The Lets Read Podcast - 284: MY HUSBAND LIVED A SINISTER DOUBLE LIFE | 10 True Scary Stories | EP 272

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about private investigators, new towns & wilderness guides HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsRead ♫ Music, Audio Mix & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by: - Betterhelp - IQ Bar

Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz. Make instant deposits or same-day withdrawals. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly.

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. Then MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. These days, I can do anything from my phone. Book a vacation, order a meal from a five-star restaurant, buy and trade stocks. But maybe the most amazing thing I can do is make my dirty laundry disappear and then reappear perfectly washed and folded. I have Rinse to thank for that. I just schedule a pickup in the Rinse app or at Rinse.com. A Rinse valet comes to get my clothes, and before I know it, they're back, crisply folded and ready to wear. They even do dry cleaning, which is returned hanging in a nice Rinse garment bag. And with Rinse, my satisfaction is guaranteed. If for any reason I'm not happy, they'll reclean my clothes for free.

Best of all, Rinse saves me tons of time each week. That's time I get to do something I love versus something I have to do. So if you want to save loads of time by not doing loads of laundry, remember, there's an app for that. Rinse. Sign up now and get $20 off your first order at Rinse.com. That's R-I-N-S-E dot com. I spent 16 years in the Marine Corps, and when I got out around the 2017 holiday period, I felt kind of lost. I drove Uber for a while, helped an old platoon mate get his landscaping business up and running, and then dipped my toe into celebrity bodyguarding. But if working those jobs taught me anything, it's that I'm just not a people person. Working with Marines is different. There was structure to it, discipline, and no offense to the general civilian population, but y'all are animals. Not that Marines aren't, but driving people around, dealing with paparazzi, and having

suburban housewives demand more respect than most Marine Corps officers would, that was a whole other level of ass pain. It got to the point where I was seriously considering to move into private security, which was something I promised myself I'd never get into. But then funnily enough, the ex-Marine I spoke to, who had a link to the industry, ended up suggesting something completely different. And once I heard it, I couldn't keep my mind off of it. He said he knew a guy that had been in a similar situation, needed to transition back to civilian life, but more conventional jobs just weren't clicking for him. The guy worked a ton of

different jobs, hated every one of them. Then, almost at random, he decides to try being a wilderness guide for a little while. That was four years ago. His buddy had been a guide ever since up near Marble Mountain, said it was the best decision he ever made. I asked the ex-marine guy a whole bunch of questions about it and he told me what he knew. He said his buddy basically worked for himself, so he set his own hours and had the freedom to pick his own clients. Then all he did for a living was hike with folks, camp with them, and impart all the survival skills he'd learned in the military in the process. People paid him handsomely too, it wasn't just some minimum wage thing. I guess his

veteran status helped him out in that respect, but he was making great money all the same. We talked about the whole private security thing too, but after we went our separate ways, it was the wilderness guide thing that really stuck in my mind. About three months later, I was driving up to Fresno for a job interview at a small veteran owned wilderness tourist company. The interview went great. I impressed the boss enough to get me hired and I've been at that place ever since. I guess the reason I'm telling you all of this is because I thought working up in Fresno would be the beginning of my quiet and peaceful life as a civilian. I'd done two tours of Iraq,

one tour of Afghanistan, saw my fair share of casualties, and lost count of the number of times I'd been shot at. I'd always be a Marine, but I was happy not to have that life anymore. I didn't want the violence, or the craziness, or the danger. But in taking one particular job at this wilderness guiding company, I somehow ended up having a brush with something far stranger and far more frightening than anything I ever came across in the Marine Corps. It all started when my boss got a call from a solo hiker that we'll just call Chuck. Chuck wasn't the guy's name, but for a whole bunch of reasons, internet crazies being just one,

I'm going to change the names of some people and places to protect the affected. Chuck wanted to hire a wilderness guide to take him to a certain hilltop out in one of the forests east of Fresno. He wanted to hike out there, camp overnight, and then head back the way he came. The easiest route to the place was about 18 miles off-road and since Chuck wasn't an experienced hiker, I figured we could do around 9 miles the first day then make camp, then walk the other 9 miles the next day before getting to the place Chuck actually wanted to camp. He was in his mid-30s, wiry, and not the most athletic of people. So when we met for the first time to walk him through the

journey that we'd laid out for him, I knew that I'd made the right decision to take it easy on him. We'd be gone for three nights. We'd provide everything he needed in terms of food, water, and equipment. All he needed to do was show up in suitable clothing and we'd take care of everything else. That first meeting was a Tuesday afternoon and it was an important one too because if either of us decided that we wouldn't be comfortable guiding someone into the wilderness then the hike was a no-go. We never took anyone we figured would be in danger to themselves while out in the wilderness, not just because we were afraid of lawsuits, because it's straight up irresponsible. But then when Chuck stopped by

the little strip mall office that we were operating out of, he seemed fine. He paid attention during the brief, respected the fact that I had the final say when it came to keeping him safe, and was polite and well-spoken while he agreed to our other terms too. There wasn't a single warning sign that gave us any indication of what might happen, or what he might do. And so that Friday morning, I met Chuck at the office, and we drove down towards our line of departure together in my truck. We set off just after 6.30 in the morning, so neither of us were in the mood for talking on the drive out to the park, but after we got going on the hike, we got into a little small talk. Chuck asked

about my time in the Marine Corps and I told him a story or two. PG-13 of course so not to freak him out or anything. After that I asked what Chuck did and he told me that he was some kind of professor. Not the teaching kind though. He was like the researching kind at a university. He told me he specialized in physics, but I'll be damned if I could tell you exactly what he said. It was something like something something theory, and I actually laughed out loud when he asked if I've heard of it or not. He didn't figure I had, but he asked all the same, then he gave me a little breakdown of the kinds of things he researched. Again, I can't say that I could ever recall any of it, it all sounded like mumbo-jumbo to me, but you can tell that he was a seriously intelligent dude and that the work that he did was pretty important. Not long after, we got onto

why he wanted to go out onto this particular hilltop, and for the sake of ease, I'll just call it Beartooth Mountain. Generally speaking, we didn't ask exactly why people wanted to visit this or that mountain because the answer was usually a variation on we heard it's got nice views. Beartooth was no different. It had awesome views and it was definitely much easier to get to than most other peaks, but I guess I just found myself curious if it had some kind of deeper significance to him. I feel like Chuck was open and honest with me, right up until we hit that point of the conversation,

because for the first time, I felt like his answer was a little dodgy. He said an uncle used to take him camping out that way when he was a kid, which on the surface sounded like a good enough reason. But if that was me, and I wanted to take my little nephew somewhere camping to introduce him to the great outdoors, Beartooth Mountain is so isolated and such a tough hike that it's just about one of the last places I'd think to take him. Between Stanislaus, Yosemite, Sierra, and Sequoia, the parks and forests around Fresno got to be home to at least a thousand different campgrounds, most of which are very family friendly. So for the guy's uncle

to march him all the way out to Beartooth, I figured that he was either ex-military or verging on abusive. But no. They got along great and he wasn't any sort of veteran. Chuck just said that he and his family enjoyed the outdoors. Enjoying the outdoors is one thing, but making your kids march out into the deep woods over difficult terrain, that's like survivalist level kind of stuff. And like I said, Chuck didn't strike me as any survivalist. But you see, while I might have been thinking all of that, I'm not dumb or rude enough to just come out and say it. If a client doesn't want me to know why they want to go someplace and they decide to make something up on the fly to protect their privacy while remaining polite,

then what kind of a jerk would that make me to go and pry any further? So the way it went was more like him saying the thing about his uncle, me just being like, cool, alright, and then the topic of conversation just kind of naturally flowed onto other things. Chuck was pretty good company actually, at least for that first day and night anyway. Like I said earlier, he definitely wasn't used to the physical strain of hiking long distances, but he showed a heck of a lot of character at times. I was in no doubt that we'd hit our nine mile goal by day's end, and when we did, he was about ready to sleep standing up and was snoring by 9.30. And that was fine by me. I'd rather get an early night than stay up talking or drinking like some clients want to and end up paying for it in the morning. So after dousing the fire and setting up a few bear alarms, I decided to get myself an early night too, thinking that the next day was

going to be some more relaxed hiking. But I could not have been more wrong. The next morning, Chuck was awake and ready to roll before I was, which was great, and as the day went on, he seemed to get more and more keyed up the closer we got to our destination. He was like a kid in the backseat of a car on the way to Disney World, basically asking me, are we there yet, every half hour or so, until finally, we hit the crest of a hill, broke through some trees, and there she was, Beartooth Mountain. Like I said, I've switched up some of the names here to save you any trouble, but Beartooth really did look like a big old bear's tooth, just this badass looking mountain with a sharply curved rocky peak. It's pretty common for clients

to get excited about arriving at their destination and if Chuck's story was true, then I understand why he was psyched to be reunited with a place that had all kinds of nostalgia about it for him. But to me, that's not how he acted. It was more like a religious thing. Like how I imagine a person would act if they saw something sacred. I kind of feel like if that was me, I'd have done a little vocal reminiscing or something. You know, like, I remember this one time Uncle Bob said X, or this reminds me when Uncle Bob did Y. But that whole time, Chucky never once brought up any kind of memory or story from his childhood.

I was so curious at that period that I even asked him if any memorable trips came to mind, or if he had any particular treasured memories or anything like that. Not in a confrontational way, just, you know, making conversation. He gave me some wishy-washy answers like all of the, I guess, it just feels good to be back. But by then, I could tell something was kind of off. Not so off I wanted to turn around or anything. Like I said earlier, a client is entitled to their privacy, you know. I just hoped that things wouldn't get any weirder. But boy, they did. I figured Chuck might have a particular place that he wanted to camp, so on the approach, I asked him if he had any place in mind. It turns out he did have a place in mind.

A very specific place, and to find it, he pulled out a laminated computer printout that had a bunch of notes written on it in sharpie. I could read maps well enough to know that I was looking at Bear Mountain and the surrounding area, but then I have no idea what all the notes and stuff said. Some of it looked kind of like math, other parts looked like some kind of shorthand and before I could ask what any of it meant, Chuck pointed to a spot on the map that had a colored dot on it. There was a bunch of these colored dots all over the map, maybe 10 or 12 of them, all spread out about a mile or two apart.

But Chuck pointed to just one and said that he wanted to camp somewhere around there. I told him I could take him to any spot he wanted, give or take about 50 yards, but I also wanted to know what all the colored dots meant. Chuck replied that they were all places he and his uncle used to camp back when he was a kid. And that was the point that I actually started buying into Chuck's story a little. I got an ex whose kid was real quiet and shy, but very organized and hyper-focused on whatever he was doing. I can't remember if there was a specific name for what he had, but I know that he was probably on the autism spectrum. My point is, I figured Chuck might have been the same way, and that's why he seemed a little off. But once again, I was there in a professional capacity, so to get paid, I just

had to get him to Beartooth and get him out again. If it wasn't impacting our safety, then it didn't really matter to me. So I get Chuck to the campsite he wanted, then after studying his map a little to make sure that we were in exactly the right place, we set up our tents again, made a campfire, and then made dinner. Once he knew we were in the right place, whatever the hell that meant, Chuck seemed to calm down a little bit. But unlike the first night, when he crashed almost right after dinner, he was still up around sunset when I myself was starting to get drowsy. We just talked till then, and not about anything in particular either, just this and that, and like I said, he seemed chilled out again. Nothing he did or said gave me any cause for concern.

I felt like a new stepdad or something, telling him not to stay up too late, but he said he wanted to enjoy the night sky a little and wouldn't be too tired come sun up. I said alright, climbed into my tent, and then went to sleep. A couple of hours later, I woke up to hear the sound of a tent unzipping. I remember sitting up just to make sure that it wasn't my own tent being unzipped, and then realized that the noise must have been coming from Chuck's. Now, I cannot overemphasize how common it is for dudes to wake up in the middle of the night and need to take a leak. So 99 times out of 100, hearing someone's tent opening up after dark is no reason to be concerned.

But even so, I called out to Chuck to see if all was good, and he replied that he was fine before saying, thanks man. I know this might sound kind of cheesy or whatever, but the way he said it, it sounded real heartfelt, you know? Like he really appreciated me looking out for him like that. I was half asleep at the time so I just told him, no problem buddy, and then went back to sleep thinking it was nothing more than what it was. Nowadays, I think he was thanking me for a whole lot more.

And the next morning, I woke up, put my boots on, and then the first thing I always do each morning when I'm on a trip like that is check on the client. I never just stick my head into their tent or anything, and I don't unzip their tent if it's zipped up neither. I'll just stand outside, gently trying to wake them up. I call Chuck's name once, twice, then three times, and nothing even moves inside the tent. At that point, I'm starting to worry that Chuck has had some kind of medical emergency, so I kneel down, unzip his tent, and open up the flap to find that it's empty. I'm still trying to rationalize things,

so I assume Chuck has gone for a walk or something. I don't see any boots, so I'm assuming that he's wearing them and that he's off taking an early morning whiz or something. I don't see any boots, so I'm assuming that he's wearing them and that he's off taking an early morning whiz or something. So off I go, searching for Chuck, having to kind of mentally talk myself out of a panic. I circled the camp, calling out his name, but Chuck's nowhere to be found. So I walk a larger circle, calling out a little louder and that panicked feeling is coming back as more and more time goes by. I keep walking that loop, mentally preparing myself for some kind of emergency when something catches my eye. And at first I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing, or actually it was more like I didn't want to believe it. Between these two trees about 50 yards down the slope was a pile of clothes,

and it looked like they were sitting on a pair of boots too. As you can imagine, my first thought that goes through my mind is, Chuck's gone nuts, stripped naked, and then walked off into the woods. Which was not something I wanted to have to deal with. Someone going missing, that's bad, really bad. Someone going missing after taking off all of their clothes, I think we can agree that that's a whole other level of crap hitting the fan. So, right after I see the clothes, and I'm 100% sure they're Chuck's, I start off on emergency procedures. So that's call the rangers, call my boss,

call everyone I possibly can, then get a head start on searching for our client. Situations like that are always time critical, but then my situation was even more so, for obvious reasons. So I went running back to where Chuck's clothes were, and started looking for any signs of a trail. Now here's where I'll admit that I've never been much of a tracker, so all I really did was walk off in the direction I figured he might have gone, but I didn't find anything but empty woods. I had to wait until the rangers showed up before we could cover any real ground, and by the time the cops and the search and rescue folks arrived,

there was no reason for me to be there anymore once I'd given an officer a statement. I felt awful. Having a client go missing like that is the nightmare scenario for any wilderness guide. It's our one job, to keep people safe, and when we fail at that one thing, it's like a punch in the gut. I talked to my boss at length about the whole thing thing and he gave me a week off to get my head straight. He was closing the office out of respect for Chuck's family and since he was a big part of the volunteer search parties, there was only one other person to take on the workload. So, better we just close and help out. I wanted to be there myself, but my boss, being the wise man that he is,

told me it'd be better if I stayed away and put my faith in the Rangers, the state S&R, and everyone else they had out there looking for Chuck. I was just one guy. And what was one guy versus all kinds of helicopters, sniffer dogs, and specially trained trackers who'd put even force recon guys to shame. I was told over and over again that it wasn't my fault. That I'd done everything right and that I had nothing to feel guilty over. But then came the day when, even with the cops being so cool and respectful,

I could tell people were starting to doubt my innocence. The day the cops came to ask me a few questions, I figured it was just all follow-up stuff or questions they hadn't thought to ask me yet or whatever. But then, there came a point during the questioning where I realized that I wasn't being looked upon as an innocent party anymore. I guess the detectives were just eliminating potential suspects, but it was pretty damn chilling knowing that they were considering the possibility that it was me that was to blame for Chuck going missing. I actually said to them at one point, look, I'm an open book, I got nothing to hide,

and I'll come help with the search effort if you want me to. They acted innocent, like they were only there to ask a few questions and nothing more, but I could tell that they were putting on the good cop routine in hopes that I'd slip up and change my story. That way, they could justify focusing on me as their number one suspect. I told my boss what was happening or what I thought was happening, and he just told me to sit tight and ride it out. After that, I got pretty much all my info from him directly, and over the weeks that followed, this is what he told me to sit tight and ride it out. After that, I got pretty much all my info from him directly, and over the weeks that followed, this is what he told me. I was only completely eliminated as a suspect when the cops found no DNA but trucks on his abandoned clothes, which suggested that he

just got up in the early hours of the morning, walked down the hilltop a little, and then walked off into the woods before taking off all of his clothes. The search and rescue tracker dogs followed his scent trail to a shallow stream, then lost it, suggesting that he washed himself in the water for some reason. Some suggested this was deliberate, as in he knew it would confuse the tracker dogs when it came time to look for him. But that made it seem like Chuck was in his right mind when he was walking off through the woods without a stitch of clothing on him. And to the likes of me and my boss, Chuck must have totally lost his mind if he thought that

he could do something like that and not be in real danger. I asked my boss if the cops must have known something that we didn't about Chuck's state of mind. He said he had no idea, that he'd been involved in a couple of missing person cases before and that Chuck's made no sense to him whatsoever. In the other two cases, the person was found safe and fine within 24 hours and both involved were hikers who got a little too confident after wandering off the trails. People figured that the same thing would happen with Chuck, as without any suitable shoes there's no way that he couldn't gotten so far that the search teams wouldn't pick him up. But that's the thing, no one found a single trace of him anywhere in the surrounding area. It was like he just dropped off the face of the earth. After a few weeks the search was called, and although California's Park Service promised that they'd continue to keep an eye out for him, people eventually just accepted that Chuck was gone.

