Imagine the last 8 minutes of your life.

8 minutes as water slowly fills the car and you are strapped in with seat belts wrapped in steel cable.

8 minutes of absolute terror as you hear your children screaming and can do nothing.

8 minutes that someone is filming with a video camera from the shore watching your agony.

This is how the Wilson family’s life ended in the spring of 2005, 70 m from the Grand Canyon.

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What do you think drives people capable of such atrocities? Is it possible to recognize a monster in a crowd of ordinary people? Flagstaff, Arizona, spring 2005.

Michael Wilson, a 39-year-old software engineer, his wife Sarah, 36, an elementary school teacher, and their two children, 12-year-old Emma and 8-year-old Noah, were a very ordinary American family.

Those who knew them described the Wilsons as ideal neighbors, always friendly, involved in school activities, attending Sunday services at the local Presbyterian Church on San Francisco Street.

Michael had a habit of washing his silver 2003 Chrysler Town and Country on Saturdays right in the driveway.

And Sarah grew tomatoes in a small garden behind the house, sharing the harvest with her neighbors.

April 19th, 2005 was a clear and sunny day.

The temperature rose to 23° C.

Perfect weather for a family trip.

The Wilsons had been planning this trip to the Grand Canyon for several weeks.

Michael took a day off from his job developing software for medical equipment.

Sarah asked for a replacement at work.

The children were thrilled.

Emma even bought a new Kodak camera with her pocket money to capture family moments against the backdrop of the canyon’s majestic red rocks.

Neighbor Dorothy McFersonson, a 75-year-old widow who lived across the street, saw the family loading their belongings into a minivan around a.m.

She recalled Sarah waving to her and shouting that they would be back late in the evening.

Emma was holding her new camera, and Noah was clutching a teddy bear named Mr.

bumbles, which he had been carrying around since he was 3 years old.

In the trunk were a picnic set, bottles of water, sunscreen, and a first aid kit.

Just a normal family trip.

There was no sign of disaster.

The drive from Flag Staff to the south rim of the Grand Canyon takes about an hour and a half on Highway 180.

The road is scenic, passing through pine forests and open plateaus with views of red rocks in the distance.

According to surveillance cameras at a gas station in the town of Tusion, located just a few miles from the entrance to the national park, the Wilson’s minivan was recorded at a.m.

Michael filled up the tank and bought two bottles of Coke and a bag of chips.

The cashier, 23-year-old Ashley Rodriguez, later told detectives that the family seemed happy and excited.

The children argued over who would be the first to see the canyon.

They arrived at the Matherpoint parking lot around a.m.

This viewpoint is one of the most popular in the park, visited by thousands of tourists every day.

Park ranger Thomas Harrington confirmed that he saw a silver Chrysler Town and Country in the parking lot at around .

He noticed the family because the father was taking pictures of the children in front of the sign with the name of the viewpoint.

Ranger Harrington remembered that the mother was fixing her daughter’s hair before the photo was taken.

It was a common scene among hundreds of similar ones that he witnessed every day.

But what happened next remains a mystery shrouded in darkness.

Somewhere between a.m.

and p.m.

the Wilson family simply disappeared.

Not from the site, no one would have noticed that.

They disappeared along with their minivan.

when the manager of the Grand Canyon Lodge in Tusan called the police at p.m.

that same day to report that the Wilsons had not checked in and were not answering their phones.

No one yet understood the scale of the tragedy.

Sarah’s mother, Margaret Jenkins, began calling her daughter around 700 p.m.

Sarah’s phone was either turned off or out of range.

The same was true of Michael’s phone.

Margaret didn’t immediately sound the alarm.

It’s well known that there are communication problems in the canyon.

But when no one in the family had made contact by 10 p.m.

and they hadn’t arrived at the hotel, Margaret called the Cochanino County Police.

Sheriff David Rhodess, a veteran with 25 years of experience, initially treated the report as a routine case of lost tourists.

This happened regularly.

People strayed from their roots, took longer than planned to descend the trails, and lost track of time.

