transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:38] When I was just two years into policing, and I was still a fairly inexperienced beat cop, my partner and I were out on patrol one day when we got a call from dispatch. An arrest warrant had been issued for a guy who'd failed to keep up with child support payments, and a judge determined that he was hiding assets. We used to deal with stuff like that from time to time. Random dads trying to beat the system, sometimes addicts who barely even remember that they had kids. And neither group tended to be fans of the cops, so their greetings were usually pretty frosty. But after rolling up on our delinquent washing his car outside his apartment building, he was actually pretty chill at first. After we confirmed who he was, and he was perfectly polite and civil, the guy then says, Ah, man, the lady at the courthouse said this might happen. Now my partner asked what he meant by that, and the guy said that he knew exactly why we were there. He admitted that he hadn't paid his child support on time, but had driven over to the county courthouse just two days prior to pay off the outstanding balance. Because it was past the deadline, the lady said an arrest warrant might already be in the process of being issued. But if that happened, he could ask the arresting officers to contact the courthouse, and they'd confirm that it had been issued in error. Now, Joe Sixpack is probably going to read this and think, What the hell? Criminals can just do that? Claim that there's a mistake and make the cops contact the damn judge? Well, yes and no. If we get a call about an escaped ax murderer, it's much more of an ask no questions type situation. But then when it comes to stuff like issues of custody or child support payments, things get way, way more complicated. Then if we arrest someone in error, even if all we can see in front of us is what appears to be a bona fide warrant, they can be entitled to a big chunk of change that comes right out of our budget. Seeing as we don't want to rack up some huge bills and compensation, we're advised to use our own judgment. And in that case, since nothing about the guy was screaming a-hole, my partner contacted our precinct to ask if someone could double-check the warrant. And after that came the waiting game. It's something you get accustomed to pretty quickly as a police officer, all that hurry up and wait stuff. We wait for backup, we wait for SWAT, we wait for clearance, or we wait for negotiators, and sometimes we wait for warrants to be confirmed. In Decayle Time, we often explain the situation as best as we can to whoever's name is on the warrant, or if we're in our squad car, we'll just shoot the breeze on this or that till word comes back. But then sometimes, making small talk with a perp is a real leveler in terms of showing them you're just a regular person doing a kind of irregular kind of job. And that can sometimes be the difference between a good day and a really, really bad one. And so, because we needed to detain the guy in the event that his warrant was good, we walked him over to our squad car and sat him in the back while we stood near the open door. And since he was being so friendly, we didn't cuff him, we didn't search him either, we didn't think we needed to. My partner asked him if he watched the Falcons, and when the guy said yeah, they started discussing if Mike Smith was the right coach for the job, since they'd just been demolished 24 to 2 by the Giants, etc, etc, and the guy in the back of the squad was saying something like hell no. But then my partner started saying how Smith was a rebuild coach, and that we were really just trying to improve and not to win. By the end of his little speech, the guy in the back then says, Yeah, I feel you. And my partner was kind of proven right too, because 2012 saw the Falcons edge a 30 to 28 victory in the divisional playoffs. They ended up losing the NFC Championship to the Niners, but that's whatever I guess. Because my partner wouldn't live to see it. After a couple of more minutes of talking amongst ourselves, my partner's radio starts buzzing with news from dispatch. This is another thing that really sets us apart from civilians. Well, most civilians anyway, and that only those with an ear for it can really decipher what's being said over police radios. This meant that I heard it loud and clear when dispatch confirmed the warrant was good and we were to bring this guy in. But our perp didn't understand a word, so when my partner tells him to step out of the car so he can put the cuffs on him, his face just sort of drops. He goes from the nicest, friendliest, most reasonable guy you could ever hope to meet, and he turns, like a werewolf, right in front of my eyes. His smile disappeared, his brow dropped, and as my partner reached into the squad car to offer him a hand, our perp reached into his pants. By the time my partner saw the gun, it was too late. He knew what was happening and what a terrible mistake we'd both made, but by the time his hand touched his holster, almost a dozen shots had been fired at him point blank. The coroner's report said it only took minutes for him to bleed to death from massive internal injuries, but having seen it myself, I think he was dead before he even hit the floor. People who were shot that many times, they gurgle or groan while they ride around for a while, and then suddenly they're just gone. But my partner just laid there like he was sleeping till they carried him off to the cooling board. The guy in the back, the one who pulled the gun and shot him, his departure from this mortal plane wasn't nearly so peaceful. I emptied a whole mag through the back window. Then after I reloaded and he made the mistake of trying to get out of the car, I emptied a whole other mag through the broken glass until we finally stopped moving. I heard him gurgling. And all I could think in the moment was, what's waiting for you downstairs is going to make those bullet holes feel like tickles from a feather. And I'm glad he was suffering. I wanted him to. And aside from not searching the guy or putting him in cuffs, my only regret is not making him suffer even more before he finally stopped moving and stopped making noises. The funeral was rough. Almost the whole department turned out to see him off, and my partner's whole family were just so darned understanding. We all felt this huge amount of guilt for letting something like that creep up on us because it wasn't us that paid. It was him. But during the eulogy, my partner's brother said that he was proud, because although we lost him, my partner went out dragging a little piece of evil with him too. And that's why he served. So he died doing what he loved, trying to keep ordinary people safe. About 15 years ago now, me and my friend Hal decided to take our families out to Makoakita Caves for a camping trip. Me and Hal had been friends since we were kids, and having grown up around Makoakita, we'd visited this state park a whole bunch of times when we were children, so we knew it pretty well. Makoakita has more caves than any other place in Iowa, and a lot of them are connected via a series of small tunnels and larger passageways. Seeing as it's a kind of natural wonder, it's become a major tourist attraction for folks that are interested in those sorts of things. And so depending on what time of year it is, the western side of Makoakita can get pretty busy sometimes. And they're a lot like you'd imagine, I guess. The caves, I mean. With rangers guiding visitors along long wooden walkways as they explain the differences between stalagmites and stalactites. Some of them are closed to the public from time to time when they become structurally unsafe, but we figured the smaller ones would be safe enough for the kids to explore, and they could have a little fun while getting in touch with a little local heritage at the same time. But what we didn't know on the drive out there was that organizing that camping trip would turn out to be one of the worst decisions we ever made. We drove up in early fall just as the leaves started to turn, but with a little late summer heat still hanging in the air, we picked out a large campsite close to a bunch of smaller caves and then had lunch out of some picnic baskets that the wives had made. And afterwards, we took the kids on a little walk around the area to talk them through some basic forestry stuff. You know, don't leave food lying around, stay put if you get lost, etc. And then we headed back to camp. And it was an awesome day. And then once the kids were asleep, us grownups got to have a little time to ourselves around the campfire with a couple of wine coolers. The next morning, me and Hal got to enjoy the same early morning camp vibes that we hadn't shared since we were children. And by that, I mean the smells of wood smoke, coffee, frying up some bacon, all rolled into one. I truly believe there is no finer combination of smells on God's green earth. And if you'd had to ask me that morning, I'd have told you that we were in for another fine day of camping. But over the next few hours, it felt like our whole entire worlds were unraveling. Our kids were a mix of boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 10, so they had no problem getting along and playing together. Then in the early afternoon, they asked if they could go play near one of the caves nearby. Hal and I had checked it out earlier that morning and found a large mouth with a narrow tunnel connected into the darkness at the rear. We told the kids if they stayed near the entrance and didn't head down the tunnel, they were fine to go play out there. And so off they went. But then not even half an hour had gone by before we heard a sudden and terrifying screech from one of the girls. We all went tearing off through the trees in the direction of the caves, and soon found the kids running back to us in the opposite direction. They were either in tears or scared out of their minds, but all agreed on the same version of events. They've been doing as they were told and been playing near the cave, not inside of it, when they noticed a man suddenly creeping out from its mouth. And they knew well enough to keep away from strangers, but said the man looked so creepy that they stopped playing and got ready to run. My daughter said they all just stood there still for a second, watching as the guy stepped towards them. He asked if they'd like a free tour of his cave, and then when they said no, he started claiming that he was friends of their parents, i.e. us, and that he'd been asked to watch us. And the kids were between 7 and 10, so they were young still, but not all together incredibly dumb. And then one of the kids said that they didn't believe him, and that's when the guy chased them. I had a hundred questions to ask them, but in the moment, all me and Hal were interested in was where the guy