I tried to move on. I tried to just file it away with all the other bullcrap I've filed away over the years. But all the unanswered questions almost drove me crazy. I got a lot of closure with the stuff that I went through in the Marine Corps and at least before I separated the top brass were pouring a ton of money into counseling, psychologists and all kinds of things to fix the mental wounds and not just the physical ones. But that whole process of reconciling what's happened to you, that's all way easier when you have some

actual answers. X was in a certain place, and then Y happened, and Z was the result. But with the Chuck thing, nothing made sense. There were no answers. His disappearance was never solved, and thinking about it caused me a hell of a lot of grief for a long, long time. And on top of that, Chuck's not the only person to have gone missing in that area of the forest. There have been a bunch of unexplained disappearances in that area and sometimes I can't help but wonder if they're somehow connected to Chuck's. For the longest time, my best friend since childhood was obsessed with northern British Columbia up in Canada. I guess to some people that might sound like an odd place to become fixated on, but once I saw some of the pictures on her Instagram feed posted by hiking influencers who often visited the region, I started to understand why. Northern BC is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, and although Lana,

my BFF, wasn't like an active hiker or anything, She fell in love with the place. She said it was one of her dreams to visit Atlin Provincial Park, and all because of this mountain that they called the Cathedral. Just below the peak, there's like a strip of flat land with a small lake on it that turns piercing blue in the summer, and Lana was just totally obsessed with it. She had one photo of it as her phone background for months on end, and then when she finally switched it up for another, it was yet another picture of the cathedral. The last straw was when she started saying things like, it sucks I'll never get to visit. I don't have anyone to go with. I guess I just wanted to be that kind of friend that helped

her dreams come true, so I started looking in how to get there. I found out that we could catch a seaplane to a place called Peggy's Island, and from there, a wilderness tourist company could take us all the way over to the foothills of the cathedral by boat. After that, it was really just a case of climbing the cathedral's slopes, which apparently weren't all that steep, and then there you go. We were at my best friend's number one favorite location on earth, and a place she thought that she'd never, ever see. I figured if I planned the whole thing in secret, told her to expect a weekend vacation to Cancun around the date of her 29th birthday, and then actually pulled the whole thing off, I'd be the greatest friend in the history of friends. It took a load of saving and planning, but eventually, I was able to spring the surprise on her. And for months, I'd been telling her that we were headed down to Mexico for a few days in

the sun, which is how I made sure that she had a valid passport without alerting her to my real plan. Then, on the very same morning that we were due to fly down to Cancun, I got to see her face when I told her that we weren't headed to Mexico. We were headed to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island, where we'd catch a seaplane all the way up to Peggy's Island and the cathedral. And she was ecstatic. And although it meant that she had to totally repack, I'd made her dream come true. But if I'd have known what I was getting us into, like actually getting us into, I wouldn't have been so happy at all. We caught our flights up to Vancouver, made our way to Port Hardy, and then flew all the way up to northern BC in our very own tin bucket of a chartered seaplane. That flight alone could have made for

its own scary story, but we made it up to Peggy Island safely and set up our tents at one of the campsites they had there. After that, we had our first face-to-face with the person that'd be our tour guide the following day. Charles was around the same age as Lana and I, late 20s or early 30s, and to be totally honest, he was a very beautiful man. You could tell that he worked out a bunch and wore a tight ranger-style uniform to show it off, but he also pulled it off too. He had deep brown eyes and a mustache that somehow didn't make him look like a creep, but only more masculine. He was handsome, charming, funny, and we thought that we'd hit a total jackpot with him being assigned as our tour guide. And after walking us through the plan for the next morning, we went back to our campsite and relaxed until it was time to sleep. The next

morning, we met up with Charles bright and early, had a little hot breakfast over at the tour center, and then climbed into the boat that took us across the lake to where the cathedral was. Charles was just as charming as he'd been the day before, even in spite of it being so early in the morning, and he even took us on a small tour of the lake, stopping so we could take pictures before heading over to the shore on the other side. It took us a while to get up to the flat part of the mountain. We'd been going hiking together in the run-up to the trip, putting Lana through some unexpected mountain climbing training.

But even with all we'd done, hiking up the cathedral was tough. We were spent by the time we reached the flat section that we'd seen so many times on Instagram. But when we did, it was every bit as magical as in the pictures, which meant each of us got very emotional. Charles just watched on with a smile, letting us have our little moment together and then, at some point, I looked over to see him talking into his radio. Charles had been checking in with the tour center every so often the whole time that we'd been out, so seeing him talking into his radio wasn't unusual or concerning in the slightest. Lana and I carried on doing our thing, taking pictures and videos, etc., until suddenly, Charles called out that we had to end the trip prematurely. I remember turning around to see him looking kind of anxious before asking why exactly we needed to cut things short.

We'd agreed to climb a little more of the mountain so we could get some more shots of the views on the other side, so as much as we were happy to be up there, we felt a little short-changed that our guide was suddenly calling time on the proceedings. I remember asking why we needed to head back early, and I am being 100% honest when I say that. If he'd given any kind of half-decent answer, I would have complied without complaint. But when I asked why, all Charles said in a very uncharacteristically rude way was, don't question my decisions. I guess that on paper, that sounds fine, and that maybe some kind of unforeseen problem had arisen,

but I literally cannot overemphasize how much don't question my decision sounded like because I said so. I asked again why we needed to head back early and was almost stunned into silence when the same man who'd been a veritable prince charming just 24 hours previously suddenly became incredibly rude and abrupt. And not just rude, this might be hard to describe, but Charles almost seemed scared. And scared in a way that he was trying to mask it with bravado. And this led me to keep asking him why we had to leave early, because naturally, if we were facing any kind of real danger, like a storm or something similar, then we wanted to know about it. We'd also paid for a whole day's worth of our tour guide's similar, then we wanted to know about it. We'd also paid for a whole day's

worth of our tour guide's time, so we wanted to know if we'd be getting a partial refund or something to that effect. I guess this makes us sound like total Karens in a way, but I swear to God, if Charles had just said something like, okay ladies, we got a sudden storm front heading in, so we just need to conclude this tour a little earlier than expected. We both would have been like, okay, no problem, let's go. But we felt like we were being kept in the dark by a guy whose sudden turn in behavior was deeply alarming, and that just didn't sit right with me at all. Eventually Charles said, F this, turned around and then started walking off towards the trail which led back down the mountain. But he didn't just wander off either. It looked like he was walking off as fast as he possibly could and considering he was a tall, fit guy and an experienced hiker,

it wasn't long before he'd put a very worrying amount of distance between Lana and I, who by that point had no choice but to follow quickly. We kept yelling for him, calling out Charles' name and begging him to wait up so we could catch up to him, but he didn't stop. He didn't turn around, he just kept on walking down the mountainside, putting more and more distance between us as time went by. It got to the point where Lana and I thought that he was going to leave us behind and all we had with us was our bags with a little bit of water, some snacks, and some waterproof material. We had no maps, no compass, nothing to tell us where we were exactly or which direction we were going. So if Charles actually

left us there alone, we would be in a lot of trouble. It was Lana who first suggested that he might just leave us there and drive off in the boat, and when she did, we both went into full panic mode. We started screaming, like full-on screaming for Charles, begging him to wait for us and not leave us behind. And then finally, he stopped. But he didn't just stop dead on the trail, and he didn't start walking back up towards us either. He just started like pacing back and forth and talking to himself. And I say talking to himself, but it was more like he'd walk in a circle,

fists clenched and every so often he'd yell something that either we could or couldn't understand. As we got closer, he started yelling things at us in the same sort of way, like he was literally so furious that you could only make out every other thing he was saying. I managed to catch things like, always gotta have things your way and never think about anyone but yourselves, but the rest was pretty much garbled yells. I guess instinct kicked in for me because I started apologizing to Charles over and over because by then I'd have done almost anything to get him to calm down so we could just leave in peace. Lana started apologizing too but it didn't seem to do any good. He just kept pacing around

and yelling about how we needed to listen, how no one ever listened to him and how was he supposed to act when no one listened to him. It was only then that it occurred to me that something else was going on. There wasn't an emergency, or at least there didn't seem to be one if Charles was content to just stop on the trail like that. But then, something had definitely happened to make him start acting that way and the change seemed to occur after he talked into his radio for a minute. I still had no idea how the two things were connected, as in like, what was said that made him go crazy, but it definitely seemed like he was having some kind of breakdown right there on the mountainside. We kept apologizing, begging him to just calm down and take us back to the tour center and,

although we eventually agreed, Charles' mood did not improve. He yelled at us to follow him and not fall behind and then he marched off again at the same speed that he had previously. Luckily, we were much closer to where the boat was parked so we didn't fall too far behind and we were able to make it to the shore just as he was starting up the boat. He was still yelling when he told us to climb in and he also seemed to be gradually calming down like he was on the back end of whatever he was going through. Only with that in mind did we climb back into the boat but Charles hadn't finished just yet. As he drove us across the lake, Charles carried on that thing of like being quiet for a while and then yelling a curse word or something.

But he also drove way faster than he had before to the point that it was actually scary. Lana and I kept yelling slow down and at first he'd just yell stuff back that was drowned out by the sound of the engine and the water. We went a little further and we started yelling again for him to stop and then suddenly he did. He stopped the boat right there in the middle of the lake, turned around and just sort of seethed at us. He was so flushed his whole face was pink. His fists were clenched and I swear I've never seen anyone's eyes go so wide in my whole life. I thought he was going to hurt us, kill us even, and out there in the middle of the lake we had

nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. It was like he was thinking about it, really weighing up his options and the voice that was saying don't hurt them was only just barely winning. For as long as I live I'll never ever forget the sound of Lana saying, please don't, in this really shaky voice. I think that actually made him snap out of it a little because after that, he turned around, got back in the little driver's seat, and then carried on driving the boat back to the dock or whatever and only by this time, in complete silence. All Lana and I did was sit there in the back of the boat, eyes glued to the back of Charles' head, shaking with

fear while we each hoped that he wouldn't turn around or stop the boat again. As soon as we arrived back at the dock, Lana literally jumped off the boat onto the wooden dock before Charles had a chance to even bring the boat to a complete stop. I was quick to follow her, but as Lana ran all the way back to our tents, I turned back to give Charles a piece of my mind, basically about how we were going to get him fired for the way he treated us. Again, total Karen thing to say, but it was literally the first thing that came to mind, and all I was thinking about in the moment was warning his boss or co-workers that he was having some kind of violent episode. I guess I was feeling brave because we were back on dry land, but as Charles climbed up onto the dock, I kept on berating him, which, admittedly, was not the best idea ever. Because after finding his feet, he walked towards me, wrapped a hand around my throat, and started to squeeze.

It was probably the single scariest moment of my entire life, seeing those wild eyes come back again, knowing that he could crush my neck if he wanted to. And worst of all, I felt like an idiot. I should have run back to the tent with Lana, or straight to the tour center to warn Charles' co-workers, and I paid for it by getting choked so hard that I thought I was going to die. Luckily though, people had already heard me yelling at Charles and were approaching the dock by the time he grabbed my throat. As soon as they saw him do that, they started yelling, and within just a few seconds we were being separated by a bunch of guides and campers. Two of Charles' male co-workers walked him off someplace and we didn't see where, and as the people around us started asking what had happened, we broke down into tears as we told them. Charles had been fine one second, then the next. It was

like he was a totally different person. It was honestly so scary to see that kind of change in him and we had literally no idea what had happened to make him act like that. The head of the tour company then brought us to their office, got us some coffee and offered to contact the seaplane people so we could leave that day if possible. They were honestly super awesome about the whole thing, probably because they were terrified of getting sued, but all we wanted was a promise that Charles would be fired and to know exactly what he'd been told that made him go crazy like that. The head of the company didn't know everything that had been going on in Charles' life, but she had been the one to pass along that piece of news on

the radio. Apparently, she'd gotten a call from his wife asking if Charles was available to talk. Obviously, he wasn't because he was out conducting a tour with us. The head of the company then asked Charles' wife if she'd like to call back and she said no and that she never wanted to hear from him again. All she wanted was for the company head to pass along a message. I caught him cheating again. I'm taking the kids and he's never going to see any of us ever again. Personally, I'd have waited until after the tour to tell him such a life-changing piece of news, but I guess the head of the company thought it was the kind of news Charles needed to hear right away.

That part did make me consider hiring an attorney, but like I said, they'd promised to fire Charles and were good enough to tell us something they had every right to withhold, so I decided not to. Filing a lawsuit would have destroyed their company, all over one dumb mistake, and above all, it was Charles' decision alone to act like such a monster, no one else's. And besides, no amount of money could help with the guilt I felt afterwards. Lana said that she didn't need an apology, that it wasn't my fault, and I understand that. But I still feel terrible for promising my best friend the trip of her dreams and pretty much having it turn into a living nightmare. I was a private detective in Michigan for four years following a long career in law enforcement. And ironically, it was during what was intended to be four short quiet years that

I encountered my most frightening and disturbing case. Our agency received a call from a woman who suspected her husband of having an affair. She said that she knew he was lying when he claimed to be working late, but essentially said that she couldn't deal with the emotional stress of personally uncovering the affair, if one was indeed taking place. And that's where I came in. If the client's husband was engaged in an extramarital affair, then it was my job to compile as much photographic evidence as possible

before presenting said evidence to the client. On the surface, it was pretty standard PI work, the kind of thing that makes up about 30 to 40% of all of our time. But in actual fact, it was one of the most disturbing and mystifying events of my entire career. So as I've already touched on, the client had already done some of the preliminary work herself. She was fine with him working late, and at first, she was proud of him for sacrificing his time for the good of their children. But her real suspicions began when their rather active love life petered out before dropping off completely. Her husband then started

to act increasingly withdrawn and seemed disinterested in pretty much anything that wasn't work-related. She said that she tried talking to him, but he just brushed the whole thing off like she was simply imagining things. Then, an accident where he'd proven a little overprotective of his cell phone provided to be the final straw, as in the client's husband seemed to descend into a minor panic at the prospect of her gaining unfettered access to it. Since she couldn't gain access to any of his devices, she decided to check in with his place of work to see if he really was working late. When she found out that was a lie, she attempted to follow him one evening after he clocked out of work, but when she saw him driving toward the city limits, she didn't have the nerve

to follow him. Her husband didn't work late every night, so we had to wait for a call from the client. But when we did, I got into position and then tailed him after he got out of work at around 5.30. Just like his wife had said, he drove for miles towards the city limits and then drove a few more miles out into the country before turning down a dirt road. I didn't immediately follow him. That's not something you'd ever do during a covert pursuit, not unless it was a life-or-death kind of situation.

If the dirt road had a dead end, I could possibly give myself away, so the thing to do was to keep going, pull over, and then use Google Maps to take a look where the road led to. According to Google, the dirt road led to two places, the first being the next stretch of highway over, and the other being some kind of industrial facility. At first, I figured the whole job had been a complete false alarm, because if he was driving out to some industrial site, it was most likely work-related, right?

But just to be certain, I started looking into the company that owned the site and how it might be related to the husband's employment, figuring I might as well since I was pulled over and had my phone in hand. I saw that the site in question, according to Google, was permanently closed. And while that didn't mean the husband was there for legitimate reasons it did raise my suspicions a little. So instead of just sitting there and peering at satellite images from 2013 I decided to double back, turn down the dirt road I'd seen the husband go down and then go check out the industrial compound for myself. I pull up outside the gates only to see a very derelict looking place, all rusted shipping containers and falling down warehouses.