But when the next morning, April 20th, a search party of park rangers and volunteers combed all the main trails from Mather Point and found no trace of the Wilson family, concern turned to real alarm.

The minivan was gone.

It was nowhere to be found in any parking lot within a 20 m radius.

Surveillance cameras at the park exits did not record the silver Chrysler Town and Country with Arizona license plates.

It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed the family and their car.

Sheriff Rhodess expanded the search, bringing in helicopters and quadcopters equipped with thermal imaging cameras.

They searched every ravine, every rock, every bush within a 50-mi radius.

Nothing.

On April 23rd, the Federal Bureau of Investigation joined the investigation.

Agent Robert Kaine, a specialist in missing person’s cases, arrived from the Phoenix office.

The first thing he did was interview everyone who had been at the observation deck on the day of the disappearance.

The list was impressive, more than 300 people.

Most were tourists from other states or countries, many of whom had already left.

The painstaking process of tracking down witnesses across the country, began.

72-year-old tourist Klaus Miller from Germany recalled seeing the family around noon.

They were standing at the railing and the father was pointing out eagles soaring above the canyon to his children.

Miller took a photo of the landscape and in the background of the photo, part of the Wilson family could be seen.

It was the last known photo of them alive.

The time on the digital photo was p.m.

A California couple, Jason and Linda Porter, told detectives something strange.

At around p.m., they saw a silver minivan similar to a Chrysler, leaving the parking lot.

The driver was a man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, not Michael Wilson, as far as they could tell from the photo they were shown.

The man was younger with dark hair.

Linda Porter noticed that the minivan did not head toward the park exit, but in the opposite direction toward less used roads leading to remote areas.

This information changed the direction of the investigation.

Agent Caine realized that this might not be an accident or a case of tourists getting lost, but a kidnapping.

But why? The Wilsons had no enemies.

Michael earned a good living, but not enough to attract the attention of professional kidnappers.

The family’s bank account showed no unusual activity.

No ransom demands had been made.

No contact from the kidnappers.

Detective Rosa Martinez of the Flagstaff Police Department took it upon herself to check all of the family’s acquaintances.

Michael’s colleagues described him as a calm, competent professional who never had any conflicts with his co-workers.

At school, Sarah was loved by both the children and the parents of her students.

No complaints, no strange incidents.

They even checked distant relatives, former classmates, everyone who had ever crossed paths with the family.

Dead end.

But Detective Martinez noticed one detail.

3 weeks before her disappearance, Sarah Wilson had filed a complaint with the police about the strange behavior of a stranger.

On March 28th, when she was picking up her children from school, a man in his 30s approached her and asked permission to photograph her children for some kind of art project.

Sarah flatly refused and told the man to go away.

She described him as thin with shoulderlength dark hair wearing a faded denim jacket.

She was particularly frightened by the stranger’s intense, almost glassy stare.

A patrol was sent to the scene, but the man was nowhere to be found.

A photo fit was made based on Sarah’s description.

It was sent to all law enforcement agencies in the state.

Several people called claiming to have seen a similar man in various places from Flagstaff to Tucson.

None of the leads led anywhere.

The man seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Meanwhile, the search for the minivan continued.

Every road and every trail accessible by car within a 100 miles of the Grand Canyon was checked.

Volunteers from local communities were enlisted.

Students at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff organized search parties, combing through forests and desert areas.

The church the Wilsons attended held a prayer service and fundraiser to increase the reward for information about the family.

The amount reached $50,000.

But weeks turned into months and there were no significant breakthroughs.

Sheriff Rhodess publicly stated that the investigation was ongoing, but within the department, everyone understood that the case was cooling off.

Agent Kaine returned to Phoenix, leaving the case under the supervision of the local police.

Television reports about the missing family became increasingly rare.

By the fall of 2005, the Wilson story was no longer in the news.

Margaret Jenkins, Sarah’s mother, did not give up.

She organized a support group for families of missing persons and regularly appeared on local television with photos of her grandchildren, begging anyone with information to come forward.

Her face, filled with maternal grief and desperate hope, became recognizable in Arizona.

