, he was just as worried about him as we were, so in light of that we ended up swapping contact info just in case anything bad happened and the cousin needed to step in. I thank God we did that, honestly, because I really wouldn't have known what to do after running out. I wouldn't say I'm particularly woke or anything, but I know well how injecting police into a mental health situation could have made that thing so, so much worse. After that, his family stepped in and the next time I spoke

to his cousin, it was to tell us that they'd temporarily closed the cafe while Miggy was checked into a psychiatric hospital, but temporarily quickly became sort of permanent, and the last time I walked past the cafe before I moved back to Philly, there was a for sale sign outside. Like I said earlier, now it could be a Shake Shack or, God forbid, a Starbucks or something, and as much as the whole thing is a freaking shame, an insane shame to be honest, I'm just happy and hopeful that Miguel is finally getting the help that he so richly deserves. Bill Dwayne Wheeler Sr. was a portly man of medium height and thinning hair,

who spent the majority of his early 20s traveling around the western US. It was during this period that he fell in love with the world famous City of Sin, Las Vegas. By 2010, Bill had been married five separate times to four different women, and you might be mistaken for thinking him something of a ladies man, but ask Bill's sister Pat and you get a very different answer. Bill had no brains, she once said. He was looking for true love, so women could just about talk him into anything. Couple that with the fact that Bill was practically surrounded by beautiful young women and you start to understand why his life was something of an emotional and financial time bomb. Bill ran two businesses in the state of Washington.

One was a legitimate private investigator's business. The other was a considerably seedier grab-and-go coffee stand, where barely clothed female baristas would serve small coffees at big prices. Some of the grab-and-go regulars called it the Sexpresso Place, a place where the baristas blurred the line between tongue-in-cheek flirtatiousness and straight-up peep shows. But legal troubles stemming from the stands weren't the only controversies in Bill's life, as his eventual disappearance and assumed death would prove to be one of the most mysterious and sinister scandals

in Nevada's history. Bill might have owned businesses up in Washington, but his home was Vegas, and around 10 a.m. on May 26th of 2010, Bill landed at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport after a brief trip to the Evergreen State. Bill's brother-in-law, Mark Tetzlaff, gave him a ride to his home in Spring Valley, just west of the Vegas Strip. Bill spent the journey on the phone with his wife, Carol, and although he spent a great deal of time up north, he and his wife appeared to share a deep and emotional bond. The couple had adopted Bill's biological grandson, and Carol cared for the boy just as much as her own two sons from a previous marriage.

Yet it's evident that despite the couple's rekindled romance, Bill and Carol were married, divorced, then remarried, cracks were forming in their marriage and Bill hadn't planned to stay in Vegas for very long. After picking him up from the airport, Mark joined Bill in the garage of the Spring Valley house to fix up his prized white Mercedes. They had no luck, so instead, Bill planned on driving back to Washington in a tan 2003 Toyota Tundra. According to Carol, after returning home, she and Bill had an amiable discussion on family and finance before Bill departed for his second home, a vacant four-bedroom rental just a few miles away on West Tropicana Avenue. It was there that Bill loaded a $15,000 deluxe espresso machine onto the

Tundra's truck bed, one he intended to install at a new grab-and-go outlet back near Seattle. Later that evening, Bill began the thousand-, 16 hour drive back to Washington, but told a friend that he'd be back in Vegas before the week's end. But in reality, it was the last time anyone would see him alive. Three days later, a man on a motorcycle was passing through Victoriaville, California when they were greeted by the sight of a burned out truck. It was the exact same Toyota that Bill had been driving. The Inferno had blown out the truck's windows and turned the tan paint job to a scorched ash. Investigators determined that the fire had been deliberately started in the truck's bed, where the huge espresso machine now lay as a smoldering husk.