Again, it didn't preclude the possibility that the husband was professionally involved in some way, but I still didn't know if he was actually there. I couldn't see his car, and for all I knew, he'd carried on down the dirt road to that other stretch of highway. I'd have to tail him again to get a concrete idea of where he was going, but luckily, that's exactly where the guy was headed. Next time, I tailed him and he turned down the dirt road, and I followed at a distance. Then, when we got to the chained up gates of the derelict industrial compound, the husband stopped his car and then got out just as I rolled past him. I could see him watching me out of my rear view, just standing next to his car still as a statue and he waited until I was way down the dirt track before he moved again. I managed to hover at the very end

of the track long enough where it bent the highway, then I caught a glimpse of the client's husband driving his car into the derelict industrial complex. Then when I circled back to take a look, the chain on the compound's gate had been locked again, but when I peered past its iron bars, there was no parked cars anywhere to be seen. I did a brief check of the fencing around the compound and found it all so rusted and dilapidated that breaking in would be relatively easy. Obviously, we were in touch with the client at every stage of the investigation, but as you can probably guess, she wanted to know what was in that compound just as much as I did. Or more accurately, she wanted to know what her husband was doing there if he wasn't working in some capacity. The client was still insistent on getting conclusive evidence

or at least proving once and for all that her husband wasn't being unfaithful. As a private detective, I had something of an advantage in this situation. When I was a cop, there was no way that I could just force my way onto private property like that, not unless I could handle the whole heap of trouble that'd be headed my way if I was caught doing so. But as a PI, the worst thing that could happen, on the legal side of things anyways, would be getting trespassing by some cops. This obviously gave me a lot more operational maneuverability and meant that I could get into the compound and finish the job

without having to worry about getting my ass fired. I didn't try and break into the compound until I'd received implicit instructions from the client. After all, a risk was still a risk and I didn't want to take one unless I absolutely had to. But once we got the okay and a call saying the husband was working late again, I readied myself to collect the conclusive proof that the client was paying us for. I repeated the process of following the husband from his place of work to the abandoned industrial site. But then, instead of immediately following him to his apparent destination,

I continued down the highway for around 10-15 minutes before doubling back towards the site. Whatever he was doing, and whoever he was doing it with, I wanted to catch them in the act, you know? Not walk in on them setting up or just talking or whatever and potentially jeopardize the entire investigation. It would be a delicate operation, but it also perfectly illustrates why I was so reluctant to let go of my vocation even after the standard retirement age. While many of my peers were content to move down to Florida Keys and spend their twilight years just fishing, I knew right from the second I even heard the word retirement that I'd missed the adrenaline rush that came with the sharp edge

of detective work. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I was actually pumped to break into that site, track down my target, and catch him in the act. Not so much out of any ill feeling towards him, I just wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery. As I said, I waited around 20-30 minutes before parking my car on the dirt road, and then I searched for the weaker section of the fence that I'd spotted on my first time around. Then after getting inside, and armed with a flashlight, a video camera, and my 9mm, I set about searching the derelict industrial site for any sign of the client's husband. The place was huge, blocks and blocks

of old warehouses and what appeared to be abandoned manufacturing facilities. But the gaps between them were wide enough to drive a vehicle down and eventually I came across a group of them all parked outside of this one grey stone building that looked different from the others. At this point I switched on the video camera making sure to get a shot of the husband's vehicle along with its plate. But just as I got the shot I started to hear something. Real faint at first but it got louder and louder as I got the shot, I started to hear something. Real faint at first, but it got louder and louder as I approached the building. It was the sound of something crying out, and what sounded like pain. But it sounded muffled too, like either they were gagged or someone was covering

their mouth with a hand. At that point, I slid my flashlight back into the holster on my belt and then grabbed my pistol instead. My heart rate was beginning to pick up and although I wouldn't say that I was scared, I was extremely apprehensive. Like I said earlier, I thought the job was going to be your basic tail them and tape them kind of deal. So to hear those screams was to realize that this wasn't your basic PI work at all. This was something different. I remember creeping towards the front doors to the big concrete building and thinking to myself, this is a real dumb idea. There was a good chance that I'd be outnumbered and possibly outgunned too, God forbid, but the prospect of abandoning whoever was in there screaming,

that was something I couldn't allow myself to do. I guess more out of practice than principle, but still, I couldn't just walk away. So I opened up the door, crept inside, and carried on walking very gently towards the source of the screaming, which appeared to be inside a room down a dusty, dark corridor. And there was a pattern to it, too. The screams would start up. These skin-crawling growls and yelps, then they'd die off again. In between the screams, I'd heard voices, some laughing, some talking, and then the screams would start up again just as loud as before.

I got closer and closer until eventually I'm right outside the room the screams are coming from. I took a breath, made sure my pistol was locked and loaded, and then burst into the room. Only to be greeted by something that looked like a scene from a horror movie. Surrounded by five men, a sixth had been tied to a chair And by the looks of things, they had been taking turns torturing him He's been stripped to his underwear, had blood dripping from various cuts to his arms and legs And there were also what looked like burn marks all over his body First thing I yelled was state police don't move

And that worked like a charm initially. I directed everyone who wasn't tied to a chair to stand facing the wall, except one, who I ordered to untie the victim. I told him not to look at me, but he didn't listen, and the second he saw my video camera he knew that I wasn't with the cops. I mean, what kind of state cop works alone while carrying a goddamn video camera of all things? He might have figured out who I wasn't, but then again, I wasn't the one with the gun pointed in their face. The guy frees the captive victim from the chair, who's still gagged and can barely walk. They're mumbling something under their gag, something at the time I figured was either thank you or some variation on that, but I told them to save it until we were actually in the free and clear.

The last thing I told those sadistic strangers was that they should stay put, because anyone who came chasing after me would most likely be shot by my backup officers who were currently rushing to the scene. It was a total bluff, but only one of them knew it for certain, and he appeared to have way more sense than I gave him credit for because he stayed put with his buddies and opted not to get shot. All I remember feeling is relief that the group weren't heavily armed, or that a shootout had interrupted as soon as I'd stormed the room they occupied. I still had no idea what was going

on at that point, but I knew it was some majorly bad juju, and almost certainly the doing of some organized crime group, which meant that I wanted to get the hell out of there with the victim as fast as humanly possible. I got them to a hospital. They stayed with him until the cops showed up so I could give a statement on what had happened, and after that, it was time to talk to the client about what I'd seen, which I can assure you was not an easy process. I guess no one wants to find out that their spouse had been taking part in the brutal torture of another human being, and that they're better off talking to a defense attorney as opposed to the divorce kind.

But in this case, the client took it particularly badly. After that, she no longer desired to retain our services, so we parted ways after sending her a bill. I guess the reason that this one stays with me so much is not because I walked in on something so horrible. It's because I have no idea why it was happening. To this day, I've never heard anything about any Michigan torture case. I don't even know if the husband ended up getting arrested. All I know is that taking that job meant that I was in that right place at the right time to save someone a whole world of life-changing torment. I used to work for a private investigations firm called AIS. AIS stood for

Atlas Investigative Solutions, and at the time, they were probably the most highly regarded PI firm in the UK. They only hired ex-military and former police officers, and even then, they didn't just accept any old tosser. They invited you for an interview, talked about your service record and your credentials, and they were very thorough. They wanted the best, and in return they offered extremely generous wage packets. In 1991, an old pal of mine had received a call from one of their recruitment officers not long after the pair of us had been discharged from the army. But since he'd promised to be much more family-oriented post-discharge, he turned the roll down in favor of a local 9-to-5. But knowing I was a single bloke and one more interested in padding

my bank account than living the easy life, he put me in touch with a recruiter. I should tell you right now that about 60-70% of private detective jobs are extremely boring. AIS might have been one of the most reliable and well-respected firms in the UK, but it didn't mean that we were all off playing 007. The majority of our clients were upper-middle class professional types, with the occasional celebrity or member of high society putting in a request for some discreet information gathering. But the kinds of jobs we did for that lot were, for the most part, the same as any other type of people. Only instead of sitting in a car on a council estate

waiting for someone's secret lover to turn up at a block of flats, you were sitting in a car outside some fancy three-story Victorian manor waiting for someone's secret lover to turn up in a Rolls Royce. The only difference was the location. But what were fairly unique to the upper classes were what we at AIS used to call non-vulnerable missing persons cases. I personally dealt with half a dozen separate cases involving kids of wealthy parents going missing. But I use that term very loosely because nine times out of ten, they were just going through a bit of a rebellious period and had run away from home. One girl ran off to live in an all-vegan commune in Hackney. The police went and found her, but she didn't want to go home, and since she was newly 18,

there was nothing they could do about it. As long as she wasn't breaking the law, she was free to do as she pleased. But that didn't wash with mommy and daddy. They wanted to know where their little girl was, so we'd tail them, keep tabs on them, hack their phones, all sorts, and their parents would be shelling out tens of thousands every week for the privilege. Like I said, I must have worked six or seven of those jobs just on my own, so when I was informed there was a missing persons case up for grabs, I thought it'd just be more the same. But then, right away, I could tell this one was going to be different. The clients were based in my native Scotland, in a wee village called Crossley, near Glasgow,

and this is partly why I was offered the job in the first place. I thought that, since they were paying big money to have their missing person found, they'd be living in some country house with a Range Rover sitting out front. But I was wrong. They weren't in poverty or anything, they obviously led a relatively comfortable life, but they weren't anywhere near the class of client that I was used to dealing with at AIS, nor was their missing person some spoiled brat who'd run off with their dad's credit card. What they were, was desperate. The missing person they wanted tracking was their son,

a 21-year-old up-and-coming boxer who, for the sake of his family's anonymity, I won't refer to only as Robbie. After he'd first gone missing, his parents had reported it to the police, but after months upon months of investigation, the case hadn't gotten anywhere. But it wasn't like they made a bit of progress, questioned a few suspects and then the leads just dried up. Robbie's parents said officers had been met with a complete wall of silence. No one had seen him, no one had spoke to him, and it was like he just walked out of his parents house and disappeared into thin air. By the time I was called onto the job, a campaign set up by local volunteers had

just run out of funding, with Renfjordshire police having only one officer working on the case and only on a sporadic basis at that. Robbie's parents then managed to collect enough in cash donations to get AIS involved, which I can promise you was no small feat. And that's where I entered the picture. The first thing I did was get all the background information on the case, which included a fairly intimate profile of the missing person. Usually speaking, people that go missing have had something go wrong in their lives, be it drink, drugs, infidelity, or some other kind of addiction that either results in big debts or even bigger mistakes. But Robbie's parents insisted that he wasn't involved in anything like that at all.

He never drank, he never smoked, he was religious about his diet, everything in his life seemed to revolve around his potential career as a professional boxer. He kept himself out of trouble and had even gotten himself a job at a local pub so he could save up some money to move to Glasgow, where he'd have access to some of the best boxing gyms in Scotland. What I'm trying to say is there was no obvious warning signs with this young man at all. Not until I asked if there had been any sudden changes or if he'd met anyone new in the weeks or months prior. Robbie's mom told me that there was something she told the police very early on in the investigation that she felt they'd overlooked. They asked her the same question about the new people appearing in Robbie's life before

he disappeared, and this is what she told them. One evening, in the days just prior to his disappearance, Robbie had received a telephone call from someone his mom didn't recognize. This is back when a family tended to have just one large telephone which was usually kept in a fairly communal space. For young lads like Robbie, there was no such thing as privacy when it came to telephone calls, so when the phone rang that evening, his mom was the first to pick it up. She thought that she knew the voices of all her son's friends and trainers. He was a popular young lad and got a lot of calls from the likes of friends, coaches, teammates, and training partners, but his mom always asked who was calling and made patter with them any time they'd call back. She knew a great many of them by voice or demeanor, but she didn't recognize the man who called that evening, and when she asked, the man simply told her, I'm calling from the pub.

He didn't give a name, he didn't sound particularly friendly either, he just asked for Robbie. His mom called him to the phone and after a brief conversation, Robbie thanked the caller and hung up, but not before addressing him with the name Tony. Robbie's mom had never heard him mention anyone called Tony, and that immediately struck her as unusual. Like I said, she thought she knew pretty much everyone in her son's life. She even knew most of the people he worked at the pub with, along with the names of a few regulars, because Robbie would often come home and chat about his shifts with her. He'd mentioned his boss and a few of his colleagues by name. He even had special nicknames for some of the regulars who came in. But at no point had he ever mentioned anyone named Tony, and if they were close enough that Tony was calling him at home, she found it very strange that he'd never mentioned him before. Robbie's mom had mentioned this to the police,

not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions, and each time, they told her the lead was a dead end. No one called Tony worked at the pub, none of the regular patrons recognized the name, and in the end, the police told her it was an insignificant detail, and they were taking their investigation in a different direction. Robbie's mom said that at the time, she accepted their decision, but as time went by, it started to bother her more and more and it bothered me too. To me, the Tony-shaped piece of the puzzle wasn't a dead end, it was a loose end. The Tony thing wasn't the only loose end because from what I learned, the whole pub angle had been completely overlooked. Robbie had been due to work that night but he never made it to the pub

and the police decided whatever caused his disappearance occurred during the 30 minute walk between his home and his place of work. I understand why the police focused on that one stretch of road, canvassing nearby houses for any potential witnesses and why they only saw the pub as a place to gather information. But to me, it was definitely something we needed to take another look at, especially since the pub and this mysterious Tony character seemed to be connected in some capacity. After talking to as many of Robbie's friends as I could reach, which I'd initially thought would be my primary path of inquiry, I decided to move on to the pub. But I couldn't just walk in, declare myself a

private investigator, and expect people to give up previously undisclosed information. Instead, I'd have to set myself up as an unremarkable publican so I could gather as much information as I could, as covertly as I could. The money Robbie's parents raised had bought them two weeks worth of my time. So knowing I'd be spending a lot of time in the pub he used to work in, I moved from Glasgow Travel Lodge that I was staying in to a small bed and breakfast within walking distance. Then over the next few days, I started showing my face around the pub. My cover story was that I was a recently

divorced dad of two who was staying in a cheap bed and breakfast nearby while trying to get back on my feet again. That way it made sense for me to be hanging around the pub all day, nursing pints and maybe putting a few quid on a horse race or two while I was there. It was that kind of lower end country pub. Pints, pies, and the odd punts from the compulsive gamblers sat in their wee corners clutching the racing papers. And as the job I've ever had. It was actually quite a good laugh at times. The bar staff and regulars seemed like decent folk, but still, I kept my mind on the job and did as much listening as I could. I popped in and out for a few days. A pint around lunchtime, one in the late afternoon, then I'd usually head back in the early evening when it was busiest. By my fifth day, I was getting quite a warm welcome from some of the regulars,

and even the moody-faced barmen seemed to soften up a bit. They were obviously getting quite comfortable with me, which suited me loads, because it meant that I could start asking the odd question without ruffling anyone's feathers. But as it turns out, I didn't need to ask any to hear Tony's name being mentioned. I was sat there, Thursday night, pretending to watch whatever football they had on the telly, when this scruffy looking bloke in a green parka walks into the pub. He says hello to one or two people, but only in passing as he walks straight up to the bar with a very serious look on his face. He ends up standing right next to me as he gets the barman's attention,

but then thinking that he's just going to put in a drink order, the barman just looks at him as he's pouring a pint as if to say, what are you having? The scruffy bloke then shakes his head, beckons him over and then asks him, is Tony going to be in tonight? He didn't whisper it by any means, but he clearly didn't want to broadcast his question to the whole pub. The only trouble was, he was saying it right next to the one person who had a vested interest in overhearing him, and as you can imagine, the second I heard that name, my ears pricked up. The guy asked after Tony, and in a similarly muted voice, the barman told him that Tony would be by later on that evening. The scruffy guy then asked the barman to pass on an apology to Tony if he saw him first.

The barman just replied, save it, I'm not the one you've got to impress. And the way he said it, it was like his scruffy acquaintance was on the way to the gallows. After the quiet scolding from the barman, the scruffy fellow scuttled out of the pub looking very, very worried. And right away, I'm beginning to get an idea of who this Tony guy is, but again, I've changed his name to protect the innocent. He was obviously someone people were afraid of, which meant that Robbie's mom had no idea how right to be concerned she really was. Having heard Tony was stopping by later that night, I finished my pint, then ducked out for a few hours to eat something,

neck a few cups of coffee, and generally sober up a bit so I'd be fit to work. A few hours later, I was back on that very same barstool, eyes peeled for anyone who even looked like they might be Tony. I was halfway through my second pint and becoming increasingly worried that the barman's tip might have been incorrect. When in walks a bloke that looked as wide as he was tall. He's got this massive gold watch on, all kinds of rings, a gold chain around his neck. He's obviously got a few quid and he doesn't mind showing it off either. He also looked like he'd spent most of his life lifting weights and not without a bit of help from the pharmacist, if you catch my drift. I had to wait until he got to the bar before I got actual confirmation, but as he strode through

the bar, the way everyone looked at him behind his back told me everything I needed to know. He gets to the bar and I hear, Alright Tony, from the barman. Tony orders a Guinness, takes a seat down the bar from me and then he and the barman start talking in low voices. But then this time, because the pub is in a wee bit busier state and they're further down the bar, I have no idea what they're saying. I got the feeling that I was missing out on something I wanted to hear. But then again, I wanted everything that came out of his bloody mouth So I stayed put, kept my eyes forward and tried to pick up on what I could Which, sadly, wasn't very much But then, after finishing his pint of Guinness

I heard Tony tell the barman, see you Sunday Then off he went I kept up my cover and popped in over the Friday and Saturday just to keep up appearances. Then come Sunday, I was in the pub from the moment the doors opened, waiting for Tony to show up again. He walks in just after three, plants himself at the bar, then asks the barman to put the boxing channel on after ordering his pint of Guinness. The barman does, as he's told right away, then for the next few minutes, Tony's glued to the TV above the bar, riveted by whatever

boxing highlights were playing. Now I happen to know a thing or two about boxing, enough to be able to use it as a means of striking up conversation, but the thing that really struck me in that moment was when I reminded myself that Robbie, my missing person, had been a passionate and dedicated boxer. I simply cannot overstate how much of a rush it is when it seems like a lead is coming together like that. And again, it proved how right Robbie's mom really was to be concerned about him. Her son and this Tony look were now connected in two ways, and considering the kind of esteem people held in him, I realized just how much of a balls up

the police had made in not following up the lead. So as I'm sipping my pint, I start making comments on the boxer's form, on their striking ability, stuff like that. I'm not directly addressing the Tony character, I'm just invoking that ancient publican tradition of talking loudly until someone joins in the conversation. It probably sounds a bit mental now that I've typed it out like that, but it worked, and before long, me and Tony were having a bit of sporadic back and forth. I introduced myself, not offering up my real name but a variation on it, then bought him a pint when I'd finished off my own. He asked how I knew so much about boxing, and I told him another variation on the truth when I said that I used to help a friend train for fights back when I was in the Navy.