had gone after chasing them. The kids didn't know, and they thought that he was still following them, so, on instinct, me and Hal went rushing toward that cave. Hal had always been faster than me. He'd been on the track team in high school, and he probably could have played football if he was a little bit bigger like I was. And so that day, he went tearing through the trees way ahead of me, and was maybe twenty feet ahead by the time he saw the cave mouth and the man that had almost snatched up one of our kids. I heard him yell out, I see him, and then somehow he seemed to speed up for that last fifty yards or so. I didn't see who he was talking about, I was just too far behind, but just knowing that they were still there made my blood boil, and I tried my best to catch up. Hal shouted he's in the cave, right as he broke from the tree line. I figured that he'd just guard the entrance till the cops came, but Hal went right in after him. I yelled at him to wait, but he didn't listen, and I guess he was right not to, in a sense. It turned out that the cave was a dead end and the guy really was getting away. But at the time, I thought that he was crazy going running off into the dark with nothing but the flashlight on his phone to light the way. I stayed put at the mouth of the cave, yelling for Hal to come back, because we had that guy cornered, but he didn't. Instead, about a minute went by before I realized that I might have to go in after him. But no sooner had I stepped forward that Hal had appeared from the darkness, and he looked pale and shaken. I asked him what happened, and Hal just said he got away. But instead of stopping in front of me, he just walked right past me and over towards the trees. As I followed, asking if he at least got a good look at the guy, I could see Hal was shaking, and then he suddenly just stopped and put both hands on the top of his head in the way that people do when they're struggling to process something or just got bad news. That body language and that look of shock in his eyes, it took me half the story already, but Hal looked at me in a way that reminded me of a much younger version of him and in a way that made him look smaller almost. And then he told me, I had him. I had him. And I let him go. And it was like he either didn't know how to explain it or didn't know how to put it into words, but after telling him to spit it out for God sakes, he did. Hal said he ran to the back of the cave, switched on his phone's light, and then caught a glimpse of the guy turning down some side tunnel. The guy was fast, but Hal was faster. And within seconds, he'd caught up with the guy after chasing him down that side tunnel. And when the guy was within arm's length, Hal reached out with one free hand to try and grab him, but the guy spun around, yanked himself out of Hal's grip, and then just hissed at him. Hal said he hissed like a goddamn cat, and then tried swiping at him with nails that were so long and yellowed they'd almost look like claws. The guy bared his teeth as he hissed too, and Hal said that they were so dark and rotten it was a miracle that they were even still in his head. The guy was crazy. He had to be. Otherwise, there was no way that he'd be wandering around those tunnels looking like he hadn't washed in over a year. But the thing that there was still enough of him left up there in his mind to try and drag a child back into the dark with him, it was chilling, and I completely understand why Hal was so shaken. By the time we got back to camp, my wife had already called 911, and there was a ranger headed to our location to talk to us. When he arrived, he confirmed that there was almost no point searching the caves, as there were so many entrances and exits scattered around the park that if he knew them all, the guy could just be about anywhere. And they only slightly reassured us by saying that it was impossible for anyone to live in the cave system, not without them knowing about it anyway. They'd also keep their eyes peeled for anyone matching his description wandering around the park, because if they did, he'd be immediately arrested and we'd be immediately informed. And as you can imagine, the kids refused to spend another night in the park, so we unfortunately had to call it quits on our camping trip. And now that I mention it, me and Hal were just about the only ones who didn't want to leave. But not because we didn't want the trip to end, it was more like we wanted nothing more than to hunt down the son of a bitch that had tried to grab one of our kids. But we were just too overworked and over tired dads. If the rangers knew that trying to seal off the whole cave system wasn't going to do any good at that stage, then what the hell could we do? It was frustrating. But that feeling faded quickly. What didn't was that lingering feeling that no matter how safe you think that you are, it's almost impossible to protect our children from those who want to do them harm. Hal fell down something of a deep rabbit hole too, trying to dig up any information that he could on other encounters with that freak that ran off into the tunnels. He didn't find anything. But I know that he still thinks about the cave guy from time to time. He regrets getting so spooked by the guy's appearance and wishes that he'd given him the ass-kicking he deserved when he had the chance. And I can't say I blame him. And I'd pay a heck of a lot of money for five minutes alone in a windowless room with that absolute piece of trash. So, picture the scene. It's the middle of a cold and rainy night in the windy city, and my partner and I are cruising along in our patrol car, waiting for the next call to come. It's been a real boring night so far, so we were practically begging for something interesting to happen. But as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. When the call came, it was from a woman saying her boyfriend was drunk and he was getting physical with her. And to be brutally honest with you, both me and my partner were just thinking jackpot. We switched on the cherries and berries as they say, then put the pedal to the metal. Because few things are as satisfying as carting some wife-beating sack of crap off to jail for a night. And it's not that we get to give him a few compliance strikes on the way out either, although this is a perk of the job. It's the fact that having him in a cell for a night can be just enough time for a battered spouse to get the hell out of dodge. And we arrived at the address a few minutes later. It was an apartment building, but a resident led us inside and told us the apartment that we wanted was on that third floor. We go upstairs, found the right-numbered apartment and then banged on the door while yelling Police Department. We could hear two people fighting on the inside, but after hearing me shout, we heard a man's voice calling out that everything was okay now and that they didn't need the cops anymore. Now, we more or less called bullcrap and then asked the guy to bring him and his girlfriend to the door so we can see that they're okay. There's a moment of silence, and then we suddenly hear movement, and then a female voice calls out, Help! He's stabbing me! He's stabbing me! Help! Now, seeing as I was the larger and heavier, the two of us, I took a few steps back and got ready to kick the door open. It took three solid kicks before it started to give, and then on the fourth, it swung open. My partner was the first through the door. I followed close behind, gun drawn and held out in front of me, and after making it down a short hallway and turning a corner into the kitchen, we saw a woman with blood all over her and a man holding a knife. My partner shouted for him to drop it, but he didn't even finish issuing his command before the guy fled down another hallway leading away from the kitchen still holding that knife. We told the wounded lady to stay put and not to move, then after quickly requesting medical units, we followed the guy down the hallway. We thought we had him trapped, we thought we had the upper hand, but we were wrong. And I never forget how physical the sensation of my heart dropping was when I heard the cries of a young child coming from what was clearly a back bedroom. We had no idea that there was a kid in the apartment, and knowing that there was one present changed everything, especially once we saw our perp darting out of the bedroom with a screaming kid under his arm. He only came in and out of view for about a second, like a flash of movement, and then he was in cover again. And then the sound of the little boy screaming was joined by the sounds of me and my partner yelling at the guy to drop him. We didn't stop. We couldn't. The guy had a knife, and now he had a kid in his arm. So we kept on pushing down the narrow hallway till we reached the end of it, and saw the guy with the knife raised above his head. He was threatening to stab the kid unless we backed off, but obviously we weren't about to do that. Instead, we yelled at him a few more times to drop the knife, watching where his eyes went until they finally landed back on the kid. He tensed up and brought the knife a little higher, clearly about to bring that blade straight down onto the kid's head. So my partner did what he'd been trained to do, and attempted to neutralize the threat. We're trained to shoot until that's the case. You don't shoot someone once and then hope that they're not going to get back up and go for their weapon. If they present a threat to life, you shoot till they're not moving anymore. Another reason that we're trained to do this is because in that kind of high-pressure situation where adrenaline is pumping, just one shot might do absolutely nothing. In the movies, people get shot and they spin around or fly across the room. And while the latter might certainly be true with a close-range shotgun blast, a nine-millimeter bullet is a very different situation. So when my partner opened up on the guy with the knife, the shots didn't send him flying across the room or spin him around and knock him off his feet, but he felt them all right, and he chose to put the closest thing he could between himself and the bullets, which was the kid standing at his feet. And it was all over in a matter of two or three seconds, just a pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And then both man and boy were on the ground laying still. We hoped all the bullets might have missed the kid, and that all of the shots hit nothing but the guy, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. And what followed was like something out of a living nightmare, a reality we just didn't want to accept. My partner started to gag, then ran to the bathroom to puke. All I could do was call in what had happened and stand there, shell shocked till backup showed up. Our sergeant was one of the first to arrive, and he took my partner out to his car to calm him down. He later