But there was no sign of Bill Wheeler. Half of Bill's family believed he was dead while the other half believed it was an attempt at faking his own death. Those that believed that he was still alive cited the fact that he was deeply in debt and was on the verge of forfeiting his real estate for failing to keep up with the mortgage payments. This is on top of the sizable alimony payments he owed his series of ex-wives, and that he was facing charges up in Washington for allowing his baristas to actually sell themselves, so to speak. Faking his own death would allow him to skirt all impending legal proceedings.

But what tangible evidence is there to support the fake death theory? Well, if Mark Tetzlaff is to be believed, Bill is living a life of luxury on the island of Puerto Rico. He was sending a ton of his money there, stashing it away. He later told investigating FBI agents who took his claim seriously enough to launch an investigation in conjunction with the IRS. Besides his family, law enforcement officials from three separate states are actively hoping to locate him, with some declaring that Bill is most certainly still alive. Bill's family has also stated that despite the espresso stand's supposed success, there were actually more of a burden than a boon. Some of his employees suffered from drug problems and were said to routinely steal from the registers in order to feed their habits.

They believed their father wanted an out, but was simply too proud to say so. In his mind, there was no other solution than to manufacture his own demise. They also point to the fact that cadaver dogs have yet to find a single trace of Bill's body anywhere near the I-15. Yet despite the compelling evidence of his continued existence, there are many who believe that Bill was the victim of a murderous conspiracy. He just wouldn't disappear without saying goodbye to his family. He just wouldn't, insisted Bill's sister, who agreed that his disappearance was the result of foul play. My brother's dead. We just haven't found his body yet. This is certainly supported by Bill's actions in the run-up to his disappearance,

as he was acting like a man preparing to close a chapter in his life. Bill was not only planning on opening up a used car lot up in Snohomish County, Washington. He also had an important testicular cancer surgery lined up for the week following his disappearance. It also makes no sense that a man in such a dire financial position would heavily set fire to $30,000 worth of assets in the middle of the desert. It's also clear that despite the veneer of success and stability, Bill had many enemies. When an article detailing Bill's disappearance appeared on SeattleWeekly.com, vitriolic debate erupted in the comments section.

Friends, family members, ex-employees, and business associates waged a war of words, some claiming he was a monster, with others claiming he was a good but imperfect man. Even his brother-in-law, Mark Tetzlaff, who he was apparently fairly close to, once called him a pervert who regularly practiced infidelity. Bill was also said to overindulge on the drug OxyContin as a way of lessening the pain of his chemotherapy, and many noted that he seemed to be taking way more of the drug than his prescriptions allowed. This could mean he did business with drug dealers in both Washington and Nevada, and we all know what dealers do to folks who run up bills they can't pay.

Not only that, but Bill's treatment of his employees might also have caused a great deal of offense. He was said to be selling OxyContin to some of his drug-addicted baristas, and on more than one occasion, he faced accusations of violent misconduct in the workplace. One of the women convicted of public indecency was just 18 years old, with her close family having no idea she was involved in such a thing. Suddenly learning this would certainly make a father or brother extremely angry, possibly even angry enough to inflict physical harm. As far as law enforcement are concerned, foul play simply cannot be ruled out. Police also noted the inconsistencies in statements made by his wife Carol in the

period following his disappearance. An official from the U.S. Department of Justice said that none of their stories of his disappearance coincide with telephone reports or neighbor's testimony. Dana Fitzpatrick, who worked at one of his coffee shacks, had stated multiple times that she believes Bill was murdered. He told me he had to go to Vegas for a short business trip and that he'd be returning four days later to go to Chelan with Michelle. Michelle was apparently Bill's girlfriend and the woman he was planning on leaving his wife for. Dana also said that Bill showed her and other employees a picture of Carol before telling them, this woman is not to be allowed anywhere near his business. Pat Thurbrush, the sister who argues Bill is deceased, has also made multiple claims that

Carol had something to do with his death. She called Carol ruthless, and claimed she long harbored feelings of deep resentment towards her brother. He said he'd call as soon as he left Carol's, she said. So he had to be already dead not to call. I don't think he ever left there alive. Yet if that were true, that would mean Mark Tetzlaff was lying about Bill departing Vegas and the tan Toyota. But what would Mark have to gain from such a lie? Well, everything. Following his disappearance, not only did Carol inherit all of Bill's businesses, she made Mark himself the general manager of all of his Vegas-based outlets. It seems no coincidence that Bill disappeared just as he put plans in motion to divorce Carol, and it was Mark who was quick to produce a 2009 insurance policy that confirmed Bill and Carol as legally married.