It turns out he too was an amateur boxer back in the day, and he retained a huge passion for it throughout his life. He then asked what I was doing out in Crossley, and I gave him the whole sob story about being freshly and bitterly divorced. Tony looked fairly disinterested by the end of my explanation, so in an attempt to keep his interest, I asked him if he ever bet on matches, what with him knowing so much about boxing. He made a bit of a face and then said something like, That rubbish? No, not anymore.

To keep the conversation going, I made out that I used to be quite a big time gambler before I got married and then was planning on getting back into it now that the wife didn't have a grip on my finances. He sort of rolled his eyes but he was still with me when I asked him if he had any tips or anything, like any talented young boxers that he might know of. He then told me that the best piece of advice he could ever give me was not to gamble on professional boxing at all. According to him, it was all rigged. The refs were all paid off, the fighters all took dives and were working from scripts, all to funnel money into the hands of the bookies. Maybe it's the cynic in me, but I can't say I didn't agree with him a wee bit.

So I asked him a very genuine question, and quizzed him on what combat sports were fit to bet on. He just sort of looked off at the telly for a while, not saying anything, then got this very sinister look about him. Tony was smiling, but he had this look in his eye. This wolfish, almost bloodthirsty look. He started telling me about these small-time kickboxing fights in Thailand that he'd been to and how, if he knew the sport, he could win thousands of US dollars a night betting on these tiny hundred-person spectator events on the outskirts of Bangkok. He said big fighters just do it for the money, but the smaller up-and-coming lads, who put way more emphasis on honor and skill, they quite literally fight for their lives. A few wins in the lower divisions could mean getting their names on bigger and better cards, and the money they earn could end up catapulting their families out of poverty.

That, according to Tony, was the purest form of fighting there was. Everything else was just theater. He seemed to know an awful lot about boxing, outside of the actual sport. He knew about the gambling side, but he seemed to know a wee bit about the promotional side too. I then asked what he did for a living, as in if he was involved in that promotional side or if he ran a gym or anything. He said he visited a gym, which was only too obvious from the looks of him, but that he hadn't been involved in organizing events for years and years. According to him, it was a lot of stress, not too much money, and then added, I'll stick to the side of the TV screen, thank you very much. I took two things away from this part of our conversation. Number one, Tony didn't answer my question in that he danced around telling me what he did for a living. And number two,

he was lying. I know it's a bit of a detective story cliche at this point, but you really do get a sense of when people are lying to you. And when Tony told me that he hadn't been involved in boxing promotions for years and years, I knew that wasn't true. Everything else he told me was correct, but that part wasn't. He was still involved in some capacity, he just didn't feel comfortable telling a stranger, which to me, was basically like striking oil. I had my number one person of interest, connected to my missing person in more than one facet, and not only did I have a strong suspicion that he was lying to me,

but I was 90% sure that he was involved in some kind of organized crime. Robbie needed money to move into Glasgow, and if Tony was involved in loan sharking, then that might well account for his disappearance. And by that, I don't mean like when he couldn't pay, they rolled him up into a carpet and chucked him in a lock. I mean, a lot of people get themselves into debt, then just voluntarily disappear, mainly because they're so afraid of the previously mentioned carpets.

People do it with big banks too. They try all sorts of scams. They disappear, change their names, even fake their own death. So when some big former boxer is threatening to break your legs if you don't get his money to him on time, voluntary disappearances are surprisingly likely. I wasn't 100% certain that Tony was loan sharking, but I wasn't about to ask him during that first conversation. When you're working with a cover story, those first contacts are all about winning trust. Push too hard, and you push them away. I had to wait until the next day to see Tony again, but when I did, I had a plan waiting. I told him that I'd love to buy him a pint, but I was skint. My soon-to-be ex-wife wouldn't let me into our joint account

because we'd already signed the divorce papers, so until I could sell off some possessions, I was brassic. Any loan shark worth his salt would have seen that as a clear business opportunity, but all Tony did was offer his sympathies before offering to buy me a pint instead. I accepted his offer, quietly taking aback that my loan shark theory had potentially been rolled out. Then I asked him if he just so happened to know anyone who might be interested in lending me a bit of short-term cash. Again, he shook his head and told me that he didn't know anyone who could help me. But then after a pause, he asked me, have you definitely got some money coming in on Friday?

It was a very loaded question, but the thing that really got my attention was how Tony suddenly seemed to have a bit of that wolfish look about him, like the one he had earlier. I told him that yes, I definitely had some money coming in that Friday, which by that point was only the day after next. He then asked me, you definitely know your boxing, eh? Enough to put money on it? Again, I told him yes, I knew my boxing and most definitely enough to put a few quid on, at which point Tony's gaze became very intense. He looked me over for a few moments, then told me if I wanted to make enough money to last me a good few years, be in the pub at closing on Saturday night with a couple of grand in cash. And at that, he finished off his pint of Guinness and said his goodbyes and then walked out of the pub. I immediately informed my

bosses that I had a huge potential lead regarding a person of interest and then told Robbie's parents that their suspicions regarding the mysterious Tony character had most definitely been warranted. The only problem was, I had no physical evidence that Tony's criminality was connected to Robbie's disappearance, only strong suspicions. We knew Robbie needed money. That was the only reason he was working in the pub. It was a stepping stone to something greater. So what if Tony had been the one to offer it to him via some kind of illicit gambling operation? Robbie could have gotten in too deep, made a bet that he couldn't honor, or he could have threatened to expose Tony's criminality after being duped out of his wages. There were a ton of possibilities, but like I said,

I didn't have evidence for any of them. However, what I did have was a golden opportunity to gather said evidence by meeting Tony back at the pub come closing time on Saturday. I didn't have any kind of secret or hidden cameras I could use, but I did have one of those small old-fashioned dictation machines that I could place in the chest pocket of my jacket. That way I could record any conversations we had and potentially obtain audio that would be of huge interest to the police. And that was the only surefire method that we had to get the investigation into Robbie's disappearance back on track and to make sure that it was headed in the right direction.

It was an exciting moment, the first time in my career that I felt like a proper secret agent. But unfortunately for me, that midnight meeting would result in my second brush with almost certain death. As instructed, I made sure that I was at the pub before closing time on Saturday night. It was a nervous wait, but eventually Tony showed up. However, instead of coming inside and sitting down at the bar like he usually did, he just caught my attention from the doorway and then beckoned me to follow him. I walked out of the pub with Tony to my front and as we walked to his car, he turned his back to me, giving me the perfect opportunity to reach into my chest pocket and switch on my dictation machine.

The tapes were tiny and only had about 45 minutes worth of recording time to them, but there'd be no switching it on in his car without raising suspicion and he had eyes on me as we walked out of the pub so I had to do it there and then or not do it at all. As we walked to his car, I saw two blokes sitting in the back seat of a grey Mercedes. I'll be honest, this did ring some alarm bells. But there was also a chance that, wherever we were going to gamble my cash, Tony thought it best to take some muscle with him. So I walk over to his car, climbed into the passenger seat after giving the heavies in the back a nervous greeting, and then off we went towards our mystery destination. Obviously, first question I had for Tony was, where are we going?

He gave me one of those wolfish smiles and told me, you'll see. We kept on driving for a minute or two and since I didn't know the area very well, I had no clue where he was taking us. And then after the silence got a bit too uncomfortable, I asked him, are we going to bet on a boxing match? And he told me, could be. And then asked if I had it on me, assuming he meant the cash. I lied and told him I did,

patting a bulge in my jacket pocket that had a pair of rolled up socks in it. Not exactly a Hollywood prop, but little bluffs like that can be very effective. I then asked him what kind of fight we were going to. Tony paused before speaking and then asked if I remembered what he said about these Muay Thai fights in Thailand. I remembered exactly what he'd said about those young hungry fighters and how ferociously they fought. Tony had also mentioned that some of those fights were unsanctioned events, sometimes organized between towns or villages. Your best fighter versus ours, for honor, glory, and untold riches for those with the stones

to risk their hard-earned money. And that's when it clicked. Tony wasn't taking me to a boxing match he knew was rigged. He was taking me to an unsanctioned, illegal boxing match that he had organized himself. I had to remind myself that I was recording the whole conversation and since he was feeling talkative, I decided to ask some much more direct questions. I remember asking him with this sort of feigned horror, it's not going to be bare knuckle is it? Tony didn't say anything, he just nodded. I then asked if the fighters ever got hurt. He told me, combat sports can be dangerous.

Sometimes people go down and they don't get back up again. Sad fact. And it was my turn to stay quiet. Not so much because of the brutal honesty behind Tony's words, but because I suddenly realized what had happened to the missing Robbie. A clean cut. Square go lad like him would never have gambled his wages away. But what he might have done is accept an offer to fight in one of those matches if it meant walking away with a king's ransom and prize money.

Enough to move to Glasgow. Enough to kickstart his dream sooner rather than later. I thought I had the perfect opportunity to ask, and considering what Tony had just said, I felt like I was on the cusp of him admitting to being involved in Robbie's disappearance. But when I asked him if anyone had died in the ring recently, he told me, I think that's enough questions for now, don't you? Right as he said that, I started to recognize some of the buildings we were passing,

but they didn't make any sense at all. It would have meant that Tony had just driven us around in circles for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, only for us to end up right back where we started. I asked Tony again, where are you taking me? And once again he told me, you'll see. Then seconds later, we pulled up outside a building that I recognized in an instant. It was the B&B that I'd been staying in. We sat there in the car for a second, before Tony slowly turned in his seat to look at me. I kept up the act for as long as I could, asking if he was pulling some kind of wind up on me,

and his response made my blood run cold. We know who you are. I was scared, but I knew from my training that I had to stick to my story no matter what. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, that I was exactly who I said I was, but it was no good. I was still trying to reason with him when one of the fellas in the back seat reached over my shoulder, grabbed the dictation machine out of my pocket, and then held it up for Tony to see. He took it and then asked me, How many more of these have you got? And the heavy in the back seat must have seen me fiddling with something in my jacket pocket as I walked to the car, but at the time, all I was thinking in my fear-addled mind was, how the hell did they know? Seeing as it was most likely pointless, I decided to stop

lying and told Tony that the dictation machine was the only one I had with me. He then told me that we were going up to my room to have a chat, and if I said a word to anyone in the B&B, anyone who might be awake at that time, then he'd burn the whole place down with me in it. We went up to my room, and while Tony's heavies ransacked the place, it was very surreal seeing them do it quietly, he told me to take a seat on the bed. Apparently he and his boys had decided to do a bit of research on me before they committed to taking me to an illegal fight, and whoever Tony was connected to was a lot more capable and powerful than I could ever imagine.

Tony started explaining that I'd caused him an awful lot of trouble. His routines would have to change. He wouldn't be able to go to the pub anymore, all because he knew he couldn't trust me not to tell my bosses everything. He said he might not have been able to stop me talking in the past, but he'd certainly be able to stop me from talking in the future. And with that, one of his heavies pulled out a length of electrical cord from his jacket pocket. As the guy started to fashion an improvised noose from the cord,

Tony explained that killing me would bring a lot of unnecessary attention down on him and his business partners. But faking a scene where I'd ended my own life, that would cause a lot less of a fuss. I remember him saying something like, a lot of ex-squatties end up that way. No one would bat an effing eyelid if they'd found you hanging in a cupboard, would they? I can't overstate just how chilling that was, knowing that Tony and his partners somehow had access to my service records. But ironically, it was that little detail that may well have ended up saving my life.

Back when I was in Northern Ireland, one of my section's land rovers was caught in an IRA ambush near a place called Crossmoglen. I was wounded as we fought our way out of it, but two of my section mates lost their lives. The injuries I sustained resulted in my eventual discharge from the army and apparently, Tony had read all about it. He'd been ready to have me killed. He'd been ready to fake a tragic, self-inflicted end. But after reading about the incident in which I'd received a mention in dispatches, he decided it was bad form to kill someone who'd already cheated death once. He gave me some big speech

about how we were both soldiers, and then more. Honorable soldiers don't just kill each other when the battle ends. The winners and the losers come to an agreement, and according to Tony, that's exactly what we were going to do. We didn't so much come to an agreement as Tony imposed terms. The only reason he'd mentioned young boxers getting killed in those illegal fights was that he accepted certain people deserved to know what happened to their missing family members. They needed to accept that their loved ones weren't coming back so that their hearts could mend and they could move on with their lives. But that, said Tony, was all I was ever going to get out of him, and if any of my colleagues

decided to visit Crossley in the future, it was me that was going to pay the price. Tony and his boys didn't just know about my service record and who I worked for, they knew where my mom lived. Any further attempts to interfere with their operation and it'd be her that ended up hanging in a cupboard with a wee note saying that she couldn't stand the arthritic pain anymore. That was obviously the bit which terrified me most, the idea that he might hurt my own mother. But the thing that really broke me was the fact that he knew her name, where she lived, and he knew about the medical condition she'd been struggling

with for the better part of a decade. And even as someone who was immersed in the world of information retrieval, I was astounded at how Tony had been able to get his hands on all of that information in just a few short days. That's around about the time that I realized Tony couldn't have been running the illegal boxing ring on his own. He must have had some very wealthy and very powerful partners to get his hands on all my personal information so fast. For all I know, they hired one of AIS's competitors which, let me tell you, would have set them back an astonishing amount of money if they wanted to get their info in that kind of time frame. Then, after we shook on our little agreement, Tony and his heavies left me in a ransacked bedroom, having taken all my notebooks and dictation tapes with them. I left crossly, with my tail between my legs, having been dramatically and unexpectedly outmatched. I told my bosses everything, that I'd been compromised, that my family was at risk, and to their credit, they made arrangements

to ensure their safety. But more importantly to me, I told Robbie's parents everything too. That hadn't been part of the deal between me and Tony, as I think he knew good and well that it was a term that I'd never accept. I told them that, although I had no evidence of it, I knew for certain that Robbie had been manipulated into taking part in an underground boxing match, and I also told them that there was a very good chance that Robbie had sustained fatal injuries during one of those fights, and that the event's organizers had then covered up his death. In all probability, his body would never be found and his killers would never be brought to justice, and even with all the information I was able to forward to the police, Tony would be on the run, knowing full

well that his part in the operation had been compromised. I apologized to Robbie's parents, over and over again, for not being able to bring their son home. But they showed patience and strength of spirit, and that was the closest evidence I've come across for there being a big man upstairs. They told me what I'd done was enough, that I'd brought them more answers and more closure than the police had in almost a year of investigating. It didn't matter to them that Robbie's killers mightn't face justice in life because, in their opinion, the justice they'd face and the great thereafter would be far greater than anything they'd have to suffer on Earth. I think the worst investigation I ever worked on

seemed like your basic proof-of-infidelity job at first. We got a call from a client who thought his wife was cheating on him with the guy she worked with. He was away on business a lot and he'd had his suspicions for some time, but to get solid evidence, he called us. I guess some of you might be asking, why not just set up nanny cams or go through her phone to find the receipts? Well, there's a very simple explanation for that Digital literacy The client was in his 60s, but his wife was in her 20s He knew she was cheating, but he just couldn't get that clean break divorce