said that he thought my partner was going to eat his gun. He was in that bad of a state. And the sergeant kept asking him what happened, but he couldn't say. And then when he finally found the words, he could only whisper it, and he couldn't bring himself to say it any louder than that. The EMTs rushed the lady with the stab wounds to the hospital when they were able to stop the bleeding and save her life. But the kid and the knife wielder were both pronounced dead at the scene. It was tough to stomach, and it took me a long time before I stopped thinking about it and dreaming about it. But what happened that night destroyed my partner in more ways than one. He quit the force not long after and then ended up moving out of state. He wanted to be as far as possible from the biggest mistake of his life, and no matter how much support and counseling we could offer him, he knew the best thing for him was to just leave. And when you sign up to be a cop, the thought of dying on the job most definitely enters your head at some point. But what no one ever tells you is there are mental casualties too, not just physical ones. And when you lose someone that way, when they're still alive, just not there anymore, it hurts almost as much as when you lost them, for real. Back in 2012, when me and my mates were in our mid-twenties, we asked a mutual friend what he'd like to do for his birthday. Now, he doesn't want to be named, so I'm just going to call him Birthday Boy. Now, we thought BB would be wanting to go clubbing, which was the same thing that he'd want to do every year. But then in September of 2012, when we asked him if he wanted to head to Newcastle or Manchester for a night out, he said no. He didn't want to go to Newcastle or Manchester or even London for that matter. Instead, Birthday Boy wanted to go to Wales because he wanted to go camping. It wasn't the first time he'd mentioned wanting the group to swap the great indoors for the great outdoors, so it didn't come as some massive shock. But then, since we'd never gone camping as a group before, organizing the trip was a hell of a lot more complicated than booking a hotel and a few train tickets. We had to scout out a decent location and purchase a ton of personal equipment and brush up on some of the more basic survival techniques, like basic first aid, lighting fires, and which mushrooms to avoid. Spoilers, it's all of them. And we also had to work out how we were going to stay warm and dry because this wasn't going to be some sun-soaked summer camping weekend. We were going in October, and our friend's birthday month, and being in the UK, just about the only thing that we could be certain of is that the weather was going to be horrible. On the day of the trip, the weather was just as crap as we expected, but we were in such high spirits that we didn't give a monkey's toss if it rained sideways. We drank a few cans of lager on the train over to Wales, and then polished off a few more as we walked to the campsite that we had picked out, which was a short walk from a lake. And as we got to the bottom of this country lane, we spotted a small house with a man doing some gardening out the front, and he stood up and looked at us as we passed by. I gave him a nod and he asked where we were going. I pointed down the lane and told him that we planned to camp by the lake. He didn't exactly look pleased to see us, but when we mentioned the campsite, he sort of just grinned a little bit. And then he says, Oh, I wouldn't go down there if I were you, lads. The shores of that lake are haunted. And we were only 15 minutes walk away, so I asked him how he himself fared with the ghosts since he lives so bloody close. And he simply pointed to the little wooden cross above his door frame and then said that we didn't strike him as believers. He was wrong. As our resident Bible basher, the birthday boy was quick to point that out. But all the blokes said back was, well, at least one of you will be all right. The rest of you, I can't speak for. Martin, who was quite easily the funniest of the four of us, made a ghostly noise like, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, which sent us all into hysterics. But the Welshman didn't laugh. He just kept that grin on his face and told us, Mark my words, boys, you'll see. And we knew that he was just trying to scare us, and being just a week before Halloween, we sort of appreciated it in a weird way. And so after making our way down to the lake, we pitched our tents about a hundred meters from the shoreline. We had a great first night. We got a campfire going and then cooked some food on it. And then after a few more beers to wish the birthday boy his many happy returns, we climbed into our tents and went to sleep. Now, I remember the ground was nice and soft because of how mossy it was, much more comfy than I imagined it would be. And then as I was drifting off, I started to hear this gentle patter of rain against my tent, which only added to that feeling of coziness. But then, maybe four or five hours later, I woke up to find my sleeping bag was damp. And then I found that water had been leaking in from outside the tent, and that's because by that stage, we were well on our way to being under water. And the spot that we picked to camp was some kind of miniature flood basin, and as it rained, the ground underneath us was slowly flooding. And when we realized this, just before sunrise at about six in the morning, we were not best pleased, and as the person that had been foolish enough to pick that spot, I got an earful and then some from the lads. And I took it on the chin, of course, because they were right. We could all agree that it was a terrible place to camp, and that I should have done more location scouting on Google Earth. But what we couldn't agree on was what to do next. One of us, not the birthday boy, wanted us to just abandon ship and go find a bed and breakfast to stand before heading home the next day as planned. But then the birthday boy didn't want the trip to end, and thought that we could find somewhere else to camp before drying off around the campfire. I agreed, and so did our friend Martin, but Mr. Bed and Breakfast was refusing to budge no matter how much we argued that he should honor the birthday boy's wishes. We were all tired and damp, so it got quite vicious at times, and so vicious in fact that our one friend Martin was basically like, F this, if you two are going to argue like little kids, I'm just going to go for a smoke. And then he grabbed his rolling kit out of his bag, and took out a pre-roll and then walked off alone. We called after him asking where he was going, but instead of telling us, he turned and showed us the walkie talkie that he was carrying, as if to say, don't worry, I'm just one click away. And someone brought two walkie talkies because they figured they'd be useful or fun. Now we soon got back to arguing and I'm not sure how long we went at it, but the sun had fully risen by the time we agreed that we should at least pack up and move somewhere else. As we started to pack up, the birthday boy suggested that we call Martin on the radio so he could get back and join us in the packing up. And when I tried, I didn't get a response. Now at first, I got it into my head that since Martin was off smoking some joint, he might have put his earbuds in for a little bit of music while he smoked. And it seemed a bit of a daft thing to do, but he was off chasing good vibes, so I didn't put it past him. Now I reckon that I didn't give it about 10 minutes before I tried again, at which point Martin would surely respond. But again, he didn't. It was just radio silence, and it got very creepy very quickly. Now I remember the exact moment after I said, Martin, are you there mate? For like the third time, which everyone had this sort of silent collective moment of, oh God. And there was no good reason Martin wasn't responding, so after we'd shaken most of the water out of our gear and packed it all away, we headed off in the direction that he'd walked to go look for him. Now as we moved, the birthday boy tried to reassure us by suggesting the radio had just simply failed. He said the battery might have died or it had reached its maximum range, or maybe it just couldn't handle the bumpy terrain. Now I'll admit, that made me feel a little bit better. But the feeling that something was wrong didn't go away, and it only got worse as we made our way up to higher ground. The higher up the hillside we got, the more we got a bird's eye view of the area that we slept overnight at. We'd hoped that we might spot Martin wandering around, but he was nowhere to be seen. As the ground ahead leveled out and we had a small section of woodland, we started calling out Martin's name in the hopes that he might hear us. We'd already tried calling him on his mobile a few times, but the phone reception in the area was so bad that we couldn't even squeeze a text message through. We also kept trying the radio in between calling out for him, but he still didn't respond, and the longer we went without contact, the more and more frightened we got. I mean, it was like something just sort of snatched him out of thin air, and having covered the ground that he must have walked on, it made zero sense that we hadn't found him already. Birthday Boys then suggested that we'd bored him away with our arguing, and that he might have spontaneously decided to just go home after having his smoke. But that wasn't Martin. He wasn't so passive aggressive as to just march back to the train station while ignoring us on the radio. If he'd disappeared like that, it wasn't voluntary. We found a decent spot to camp in that wooded area I mentioned, but we didn't pitch our tents right then. Instead, we only dropped our bags and then walked right back the way we came to carry on looking for Martin. I was getting pretty frustrated with the walkie talkie not working, so I gave it to Chris, the guide we'd talked out of getting a B&B, so he could take a turn trying to get Martin. We didn't have our packs on at the time either, so we were able to move around a lot faster and a lot more spread out so we could cover more ground. I remember at one point me and the birthday boy were on some higher ground and still in the trees while Chris walked down towards the lake to look around. Now the birthday boy and I exchanged a few words about how concerned we were for Martin, then suddenly we heard Chris shouting for us. We went running off to find him and found him running up towards us, and when he stopped, he looked terrified as he told us that Martin had contacted him in the radio. I knew it was going to be bad, but when I asked Chris what Martin said, his reply made my blood run cold when he stated, Let. Me. Out. You know there are those five stages of grief and two are like denial and bargaining? That's what took over in the moments after Chris claimed Martin