Bill's children from his second marriage also claim foul play, with Bill Jr. stating that, I have no doubt that Carol did something to my father. She is motivated by greed and money. This is no mere hearsay either, but something Bill was happy to swear in front of a court of law if given the opportunity. However, even with a chance to do so, he suddenly declined, and this might have something to do with the fact that Carroll is the sole legal guardian of Bill Jr.'s eight-year-old son. This was done while Bill Jr. was enlisted in the Air Force and was mainly the result of a vengeful move from Bill Jr.'s ex-wife, who was also said to have forged his signature on the court documents. Carroll, who has since renamed the coffee stands Carroll's Espresso, made a counter-statement which read,

Bill Jr. has always had a hatred for me since his father adopted my two sons, making him no longer the oldest. Also, my 8-year-old is afraid of him for threatening to put him in the trunk of his car as a punishment. Bill Jr. has flat out called this a lie and claims that Carol has poisoned his son against him. He also claims that he had a good relationship with his father and was shocked to hear that Bill had written in his will that, I specifically desire that my son, Bill Dwayne Wheeler, Jr. receive nothing whatsoever from my estate. It makes sense that the expansion of Bill's family circle might lead to his other children receiving less of a share, but to cut him out of the will completely seems very unusual. My dad had no reason to run, and he left me in charge of the coffee stands before he vanished, Junior later said. Sure, he was behind on bills, but he always was behind on bills,

and he always paid up. His patterns were very consistent, and I know this because we were in constant communication. Then all of a sudden, he just vanishes. Mark Tett's laugh felt such an overwhelming urge to dispel the violent rumors that he held an interview outside of one of Carol's coffee stands, stating that neither he nor Carol had anything to do with Bill Sr.'s death. Carol isn't going to give them any money, he said, referring to Bill's kids and sister. That's why they say she hired someone to kill him, but that's categorically false. Mark once again asserted that Bill was alive and had been funneling money into offshore accounts, even producing paperwork which supposedly confirmed it.

Mark was also able to confirm that after inheriting Bill's businesses, he discovered that he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. I just paid off $50,000, Mark said during the interview, and that didn't even put a dent in the total amount. I bet my last dollar that Bill was trying to escape the IRS. They've been all over the grab-and-go offices for years now. The FBI even got involved at one point. If it was me, that's exactly what I'd do. Fake my death, burn up a few assets to make it look real. He might have fooled his kids, but he hasn't fooled us. As disturbing and mysterious as this case is, when seeing it from Bill Jr.'s perspective, it takes on a deep melancholy.

Bill Jr. seems to have spent the majority of his adult life emulating his missing father. Citing his law enforcement experience in the military, Jr. opened a background check firm, Century Investigation Services, just like the one his father ran. He also opened his own espresso stand in the Everett Mall area of Washington, which he named Gravengo, just like his father's. It's also clear that, out of all of Bill Wheeler's relatives, his oldest biological son had been the most active in tracking him down. He was discovered that after 10.32 on the day of his disappearance, his father's phone was completely inactive, and this is contrary to Mark Tesloff's claims that Bill made calls to Carol and his businesses after he arrived at his Spring Valley home.