Without evidence of pre-nup breaking infidelity And when it came to getting a hold of that evidence His wife always seemed to be two steps ahead He said that when he first suspected his wife of having her boyfriend over to their place, he installed nanny cams to try and catch them in the act. And then somehow, they figured out the cameras were there and just changed the venues so they wouldn't get caught. Next thing, he tried stealing her phone, thinking he'd have time to guess the password and go through her emails and whatnot. She had it bricked before he even

got a chance to try, and some tech kid wanted four figures to break past the security to retrieve all the data stored on the thing. We only asked him for half the figure to get us photographic evidence of an intimate rendezvous. Nothing salacious, of course, but incriminating enough to get him that swift and uncostly divorce he wanted so bad. The wife wasn't dumb. She stayed away from her boyfriend while hubby was in town. But you know what they say, when the cat's away, the mice will play. So to help catch her, hubby plans a fake business trip but doesn't even leave the city,

stays in this nice hotel downtown. He then pays us to tail his wife while demanding updates every five minutes. And so that was me for five nights of my life, following this broad and her boyfriend around the city while my partner sat in the passenger seat taking pictures wherever they went. Every night, he'd take her out to his condo in the suburbs, then every morning, he'd drive her back home. They had no clue that they were being followed, especially at night when it was dark and the places they went were high traffic. I was on the night team, 8pm till 8am, and since the boyfriend drove the Target back home so early,

my partner and I would be there to see it, bleary-eyed and wired on Dunkin' Coffees. But then this one morning, lover boy came out all alone, looking like he hadn't slept a wink all night, but was somehow headed to the gym all bright and early. Guy had a hoodie and shorts on, then after tossing a very full-looking gym bag into the trunk of his car, he took off. At first, my partner and I are all jokes. I woke him up, pointed to our guy, then probably made some inappropriate joke about how he and the client's wife had been up all night. Obviously, we recognized that this was slightly a different routine for them, but the significance of it was totally lost on us until much later that day. Like I said, my partner and I were on night duties, so maybe an hour or so after spotting

our red-eyed lover boy walking out of his condo alone, we handed over to the day team. We went home, got some sleep, then once we were ready to go again, I got in touch with the day team to find out where they were so we could switch over. To my amazement, they were still parked outside of lover boy's condo. He hadn't returned home from work and as far as they knew, our client's wife hadn't left the condo either. Our day team figured the pair of them had a heavy night of drinking and dancing, among other things, but then by the time 8pm came around and neither the wife nor her boyfriend had been spotted, they started to wonder if something was going on. They told us all that,

but granted, it was only maybe 8pm at the time. The wife could have been lying in bed all day, stuffing her face with cheese doodles while her boyfriend was off doing whatever. I remember telling my partner, 20 bucks says he's back before dark, guy must be running on fumes already. And a few hours later, I was handing over that 20, still looking at the guy's empty parking spot. We didn't have anything else to do but sit there in our car, watching the condo and any signs of the wife. She was our follow, not her boyfriend, and if at any point we felt like we needed to track him to find her, then we'd deal with that situation as we came to it. So for the second night in a row

we sat outside Loverboy's condo bored out of our skulls. Then since we were almost constantly in touch with the client and we were obliged to be frank regarding the status of our investigation we had to level with them. There had been no sign of his wife or her boyfriend for 24 hours give or take any longer and we'd have to consider the possibility that they knew that they were being followed and given us the slip. The client basically told us,

okay, keep me updated, and then left us to do our thing. We waited all night, but still, there was no sign of either the target or her boyfriend. So by that point, we're thinking the wife had tricked us into waiting there while she snuck out a back door or something. We called our boss and he agreed that we should go check out the client's home to see if there was any activity there. You know, like a bedroom or hallway light on, any indicator that she'd gone back there instead. There was no sign of anyone there, but soon after it was no longer a problem. The day team took over for the next 12 hours and it was our turn to get some well-deserved rest. Then, come 8pm and our handover, we learned that

there had been no activity at the client's house, but no activity at the boyfriend's condo either. The day team had tried a bunch of other places too, all regular hangouts of lover boy and our client's wife, but there was no sign of them there either. That meant 36 hours of no contact, which is not what our clients pay us for. But then right as we're trying to think of a way to get back on track, we get a call from our boss. The client had reached out with some real concerning news. His wife had been due to meet a friend for a dinner date, but hadn't showed. Equally concerned, her friend had called her husband, our client, saying that she hadn't texted over any kind of cancellation and wasn't answering any calls either.

Obviously, the loss of contact was concerning. By having one of her friends being on the verge of reporting her missing, that suggested a whole other level of urgency was concerning. By having one of her friends being on the verge of reporting her missing, that suggested a whole other level of urgency was required. We had to make sure that she wasn't still in Loverboy's condo. The only question was, how? Since it was only a few minutes past nine, I figured that I might be able to catch the building's superintendent so I could run an old scam on them and try to get a look inside the room. I told my partner to stay put, got out of the car, then just walked right up to the apartment building and tried to open the door. To my luck, and his misfortune, they had the poor superintendent guy doubling his securities so as soon as I started loudly trying to open the door without a

key, he came running to see who I was. I started explaining that I was looking for a friend of mine, how I hadn't seen him in a few days and how I was worried about him. The guy started giving me all that, I can't let you in without prior permission. But I turned the Hollywood up to 11 and started giving the guy this whole sob story about how he'd recently been diagnosed with cancer and was taking it real hard. Then his mom was in the hospital with a busted hip having fallen down the stairs when she heard the news and fainted. I laid it on thick for the guy, said whatever tear-jerking thing came to mind and in the end he agreed to show me into Loverboy's apartment so long as it was under his strict supervision. Mission accomplished, right?

If the wife was in there, I could say that i was mistaken and that i must have given the wrong address sure that was getting a little too close to the target for comfort but these weren't your regular circumstances anymore the client wasn't just concerned for his wife's fidelity anymore he had a bad feeling that she might have stolen a bunch of jewelry from him then ran off with lover boy after losing their tail. He hadn't told us that was a possibility before, but when he did, it made the situation time critical, so to speak. Anyway, we head up the stairs to the second floor,

and the guy lets me into the condo that we've been staking out. He opens the door for me, reminding me that he's about to tail me everywhere, then off we go into the TV room, the kitchen, and eventually the bedroom. I went to open it, and found the door was locked. I call out, not specifically to the wife, just to anybody, but no one replies. The guy then starts saying how no one's home, but I start explaining how we definitely need to get that bedroom door open because I'm scared that my buddy has done something terrible, either to himself or someone else. He says he doesn't have the keys to the doors inside of these units, which was understandable, but then as he was talking, he suddenly stops, his eyes go wide, and he points down at my hand.

There was blood, like old half-dried stuff smeared across my lower fingers and palm all from where I'd gripped the door handle. And my adrenaline starts pumping. I tell the guy to call the cops because either they're going to have to arrest me for criminal damage or they're going to want to see whatever the hell was behind that locked bedroom door. I knew I'd have to stay anyway. I had freaking forensics all over my hands so when the guy agreed to go get the cops, I just hung out in the hallway outside and called my partner to let him know things had taken a real dark turn up there. We suspected the worst, but having it confirmed didn't make it any easier. The cops arrived with

the whole team. They got the bedroom door open and there she was, lying on the floor, strangled. We didn't find out until much later on, but the wife had actually tried to break it off with loverboy after a night on the town. She thought one last blowout would soften the blow. But after too many cocktails, the guy wasn't anywhere near as level-headed as she figured he might be, and somehow, he came to the decision that if he couldn't have her, no one could. That morning when we saw him, wearing his workout gear and looking like he hadn't slept, he'd murdered our client's wife less than an hour before. We were sat there in our car, having no clue that a murder was happening less than a hundred yards away. It makes me sick to think about, even all these years later, knowing that we were so close but there was nothing we could have done to stop it.

I heard Loverboy went to prison for first-degree murder and that the rich client remarried not long after. And I have a ton of stories from my time as a PI, but that's by far the one that haunts me the most. In the summer of 2017, I moved from my small hometown of Barnsley in South Yorkshire to the much larger city of Manchester. I found a flat in a place called Moss Side, which people said could be quite a rough area, but where I lived was no bother at all. People were nice, the neighbors were friendly, everyone just kept to themselves really, but the reputation of the place still kept me on my toes for the first few weeks of living there. I was careful where I went after dark, I always made sure my doors and windows were locked every time I went out, and I even did stuff like hide my laptop under my bed in its sleeve,

just in case my flat did get broken into. It took just three weeks for me to have my first run in with trouble, but when it came, it came from a direction I'd never have expected, and nothing has ever topped it since, in terms of sheer terror. So the place I lived in at the time was a two-story building, one flat on the top and one flat on the bottom, with a little walk up on either side and shared a back garden out the back. Both the flats' wheelie bins were kept out the back, so every time the bin in my kitchen was full,

I'd carry it into the backyard and pop it into one of the bins. I'd done this about 10-15 times in the three weeks that I'd been there and it had already become a regular and uneventful routine. Then one night, at about 9 o'clock, I was taking the bin out after I had done all the washing up. I popped the bag in the bin just like I'd done a the washing up. I popped the bag in the bin, just like I'd done a dozen times before, when I heard a voice behind me say, don't move. The voice was coming from the other side of the fence at the end of the yard, and it was so calm that at first I thought it was just someone taking the mick. I turned around and was halfway through saying, who the bloody hell are you talking to, when I saw him.

There was a man, probably around my dad's age, so 50 something, leaning over the top of the fence at the end of the yard and he was pointing a gun at me. Not like a handgun either, it was a full on rifle, like a modern looking one too. The second I saw him I threw my hands up in the air and felt like sudden trembles coming over me from the adrenaline dump. I remember saying, please don't shoot me, to which the bloke responded, well don't move then. A split second later I noticed that he was wearing a baseball cap with the word police written on it, which was actually really reassuring for a moment. At least until it hit me that just about anyone could get a hold of a cap

like that at your average fancy dress shop. I blurted out, are you the police? And all the bloke said in response was, lift your shirt up. He wasn't barking orders like you'd expect the police to do, he just said it dead calmly with his gun still pointed at me. I think if he'd have asked me to do anything else, like get on the floor or put my hands behind my head, I'd have done just that, no questions asked, because that's something I've seen the police do before. But when he asked me to lift my shirt up, I was so confused that I couldn't help but ask, why? The bloke instantly went, do as I tell you. But again, he didn't raise his voice or anything. He said it calmly and quietly.

I didn't need telling twice. After all, he was the one with the gun and I was bricking it so badly that I just did as he told me and lifted up my shirt without any clue as to why he was asking me. I lifted my shirt up and then put it down again, only for the bloke to be like, hang on a minute, lift your shirt up again and turn around in a circle. I was beyond asking why by then, so I just did as he told me, and then lowered my shirt again after asking what this was all about. He didn't answer my question that time either, he just asked me what my name was, so I told him, and said Tom. He then goes, listen to me very carefully Tom, I want you to walk towards me nice and slowly, arms raised, okay? I'm still cacking myself, but I was getting more and more sure that he wasn't about to shoot me too, so I did what he said. When it got close to the back fence, the bloke goes to me, stop. So I do. But then he says,

nice and slowly, take the latch off that back gate there for me. There's a good lad. Again, I did as he said, and pulled back the latch from the gate. The second I pulled it back, the bloke tells me, Step back from the door, Tom. Then about five or six armed policemen, all wearing helmets and body armor and all that stuff came rushing through, but still staying as quiet as they could. One of them was carrying one of those big door smashing things, then when they got to the steps leading upstairs, he went first and then his mates

crept up after him. It was like something out of a film, it really was, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. We don't really see big guns like that in the UK, and we don't really see small ones either, so to see that proper commando looking blokes burst into my back garden, I was just gobsmacked. We all just stood there, them waiting on the stairs which led to the flat above mine, me with my hands in the air until the bloke I'd been talking to said, right Tom, come out the back gate there for me quick as you can. I think I knew that because the guy had asked me to leave the back garden, it was all about to kick off, and just as I rushed out the gate and into the street,

it did. I saw a group of police in front of me and one of them starts saying, run to me, please, quick as you can, and then behind me, I heard the sound of police in front of me and one of them starts saying, Run to me, please, quick as you can. And then behind me, I heard the sound of the police smashing the door and then screaming, armed police. I could hear all this screaming from behind me, and people were coming out into the street to see what was going on as one of the police in front of me said, You need to come with us. I asked them if I was being arrested and they said no, which was a relief. But then this one policewoman says that I'm being detained for questioning under the

Terrorism Act of 2006. I don't know why they've got to tell you the date of something like that, but I swear to God, right? That phrase, the Terrorism Act of 2006, has just burned into my memory now. I was like, what are you on about? I'm not a terrorist. But the policewoman told me not to worry. That's just what we've got to say. They were going to ask me a few questions and if I hadn't done anything wrong, then I didn't have anything to worry about. I think once I heard that it was that level of serious, I realized any pushback was just pointless. If I'd have refused to go with them, like I might have done if it was just a drug raid or something, then they'd have just arrested me on the spot. So off I went to the police station to answer all their questions.

Because I wasn't being interviewed under caution and wasn't formally considered a terrorism suspect, the interview happened without a lawyer present for me. They didn't take me to a proper interview room either. They took me into like a family room with all the couches and stuff that's supposed to make you feel a lot more comfortable. It didn't really help. Like I was still buzzing with adrenaline, then as they asked me all their questions, I answered them as best I could. But then some of the questions were very weird. They asked me what my neighbors upstairs were like and if they ever spoke to me, if they were friendly, stuff like that. Obviously, I'd only been there three weeks so I didn't have much to tell them. I hadn't seen much of

my neighbors and when I had, they'd seem normal enough. But then they started asking me things like if I ever smelled any strong chemicals coming from their flat or if they used the front or back doors to get into their flat. Now I'm no expert on these kinds of things so I had no idea why they were asking me stuff like that but I still answered their questions as best I could and when they were finished, I was free to go. They weren't searching my flat or anything, just the one above, so I could go straight home and carry on with my evening. But that, as you can probably guess, was much easier said than done. The raid was all over the news, so for the next few hours, I sat watching the TV and scrolling through my

phone. And that's when it actually got very real for me. The previous few hours had been a bit of a blur, but seeing it all unfolding on camera phones and seeing the BBC reporter standing right at the end of my street, it brought it home for me big time. I had actually been caught up in a bloody terrorism raid, and from what I learned later on, I was in a lot more danger than I'd first thought. Once I realized the bloke was actually a policeman, the one who was pointing his gun at me, I actually felt a bit relieved, like I said. I know he was pointing a gun at me, but I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't just bloody shoot me. It just gave me a good scare is all.

But what I found out later is that the whole thing was considered a quote-unquote delicate operation. And that's because they were scared that whoever was inside the flat upstairs was going to just blow the place up if they got advance warning. And that's why the policeman didn't just start screaming at me when he saw me, and why they very subtly evacuated the neighbors on both sides of us. They were about to do the same thing with me when I took the bin out, and that's where it all started for me. Getting a gun pointed at me, instead of a friendly knock on the door. I found out later on that it was all connected to the Manchester Arena attack which had happened just a few weeks before. One of the people suspected of helping the bomber was apparently living in the flat above me.

Couldn't tell you if anyone was arrested or if anything happened to them after, but bloody hell, it was scary thinking I'd potentially been living so close to someone who had been involved in something so horrible. Back when I was just 15 years old, my parents moved us out of the city and to a small town about 30 miles away from where I grew up. I had to start 10th grade at a whole new school with no friends and it was probably the loneliest and most stressful period of my entire life. I was actually kind of mad at my parents for uprooting my whole existence like that and a new bedroom and bigger backyard meant nothing to me when I'd lost all my friends and all my familiar hangouts. I guess that makes me sound like a total ingrate but where we lived wasn't exactly a great place for teenagers. Lots of drugs, etc.

And so these days, I get it. But back then, I was not happy. I was a complete nervous wreck during the first week of 10th grade. I had this idea in my head that I'd remain a friendless loser until graduation, at which point I'd be so socially stunted that I'd be alone for life. Highly irrational, I know, and on the surface, it seemed that it was proven wrong within a relatively short space of time, because around the start of my third week, a group of kids invited me to sit with them during lunch. I was a ball of anxiety, but they were nice

and told me that I was welcome to sit with them during lunch in the future. That was a ball of anxiety, but they were nice and told me that I was welcome to sit with them during lunch in the future. That meant a whole lot to me, as I always felt ultra-scrutinized every time I was walking among the tables, trying to find a place to sit. I sat with them for the rest of that third week, keeping quiet and trying to just blend in. They'd ask me a question every so often, where I was from, what kind of stuff I was into, and each time I'd try and give the least offensive answer possible, again just trying my best to fit in. But then, come Friday, they asked me if I wanted to hang out that night after school. I had to really stifle my enthusiasm because it meant the world to me that they thought that I

was cool enough to hang. Then, when I asked where they usually chilled, they told me the bridge. The bridge turned out to be an old, disused railroad bridge that ran over a river about a mile out of town. Every weekend, my new group of friends would head out there with whatever tobacco or alcohol they could get a hold of because there, they were free to do whatever they wanted. Remember I told you about growing up in a kind of bad neighborhood? Well, I was already into all kinds of foolishness before we moved out of town. It wasn't anything too bad, but I'd already tried cigarettes and stuff, so it wasn't like I was thinking, oh no, these are bad kids, better stick to after-school bible study club or whatever. I was down to hang with them, and I was thinking, oh no, these are bad kids, better stick to after school Bible study club or whatever. I was down to hang with them and I was psyched that they'd even ask me in the

first place. So at the end of school, my new friends come to make sure that I'm headed down to the bridge later that night. I'm like, sure, I'll be there, and try to hide the spring in my step as I'm walking off. I was legitimately euphoric. I'd found a new group of friends and they seemed like my exact kind of people too. Which is why I was so mad when some kid came to sit down next to me on the bus and told me not to go hang out with them. I'm probably going to sound like a total jerk here and I'm embarrassed to even say this but I thought the kid who approached me was a total loser. His clothes were dirty, he kind of smelled a little, and had this wild red hair that he obviously didn't wash, and when he told me not to hang out with those guys, I figured that he was

trying to, I don't know, sabotage me or something. I know that makes me sound like a jerk and a bit of a cynic, but I was so insecure in my status as the new kid that I couldn't conceive of anyone going out of their way to be nice to me. I kind of just told him to get lost, then turned to face the window and ignored him, but he persisted. He said something like, I know it sounds crazy, but I think those guys are going to try to hurt you. I overheard them talking about shoving someone, and if the fall would kill them, I think they were talking about you. Again, I just told the kid to get lost in so many words, only much more forcibly this time, and he did eventually leave me alone. But after I got off the bus and walked back to my house, what he said kept looping in my mind. My new friends had invited me to the bridge and they themselves had said how it was a railroad bridge over a river.