had whimpered let me out into the radio. The birthday boy and I were like, Are you sure he didn't say something else or? It's a prank. He's trying to scare us. Of course he is. It's almost Halloween. But Chris was adamant. The voice was male and he was certain. And he said a bunch of other stuff too, but the thing he heard for definite was, Let me out. And it sounded like whoever said it was in pain. Obviously at that point, the situation went from the eerie but simple, where's our mate gone, to the more serious, we need to call 999 right now. But like I mentioned, the phone reception in that area was absolute dog crap. That meant we had to run all the way back to the country lane back near where we were camped previously, and just hope a car came along that we could flag down. Luckily, it took only about 10 minutes before we saw this van driving down the lane, and after flagging it down, the driver let us hop into the back. A few minutes later, he dropped us almost right backward we'd started that previous day. This was only a few miles from where Martin had gone missing, but more importantly, it had phone reception. And it was Chris that put the 999 call in while me and birthday boy listened. He sounded as panicked as we felt as he described what had happened, then after taking Martin's name, the dispatcher told us that she was going to try something. Since the most likely explanation was that Martin had been hurt in some way, she was going to check her database for any ambulance patients with the same name. That way, she might be able to find out what had happened to him and where he was headed. But then a minute or two later, the dispatcher comes back on the line to tell us that she's found Martin. You might think we greeted that news with relief, but we were still very much under the assumption that he's been a medical emergency, and she might have found him, but that didn't mean that he was okay. So when she said it, we were just sort of like, okay, go on. Martin was fine, and hearing that was when the relief hit, but the dispatcher also told us that he wasn't 100% okay, because he'd been arrested. All she could tell us by law was that he'd been nicked by the police just a few hours before, and he was being held at the police station at Abergavenny. And we're just thinking, what? What did he get arrested for? We were given the number of Abergavenny police station, and after we called them, we found out Martin was most likely going to be released that evening after he'd been formally processed. At which point the long and arduous process of retrieving our gear and traveling to Abergavenny began. We were on the train and almost at the town's train station when Martin called us. He'd been released and was waiting for us at the pub near the train station. Then when we met, everyone was sitting down with a cold pint and Martin told us what had happened to him. Remember that country lane that I mentioned, the one that we used to hitch a ride down the road a bit? Well, that's exactly where Martin had walked after rolling his joint. He said that he'd found a tree stump that looked like a nice seat, but it was soaked after the night's rain, so instead of sitting down, he just started walking up and down the quiet lane puffing away on a smoke. He walked right up to a bend in the track in the morning, still peaceful and quiet. But right as he turns around, he hears an engine coming up the lane around the bend. He said that he thought it was just a farmer, someone who probably wouldn't pay him much attention. But when he looked back to see who was coming around that bend, he saw a police car. Now Martin is about six foot with bright red hair, and back then he wore a purple jacket and had his hair in dreadlocks. So as the cops drove around the bend at like 6.46 in the morning, all they saw was this giant white rasta wearing bright purple, who had a massive joint hanging out of his mouth. They were always going to give chase, or at least stop him to ask what he was about, and Martin knew this all too well. So instead of staying put to be questioned, hectored, and inevitably rested, Martin decided to leg it. And he didn't get far. One policeman jumped out on site while the other zoomed ahead and cut Martin off. He said he looked for a fence to hop or a gap in the hedge to squeeze through, and then by the time he realized that he was buggered, the police were quite literally on top of him. All he had on him was one spliff, but running meant that police hit him with a possession and attempting to flee a lawful stop or something like that. And that meant that they could drag him down to the station for processing, which they did, and that's why it seemed like something had just snatched him out of thin air. Because for all intents and purposes, something had. It was only prior to transportation when the police were patting him down that Martin realized the walkie-talkies' cheap clip had fallen free from his jacket while running, but he was in no position to ask to retrieve it, and off they went to the station. I remember the four of us sitting around that table, all kind of ripping on Martin for getting arrested while remarking on the sheer bad luck of it all. But then Chris was suddenly like, well, hang on, who was asking for help over the radio then? And the table was silent. Martin asked what we were on about, and then when we explained, it was his turn to think a prank was being pulled on him. And when we asked him to promise us that he hadn't said let me out over the radio, Martin assured us that he hadn't used the radio at all. He'd walked off, taken a few puffs, and then, Bob's your uncle, he was in cuffs. No radio usage whatsoever, and he certainly hadn't said let me out after the cops put him in the car. But that left us all asking the question, who did? These days, we all collectively choose to believe that just in the case of that man near the lake who tried to convince us it was haunted, the weird radio transmissions were more of the same. Someone had found the radio, heard us asking, Mart, are you there? And thought to themselves, how can I scare the pants off these numpties in as few words as possible? Well, if that was you, and you just so happen to be listening to this, then well done. What you did had proved an enduring mystery to us, and one we care not to think about during those quiet midnight hours when alternative and much darker explanations begin to rear their ugly heads. So one of the most memorable calls of my entire career as a police officer happened on a quiet Tuesday morning, right around the time all the school buses were out on the roads. That time of the morning is probably one of the least busy of our day, or the worst that you'll get is a minor accident or a bad case of road rage. But that morning was different. So my partner and I got a call from dispatch, asking us to perform a welfare check on an address nearby because they had gotten a silent 911 call. And the call was silent, and then the caller hung up. But after dispatch called back, whoever answered very sketchily changed their story from I didn't call 911 to Oh, I must have dialed it accidentally. No need to send anyone out. Now, on paper, you might think, okay, accidents happen, right? No harm, no foul. Well, that's not how things work in practice. We try to follow up on every 911 that you might describe as inconclusive, and the reasons for that will become obvious as the story unfolds. And so we drove over to the address that the call came from, arriving at around 8.15 and knocked on the door. A man in his late 40s to early 50s came to the door, and once again assured us that his call had been accidental. We asked if we could come inside to take a look around, and he said, sure, no problem. The first floor was a mess, but there was otherwise nothing suspicious about it, and the same applied to the second. But when we asked if we could take a look in the guy's basement, he suddenly went from being friendly and inviting to acting extremely suspicious. The second, my partner took a step towards the basement door, the guy got very nervous and said something like, I'd rather you just didn't go down there. It's a real mess and it's very embarrassing for me. And this was after allowing us to walk around a home that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. And so as you can imagine, me and my partner's spidey senses were starting to tingle. And we didn't have a warrant so we couldn't exactly force our way in there. But when we told him that we would come back with a warrant, he just said, fine, they'll get you a warrant, but for now I just like both of you to leave. Then we did as he asked, thanked him for his time, and then walked back to our squad car, fully intent on reporting what we'd found so the department could apply for a warrant. And then right as we were about to drive off, I spotted something near one of the guy's basement windows. It looked like roots flapping in the breeze at first, but there was something off about the way they moved. They weren't moving with the breeze, they were sort of moving on their own accord, flapping up and down and up and down. And I remember sort of squinting at them and thinking, what the hell? When it suddenly hit me what I was looking at. They weren't dry roots, they were fingers, human fingers. I remember telling my partner that there was someone in the basement. Now he's like, huh? Because obviously he had no idea how I'd figured it out, but following my lead as I got out of the car and marched right back up to the guy's door again. The fingers were gone from the basement window when I tried to show him, but he trusted that I hadn't just hallucinated the whole thing and joined me at the guy's door when I knocked a second time. Now the guy came to the door saying, I thought I told you two to get lost. Now he didn't open the door. He talked through it, which I guess was a smart move considering the circumstances. He just wasn't smart enough. I told the guy that we'd stay out of his property, so we just had an issue with one of our sergeants who didn't believe the 911 call had been accidental. He could either call the department, which might involve being put on hold for maybe five to ten minutes, or he could walk to our squad car and talk to the sergeant on our radio, which would take no more than around sixty seconds. Now I laid it on thick, like we were sorry, like we might even be in trouble for bothering him, and he bought it hook line and sinker though. And then, when he stepped out of his house and closed the door behind him, we pounced. We easily took the guy to the ground, then after putting him in cuffs with my partner standing guard over him, I entered the house, starting to clear it and made my way to the basement. It was locked, but with the whole place rotting from the inside out, it only took a couple of kicks before those hinges gave way and I was able to sort of