Junior had also discovered that on May 29th, three days after his father's disappearance, his cell phone showed signs of malfunctioning. This is long after investigators claimed that his truck was set alight, meaning someone was in possession of the phone, destroying it when they determined it to be a liability. This had divided investigators, with some claiming this is evidence that Bill retained his cell phone, despite one being found in the Toyota's burned out wreckage, while others claimed it as proof that the phone remained on Bill's body until he was either cremated or disposed of in some other fashion, days after his supposed disappearance. Perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence that Bill Jr. has presented

are his photographs from a visit to the final place his father was thought to have been, the vacant rental house in Vegas where the espresso machine was stored. In the presence of Vegas police officers, Junior took pictures of red stains on a carpet, as well as gaping holes that appeared to have been smashed in the walls. Several bottles of bleach were on a countertop, most were completely empty. Even the accompanying police officers believed it looked like a crime scene, and when Junior told them he believed it was the site of his father's murder, they agreed it made for a very convincing argument. When confronted by police, Mark Tetzlaff claimed

the stain was from an earlier ink spill, and that tenants had left the house in a filthy condition, hence all the bleach bottles. But that would make for a rather convenient coincidence, I'm sure you'll agree. As for escaping the Puerto Rico and the much-discussed offshore accounts, Bill Jr. claimed that he poured through his father's records long before Carol and Mark ever arrived in Washington. There were no signs of any money funneling, secret amounts, or death-faking intrigue whatsoever. In fact, Junior claims that the most powerful evidence of his father's murder is that Carolyn Mark had already faked a bunch of paperwork before he even disappeared, thus proving premeditation and conspiracy to murder. At the end of the day, the only thing

we know for sure is that investigators from a variety of different agencies have been completely unable to decipher what amounts to a dense and enduring riddle. Just about every theory imaginable has been floated before them in order to explain Bill's disappearance, but the bottom line is that no one knows what happened to him, nor are we ever likely to find out. Las Vegas has one of the most sophisticated missing persons tax force in the western world, as more than 2,000 people go missing there every year, but even they have been unable to find him. Perhaps the general feeling is best summed up by a quote from Bill's sister, Pat, who once said, I just want to find my brother's body.

That way, we can all be at peace. We can all just put this behind us. Back when I was in college down in Florida, I used to visit this one particular coffee shop on the regular to get my morning gel. It wasn't so much because the coffee was good, which it was, or that it was super cheap, it also was that. It was because one of the employees, a girl named Demi. Demi was a Cubanita, which at first I thought was a cocktail, but turns out it's a name for Cuban girls. She was American born, but her parents came over from Cuba during the whole communism thing, and she was without a doubt the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. I grew up in small town Maine, and where I came from you just didn't see girls like Demi. Most of the girls in my high school were stick thin whereas Demi was well not so much. She was as my kid cousin would call thick with two c's and I was crushing on her hard from the first moment I saw her. She was also a very unusual barista and that was because

she didn't drink coffee. She didn't even like coffee from what she told me. But somehow she had a crazy talent for making it. I have no idea how that works, but go figure. Stranger things happen, right? Anyway, I was pretty shy when first talking to her. Honestly, kind of intimidated, but she was so friendly that it wasn't long before I felt confident to lay a few compliments on her. Nothing too forward, just like, hey, I like your hair today, or that bracelet's so pretty, where'd you get it from?

Then one time, she hit me back with, you're looking pretty good yourself, with this cute little grin, and then I knew I might have a shot with her. I was so nervous when I asked her out, like I was kind of terrified that she'd say she had a boyfriend or just wasn't into me that way. I mean, a girl like that always has a boyfriend, am I right? Well, this one didn't, and I couldn't believe it, but it was true. She'd been out of a relationship for around six months, and it turned out my timing was incredibly perfect. We ended up going to this place called Havana's. Not the most creative name for a Cuban cantina but Jesus the food was just out of this world. I had this thing called friccas which is definitely not how it's spelled but that's

how you say it. And throughout the course of the date I got a crash course on Cuban culture which is honestly so cool when you get to know it. I know there's a rivalry between the US and Cuba but there so shouldn't be, we're way more similar than you'd figure. Anyway that was the start of mine and Demi's little relationship and for a few sweet weeks it was basically perfect. One day I decided to stop at the coffee shop around closing so we could hang before getting drinks at a bar that was notoriously bad at carding. Place is closed down now,