Had they invited me there because they actually wanted to be my friends, or was it a trick? And they were planning on shoving me off the bridge as a prank. I think if the kid had said, they're going to beat you up, or something kind of vague like that, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. But he specifically said shoving and falling. I remember thinking how the kid that warned me might have known all about their hangout, enough to give me a very specific kind of fake warning, if that makes sense. After all, I knew next to nothing about all the social dynamics in town,

which in practical terms meant that I had no idea who to believe or who to trust. I spent like an hour thinking it over, then when the time came to go meet my new buddies over at the bridge I was a total coward and decided not to go. I say coward because that's what it felt like at the time. I was too scared to go meet them just in case the whole thing was some ruse to prank me but I was also scared that I was about to blow my one shot at fitting in with a friend group at school. I wrestled with the two concepts back and forth for another two hours. Then when I realized it was probably too late to go hang out, I just sort of sunk into a mild depression. On the surface, the reaction was as bad as I feared.

My new friends said I couldn't sit with them anymore, that I'd been rude as hell to refuse their invitation. They said they'd waited around almost all night waiting for me to show and that I hadn't shown them the courtesy of showing up for five minutes. And at the time, I was horrified. I'd reassured myself that maybe they wouldn't react so poorly. Then, there they were, kicking me out of that friend group before I even had a chance to really prove myself. I was devastated and went and sat on my own and to add insult to injury, the stinky redhead kid came and sat with me, almost like he felt sorry for me. Now I know what you're thinking, Stinky redhead kid is a cool guy and these days I would

totally agree with you. But at the time, stupid 15 year old me had nothing but contempt for him. If the moral of the story is that kids can be cruel, then sadly, I guess that example extends to me too. Because once again, I told the kid to buzz off, leave me alone, and not even think about sitting with me ever again. I condemned myself to be lonely again for about a week until, by total happenstance, another new kid joins 10th grade. I figured this was my shot to make a friend. He was a dude and looked like they might be into similar stuff as me so hopes were high. Next chance I got, I sat with him during lunch period and got talking to him a little. But then the next lunch period, guess who called him over to their table?

You guessed it, the old friend group that I was very briefly a member of. I thought they did it on purpose and I guess on one level they kind of did. It seemed like they'd kicked me out of one friend group and now they were denying me the chance to form another. Like a nightmare scenario where the guys I thought were going to be my friends kind of turned out to be my bullies. They had me sinking further into that very teenage flavored depression, seeing this new kid doing all the stuff that I should have been doing with the people I should have been doing it with. And every Friday night for weeks on end I'd be lying in my bedroom, totally depressed and wondering what those guys were doing

out at the bridge. They obviously hadn't been planning to pull a prank on me because the new kid had been hanging with them for weeks, probably down at the bridge too, and if they had pranked him, especially by shoving him off the bridge, he sure was handling that well. Again, this had me totally depressed, and above all, I am out of my mind furious with that stinky redhead kid. I thought he totally tricked me into not hanging out with my future friend group and probably so he could just have me all to himself, which to be fair is exactly what I'd try to do with the new new kid who joined 10th grade after I did. I remember one Friday night just stewing in my hatred for that stinky kid, fantasizing about giving him the old right there Fred in the cafeteria. But then the next day, when I was throwing a ball around with

my dad, he said that if they kicked me out without a second thought, those kids weren't friends in the first place. And that, in the end, I'd be happy that I didn't go down to the bridge that Friday night because I wouldn't be stuck hanging out with a bunch of losers who are so fickle. At the time it was sort of reassuring, but neither of us had any idea just how right he really was. The next morning, so Sunday, I'd been awake for maybe two or three hours before I realized that there was a kind of strangeness in the air. I hadn't been in town long, but weekends there were like weekends anywhere. Lots of people got the day off. Kids aren't at school, so I was used to seeing people walking down the street either by themselves or with their dogs.

There was also this group of three kids who used to routinely ride their bikes up and down the street. I saw them after school sometimes and always saw them on weekends. But that whole Sunday morning, for at least two to three hours, I didn't see a single person walking down the street, and nothing but a single car which was my mom returning home from the grocery store before it closed early. I remember how when I got home, I went downstairs to see if she brought back any snacks or anything and I could immediately tell something was wrong. She called my dad down into the kitchen and when he got there, mom told me to go up to my room. I asked why and she snapped at me, telling me to do as I was told. Dad shut the kitchen door behind me and I walked all the way to the stairs but

stopped on the first few steps so I could listen in on what they were saying. I couldn't make out every word they said but I got enough to know that a dead body had been found in the woods outside of town and that the rumor going around was that it was a kid from my high school. I was shocked, horrified even, but I also had no way of knowing which kid had been found dead. Like I said, I had literally zero friends to call about it and this is before social media, so it's not like I could just search up some hashtag or scroll through a bunch of feed to read what people were saying about it. I had to wait until school the next morning to get any real info. And then just after 8am, we got an announcement from the principal,

saying that we were all to file into the gymnasium for a special assembly. So, that's what he did. Me and all the other kids walked off to the school's gym. Except it wasn't all the kids, and I think I might have been one of the first people to get an inkling of what had happened that Saturday night. As all the kids were filing into the gym, piling onto the bleachers, or taking seats on the floor in front of it, I noticed that one particular group was nowhere to be seen. I'd been in the habit of keeping an eye out on my old friend group, mainly out of bitterness, to be perfectly honest.

I wanted to know where they were as much as possible so I could just avoid them. So as everyone's walking through the gym doors I'm looking out for the group but more and more kids are filling up the gym and there's no sign of my old friend group anywhere. Eventually and once they're sure no one else is due to show up one of the the teachers closes the gymnasium doors, but still, my old friend group are a no-show. And then, it hits me. Either one of them ended up being the body they pulled out of the woods, or they'd done something truly terrible. Once the doors were closed, the principal started telling us about how something terrible had happened over the weekend, and the terrible thing was that a 10th grader had been

found dead in the woods just outside of town. Obviously, quite a few of us had heard rumors by that point, but having it confirmed by an official was still very shocking, and I remember the gasps and oh my gods after the announcement was made. We were told that if any of us had any information, we were to approach the school resource officer. It didn't matter if classes were in session, if he had any info, you had reported immediately. We weren't told who exactly had died either. We were quick to figure out who was missing from the gym, since a group of five kids were absent from school that day. But we didn't know which of them had been the one to lose their life. It took a while for the truth to come out, but I always had a gut feeling that something very specific had happened.

And when the truth did finally come out, it turned out I was exactly right. The dead body found in the woods had belonged to the new kid, the one who joined 10th grade shortly after I did. He'd been found in a shallow stretch of river just below the old railroad bridge, the same place my former friend group used to hang out on a Friday night. According to forensics, it appeared as if the kid had jumped off the bridge, thinking the river was much deeper than it was, but in reality, it was only shin deep in the section he landed.

He broke both of his legs, injured one of his arms in the fall, and after failing to drag himself out of the water with his one good arm, he drowned after becoming exhausted. There was a brief period where everyone in town thought that it was some kind of accident. You know, the kids were drinking, maybe doing drugs. Then all of a sudden, one of them believed that he could fly and tried jumping off the bridge. A lot of the more hysterical folks in town were blaming the kid's death on drugs, like that old LSD story where the college kid tries jumping off his dorm's roof because he was high on acid and thought that he was Superman. The same thing happened in our town,

but only for maybe a few days at most, because once we all found out what actually happened, the reaction was very different. At first, all we knew was that the kid had fallen off the bridge somehow. The drug theory was prominent and a lot of people figured that some kind of accident had occurred, but a handful of other folks suggested that the new kid had been pushed. I feel like that was one of the more extreme or less popular theories because people were asking themselves, why would they just murder the new kid like that? My potential new friends might have been a bunch of burnouts, but they weren't evil, were they?

And to this day, I still don't quite know if it was an act of pure evil, but the cops sure decided that the law had been broken, and when the news broke that the kids had been broken, and when the news broke that the kids had been arrested, it sent shockwaves through the local community. And when they were initially being questioned by the cops, it only took a little pressure for one of them to start singing like a canary. The whole thing was supposed to have been nothing but a prank, push the new kid off the bridge. The worst they thought would happen was that he'd get wet before having to walk home in wet clothes while they laughed from up above.

But that's not what happened, and they didn't realize what was actually happening until it was far too late. Apparently, the kids on the bridge ran down, dragged him out of the water, and tried to save his life, but it was no good. They couldn't revive him, and when they realized he was dead, they just ran off and left him there. The following night, someone was walking their dog down by the river, and it was them that found the body. One kid ended up going to juvie for second-degree murder, and I think one other kid went down for assisting him, but the other three kids got away with it completely. I guess the cops could only charge the pusher and the one who'd lied to help cover it up, but the other three kids got to go back to school like nothing had happened at all.

They were complete pariahs for the remainder of high school. They never got that stink off themselves, but there was also someone I owed an apology to, and that was Stinky Redhead Kid. Carl and I were friends for almost 20 years afterwards, right up until the day we lost him in a freak car accident. And I think about him every single day. Not just because he was a close friend that I lost so suddenly, but because if it wasn't for him, I might not

be around to enjoy a single day without him. So here's to you, Carl, and here's to all true friends, because Lord knows they're hard to come by. My wife and I met when we were still at NYU, and after we had our first child, we held out for nine years in Tribeca before we moved upstate. I still miss living in Tribeca for a whole bunch of reasons, but it was not a place you wanted to raise a child. So after checking out a bunch of properties around Rochester and Buffalo, we ended up moving to a small quiet town in western New York. Two years into living in our new home, my son was almost 12 and my wife and I had just welcomed our daughter into the world. My son had made his first real friend during the first year of middle school and as the weather got better and better as the summer approached, he and his new buddy would play outside more and more.

His new friend lived just down the street from us, and boy was he a character. He had a very active imagination and would invent all kinds of scenarios and games for them to play. For example, one time he called our house and had me pass along a message to my kid. That message being, aliens had invaded his backyard and he needed my son to come over and help fight them off. My kid knew that he wasn't serious of course, but he still played along as he begged my permission to head over to his buddy's house so they could save the world. I kind of played along too, told him to destroy the mothership by 7pm at the latest, then off he went to massacre extraterrestrials.

So this carries on all summer, with my son getting calls about pirate ships, vampires, or mutant squirrels. And then one day, he gets a call from his buddy down the street, and they arrange to meet up later that day. I asked my son what the scenario was this time and he told me something like, there's a man down by the pond who's going to give us gold coins if we go on a quest with him. And I was like, okay, well, have fun and carried on with whatever I was doing.

And then, dad brain kicked in. My son had battled interdimensional invaders, he'd slain three-headed dragons, and he'd blasted off to Mars with his buddy in the passenger seat of their rocket. But never in all the time they'd been playing together had they ever dealt with a man, let alone one that was offering a reward for something suspiciously vague like a quest. I walked up to my son's room and asked him if the man his friend referred to was actually real. And he gave me a look like I was crazy and told me, no, of course he's not real. And at first I took his word for it. Well, as time ticked by, the old dad brain persisted, so I walked back up to my son's room and asked if he was sure that the man was just made up. He thought about it and told me, I guess so, but I could clearly

see that he wasn't 100% sure. So instead of just letting him head down to the pond, I decided to call his buddy's parents to see if they knew anything about this man. I gave them a call and I was originally hoping to talk to my son's friend, but his parents told me that he'd already left the house on his bike about 20 minutes prior. They then told me that he was headed down to the pond, but were confused as to why he hadn't gone to fetch my son before he did. I could tell that they were starting to worry because if their kid told them that he was headed over to our place and then he went someplace else, that was an obvious cause for concern. But then as much as I shared their concern, I didn't want to go freaking them out

by me mentioning a man who still could have been just some figment of their son's imagination. I just didn't want to make a whole situation out of something that could have been nothing, but still. I told them that I'd head down to the pond with my son right away, just to make sure everything was fine. They thanked me, we hung up, then I told my kid to put his shoes on because we were headed down to that pond together. And so off we went, and the pond was only a five or ten minute walk from our house, so it didn't take long to get there. But when we did, we couldn't see my kid's buddy anywhere. I figured maybe he rode his bike off someplace else and would be arriving soon because my son and I arrived a little earlier than they'd arranged to meet. My kid was still kind of confused as to why I'd escorted him in the first place,

but I told him I just wanted to check the place out a little bit and would wait until his buddy arrived to make sure he wasn't lost or something. And that's what I told him, and what I was really doing was scoping the place out to make sure that there wasn't some kind of diddler hiding in the bushes waiting for the boys. I walked around a little, just talking with my kid and trying not to make him feel over-supervised, even though that's exactly what I felt like I was doing. I've got my head on a swivel, keeping my eye out for any kind of person lurking nearby, but

I don't see anyone, so I start to feel a little less paranoid. But then we waited, and we waited, but there was no sign of my kid's buddy, and when I asked if he was normally late, my son said no, and that it was normally early if he didn't stop at our house first. And upon hearing that, the feeling of paranoia started returning, so I asked my kid to take a little walk with me, and that way, maybe we could spot his buddy riding towards us on a bike. My kid is getting really confused at how I was acting, but he doesn't ask questions, he just follows me as I go walking off around the pond. The idea was to get a better look at the area that I had already, and make sure that there

was no one lurking further away who might swoop in the second I leave. The pond was in this piece of semi-wild parkland, a jungle gym here, some benches there, but mostly lots of wildflowers and bushes and stuff, and I was looking around and over the bushes. My son didn't know what to look for, so his eyes were wandering all over the place, and that's when he spots something familiar that looked like it had been shoved under a bush. It was his buddy's bike, but his buddy was nowhere to be seen. I didn't see what he was looking at, not at first anyway, but then he crouched down and dragged the bike out from the bush with yet another look of confusion on his face. He still had no idea why his buddy might have shoved his bike into a bush like that, or

rather, he couldn't quite conceive of why someone else might want to do that. I started calling out his friend's name and at this point he starts asking, Dad, what's going on? I was honest with him. I told him I was worried about his friend and asked him to join me in calling out his name in hopes that he'd just hidden his bike then gone off wandering someplace else. So we're walking along calling out this kid's name when all of a sudden it was

my turn to spot something. It was a shoe, barely visible among some reeds at the side of the pond and it looked like it had been placed there just recently. My first thought was to tell my son to run to his buddy's house and tell their parents to call the police, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. I just couldn't. It was like an admission that something was horribly wrong. That and I didn't want to leave him alone for even a minute out there considering the frame of mind that I was in. But then, having him run with me all the way to his friend's house, that clued him in anyway and by the time we got there, he was almost in tears. We had his buddy's mom walk him back to his house, then me and his dad called the cops before heading back down to the pond to look for his kid. And it was a true

nightmare. Literally every parent's worst nightmare come to life and I got a front row seat to watch a man lose his mind. The cops showed up and took over the search then eventually opened up an investigation into the kid's disappearance, but to this day he's never been found. The disappearance broke the kid's parents to the point that they just moved and it haunted my son so bad that we ended up moving someplace else too. It's a terrible thing to say out loud, but it was never the same for a while after that, like he was afraid of his own shadow. But if that were me, and I had my childhood best friend snatched away like that, I would be the exact same way. Sometime in 2004, the residents of Bell Close and Ipswich woke up to find a moving van parked on their street.

The for sale sign outside a vacant home had recently been taken down and overseeing the unloading of boxes and furniture, were a young and very happy-looking couple. They had moved to Ipswich from the much smaller coastal town of Felixstowe, and to their neighbors they embodied happiness, harmony, and hope for the future. Yet unbeknownst to all but one, the couple's arrival foreshadowed a great and terrible darkness. On the evening of December 2nd, 2006, just over two years after our young couple moved into Belclose, a member of the local constabulary was patrolling the banks of a nearby river when he made a horrifying discovery. The naked body of a young woman was floating in the waters of Belstead Brook, and within the hour, the scene was awash with uniformed police officers, plainclothes detectives, and white-gowned forensics teams.

The woman turned out to be 25-year-old Gemma Rose Adams, last seen around three weeks earlier near Ipswich's West End Road. Police discovered Gemma had been addicted to heroin as a teenager and had been working as a prostitute at the time of her murder. Just six days later, on December 8th, the body of 19-year-old Tanya Nickel was discovered floating in a nearby body of water. Nickel had successfully graduated from secondary school, but by age 17 was living in emergency accommodation

while prostituting herself to support a burgeoning drug addiction. Police interviewed those who knew her and discovered that she was a close friend of the first victim, Gemma Adams. Detectives had yet to properly begin their investigation into Tanya's death when a third body was found in an area of woodland near Nacton. 24-year-old Anneli Alderton had been three months pregnant when she was asphyxiated before her body was arranged in a cruciform position. She was last seen on the 1843 train to Ipswich, but after disembarking at the station, she disappeared. Police discovered Anneli had attended Copleston High School,

where her academic performance had been exemplary. Yet following her father's death from lung cancer in 1998, Anneli had become increasingly reliant on heroin to cope with the grief. In the aftermath of three dead bodies being discovered in quick succession, the Suffolk Constabulary held a press conference.