But as the years passed, even her determination began to be undermined by the hopelessness of the situation.

In 2007, Detective Martinez retired, handing the case over to a young detective, Brandon Clark.

He reviewed all the materials and tried to find a fresh perspective on the events, but he too came up against the same wall of silence.

The Wilson case was officially declared cold.

The investigation is not closed, but no active steps will be taken unless new evidence emerges.

The family’s house on Chester Avenue in Flagstaff, stood empty for 2 years until the bank repossessed it for non-payment of the mortgage.

The new owners, a young couple with a child, were unaware of the tragic history associated with the place.

The neighbors tried not to discuss the subject, wanting to forget the nightmare that had disrupted the tranquility of their quiet neighborhood.

However, no matter how deeply the truth is hidden, sooner or later it comes to the surface, literally and figuratively.

The summer of 2016 was unusually hot and dry, even by Arizona standards.

Temperatures regularly exceeded 40° C.

Reservoirs dried up and water levels in rivers and lakes fell to critical levels.

The state governor declared a state of emergency due to water shortages.

Farmers lost their crops and cities imposed strict water rationing.

Castle Creek Lake, an artificial reservoir 70 mi southwest of the Grand Canyon, had become so shallow that its bottom, which had not seen sunlight since the dam was built in the late 1980s, was exposed.

Local residents used the reservoir for fishing and recreation.

But in the summer of 2016, the lake turned into a pitiful puddle surrounded by cracked earth and mud.

On August 7th, 2016, fisherman Kevin Turner, a 50-year-old mechanic from the town of Williams, decided to check if there were any fish left in the lake.

He was walking along the exposed shore, avoiding boulders and snags, when he noticed something strange about 30 m from the water’s edge.

A metal object covered with silt and algae was sticking out of the mud at an angle.

At first, Turner thought it was an old boat or some kind of agricultural machinery that had been submerged when the reservoir was created.

As he got closer, he could make out the shape of a car, the rear end of a minivan.

Kevin immediately called the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputy Sheriff Mark Olsen and three of his deputies who arrived at the scene initially treated the discovery as a routine case of a vehicle illegally dumped in the reservoir.

This had happened before.

People disposed of old cars by sinking them in lakes.

But when county diver Daniel Scott went underwater to attach ropes to pull the car out, he discovered something that caused him to surface immediately and call for help.

There were bodies inside the minivan.

Four bodies still strapped to their seats.

Additional forces were called to the scene, forensic experts, a medical examiner, and detectives from the homicide division.

The operation to recover the vehicle was led by Yavapai County Sheriff Tom Hullbrook himself, a veteran with 30 years of experience, who, as he later admitted to reporters, had never seen anything like it in his entire career.

When the minivan was finally pulled ashore, it became clear that this was no accident.

The vehicle was lying at a depth of about 7 m, nose down almost vertically.

The Arizona license plates were still in place, albeit covered with a layer of silt.

A database check revealed that it was a 2003 Chrysler Town and Country registered to Michael David Wilson of Flagstaff.

The family that had been missing for 11 years had been found.

Medical examiner doctor Elizabeth Chen, who had arrived from Prescott, conducted an initial examination right there on the spot.

What she discovered shocked even the most seasoned police officers.

All four victims were wearing seat belts, but these belts were additionally wrapped with a steel cable about 6 mm thick.

The cable was wrapped around the body of each family member four or five times and secured with industrial carabiner locks that cannot be opened without a special key.

This did not look like suicide.

It was murder planned and methodically executed.

Moreover, it was a particularly cruel murder.

The family was drowned alive, fully conscious, with no way to free themselves.

Dr.

Chen noticed the condition of the interior.

The fabric upholstery of the front seats was torn.

Traces of Michael and Sarah’s desperate attempts to free themselves.

There were deep scratch marks from fingernails on the plastic of the steering wheel and dashboard.

The scene in the back seat was even more heartbreaking.

Little Noah, an 8-year-old boy, had died clutching his teddy bear, Mr.

Bumbles.