rest in peace Jango's. I'd done this a few times and I always offered to help clean up, but Demi always turned down the offer. She was sweet like that. So I just sat at one of the tables, flicking through one of the college newspapers. It was right near that, so I just sat at one of the tables, flicking through one of the college newspapers. It was right near campus, so they stocked the paper. I hear the door open, and I look up to see this guy walking in, striding with purpose too, looking like he was extremely angry, which is exactly what he was. Feeling kind of protective of Demi, I was kind of like, hey yo buddy, we're closed here. Even though I wasn't an employee or anything. He just looks at me, then looks at Demi and says, this the guy? Like he's totally disgusted by me or something.

I couldn't help myself, half offended by the comment and half wanting to look tough in front of Demi, but I just responded by saying, yeah, this guy. Who are you? Literally as soon as I said that, the guy reaches into his pocket and pulls out what looked like a Glock. I'm not a gun guy, so it literally could have been any kind of pistol, but I'll just call it a Glock for now because it's easier. Anyways, I'm not kidding, and I just about peed my pants. I know that's not exactly tough of me to admit, but it's the truth. I'd never had a person point a gun at me like that before. Sure, I'd seen guns growing up, but having one actually pointed at you when you know it's loaded. Jesus Christ man, that's a whole other feeling. Then the next thing I hear literally blows my mind out of my skull. It's Demi and she says all terrified, Marco please don't. That's when my stomach dropped and I just knew I was

about to either get shot or see Demi getting shot. Demi had mentioned Marco in passing and had chewed him out as being her super jealous ex. All I knew about him was that he was doing 8 months in county for beating some guy over something really pointless and now I guess he was out of jail. I know this is cowardly but when he turned back to Demi and started screaming at her, gun pointed in her face, I actually thought to myself for a moment, I could just run. I could just bolt and he might not be able to hit me with any bullets. But then the reality of letting her down, or letting her die, hit me like a ton of bricks and I knew I had to stay. I couldn't live with myself otherwise. And after that, I suddenly got all weirdly calm. It sounds nuts, I know, but once you kind of get it into your head that you're going to die,

or at least get really badly hurt, this weird sense of calm comes over you. I heard the same thing from a pilot friend of mine years later, who said he had the engine of a single prop plane cut out on him in the middle of training flight. He was panicking like a rat in a trap at first, but then he said he was like, no point fighting it. If I'm going to get through this, I gotta be chill. Must be some kind of mechanism in the brain or whatever. Human bodies are incredible, right? So, like I said, I suddenly got this confidence about me. I remember standing up, facing the guy and saying something like, this isn't you, dude. You're not a killer. You don't gotta go back to jail for this. I think that just about made him madder. The fact that

I knew he'd been locked up and he turned to Demi like, you were talking about me? Then he tried to grab her over the counter, but she backed off in time and he missed. Right then he points the gun at her again, but I barked at him to get his attention something like, hey Marco, right here buddy, the problem's with me. Unfortunately he was in hard agreement with that, and immediately spins around to aim that Glock at me. He then starts calling me an effing Yuma, like, as if I'm about to let some Yuma mother-after take my effing girl from me. I didn't find out till later, but Yuma is what Cubans call all Americans, and I guess Demi was just too sweet to tell me that. Anyway, the next thing I know, Marco sends the grip of the glock smashing into my face and I remember crashing back into one of the tables, falling over it backwards before landing in a heap on the floor.

It didn't hurt right away, but the impact had me almost out for the count and as I reached up to my forehead and saw blood when I brought my hand back down from it, that same sort of fear hit me again. He's screaming about Yuma this and Yuma that and I hear this chick chuck noise like the pistol being armed and I figure that was for me. But then, get this, right when he's about to shoot me, right as I'm expecting to just suddenly not exist anymore, I see Demi holding something, almost leaning over the counter. I don't know what she said to the guy, cause it was in Spanish and mine was god awful back then, but whatever it was, it was enough to draw his attention just long enough for her to throw something hot and liquid right in his face.