Before a gathering of local journalists and following the results of a preliminary investigation, the Chief Constable warned all the women of Suffolk to remain from frequenting poorly lit areas of Ipswich after dark. The day after the press conference, the bodies of two more young women were found near Levington. According to police, 24-year-old Paula Klennell and 20-year-old Annette Nichols had been murdered via compression of the throat. Paula Klennell was last seen on the night of December 10th and just days prior,

had taken part in a man-on-the-street-style interview with a local news station on the subject of the recent murders. A self-confessed prostitute, Klenel told the reporter that she was a bit wary of getting into cars, but I need the money. Police discovered that she'd moved to Ipswich around 10 years earlier and had her three children removed from her care due to crippling addiction to heroin. Annette Nichols, the oldest of the five victims, had been drug addicted for around six years. A mother of one, she'd been employed as a beautician prior to her addiction, but had since given up custody of her child so she could pursue organized prostitution. She was also the only other victim to be posed in a cruciform position,

as in the image of Christ on the cross. Given the backgrounds of the victims, the locations they were dumped, and the ways in which Nichols and Alderton had been posed, the Suffolk Constabulary concluded that the murders were linked. They launched a large-scale investigation, codenamed Operation Sumac, with the chief constable declaring that public assistance would be key to its success. The killer, believed to be a heavyset male in his 30s or 40s, almost certainly lived among them. He was someone's husband, someone's father, or someone's son. The police would do all they could to bring the man to justice, but they were not best placed to spot the signs. They warned the citizens of Ipswich to

be wary of anyone who'd recently had their car thoroughly cleaned, or anyone who disappeared at night for long, unexplained stretches of time. The prospect left a dark cloud hanging over Ipswich, and its citizens wondering which of them would be next. On December 14th, police held another press conference where they announced that the investigation was making steady progress. They discovered that each woman had been murdered in a primary location before being transported to a body of water or an area of woodland close to a school or church. They also announced that they believed their suspect was a violent, possibly religious man who made frequent company with ladies of the night. They subsequently warned the public to

be on the lookout for any male who would suddenly and inexplicably come in possession of women's clothing, as it was believed that the killer was in the habit of taking trophies from his hapless victims. The following day, police announced that the number of officers working the case full-time had risen to 600, and that support staff from over 25 different British police forces was lending material or human resources to the investigation. Just five days later, on December 19, 2006, the Suffolk Constabulary conducted an early morning raid on a quiet suburban street just south of the River Orwell. The name of the street was Bell Close, and the man arrested was a 48-year-old man named Steve Wright,

the very same that had moved into the vacant house with his partner over two years prior. The move had been an optimistic one, with Steve and wife relishing the chance to start a new life together following the former's failed first marriage. Yet somehow it ended with the brutal murders of five young women, leaving both loved ones and law enforcement asking, why? Steve Wright was born in Norfolk back in April of 1958 and was the second child of an RAF policeman and a veterinary nurse. Due to his father's career, the family moved around a lot during Steve's childhood and he spent his youth

in Malta, Singapore, and Suffolk. Before Steve was even 10 years old, his parents underwent a brazenly bitter divorce. His father later said that Steve's mother abandoned them, leaving the young man searching for a mother figure he would never find. Steve's mother, on the other hand, claimed his father was a violent drunk and that she left out of fear for her life. She also claimed that fear for Steve's the only reason that she hadn't taken him with her, as his father had vowed to hunt them down and murder them if she attempted to take his son away. As a result of his turbulent upbringing, Steve grew into a painfully shy young man who struggled with both relationships and employment. He left school at 16 with no qualifications

and following a brief stint as a hotel waiter, joined the British Merchant Navy. He worked as a chef on ferries sailing out of Felixstowe, but after less than a year of service was granted a request for separation. Steve then hopped from job to job, plying his hand as a dock worker, a barman, a landlord, and a forklift driver. But it wasn't long before he gravitated back to sailing, and he applied for a job as a steward on the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth II. Steve spent six years aboard what he affectionately referred to as the QE2, and traveled all over the world in the process. At every port they stopped, Steve was given a few days shore leave,

but unlike his shipmates, who spent their time shopping or sightseeing, Steve was in the habit of visiting local brothels. It became something of an addiction for him, and his co-workers knew him to disappear for days at a time before returning to ship, seeming quiet and distant. At the end of his six years on the QE2, Steve moved to Norwich and became the landlord of a pub known as the Ferry Boat Inn. The inn was located in an extremely rough area of Norwich and was frequented by many of the city's ladies of the night. Steve was believed to have been a frequent customer of theirs, and this may or may not have contributed to his eventual dismissal a mere five months after he was first hired. Steve then moved to London, where he was visited by his mother during the holidays of 1992. Patricia Wright

later told journalists that, despite a warm initial reception, her son had, quote, changed completely. On Christmas Day, Steve drank continuously from morning until night. Then, when his mother suggested he slow down a little, he flew into a rage and threw her out of his home. It was F this and F that, she told reporters. He said such terrible things. He obviously didn't want anything to do with me. It was around this time that Steve began to visit London massage parlors, but

this was an expensive habit, unsuited to the minimum wage jobs he tended to stick to. As a result, Steve began gambling to finance his nightly companionship, but it wasn't long before spiraling debts began to take their toll. Seeing no way out of his present situation, Steve attempted to gas himself in his car, and he was later found lying in an alley in Haverhill before being taken to hospital. Steve's stepbrother, Keith, learned his brother had accumulated £30,000 in debt, all in just a few short months, and added that the incident proved a watershed moment in Steve's life. Before that, he used to be quite outgoing, Keith said.

He'd go out for a beer, have a laugh and a joke, but after he went a bit quiet, it was hard to get much out of him. Following his recovery, Steve went on a 10-week trip to Thailand, spending what little money he had left on pills and prostitutes. He even sold his car and furniture to fund the trip and upon his return, Steve was forced to move in with his elderly father to avoid sleeping on the streets. Having hit rock bottom, Steve appears to have undergone a period of intense self-improvement whilst lodging with his father. He found a series of steady jobs which afforded him membership of a local golf club,

and was a regular dapper dresser at the affixed hotel's bar. Steve was doing so well that he managed to begin a relationship with a woman named Pamela, the same woman he would eventually move to Ipswich's Bell Close with in 2004. The meeting marked a period of relative stability in Steve's life, and prior to their relocation to Ipswich, he stopped visiting brothels altogether. Yet just six months after he moved into Bell Close, old habits returned with a vengeance. Steve started off by visiting massage parlors, but by October of 2006, discovered he could purchase company for as little as 20 pounds from the street junkies who roamed near his home. One woman claimed Steve had visited her three days following the discovery of the final two victims.

He was a regular. I felt safe with him, she said. But that night he turned nasty. He pinned me down, which is something he never used to do. He scared me because that wasn't like him. But when I heard he'd been changed, I thought, oh God, I've been in his house. He could have done anything with me. I never thought it would be him. Steve's trial began on January 16th of 2008 with his defense hinging on the idea that although he was a regular visitor of Ipswich's so-called Red Light District, he was not the woman's killer. The prosecution raised the prospect of Steve having an accomplice, claiming there was, quote,

no evidence that her body had been dragged by one person. Just over a month later, on February 21st, and after eight hours of deliberation, the jury returned unanimous verdicts against Wright on all five counts of murder, prompting the prosecution to argue that Wright should receive a whole life tariff and thus never be released from prison. The judge granted their request and the next day, Steve Wright was ordered to spend the rest of his natural life detained at Her Majesty's pleasure. Greg Bradshaw, Paula Klennell's brother-in-law, told the press,

these crimes deserve the ultimate punishment and that can only mean one thing, the death penalty. Or a daughter and the other victims were given no human rights by this monster. He will be guarded by the establishment at great cost to the taxpayers of this country and emotionally to the bereaved families. However, the father of Gemma Adams was not so quick to call for violence when he said, I am very relieved and pleased for all the families that this is now over. Finally, we can all start to get on with our lives in peace. On January 21st of 1842, James and Esther Packer welcomed the first of their three children into the world. He was born in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, not far from the city of Pittsburgh, and the name they gave him was Alfred. When Alfred was around ten years old, his father moved the family to LaGrange County, Indiana, where he found work as a cabinet

maker. Alfred was slow to adjust to the sudden relocation, struggled to find friends among the local children, and developed profound melancholy as a result. Familial relationships became strained and during his 16th or 17th year, Alfred left home in the middle of the night, leaving a note which read, never coming back. He rode to Minnesota and worked as a shoemaker for a few years, but in April of 1861, the eruption of a fiery civil war would forever alter Alfred's fate. He enlisted in the Union Army during April of the following year and was assigned to Company F of the 16th Infantry Regiment, but was eventually discharged after just two years of service following year and was assigned to Company F of the 16th Infantry Regiment, but was eventually discharged after just two years of service following a diagnosis of epilepsy.

Alfred then traveled west in the hopes of finding his fortune, and held a variety of jobs such as hunter, ranch hand, and wagon teamster. Yet wherever he went, Alfred proved deeply unpopular with his co-workers, allegedly owing to his argumentative personality, his near-pathological lying, and his reputation for theft. But by the time Alfred arrived in Utah Territory, he'd discovered a profitable profession which suited his contempt for both authority and discipline. That of a wilderness guide. For thousands of years, certain individuals have specialized in guiding unwary travelers across vast and perilous stretches of terrain, and such people were mentioned frequently during the earlier chapters of American history. For instance, Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition through the American West relied heavily on the knowledge of a Shoshone woman

named Sacagawea, and the likes of Jim Bridger and Kit Carson made their names trading on their knowledge of the western frontier. A generation later, migrants seeking to flee the aftermath of the Civil War found that skilled wilderness guides were essential to surviving the journey west, and as a result, a capable guide would expect to make vast amounts of money. Alfred rather fancied the idea of becoming a self-employed wilderness guide, but in truth, he was a dangerously inept navigator. He drew the ire of many a dissatisfied customer and was responsible for at least two fully loaded wagon trains becoming lost on their way to Oregon. He was ignorant, obnoxious, and incompetent. Yet the demand for wilderness guides was so high that, despite his reputation,

he continued to find paying work. One such group of potential employers was headed by a man named Robert McGrew, who intended to prospect for gold near a place called Breckenridge, Colorado in the winter of 1873. The party consisted of 20 men, whose journey would take them from Utah's Salt Lake City to the San Juan Mountains, around 300 miles to the southeast. It would prove a hazardous journey, and the men were in dire need of a capable guide. So once they reached Provo, a man named George Tracy was sent out to find one. He returned with a 23-year-old gold prospector who just so happened to know the route to Colorado like the back of his hand. Yet this prospector was none other than Alfred Packer.

Packer was not 23 years old, he was actually 31 in November of 1873, and as previously stated, he was relentless in his fabrication. Although Packer had a small degree of mining experience, he was no prospector, nor had he ever been to the San Juan Mountains, but in sensing the desperation of McGrew's party, he saw an opportunity to profit. Packer told them that for the price of $25, around $700 in today's money, he could lead them to the gold country south of the Colorado Territory. The group accepted, and then off they went. Almost immediately, Packer's incompetence became painfully obvious to McGrew and his companions.

Those who made it to Colorado later said that Packer was not once, but twice caught stealing rations from other travelers. But since it appeared that his services were indispensable, he was shown mercy each time. The group's slow progress also meant that by the time they reached the more hazardous sections of their route, they were beset by harsh winter weather. Heavy snow hid the path ahead, forcing the party to rely almost entirely on their compass for direction, and due to Packer's inexperience, it wasn't long before they became lost completely. When their rations ran out, the men ate horse feed. When the horse feed ran out, they ate lost completely. When their rations ran out, the men ate horse feed. When the horse feed ran out, they ate their horses. But in the third week of January 1874, the party came across

an isolated island of salvation in the form of a Native American encampment. Chief Hure, also known as the White Man's Friend, made his winter encampment in the Uncompagre Valley near Modern-day Montrose. He was famous for his generosity to needy travelers and supplied McGrew's party with food and lodgings by which they could regain their strength for the journey to come. However, Chief Hure strongly recommended that the party postpone their expedition until spring, since they were likely to encounter dangerous winter weather as they reached the San Juan Mountains. The natives knew that to undertake such a journey would be to risk certain death, and Chief Urey offered to shelter their party until early spring, whereupon they could continue their venture in relative safety. The party of twenty convened to discuss their options,

but eleven of them refused to accept the chief's offer. In their view, delaying their expedition until early spring would roll out the red carpet to other less risk-adverse prospectors, delay their journey, and they miss out on the lion's share of the gold. A few days following his arrival at Chief Urey's camp, Robert McGrew approached him with their final decision. Eleven of them would continue on towards the Los Pinos Indian Agency, which was the closest outpost to the camp, and proceed onward to Breckenridge from there.

Chief Urey stated that he respected the party's courage and provided them with food for their journey, as well as safe directions to bypass the mountains. However, just hours into their journey, Alfred Packer announced that he had a better idea. Instead of bypassing the mountains by way of Indian territory, Packer proposed the group take a much more direct route through the mountains. Obviously, most of the party understood Packer was an incompetent navigator, but at this juncture, it seems their desire for enrichment outweighed any kind of common sense. Five of the party continued along the safer route, but six others, Packer included, decided to risk the snowy passes of the San Juan Mountains. Aside from Packer himself, the group consisted of Shannon Wilson Bell, James Humphrey, Frank Butcher Miller,

George California Noon, and Israel Swan. McGrew and a handful of his loyalists proceeded to aid Packer's group in their initial departure, but once the snows grew too deep for heavily laden packhorses, they unloaded Packer's supplies and then headed back to Chief Uray's encampment. Packer and his party then continued along the Gunnison River and began climbing the higher paths which led into the mountains. But this, as many have reasoned, was pure insanity. The men had less than two weeks rations, no snowshoes, no flint to light a fire, and wore clothing that was thoroughly unsuited to the intense Colorado winter. Finally, on April 16th of 1874, a full 65 days following the departure of Packer's party,

a lone figure stumbled out of the woods near modern-day Sewatch, Colorado. As they sat eating breakfast, a group of Ute tribesmen spotted the man limping towards them. He carried with him a rifle, a knife, a steel coffee pot, and a satchel. When they rode out to meet him, they found a man on the verge of total starvation. It was Alfred Packer, who had somehow survived the journey into the mountains. The men sat him down at the table and gave him some food, but upon attempting to chew and swallow it, Packer promptly vomited. The tribesmen feared that Packer was ill with some kind of infectious disease, but he assured them that his condition was the result of prolonged starvation and he was of no danger.

The tribesmen then asked Packer what had happened to lead him to starvation and this is what he told them. Packer explained that he had been hired by five prospectors to guide them to Breckenridge. However, during the course of their journey, he began to suffer a terrible bout of snow blindness and began to lag behind. Packer then claimed that when it was clear that he could not continue, his employers abandoned him, leaving him with nothing but a rifle, a few rounds of ammunition, and two cans of preserves. From then on, he had been forced to find his way back to civilization alone, and after exhausting his meager rations, had eaten roots, rosebuds, and even the leather of his own shoes to escape death by starvation. It made for one hell of a story, and most who heard it displayed a great deal of sympathy for

the haggard-looking wanderer. Yet to other more senior members of the tribe, Packer's story did not match his condition. Packer had not been the first unwise traveler to have erred under the might of the Colorado winner, but others who'd emerged from the forests of the San Juan foothills had been so malnourished they appeared skeletal. Alfred Packer, on the other hand, looked relatively healthy, and the bloating around his cheeks and chin suggested that he'd been binging on cheap whiskey. Under the assumption that Packer was dead broke, the Indian agency's Justice of the Peace purchased his Winchester rifle for the generous price of $10. The filthy pre-owned rifle could have been purchased for considerably less, but the money was partly intended to help poor Packer get back on his feet.

Having seen enough horrors to last a lifetime, Packer claimed his days as a wilderness guide were over and that he intended to return home to Pennsylvania. But upon his arrival in the nearby town of Sewatch, Packer began a veritable spending spree. He purchased a horse for $70, spent $78 on whiskey and tobacco in Otto Mears General Store, then dropped $100 to book the finest hotel room at Dolan Saloon for the foreseeable future. The amount of money Packer spent is the equivalent of thousands upon thousands of dollars today, which raised the question, just where exactly did an apparently destitute man get so much money? Packer remained in Sawatch spending like a sailor in Dolan's saloon until, one day, three men walked through its swing doors. Packer recognized them in an

instant. It was Preston Nutter, one of the nine men who'd chosen to winter at Chief Uray's camp, rather than face certain death on the trail to the San Juan Mountains. And behind him stood two other members of Robert McGrew's original party. Nutter approached Packer at his table and asked where the other members of his group were. Packer recounted his story of abandonment, but Nutter was skeptical. It would have been extremely unwise for men so unfamiliar with the region to have abandoned their only guide, even if they did display signs of incompetence. Sure, the men had been foolhardy to try and brave the Colorado winter, but they were not insane.