wench my way through the door panel. Flicking the light switch did nothing, so I flicked on the flashlight attachment on my pistol and crept into the dark calling out police department. Then as I listened, I heard this muffled groaning coming from what looked like a closet. The door was padlocked, so I had to search through piles of debris and rusty tools before I found anything that could clip it off. But when I did and I opened the door, I was greeted by a cage, and inside it was a young woman who had some kind of mask attached to the lower half of her face. She burst into tears when she saw that it was a cop opening the door and not her captor. And then after I removed the mask, which doubled as a kind of gag, she kept saying thank you, thank you, thank you through her tears. It turned out it was the guy's niece who had been sent to live with him by her parents after a period of very unruly behavior, quote unquote. He'd built the cage and closet right next to the basement door. And at first, we figured it was for light and air. But the point was to taunt her with a view of the outside world that was too high for her to reach. But then how did she stick her fingers out the window? I'm probably hearing you ask. Well, through weeks of practice, that's how. She had calluses on her feet from scrambling up the rough uneven stone wall and she said it hurt at first, but she couldn't even make it a few feet. But with practice came calluses, and those calluses made it so she could scramble all the way up the wall before grabbing on to the ledge. She said she broke the window late one night after climbing up the wall and when her uncle wanted to know where all the blood had come from, as she cut her fingers up something awful, she lied and said that she got her period. Now, being an almost perfect Mormon, the guy believed her and didn't even think to check her for any actual wounds. And after that, it just became a case of waiting for the right moment to signal visitors. And there was no calling out to them because the guy had learned pretty quickly that if he didn't want to get caught, he'd have to gag her and silence her. But that meant that we were the third set of visitors he tried to signal, and after failing with the first two, she was just about ready to give up. It was only when she heard my partner say, my name is Officer Such-and-Such, that she realized that the cops were there. At which point she started scrambling and signaling like crazy in the hopes that we'd spot her. And then by some miracle, we did. Now I'd like to say that there was some grand happy ending to this whole story, that the girl was returned to her family and the guy went to prison for a hundred thousand million years. But all I know is that the girl was not returned to her family, who were deemed unfit to take care of her, and she ended up in the foster care system for a couple of years. The guy who kept her prisoner in her basement ended up going away for probably fifteen years, which is undeniably a good thing. But I sometimes get the feeling that some punishments just don't fit the crime. That girl is filled with the memories of her captivity and abuse for the rest of her life. While her sick psycho uncle is going to be out in less than ten years if he even behaves himself while he's inside, she might never get to the point of leading a normal life. The scars will always be with her, visible or not. But that guy spends some time and money building a cage in his basement so he could live out some gross power fantasy with his own flesh and blood. At this point, I'd be more surprised if he didn't do it again. But I also take comfort in the idea that if he does, there will be some very focused-eyed officer, much like myself, to bring him to justice all over again. Just over 20 years ago now, back in the fall of 2003, myself and my buddy Daryl decided to head out on a weekend of hunting and camping here in our native Wyoming. It had been a good six years since our last trip, on account of Daryl getting married and having children, and we'd missed it something awful, I'll tell you. Daryl had always said, once the boys are out of diapers, I'll have time for trips again. And then boom, he went and had another one and the process started all over again. But then when his first kid was six and his second was almost three, his wife hit him with divorce papers and he got a DUI that same week. He might have had a chance if it wasn't for that intox charge, but with his wife's attorney being able to paint him as some drunk in a deadbeat, he didn't have a leg to stand on like most men. She took the kids, the house, the dog and half his money. Darryl got to keep his business in the car, but that was pretty much it. And the first thing I asked once he told me all about this was, well, what do you want to do about it? And he thought for a few seconds and then just said, let's go hunting. Now cut to about a week later, hunting season is in full swing and Darryl and I are way out in the sticks setting up camp for the next couple of days. And it was the most alive I'd ever seen him in a while and doing something that we hadn't done in a while made me feel about ten years younger. I made sure to avoid all the topics related to families or relationships too and stuck to football and hunting and just reminiscing to keep him firmly in that bubble of escape even if it was only for a short while. Once we were set up and had our blaze on, which are those bright orange pieces of clothing, we headed out into the woods to track some deer. It's a long and slow and very quiet process, but that's exactly what Darryl needed. We took our time with it, and we didn't see much aside from a few squirrels stashing some nuts for winter, but that didn't bother us. It felt far too good to be back where we belonged. Just our rifles, the trees, the forest, and nature. A couple of hours in, we spotted what looked like a four- or six-person tent off to our left through the trees, and then presuming whoever owned it was also there to hunt, we figured it was best to just head over to say hi. We were about halfway over when we started yelling howdy, but no one came out of the tent. And then I noticed, ringing the entrance, there were a whole bunch of canvas lean-tos sheltering what look like big black gun cases. I realized they had a whole arsenal out there with them. The tent slept no more than six, but there had to be at least a dozen cases outside of it. I remember Darryl speaking up and saying that it didn't feel right creeping around someone's campsite when they weren't around. Now I agree we probably should have just moved on once we realized the place was deserted, and I remember hoping that we'd run in to whoever owned all those cases so I could find out whose army they were up against. And then I looked up at Darryl, just in time to see the arm of his jacket explode with the spray of the stuffing from inside of it. And then as he was falling, the sound of a gunshot echoed through the trees around us. I fell with him, not because I'd been hit, but because I needed to crawl to him. I had absolutely no idea why the shooter opened fire, but I'd been standing right in front of one of the traps and gun cases. Darryl hadn't, meaning he was still exposed. And as I crawled, I remember seeing the dirt near Darryl's shoulder explode as a bullet slammed into the ground. I told him to roll towards me if he could, and then when he did, grimacing in pain, another bullet hit the dirt right where he'd been laying. And once we had a little cover between us and the shooter, they didn't stop firing. They aimed for the gaps between the cases, trying to hit us by firing over them, and I felt like I was going to void my boughs every time I heard a bullet snap above our heads, but none of them hit. My biggest fear while laying there in the dirt was that while one person was firing to keep our heads down, another was approaching to finish us off. I tried rolling on my side and shouldering my rifle, telling Daryl to stop the bleeding from his arm, but otherwise not to move. Then I waited, shaking with fear, hoping that I could get a decent shot on whoever was approaching before they got the drop on us, but no one approached. And when the firing suddenly stopped, I figured whoever was shooting was having to reload. Daryl recognized it too, and he was already getting ready to find his feet when I told him it was time to move. He didn't even try to bring his rifle with him. He knew better than that. We just got up and ran to put the tent between us and the shooter, but even then that didn't stop them. Because once we were behind it, a bullet came so close that I literally heard it zip and not crack, meaning it punched through the tent before passing within just a couple of feet of us. It was practically a trick shot, whereby the shooter deduced that we'd been using the tent for cover and tried to hit one of us based on where he figured we'd be. It only occurred to me later that assuming it was the tent's owner shooting at us, they must have wanted to kill us really badly if they were willing to put holes in their own shelter. We ran till Daryl said that he couldn't anymore, and he looked pale and sweaty. And when I looked, his arm was bleeding heavily from the bicep area, and he kept asking if he was going to die, and I remember telling him, not if I can help it. I had a pretty basic first aid kit with me, so enough bandage to tie a basic tourniquet around Daryl's arm. But tying that thing was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my whole life, because I had to give my rifle to Daryl to hold with his good hand and tell him to shoot anyone who came over that ridge that looked like they wanted to do us harm. He could barely hold that rifle upright with one arm, let alone steady, so it felt barely any better than just setting it down in the ground. But just that thin layer of security gave me enough focus to wrap Daryl's arm, and then we were on the move again. At the time, I figured the people who shot us would be following us so they could finish us off. But looking back, I think they knew our next move would be the hospital, and then the cops, so they were probably interested in packing their gear away and getting out of there. Either way, it was a relief when I realized that we weren't being followed. But there was still the issue of getting Daryl to a hospital before he bled to death. We obviously couldn't just head back the way we came, so we had to kind of dogleg around where we thought the weird camp had been in order to avoid it. But this only extended our journey and at some points, I thought Daryl might pass out and I'd be forced to actually carry him. He kept telling me to just leave him so I could run ahead and get to safety, but I kept telling him to shut the hell up and that I'd drag him out of those woods if I had to. It took a few hours, and Daryl was having to lean on me for