The scream he let out was like nothing I'd ever heard before. It was like something had erupted from deep down inside of him, something that sounded barely even human. I figured she'd just thrown some hot coffee in his face. I was right about to scream in her favor when I actually got a look at Marco's face. Something was stuck to it, like a kind of crystal-y brown gunk and it was actually steaming as he tried and failed to get it off. She screamed that we had to leave as she hopped the counter and ran towards the door. I followed, head bleeding and out into the street. We ran down the sidewalk to a bodega,

ran inside and called the cops. Then as she's on the phone with 911, in between talking, I asked what she threw in Marco's face. She gave me this real guilty look before she kept talking so I didn't find out what it was until later when she was explaining what Yuma meant. It was hot coffee alright, but there was a whole bunch of sugar in there too, and for those that don't know, that's the same kind of stuff they do in prison to the really bad prisoners. It sticks to your skin and cooks it right to the muscle, and it leaves absolutely horrific scarring. I normally wouldn't have wished for my worst enemy, but we were in a kind of life or death situation, so I suppose there was just

nothing else to do. Okay, I just realized how long this thing has gotten, so I'll wrap it up as best I can. Now given the circumstances, Marco was taken to the hospital and kept under police watch. Then once he was finally ready to be discharged, he was arrested for what he did. According to Demi, he didn't end up going back to jail, but instead went to a nut house somewhere in another state. I guess whatever face he had left just messed up his mind, and that figures if you ask me. Me and Demi did stay together for a while after, but broke up when she ended up getting accepted into a college up in the northeast. It sucked. I really loved her but people just move

on I guess and LDRs aren't something we were capable of. I have this pretty cool looking scar these days right up near my hairline and I think I have a pretty cool slash scary story to go with it. I hope you find time to read this on one of your videos sometimes, although I'm not too sure where it would fit. Maybe psycho ex-boyfriends, maybe. Anyways, love your content and keep up the good work. I used to visit this one Starbucks here in the UK and I still do from time to time. But I had a really bad experience there once that put me off going for almost a whole year. So it was this really hot summer in 2018. I don't know if many other English people listen but they might remember how hot it was. I'm not usually one to go for a frappe but oh my god it was just so roasting outside that I needed something to cool myself off. So instead of my usual venti latte, I went for a frappuccino to keep chill.

Not just that, but the staff had really ramped up their air conditioning to keep themselves nice and cool too, so walking in and feeling that artificial breeze hit me, and basically thinking ice cream coffee, I was in heaven. Anyway, just as I was enjoying my frarap, I get a tap on the shoulder. It was an older man, but that's not hard considering I was 19, and he gently places another frap on my table. Then, in a way that was actually quite sweet, he says, A girl as pretty as you deserves a treat on a day like this. Keep yourself nice and cool, sweetheart. This one's on me.

I actually thought it was quite a nice gesture at first. A little sus, but still very nice of him. So I did what any polite young woman would do. I just thanked him, but had no real intention of drinking it, and only because I was so full from the first one. But then as soon as the guy walked out of the Starbucks, I looked up to see one of the baristas at my table. I can't remember what exactly it was he said, not word for word anyway, but this is basically

the gist of it. He told me that he felt he had to warn me, because the man who'd given me the drink had literally gone into the toilet with it like minutes before he handed it to me. At first they hadn't thought anything of him ordering the same drink, hot day and all that, and he made no indication that he was intending to give it to anyone else. But then, thank god the barista was alert enough to notice what he'd done immediately after receiving it, because as he said, he literally could have put anything in there and we'd all be completely unaware. What if I'd actually had the room to drink it, maybe been a little bit more naive or something? There could have been drugs in that frap and that's about the nicest thing I can possibly think of that could have slipped in

there while in the bloody toilet for god's sakes. I know this probably isn't the scariest story as you get sent, but it's an incident that's stuck with me for literally years now. Random guys can be just so bloody creepy. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon. And maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt.

And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends. And I'll see you again soon.