Nutter also found it odd that Packer was given one of only two rifles the group was in possession of, even though he was already armed with a revolver. Yet the final straw came when Nutter noticed a skinning knife hanging from Packer's belt. It was a knife belonging to a man named Frank Butcher Miller, one of the five party members that accompanied Packer on their final leg of the journey. When Nutter asked how Packer had come to be in possession of it, he claimed that Miller had simply stuck it in a tree and then walked off without it. Packer then claimed that after asking Miller if he wanted the knife, he was told he could have it. But Nutter didn't believe a word. He'd spent enough time with Frank the butcher to know that he'd prided himself on his ability to

cleanly and efficiently butcher an animal. He'd carried that same skinning knife with him on hundreds of hunts, and to say it was a precious possession would be a major understatement. Nutter knew something was wrong, terribly wrong, and in the face of Packer's obvious deceptions, he became irate. He was said to have lunged at Packer, demanding he speak the truth and since he was quite visibly the aggressor, he was tossed out of Dolan's and then barred from entry until the week's end. Meanwhile, back in Colorado, the five-man splinter group who'd rode on towards the mountains rather than winter with Chief Hure arrived at the Los Pinos Indian Agency. They were greeted by the agency's administrator,

a General Charles Adams, who told them he'd already met with a man named Packer, who claimed to have been abandoned by his fellow travelers. Oliver Lautzenheiser, who'd headed the five-man group that did not contain Packer, claimed this was impossible. The prospectors Packer had been riding with were good, decent men who would have never abandoned one of their number, no matter how much of a burden they were. Suspecting some kind of foul play and knowing Packer to be a compulsive liar, Lautzenheiser convinced General Adams to have Packer arrested, but the general himself chose a far shrewder course of action. Adams sent a trio of soldiers out looking for

Alfred Packer, but after finding him in Sawatch, they didn't simply put him in cuffs. The lead soldier initially consoled Packer regarding his recent tribulations and complimented him on the survival skills it must have taken to make it down from the mountains alive. Packer was accustomed to such treatment by that point and welcomed it graciously. The soldier then informed Packer that they wished to hire him, at a very generous rate, to help recover the missing members of his party. Packer seemed reluctant at first, but following a reminder that proving his innocence to the authorities was a far superior option than vigilante townsfolk assuming his guilt, he agreed to join the search party.

When he arrived back at the agency, Packer was immediately brought before General Adams, who had allowed Lautzenheiser's party to witness his questioning. Adams demanded an explanation for the conflicting stories, but an indignant Packer repeated his claim that he'd been abandoned while snowblind and professed deep surprise upon learning his fellow travelers were missing. Adams then questioned him regarding his Sawatch spending habits, but Packer defended himself by claiming the money was a loan from a sympathetic citizen. Upon hearing this, General Adams dispatched another group of riders to Sawatch who learned that not only had Packer not received any loan, but he'd been spotted with several different wallets during his stay in town.

Following the riders' return and confirmation that Packer was lying, General Adams and Lautzenheiser's party began discussing what should be done. Yet as they debated, the arrival of two Ute tribesmen prompted an uproar in the camp. The two tribesmen had been hunting just a few miles from the Indian agency, and after reaching the crest of a hill, had come across strips of dried human flesh they'd found lying on a rock. And nearby was the exact same trail Alfred Packer had used during his march for survival. When confronted with the strips of flesh, Packer had used during his march for survival. When confronted with the strips of flesh, Packer appeared to break down completely and began begging General Adams for mercy.

He then promised to make a full and frank confession after reportedly stating it would not be the first time that people had been obliged to eat each other when they were hungry. Packer claimed that after his party ran out of food, they began, and I quote, eyeing each other in a most unsettling manner. A few days after this dreadful leering commenced, Packer claimed he left camp to gather dry firewood and returned to find four of his traveling companions standing around the lifeless body of the fifth. Israel Swan, who was said to be the oldest of the five men, was killed instantly when he was struck from behind with a hatchet. In the process of dismembering Swan's body,

Packer claimed the group found several thousand dollars in cash on his person, and after dividing the money between them, they began roasting and eating chunks of the dead man's flesh. The men ate well that night, so well that just two days later, they were once again completely out of food and wracked by ravenous hunger. They tried hunting and set snares for rabbits and other small game, but after fresh meat eluded them,

a conspiracy was struck. Since Frank Butcher Miller still had a great deal of fat on him, Packer claimed Shannon Bell, James Humphrey, and George Noon convinced him that it was the butcher's turn to be carved up. He too was murdered with a single hatchet blow to the skull, ambushed while stooping to pick up firewood. It was then that Alfred Packer acquired the butcher's skinning knife, fastening it to his belt before he feasted on its owner's still warm cadaver. Packer then claimed that as the four remaining travelers pushed on towards Los Pinos, they became lost in a blizzard. Once again, they became ravenously hungry and this time it was

James Humphrey's turn to be ambushed, butchered, and consumed. Packer added that George Noone was murdered before Humphrey's corpse had even been stripped of all its meat, and the killing was wanton now. They had a taste for human flesh. Once the blizzard had cleared, Halford Packer and Shannon Bell continued their journey towards Los Pinos. They agreed never to speak of their ghastly hunger, nor the manner in which it was sated. They would say that their companions died of exposure and that each was afforded a Christian burial. Packer also claimed that being the only two survivors of the five-man party, he and Bell made a pact that neither man would murder or consume the other.

According to Packer, it took just days for this pack to unravel. After three more days of trudging through the mountains, frostbitten and exhausted, Packer claimed that he and Bell set up camp next to a lake near a large grove of hemlock trees. The two men managed to light a fire, but after a few hours of lying under their blankets and trying not to freeze, Shannon Bell went berserk. Packer claimed Bell threw off his blankets, screaming that he couldn't take it anymore. Then after snatching up his rifle, he lunged at Packer and attempted to bash in his skull. Packer described how he deflected the blow before striking Bell in the head with a hatchet. Then fearing that he might starve to death before reaching civilization, Packer cannibalized Bell's corpse and continued on his journey with the dead men's accumulated wealth.

Following another day's walking, Packer claimed he mounted the crest of a hill. Upon spotting the Los Pinos Indian Agency in the distance, he threw away the remaining strips of human flesh, but admitted that he did so with, quote, a fair degree of hesitation. After listening to Packer's version of events in full, General Adams called for a discussion of the matter between the surviving prospectors and agency officers. This prospector stated they didn't believe a word of Packer's story and asked the general to aid them in the information of a search party so that the truth might be uncovered. With Agency Clerk Herman Lauder at the lead,

the five Utah prospectors followed a handful of agency officers for 50 miles across the hills, ironically with Packer acting as their guide. Then, after two weeks of searching the snowdrifts near Lake Fork, Packer announced that he was lost, forcing a frustrated Lauder to order the return to the agency. However, at some point during the journey back, Packer armed himself with a knife and attempted to murder Herman Lauder. Fortunately, Lauder was able to defend himself, and after the other members of the search party restrained him, Packer was arrested. The failed attempt snuffed

out any and all doubt that Packer was an innocent man, with General Adams ordering his immediate transportation to Sawatch's jailhouse. During this period of detention, Packer changed his story. He now claimed that after days of hiking with virtually nothing to eat, Israel's swan could go no further. They found a pine-shaded gulch next to a lake and set up camp. A short time after this, Packer asserted that swan passed away from a combination of hunger and exposure. The following is an extract from his signed confession. Old man's swan died first and was eaten by the other five persons about ten days out of camp. Four or five days afterwards Humphreys died and was also eaten. Sometimes afterwards, while I was carrying wood,

the butcher was killed, as the other two told me accidentally, and he was also eaten. Bell shot California with Swan's gun and I killed Bell. I covered up the remains and took a large piece of his meat along, and traveled 14 days into the agency. Bell wanted to kill me with his rifle, struck a tree, and broke his gun. Yet while he was in jail, observers challenged his credibility and noted that Packer, far from being a victim of cold or starvation, had set some kind of diabolical trap. Finally, in August of 1874, an illustrator from Harper's Weekly was hiking near a place known as Slumgullion Pass, just two miles southeast of Lake City, Colorado. Upon spotting a pine-shaded gulch surrounded by hemlock trees,

John A. Randolph believed he'd happened across the prime spot to rest. But as he got closer, he made a horrifying discovery. Five rotting corpses lay strewn around the gulch. Randolph made a quick sketch of the scene, then rushed to alert the sheriff in nearby Lake City, who, naturally, was only too happy to receive news of the discovery. There was just one problem. From its description, the gulch was the site of the final confrontation between Packer and Shannon Bell. But according to his story, Packer and Bell

were alone. In which case, how had the bodies of the murdered and cannibalized men all come to rest in the same spot? The Lake City Sheriff wrote out to what became known as Dead Man's Gulch with around two dozen volunteers in tow. The scene that greeted them was the stuff of nightmares. One deputy noted that, and I quote, it appeared as if extreme violence had befallen the men. Frank Miller and Israel Swan's bodies were little more than skeletons, with almost every strip of flesh having been carved from their bones. The bodies of James Humphrey and George Noon lay rotting and flayed, with their legs having been butchered entirely. Both had received blows to the head, with the shape of the wounds indicating a hatchet had been used to dispatch them.

Shannon Bell lay with his arms to his sides, his hands skinned with skeletal legs splayed out beneath him. Shannon Bell lay with his arms to his sides, his hands skinned with skeletal legs splayed out beneath him. Someone had smashed open the top of the skull and removed his brain entirely. No attempt had been made to consume bone marrow, nor had any of the men's organs been consumed. Packard simply gone from man to man, stripping the soft, sweet, nutrient-rich muscle from their bones before eating it. The remains of the fallen prospectors were buried where they lay, and when word reached the Sewatch County Sheriff, he sent half a dozen deputies to the jail to confront Packer with their newfound evidence. But when they arrived at the makeshift prison cell on the outskirts of Sewatch, Packer was nowhere to be found. In order to prevent his

summary execution by bloodthirsty vigilantes, the town sheriff decided that Packer would be held in a makeshift cell on a ranch owned by the county. The cell was little more than a dilapidated log cabin. At the time of Packer's arrival, it was almost completely unfit for human habitation. Prior to the discovery of the missing prospectors, Packer had been held there for months, with no evidence, no bodies, and no formal charges levied against him. Yet, while there were many who were only too happy to see Packer under lock and key, just as many saw his detention as unjust, some bemoaned the extensive tax bill Packer's imprisonment racked up, while others argued it was unconstitutional to incarcerate a man merely suspected of a crime. Such talk among the townsfolk appeared to have

generated a great deal of sympathy for Alfred Packer, because when the deputies arrived in late August of 1874, they found the cabin unguarded and deserted. Someone had helped Packer escape. As Sawatch's sheriff organized both professional and volunteer tracking teams, local citizens discussed theories on what had motivated Packer to murder and consume his traveling companions. Many believe that he simply attached himself to the party under the false pretense of being familiar with the area, and that ultimately, the men had died because of his incompetence. However, a much more popular theory involved Packer leading the party of five into the mountains with a premeditated plan to kill and rob them. Preston Nutter and Oliver Lautzenheiser were highly vocal in their condemnations of Packer

and did their best to persuade the Sawatch townsfolk that the deaths were not some kind of tragic accident, nor was Packer a man of fortitude who'd simply done what was necessary to survive. Yet surprisingly, the details of Packers' cannibalism were not the primary issue. By the late 19th century, the American public were familiar with the tragic tale of the doomed Donner Party. Delayed by a multitude of mishaps, the Donners spent the winter of 1846 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, mainly eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, or extreme cold. But in one case,

two Native American guides were deliberately murdered for this purpose. News of such ghastliness spread fast among the American populace, but after a lengthy national discussion, many expressed a great deal of sympathy for the Donners. And while many argued that they themselves would not have committed murder, very few were able to categorically state that they would not have resorted to cannibalism if placed in the same dire circumstances. So in the case of Alfred Packer, the most pertinent question was, did his companions die as a result of his incompetence, or was greed the motivating factor? By early spring of 1883, Packer had been on the run for almost nine years.

Despite being one of the most infamous individuals in the entire United States, there wasn't a single reported sighting of him for almost a decade. That all changed when a man named Frenchy Capazon arrived in the Wyoming state capital of Cheyenne. Frenchy was a traveling salesman who roamed from town to town plying his trade from the back of a wagon, but Frenchy also happened to have been one of the original members of Robert McGrew's prospecting party who'd wintered at Chief Ouray's camp during the winter of 1874. Frenchy's wagon pulled into Cheyenne in early March of 1883, and on Sunday the 11th, he and several other traders set up along the thoroughfare to do business with local townsfolk. Frenchy served dozens of customers that morning, many of whom were headed home from church. But when one

man stepped up to his wagon and sought to peruse his goods, Frenchy found his face to be curiously familiar. Don't I know you? Frenchy asked. The stranger returned his gaze, revealing piercing blue eyes that Frenchy was certain he'd seen before. No, sir, he replied. What's your name? Frenchy asked, studying the man's rough, dark goatee and how his shoulder-length hair was slick with pomade. John Schwarza, the man replied, clearly irritated by Frenchy's incessant inquiries. Frenchy apologized, claiming he'd confused the stranger with an old acquaintance. Yet in truth, there had been no such confusion.

Frenchie Cavazon was quite certain of the stranger's identity, and following the conclusion of their business, Frenchie rushed to the local sheriff's office and begged them to send a message to General Charles Adams of the Los Pinos Indian Agency. A dangerous fugitive was present in Cheyenne, one that had been wanted for murder for the past nine years, and his name was Alfred Packer. General Adams and a handful of agency

officers rode day and night until they reached Cheyenne. Then, following the confirmation of his identity, Packer was taken to Denver by train on March 16th of 1883. Packer explained that he'd only escaped from Sewatch due to his fear of imminent vigilante justice and expressed a desire to give a second, much more truthful account of how he survived his ordeal in the San Juan Mountains. Instead of claiming that the men were gradually eaten as they died off one by one Packer now claimed that Bell had killed the others after ordering him to collect firewood. Packer departed in the morning, then returned in the late evening. According to the second of his signed confessions, this is what he

found. I found Bell, who acted crazy in the morning, sitting near the fire roasting a piece of meat which he had cut from the leg of Miller. His skull was crushed in with the hatchet. The other three were lying near the fire. They were cut in the forehead with the hatchet. Some had two or three cuts. I got closer to the fire and when Bell saw me, he got up with his hatchet and charged towards me. When I shot him sideways through the belly, he fell on his face. I grabbed the hatchet and hit him on the top of the head. Packer claimed he then dropped the revolver in a patch of deep snow and lost sight of it. After that, he constructed a crude shelter out of stray

logs and then hunkered down to wait out a heavy storm. He claimed days went by, his hunger growing ever more intense, until finally he could bear it no longer. He tried to get away every day but could not, Packer said. So I lived off the flesh of these men for almost 60 days. General Adams then asked Packer why he hadn't told the truth during his first confession. I was excited, Packer reportedly replied. I wanted to say something and the story as I told it came first to my mind. Finally, on April 6th of 1883, Packer pled not guilty at the opening of his trial in Lake City, Colorado.

The prosecution claimed that the only logical explanation for Packer's actions was that the killings were premeditated, while the defense argued against him being a murderer and claimed cannibalism was essential to his survival. After seven days of testimonies and examinations, he was found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to death by hanging. Yet Packer was eventually spared the death penalty due to a legal technicality. He might have cheated death a second time, but he was still legally culpable for the deaths of his traveling companions. A second trial was held in Gunnison, Colorado, in June of 1886. Only this time, Packer was found guilty on five counts of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 40 years in prison. At the time, Packer's 40 years in prison constituted

the longest custodial sentence ever handed down in the United States and it stunned the American public. He was encouraged to lodge multiple appeals and sent letters to national newspapers claiming that he had been, and I quote, unjustly convicted by an unfair and unsympathetic judicial system and by the ignorant conclusions and judgments of small-minded people. Eventually, on February 8th of 1901, Packer was paroled after serving 18 years of his 40-year sentence, and upon his release, he expressed a huge amount of gratitude towards a woman named Polly Pry. Polly Pry was the pen name of Leonel O'Brien, an ambitious young reporter with the Denver Post. Upon learning of Packer's military service, she used her platform to paint him as a courageous former soldier,

whose only crime was getting caught up with what she referred to as a regrettable situation. She called him a victim of circumstance who did what he had to do to survive, but one who had been, quote, crucified for violating civilized sensibilities by having to do to survive, but one who had been quote, crucified for violating civilized sensibilities by having to resort to cannibalism. The column inches she dedicated to Packer prompted the launch of a petition, one which made it onto the desk of the Colorado governor, Charles Thomas. Thomas was initially reluctant to involve himself in this situation, but after months upon months of pressure, one of his final acts as governor was to have Alfred Packer paroled, under the condition he would not attempt to profit from his story. Six years following his release on April 23rd of 1907, Alfred Packer passed away in Jefferson County, Colorado, aged 65 years old. Some have cited his cause of death as being dementia, others blame a stroke, and while rumors abounded that he became a vegetarian before he

died, many reported Packer as living modestly and charitably during his final few years. Buried in Littleton, Colorado, Packer's grave is marked with a veteran's tombstone, listing his original regiment from 1862. But while he might well lie in a soldier's grave, his reputation will always be that of a charlatan, a murderer, and a cannibal. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. 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. Thank you.