support by the end of it, but we finally made it back to my truck with him awake and still on his feet. It was a relief, but it didn't feel like I could all together relax again till the doctors at the hospital said he'd be fine and that he wouldn't lose the arm either. He'd have to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks and he'd have to go through all kinds of rehab to make sure that he retains his arm's full range of motion, but aside from that, he was going to be fine. I was allowed to talk to him for a while before his surgery and he thanked me for getting him out of those woods. I told him I knew that he'd do the same thing for me if it were the other way around. Because that's what friends are for. I was a polite negotiator for more than two decades, and as you can imagine, I saw my fair share of messed up situations and even more messed up endings to these said situations. But out of all of them, this is the one that springs to mind whenever someone asks, which are the most memorable? Now one night, I got a call about a barricaded suspect in a downtown apartment building. The guy was armed, and he'd already shot at the cops once already, and he was threatening to set the whole building on fire if anyone tried to break down his door. I jumped in my car and drove downtown. Then when I arrived at the apartment building, two cops guided me to the elevator and up to the floor of the barricaded apartment. After 20 years in this line of work, I've learned that being a police negotiator really isn't about talking, it's about listening. Everyone imagines it's all smooth words and quick thinking, but the truth is, the best negotiators are patient, quiet, and calm when everyone else is losing it. You spend most of your time trying to understand what brought someone to that breaking point, because there's always a story behind the gun, behind the barricade, behind the threat. And in this case, our suspect had just sort of snapped. He was a recently released felon who had been working a job program and, from what I could gather, he clearly hadn't been ready to rejoin society. He said his boss just kept talking to him like he was lesser than, so he smacked him around a little before quitting. The cops then went to his door to cart him off to jail, and that's when he opened fire in them through the door with what the officers said was a large caliber semi-automatic rifle. And when I asked him what he wanted, he said that he wanted to leave the country. He'd rather die than go back to prison. He hated America, and he'd rather be a gringo with no español than go back to wearing prison blue. I tried telling him that that wasn't going to happen, that the only way out was to stay within the realm of realistic options. And he replied that his position hadn't changed, and if we broke down that door, the building was going to go up in flames. Over the next hour or so, I just kept on trying to reason with him by shouting down a short corridor. Not the most ideal way of communicating, but it was effective enough for me to determine that our perp wasn't alone in his apartment. Oh no, his mother was in there too. And once we realized that, the situation changed radically. It was no longer about getting our perp out of his apartment, it was about getting his mom out so Swat could do their job without getting her hurt. But when I suggested that he allow her to leave, and owing to his belief that we'd somehow hurt her, the perp refused to allow his mom away out. She hadn't spoken much during the standoff. I mean so much so we didn't even realize that she was in there until she finally spoke up. But when her son refused to let her leave, she got very vocal in trying to persuade him otherwise. Being very much on our side, she kept telling her son to do the right thing, and give himself up. Or if he wasn't going to surrender, he should at least let her leave because no mother should have to watch their son die in front of their eyes. You might think that this was something I appreciated, having someone on the inside to wear him down psychologically. In reality, I had the complete opposite reaction. It sounds crazy to say it, but by the time she was bringing up the prospect of imminent death, I actually appreciated the perp telling her to shut the f up. I didn't say it out loud, you don't ever want to say anything overtly negative. But as a negotiator, you want to keep your perp calm, but above all, you want to keep them hopeful. Sometimes I think the most effective words in my arsenal are, no one has to die here today, because it gives a perp hope. So when his own mother announced her belief that he wasn't long for this world, I don't think a single other sentence could have caused him more agitation. I tried saying, your mom's going to be fine, and so are you. But he wasn't even listening to me anymore. He was focused entirely on his mom as she talked about how she might die, and how he might die, and how they'd see it. I called out those seven words, no one has to die here today. But on that occasion, they didn't even make a dent in the screaming and shouting that came from the other side of the door, which got louder and louder before bang, bang, bang. There was this dead silence for a couple of seconds, and at first I thought that the shots might have been directed at us through the apartment door. Turns out they weren't fired at us, but we didn't figure out who exactly the perp was aiming at until we heard him whimpering, What have I done? What have I done? And that night was the only time in my whole career, my whole life in fact, that I ever asked another man, Did you just shoot your mom? Then a second later, we all heard this very tearful, strained reply of, Yeah, I shot her. And the cops behind me couldn't believe it, and neither could I till I had heard how cracked his voice was and how silent she was. And called me cold-hearted, but all I remember thinking was, work the angle. Now I know it must sound harsh, but I was in work mode, and if I did my job well, then lives might have been saved, and that's all I could focus on. I told the perp if he tossed his gun out into the corridor, we could get EMTs into his apartment to help his mother, but once again, he was barely listening. He just kept yelling mom, mom, wake up, and it took quite an effort to drag his attention away from that. But even after offering him help for his mother, the guy still wouldn't surrender, and he'd yell stuff through the tears about his right to defend himself and his family. I tried my best to get those EMTs into that apartment, but when it came down to brass tacks, the perp cared more about keeping his ass out of prison than saving her life. And then, not long after, he started yelling about how she was dead. And I knew he was telling the truth. I could hear it in his voice. But like I said, it was up to me to keep him hopeful. I yelled back that he didn't know that she was dead, that her pulse might just be weak and her breathing might be very shallow too. He replied that he'd been checking her pulse for the last five minutes. She was dead and he knew it. After a tap on the shoulder from one of the SWAT guys, I got to work trying to distract him. I started asking him if he was still wanting a car and a plane ticket to Mexico, and when he said he did, but didn't believe that we'd ever deliver them, I told him that we were already arranging it. We didn't want anyone else to die and as far as we cared, he was Mexico's problem now. He called the BS, and rightfully so, but repetition, as they say, is the mother of all learning, and I kept on saying it over and over, fitting it into any place I could. I tell him how that car was on the way and how we could get him on a commercial flight that very same night, no questions asked. He could even keep hold of his gun if he wanted to. He just had to promise not to fire at police after we backed away from the parking lot. Now, much like yourself, our perp was calling BS, saying the cops would never just give someone a car and a plane ticket, and I said that if he didn't believe me, he could look out into the parking lot and see for himself, because there was a navy-blue bronco gassed up and ready to drive. And there was a moment of near silence as I heard the perp's footsteps on the other side of the door. Then all of a sudden, there was a bang, followed by a smash of glass, and the thud of a limp body hitting the floor. When a perp executes a hostage or otherwise poses a serious and imminent threat to innocent life, the game changes completely. We go from trying to preserve all human life, including the hostage taker, to doing our damnedest to prevent him from doing any additional harm. That meant, from the moment that SWAT guy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered that they had a police sniper in position, I had one job and one job only. Get the perp to look out the window. Those are by far the worst kind of jobs when you walk away feeling like the goddamn grim reaper having just talked a man into his death. The only thing that keeps you sane is knowing that doing so prevents others from suffering identical fates. What I'm about to tell you is the single most enduring mystery of my life, something I've thought about for decades now. I'm okay with meeting my makers having not understood the great whys and hows of the world, but I'd think I'd do just about anything to know the truth of what I saw out in the woods all those years ago. So if any of you listening are familiar with anything I'm talking about, just know that I'll be lurking in the comments section, reading everything that y'all have to say if I find out that this story makes it to a video. Now way back when I was still in my early twenties, myself and a few of my friends were on a camping trip in late October. So it was my buddy Greg, my buddy Steven, and his girlfriend Mina and I, with me and Greg in one tent and Steven and Mina in another. We were out near Washington and Jefferson here in Virginia, and the first day all we did was hike there and get set up and then eat dinner and drink a couple of mugs of hot chocolate before climbing into our sleeping bags. The next day was pretty cool too because we got to take a walk around the area and catch some views of all the leaves turning. It was incredibly beautiful, and one of those things in nature that makes you think that there might be an artist's hand at work, so to speak. We gathered up some chestnuts for roasting, watched the squirrels bounding around and burying their breakfast that they'd be eating after hibernation was over, and it was near perfect. The exact kind of fall minication that we needed before the nights got way colder and way longer. But then in the early evening, when it was Greg's turn to collect firewood, everything changed. We'd built quite a large campfire, and since it was so cold with nights that were lasting much longer, we'd kept it burning