And 12-year-old Emma, was clutching a photograph, a family photo taken at Christmas in 2004 with the whole family smiling at the camera against the backdrop of a decorated Christmas tree.

Criminalist George Wilkins from the Arizona State Laboratory later calculated based on the volume of the cabin and the rate of water penetration through the seals that the family had been drowning for 8 to 12 minutes.

8 to 12 minutes of absolute all-consuming horror.

Parents unable to protect their children.

Children calling for help from parents who cannot come.

water slowly rising, first to their ankles, then to their chests, necks, and faces.

Last gasping breaths under the cabin ceiling before the water filled every inch of space.

Detective Brandon Clark, who inherited the case in 2007, was immediately notified of the discovery.

He was now 38 years old, and all this time he had periodically returned to the Wilson case files, hoping to find a missed clue.

Now, the case had moved from the missing person’s category to the homicide category.

This completely changed the approach to the investigation.

The first question was, how did the minivan end up in Castle Creek Lake, 70 mi from the Grand Canyon? Clark studied the maps and realized that the route from the park to the lake ran along little dirt roads through abandoned farmland.

It was the perfect route for someone who wanted to avoid surveillance cameras and witnesses.

But how did the killer get the family to follow him willingly? Or did he use force in the parking lot? Forensic experts examined every inch of the minivan.

They found a picnic basket in the trunk untouched, meaning the family didn’t even have time to eat lunch.

Michael and Sarah’s phones were found in the glove compartment, dead from years underwater.

experts managed to partially recover the data.

The last calls were made on the morning of April 19th before arriving at the park.

There were no alarming messages or calls on the day of their disappearance.

Medical examiner Chen performed a full autopsy on all four bodies despite their condition after 11 years underwater.

Surprisingly, the cold water and lack of oxygen at depth contributed to the relatively good preservation of the bodies.

She found traces of a seditive in the stomach tissue remnants, dasopam, in significant concentration.

Enough to cause confusion and muscle weakness, but not enough to cause unconsciousness.

The killer wanted them to understand everything, but be unable to resist.

How did he give them the drug? Detective Clark suggested that it could have happened in the parking lot under some pretext.

Offering help, asking for directions, offering water on a hot day.

Dasipam takes effect 15 to 30 minutes after ingestion.

Just enough time to take the family to the car, seat them, and secure them with ropes when they are unable to resist.

But the most important clue was yet to be discovered.

Forensic experts found tire tracks from another vehicle, a pickup truck or SUV with wide, aggressive tires on the ground near where the minivan was submerged.

They also found shoe prints, men’s size 11 boots with distinctive grooves on the soles, typical of Timberland work boots.

These traces led from the shore to the road and back several times.

Detective Clark realized that the killer had spent a considerable amount of time at the scene of the crime.

He didn’t just push the car into the water and drive away.

He stayed there.

Why? The answer to this question came from an unexpected source.

Margaret Jenkins, Sarah’s mother, by then a 72-year-old woman with silver hair and a tired look that had not lost hope in 11 years, was notified of the discovery.

She came to the morg in Prescott to officially identify the bodies of her daughter and grandchildren.

After the identification, when Detective Clark was talking to her, trying to find any clue, Margaret suddenly remembered a detail she had forgotten during the years of grief.

About a month before her disappearance in mid-March 2005, Sarah told her on the phone about a strange incident.

While she was walking with her children in Buffalo Park, a man with a video camera approached them and asked permission to film the children for a documentary about happy families.

Sarah refused, considering the request inappropriate.

The man apologized and left, but Sarah noticed that he continued to film them from a distance.

She wanted to call the police, but the man soon left the park, and she decided not to make a fuss.

Video camera.

Detective Clark returned to the lake and organized a thorough search within a 100 meter radius of the drowning site.

If the killer had spent so much time there, he might have left something else behind.

Search teams with metal detectors combed every meter.

And on the third day of the search, they found it.

In the bushes 50 m from the shore, they discovered the metal body of an old Sony Handycam video camera, a model from the early 2000s.

The camera was badly damaged by time and weather, but forensic experts sent it to a specialized laboratory in the hope of extracting data.