for maybe eight hours each night before letting it burn out. We'd strip pretty much every piece of kindling and firewood from a hundred meter radius, meaning poor Greg had to wander a little further to get the fuel that we needed. I was rooting through my bag for something when I suddenly heard him yelling guys from way off. Now, he comes sprinting back saying he got to see this, and then we followed him off into the trees to see what he was looking for. And the first thing I saw when we got to where we were going were these sort of grave shaped patches of disturbed earth beneath a bunch of trees. And there was a lot of cursing, a lot of holy crap and what the F's, but that wasn't even the half of it. Greg then says, Look at the trees. And when I did, I saw that each of the tree trunks that had disturbed earth at their bases also had faces carved into them. Each was carved at the same height, and although all of their eyes were closed, each face was different, almost like it was a representation of the person buried underneath. And after we all stared in horror at the scene for a moment or two, we ran back to our camp to call the cops. And maybe an hour or two later, we had a ranger show up at our camp so we could show her where the graves were. She acted kind of skeptical at first, and I guess she had every right to. But once we walked her out to where we'd been, she looked just as freaked out as we did, and then said there'd most likely be a whole police forensics team out there before day's end. And after that, we made our way back to camp again, but we didn't much feel like staying in that same location, not with those graves and those carvings looking so fresh. And so we drove to the complete other side of the park again before setting up for our final night. It was terrifying knowing that we'd stumbled across something so disturbing, and that whoever did it might still be in the area. And it was kind of comforting to know that we were far away from the site of their work, but none of us were able to totally relax until days later when we were back at home, and the cops called us to give an update. It was good news in a lot of ways, because after digging up all those so-called graves that we saw, they didn't find a single scrap of human remains. And each and every one of them was empty. The cop Greg spoke to thanked him for calling the whole thing in, because public reports like that are a huge part of police work, but ultimately, we found nothing but a few holes and some weird carvings. Only, we didn't just find a few holes and some carvings, and we all knew it. Unless it was some kind of art piece or some kind of Native American thing that I'm ignorant to, then fine, that wouldn't freak me out. But all other alternatives give me the shivers when I think about them. If it was one dude whose idea of fun was digging fake graves and carving faces into the trees, then what the actual heck? That's freaky as hell. But then, if there's like a group of people all doing it for some sinister purpose, then that might be even scarier for some other reason. Mina later said that just maybe it was some kind of ritual, but maybe a positive one. She pictured a bunch of people going out into the woods to bury their old selves and put old ghosts to rest, and then walking out feeling lighter with a ceremony having helped them get free of whatever was hanging around their necks. I kind of like that interpretation. I just can't bring myself to believe it. And in my darkest moments, I think we came across something very sinister. And whatever it was, it wasn't finished yet. In my entire career as a police officer, one of the most haunting things I ever witnessed started as a very basic welfare check. I was out in my squad car when a call came over the radio saying some sweet old lady hadn't been seen for a while, and so I volunteered myself to check out the address in question and then drove over and parked outside. No one came to the door when I rang the doorbell, and then since there was a heck of a lot of mail piling up inside the contained porch area, I knew that I'd have to force entry to ensure that this woman was okay. Now, I wasn't expecting anything as such because as a cop you learn to expect the unexpected. I performed an almost identical welfare check on a lady whose hearing aid had run out of battery. I almost scared her half to death when I just sort of appeared there in her kitchen all of a sudden. But bottom line, she was okay, and the lady on this occasion however was not. I managed to break the lock on the double doors around the back of her house, and right away I was greeted by the smell of death. I wasn't strong, which suggested the lady that I was looking for hadn't been dead for very long, but when I found her, her general condition confirmed this. What I also noticed was that her arms and hands appeared to be in a much more enhanced state of decomposition. There were large patches of skin and flesh missing from them, mostly in circular patterns. While the skin on her face and legs were dry and waxy, but mostly undegraded. I looked around the room for any clue as to why this was the case. For example, if there were any hazardous chemicals or biohazards that might account for the strange rate of decomposition, but there was nothing. And aside from the corpse lying in the middle of it, the room looked totally unremarkable. I radioed in the body, then got an almost instant response to say support was inbound, but literally seconds after I acknowledged, I heard this soft mewling sound coming from what sounded like the second floor. I turned in time to see a black cat walking into the room. I stopped when it saw me and sat still looking at me for a second. My heart sank when I saw it and I remember saying something like, hey buddy, I'm sorry about your mom. And it was a dumb thing to say, I know, but it was almost like more for me than the cat. I still hadn't put two and two together and yet I didn't want to scare the cat at all in case it tried attacking me, as cats are worse than dogs for that sometimes for sure. And so I gave it a wide berth as I made my way back towards the back doors. But when I got there and I looked back at the cat one last time, I saw it walking over towards the corpse of its owner, and then everything finally made sense. I remember just thinking, or sort of staring for a couple of seconds, and thinking, Oh God, please no. Please don't let it be the cat. But it was. And as to dispel any reasonable doubt that I had left, the cat stopped, sat itself down, and then just started chewing and tearing at the skin of its owner's arm. I didn't entirely see it. The cat had its back to me, but I heard it, and that was enough to send me out the back doors of my squad car. I'd heard a lot of rumors about pets eating their owners following sudden and unexpected deaths, but had never seen it for myself until then. I only ever saw it the one time, too, but it's something that I'll never, ever forget. So, a long, long time ago, my friend named Joe and I went on a little camping trip out in the Cascades. Joe was easily one of the funniest guys I've ever met, like so funny that he could have done a talk show or something. I always used to tell him to try stand-up comedy, but he always said that he was too shy, and that he could only be funny around people he was comfortable with. It was pretty rare up in Washington to get a weekend without rain, even in the high summertime. So when we found out that there was going to be a whole three days in October when the chance of precipitation was below 20%, we knew that it was the single best chance for us to go camping without ending up like drowned rats with crotch rot. Joe came to pick me up on the Friday afternoon after we both got off of work early, and then a couple of hours later, we were roasting wieners and cracking some beers around a campfire. Camping trips with Joe always went a little too fast. It felt like one minute you were setting up your tent, and then the next you were packing it away again after laughing your ass off for like two or three days straight, and that time was no different. Granted, all the beer we drank probably helped turn everything into one big blur of open containers and split sides, but it really was like two whole days just flew by before we were loading up the cars again and preparing to head home. We had everything packed away and were literally just about to leave when Joe says, Oh, hold up, I need to use the bathroom. Now, I told him no problem, just be quick because I was starving. But then he says, It's not like that kind of bathroom break. It might be a while. I remember rolling my eyes and just cursing the timing, but Joe then responds, Hey, when nature calls, dude, then slipped out of the passenger seat and around to the trunk to go fishing through our packs for toilet paper. He finds it, and then off he goes into the trees to take his dump. I was reading an Old World War II book at the time, and I kept it in the compartment of my driver's door. So as Joe's off using the bathroom, I figured that I could work my way through a page or two before we got back. And I ended up getting a little too engrossed in the passage about German paratroopers in Crete and how the locals came out to stab them with pitchforks when their chutes snagged on trees. And so when Joe came literally sprinting back screaming, start the effing car, it just about scared the crap out of me. I didn't ask any questions. I trusted Joe enough to do exactly what he asked and gunned the engine without needing to know what was coming. And it was only once we were moving that I asked what the hell had happened. But I didn't need an answer because as I looked up in the rear view, I saw a man with a bandana covering his face break from the trees and start giving chase to us. And though I didn't see exactly what was in his hands, I could see that he was carrying some kind of long-handled weapon like an axe or a pole or something. And as you can imagine, I immediately threw the car up a gear and then put my damn foot down because the guy was running full pelt. We easily avoided him once we picked up some real speed, but my hands were still shaking for a long time after we finally hit the highway. Once the guy was out of sight, I started demanding Joe to tell me what the hell had just happened. He said he was looking for a place to poop. When he saw a thicket of bushes and some small trees, he figured he could guarantee some privacy, because we're now way back near the dirt roads and so way closer to other hikers and stuff. Now anyway, he said he pushed his way through the bushes and came out the other side only to see that bandana man, who was actually holding an axe, standing over a blue tarp laid out on the ground. There were no bodies, no victims living or dead. Just the axe man and his tarp. But the moment he and Joe locked eyes, Joe knew that he meant no good. The look on the guy's face was a clue, but then chasing after him with that axe was probably the biggest giveaway of all, because I'm sure you all agree. He most likely wasn't catching up to Joe to give him a hug, or calmly explain how there had been some terrible misunderstanding. And neither did Joe stop to ask what he was doing in the woods with an axe and a tarp, because that's one of those questions that just does not need to be asked. You see something like that and you run. No questions, no hesitation. And so we called the cops from the first gas station we came across, but as you can imagine, they didn't do anything. Joe got a call a couple of days later saying some cops had taken a look around and questioned a couple of bikers, but ultimately they couldn't find anything and they didn't have any suspects. Now that was bad enough, but the cop Jake spoke to tried to reassure him that what he'd seen might not have been as sinister as he assumed, and that it all might have been that terrible misunderstanding I mentioned. Now Jake said there was absolutely zero chance that he'd misjudged the situation, but all the cops said before he hung up was that he'd keep Jake updated if there were any developments. But there weren't any, and that was the last we heard of it. We still talk about that day, though, and we talked a whole lot about what that guy might have been up to back there. We don't think that tarp or that ax was for Joe. We think that guy brought them out there for someone else. But we also think that given that Joe had seen him, and was therefore about to be a witness to whatever he was about to do, Joe was no doubt about to end up getting chopped up on that tarp, along with whoever it was originally intended for. I worked for the UK's National Crime Agency, and for six years of that, I worked with its Missing Persons Unit. I actually really enjoyed my time with the unit. It was good, clean detective work that made a real difference to people's lives. The success rate was fantastic too, and the vast majority of cases I dealt with ended with the missing person being found and brought home. But every so often, a case would take you to some very dark places. In the UK, if a person who's been reported missing doesn't return within three days, their name is fed into the NCA's Missing Persons Unit. I'd like to say that we get around looking for those people right away, but there tends to be something of a backlog to work through. So the file of the girl named Melissa, not her real name, had been sitting on my desk for just over a week before I got around to it. According to the report of the IIO, that's the Initial Investigating Officer, it was Melissa's mom that had reported her missing. Her daughter lived near Brighton with a friend turned flatmate, but when both suddenly stopped answering their phones, she started to worry. When the IIO called over to the semi-detached Melissa and her housemate Sherritt, no one came to the door. But after talking to a neighbor, he learned both Melissa and her flatmate had been seen recently, and nothing appeared amiss with either of them. This was encouraging, but not conclusive, so I drove over to the address in the hopes of closing the case that day. The house in question was a lovely little place, the small front garden and nice flower beds. After I rang the doorbell, a young woman opened the door. Early twenties, petite, with sandy blonde hair and a big smile. She introduced herself as Helen, also not a real name, and as Melissa's housemate, who was only too happy to explain the situation. I was told Melissa had taken ill and was upstairs in bed. Helen, on the other hand, had been so rushed off her feet having to work and take care of her that she'd missed her mom's calls and forgotten to return them. And she seemed terribly sorry to worry everyone, but both she and Melissa were fine and were in no need of assistance. It sounded like a convincing story. She didn't appear to be hiding anything anyway. But we can't just take people's word for it when it comes to missing persons investigations. A case can't be closed until we either make face-to-face contact or are given irrefutable proof-of-life images such as those from High Definition Timestamped CCTV. So in light of that, I asked Helen if I could come inside so I could at least lay eyes on Melissa. And after Helen invited me inside, she asked me to wait in the hallway for a moment while she went and fetched something from the kitchen. And when she returned, she was carrying a tray with a bowl of soup on it and said that I was just in time for lunch. On the side of the tray in the soup suggested Helen was too sick to get out of bed, so I asked what was troubling her. And Helen said that she thought that it was a viral thing that had really run her batteries down, so to speak, and so she just needed some bed rest. Helen added that Melissa had improved an awful lot over the past few days, but was still a bit too poorly to be going up and down stairs. I promised I wouldn't stay more than a minute or two, and I was relieved that she was safe and at least partially sound. But after Helen opened Melissa's bedroom door and I followed her inside, I found something very different to what had been described. Melissa was indeed right there, buying in bed in front of me, but it was clear that she had been deceased for some time. Exactly how long was difficult to say as it appeared Helen had been applying some kind of moisturizer or cream to Melissa's face. Her clothes appeared clean, meaning Helen was frequently changing them, because after she set down the tray and tried feeding Melissa a spoonful of what I think was chicken soup, it sort of just dribbled out of her mouth and onto the neck of the t-shirt she was wearing. It was a scene that, even thinking about it all these years later, makes the hairs on my arms and neck stand on end. But Helen acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. She said sweet, encouraging things to Melissa as she attempted to feed her, almost like the way a person talks to a child. When the soup sort of dribbled out of her mouth, she said something like, Oh dear, making a mess again. But don't you worry, I'll get that cleaned up for you. I have never seen anything that was so frightening, disturbing, and upsetting all at once, not in all of my time in the police. And so, and I'm ashamed to say, but all I could do for a minute or so was just sort of stand there, gopping and trying to work out what was going on. Seeing Helen revert to trying to feed a lifeless Melissa sort of jolted me back into my body, and then in the politest way possible, I asked if I might speak with her outside for a moment. She said yes, but only for a moment because she didn't want Melissa's soup getting cold. Outside in the corridor, I did something that I had done only once or twice per year, and told a person I believed their loved one was deceased. Now, on every other occasion, this was greeted with either tears of grief or a grim sort of acceptance, but on this occasion, Helen looked at me like I had grown a second head. She understood Melissa was looking a bit worse for wear, but she wasn't dead. In fact, she most likely just be up and about again over the next couple of days. I assured her, in the most tender manner I could muster, that was not going to be the case, and then reminded her that denial, a perfectly normal part of the grieving process, could be a very powerful thing when left unchecked. After that last part, I saw the briefest flicker of understanding in her eyes, and then it was gone. And after excusing herself, she tried walking back into the bedroom before the soup got cold. When she turned back, I informed her with just a smidge of sternness how what she was doing was against the law. Unless she surrendered Melissa's body to the relevant authorities, she would be arrested and charged. When I said that, she turned nasty. She spun around, and with this look of anger and outrage on her face, I asked if I was really going to arrest her for taking care of her friend. I reminded her that as hard as it was to accept, that wasn't what she was doing. When she pointed towards the stairs and told me to see myself out, I asked her not to make things any worse than they already were. Again, there was this brief moment where it looked like I was getting through to her, and then she flipped. Her eyes went all wide, and she started screeching at me to get the hell out of her house, and then seeing as I didn't want to aggravate her any further, I immediately began walking toward the stairs while saying, Okay, okay, Helen, I'm leaving. But as I walked, I made one near-fatal mistake and pulled my mobile phone out. She knew what that meant, and after lunging at me in a way I never expected, she slapped the phone out of my hands and went tumbling down the stairs. I asked her to calm down as I walked down after my phone, but Helen screamed something about me trying to take her away. And then what I also didn't anticipate in the slightest was Helen launching herself down the stairs and onto my back so hard it sent us both crashing down the last few steps. The landing so thoroughly knocked the wind out of me that I was convinced that I must have broken a rib and maybe even punctured her lung. I could barely move for a second, but then feeling Helen's fingers reaching from my face and more specifically my eye, spurred me into action. Now, I'm not going to pretend that it was some epic struggle. I was a 5'11, ex-rugby player, and she couldn't have been any taller than 5'4, but unleashing that kind of force on someone that I knew was just out of their mind with grief, that made for a struggle all of its own. Restraining her did no good at first, and Helen kept on trying to fight me. And it was only when I mentioned Melissa's family that I saw that flicker of understanding reappear in her eye. But that time, it didn't go away. It stayed, and after she suddenly stopped struggling, Helen burst into tears. I promised that I'd get her help. And I did, although it wasn't until uniformed officers turned up that I learned that I had three deep scratches on my face running away from my right eye. Helen was taken away first, then Melissa, and then after that I went back to the office to contact Melissa's mom and close the case. Helen was charged with assault on a police officer and preventing the lawful burial of a dead body. She pled guilty to both charges and received a very lenient, suspended sentence due to her fragile state of mind at the time of the incident. Helen later wrote to me, apologizing for what happened. I offered my complete and unreserved forgiveness and told her that it was all part of the job. I didn't join the NCA because it would be an easy ride. I joined because it meant doing difficult things, to help people through the hardest and darkest of times. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.