Meanwhile, Clark expanded the search by requesting information on any similar cases in the FBI databases.

Families who disappeared under strange circumstances, cars found in bodies of water, cases involving sedatives.

The database returned 15 potentially related cases from the past 20 years across the country, but none had the exact same modus operandi.

Victims tied up with ropes drowned alive in their own cars.

However, one case caught his attention.

In 2002 in Nevada, a car was found in Lake Meade with a man’s body inside.

He was also tied to the seat, although without the use of a rope, just very tightly fastened seat belts that he couldn’t unbuckle.

The case remained unsolved.

Detective Clark contacted his colleagues in Nevada, and requested all the materials.

The FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, analyzed the tire tread found at the scene.

The results showed that they were BFG Goodrich allterrain tires size 31 in installed on pickup trucks and SUVs.

These tires are popular among off-road enthusiasts.

Thousands of vehicles with similar tires are registered in Arizona.

Too wide a sample, but experts also found microscopic particles of red paint in one of the tread grooves.

analysis showed that this was paint used on Ford F-S series pickups until 2007.

Now, the circle had narrowed a red Ford pickup with BFG Goodrich tires.

There are still hundreds of vehicles in the state, but this is progress.

Meanwhile, the digital forensics lab reported a breakthrough.

Despite the damage, specialists managed to extract data from a mini DV cassette found in the video camera.

What they recovered prompted the experienced experts to immediately notify Detective Clark and call in a psychologist.

The tape contained a video dated April 19th, 2005.

The recording began with an image of Castle Creek Lake viewed from the shore.

Then the camera turned and a silver minivan appeared in the frame slowly rolling toward the water.

The silhouettes of people inside were visible through the windshield.

The car entered the water and someone filmed it from the shore.

The video lasted almost 12 minutes, exactly the time it took for the minivan to submerge completely.

The sound on the recording was distorted by water and time, but experts were able to partially restore it.

Muffled screams, children crying, and blows against the glass from inside the cabin could be heard.

and a voice off camera, male, calm, almost indifferent, uttering something indistinct.

Audio analysis specialists worked on cleaning up the sound.

Detective Clark realized they were dealing with a serial killer who filmed his crimes.

FBI psychologist Dr.

Rebecca Holmes, a specialist in criminal profiling, compiled a portrait of the suspect.

A man 30 to 45 years old, a loner, socially isolated, possibly with a history of mental illness, experiencing a pathological need to control and observe the suffering of his victims.

He probably has a collection of similar recordings.

He may be sharing them in closed online communities.

The FBI brought in its cyber crime division.

Agents began monitoring the dark web and specialized forums where extreme content is distributed.

The search took weeks, but in October 2016, they found what they were looking for.

On one of the forums, which had restricted access and required a special invitation, a user with the nickname water ghost was uploading videos.

Among them were several clips showing cars with people inside being submerged in water.

FBI computer technology specialists began tracking water ghosts digital footprint.

This proved to be difficult.

>> >> The user employed complex encryption and anonymization schemes, constantly changed IP addresses, and used virtual private networks and proxy servers.

But the FBI had the best experts in the country.

It took them 6 weeks through a series of technical operations and partial errors by the user himself to calculate the real IP address from which the activity was sometimes conducted.

The IP address belonged to an internet service provider in the town of Sedona, Arizona, 40 mi south of Flagstaff.

The list of subscribers to this provider included about 800 names.

Now, it was necessary to narrow down the search.

Detective Clark combined the available data.

The owner of a red Ford pickup truck living in the Sedona area, a man between 30 and 45 years old, possibly single.

The vehicle database returned 23 matches.

Among them was Douglas Wernern Mills, a 37-year-old Sedona resident who owned a red 2004 Ford F-150.

Mills worked as a freelance photographer and videographer specializing in shooting nature and tourist locations for sale to stock agencies.

He lived alone in a small house on the outskirts of town, had never been married, and had no criminal record.

Detective Clark requested additional information.

Mills was born in Tucson in 1979.

His father left the family when the boy was 4 years old.

His mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder, raised him alone, often displaying emotional instability.

When Douglas was 13, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the bathtub.

The boy found her body.

After that, he lived with his grandmother until he came of age.

A psychological profile began to take shape.

Traumatic childhood experiences involving water and death.

Social isolation, a profession involving observation and recording reality through a camera.

Dr.

Holmes confirmed that this fit the suspect’s profile perfectly.

But direct evidence was needed.

You can’t arrest someone just because they own a certain car and fit a psychological profile.

You need physical evidence linking Mills to the crime.

Detective Clark organized roundthe-clock surveillance of Mills’s house.

A team of four plain clothes officers changing every eight hours, watched his every move.

Mills led an extremely measured lifestyle.

He woke up early, jogged along deserted trails, had breakfast at a local cafe, then drove off for the day in his pickup truck, returning only in the evening.

On weekends, he spent even more time traveling.

Officers tracked his roots.

Mills regularly visited popular tourist destinations, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Petrified Forest National Park.

He photographed landscapes, but also, as observers noted, showed an unusual interest in families with children, often pointing his camera at them.

A search warrant was needed, but strong grounds were required to obtain one.

Yavapai County Prosecutor Jennifer Stone felt that the available circumstantial evidence was insufficient.

She feared that a premature search could scare off the suspect or be ruled illegal, making it impossible to use the evidence found in court.

But in mid- November 2016, Luck turned in favor of the investigation.

Officer Maria Gonzalez, who was on night watch duty, noticed that Mills left his [mu sic] house at a.m.

and began loading boxes into his pickup truck.

She immediately notified Detective Clark.

Perhaps the suspect felt he was being watched and was going to get rid of the evidence.

When Mills left town on Highway 17 toward the desert areas, three patrol cars followed him at a safe distance.

He drove about 30 m and turned onto a dirt road leading to an abandoned quarry.

It was the perfect place to dispose of evidence.

Isolated and rarely visited.

Detective Clark decided to make his move.

When Mills stopped at the edge of the quarry and began unloading boxes, the patrol cars turned on their sirens and surrounded him.

The suspect tried to flee but was quickly apprehended.

Inside the boxes he was about to dump into the quarry, they found videotapes, hard drives, photographs, and several diaries.

Mills was arrested on suspicion of illegally destroying potential evidence.

That was enough to hold him for 48 hours.

Now, the police had a warrant to search his home and pickup truck.

What forensic investigators found in Douglas Mills’s home on Cottonwood Drive in Sedona exceeded their darkest expectations.

The living room had been turned into an archive of death.

Hundreds of videotapes, neatly numbered and dated, stood on shelves.

Hard drives with digital recordings, photo albums with pictures of families, many of which had notes, dates, places, names, maps of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico hung on the walls with locations marked.

The basement of the house was equipped with an editing studio with professional video editing equipment.

Investigators found dozens of edited videos on the computer ready to be uploaded to the darknet.

Analysis showed that Mills had been filming his crimes for at least 15 years.

The experts began reviewing the video footage.

It was one of the most difficult tasks of their careers.

The tapes contained recordings of drownings, at least eight different cases.

In addition to the Wilson family, there were seven other episodes with other victims, lone drivers, couples, another family.

All the recordings followed the same scenario.

A car slowly sinking into the water.

People inside desperately trying to get out and Mills’s voice offcreen, sometimes commenting on what was happening in a calm, almost clinical tone.

Among the videos was one that had been partially recovered from a damaged camera.

the full version of the Wilson family’s drowning.

It showed everything.

Mills approaching the minivan in the Grand Canyon parking lot, disguised as a tourist, offering Michael bottles of water, which he accepts for the children.

20 minutes later, the family begins to lose coordination.

Mills gets into the minivan and drives it along dirt roads until he reaches the lake.

He then gets out, sets up the camera on a tripod on the shore, and returns to the car to secure the ropes around the victims.

The final footage shows him pushing the minivan into the water, then returning to the camera and watching until the car disappears beneath the surface.

In Mills diaries, detectives found entries that revealed his motivation.

He described himself as an artist documenting the last moments of human life in their purest form.

He believed that the moment of death was the only truly real experience devoid of social masks and pretense.

He called his work a documentation of human vulnerability.

A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation found that Douglas Mills suffered from severe antisocial personality disorder with sadistic traits and also exhibited symptoms of schizoid disorder.

Experts noted a complete lack of empathy and a distorted perception of death as an aesthetic phenomenon.

However, they found him sane and capable of being held responsible for his actions.

Mills was formally charged with the murders of at least 12 people in four states.

The trial began in March 2017 in the Yavapai County Court in Prescott.

Prosecutor Stone presented overwhelming evidence, video recordings, diaries, expert testimony, and DNA analysis.

Results found in Mills’s pickup truck that matched samples from the Wilson family.

Mills refused a plea bargain.

He showed no remorse in court.

When asked why he did it, he replied that he wanted to capture the truth about human existence.

These words caused a wave of outrage in the courtroom.

Margaret Jenkins attended every hearing.

She was now 73 years old, and the grief of the past 12 years had carved deep wrinkles on her face.

When asked to make a statement to the court, she looked directly at Mills and said she forgave him because it was the only way she could free herself from the hatred that had poisoned her life in recent years.

But she hoped that he would never see freedom and would spend the rest of his days understanding the gravity of his actions.

The jury deliberated for less than 3 hours.

The verdict was guilty on all counts.

Judge William Campbell sentenced Douglas Wernern Mills to 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The sentence was handed down in May 2017.

Mills was transferred to a maximum security prison in Florence, Arizona.

According to prison officials, he spends most of his time in solitary confinement, refuses to participate in rehabilitation programs, and has little contact with other inmates.

Psychologists working with him note that he shows no signs of remorse or change of heart.

The Wilson family story received widespread publicity after the trial.

National news channels broadcast reports on the case.

Several documentaries were made about the serial killer who filmed the deaths of his victims.

Internet forums discussed Mills’s psychology trying to understand how a person could do such a thing.

The house on Chester Avenue in Flagstaff, where the Wilson family once lived, now belongs to another family.

They have placed a memorial plaque in the yard in memory of Michael, Sarah, Emma, and Noah.

Every year on April 19th, the local community holds a memorial service at the Presbyterian Church.

Margaret Jenkins continues to work with a support group for families of missing persons, helping others not to lose hope.

She says that although justice has been served, the void left by the loss of her daughter and grandchildren will never be filled.

But she finds comfort in the fact that other families will not fall victim to the same monster.

Detective Brandon Clark received an award for his outstanding work in solving the case.

He continues to work in the police department, but says the Wilson case has forever changed his view of the nature of evil.

Evil does not always wear an obvious mask.

It can hide behind the face of an ordinary person, a neighbor, a colleague, someone who smiles at you on the street.

Castle Creek Lake has partially restored its water level after the drought ended.

Local residents avoid this place, remembering what was found at the bottom of it.

Authorities have erected a memorial sign on the shore with the names of all the victims whose bodies were found in Arizona’s waterways thanks to the solving of the Mills case.

This story reminds us of the fragility of human life and how quickly an ordinary day can turn into a nightmare.

The Wilsons just wanted to spend a day off together, enjoy the beauty of nature, and make memories.

Instead, they fell victim to a man for whom the suffering of others was a form of art.

But this story is also about how the truth, no matter how long and deeply it is hidden, always finds its way to the surface.

For 11 years, the Wilson family lay at the bottom of a lake.

But in the end, they were found, the killer was caught, and justice prevailed.

For those who have lost loved ones in similar circumstances, this case has become a symbol of hope.

Hope that even the coldest cases can be solved, that even the most cunning criminals can be caught, that the memory of the victims will be preserved, and that their killers will be punished.

If this story has touched you, please share your thoughts in the comments.

Do you think this tragedy could have been prevented? What measures should families take to protect themselves from such predators? Let’s discuss it together.

Your opinion is important because only through understanding and vigilance can we make our world safer.