In June of 2015, 20-year-old Kate Sanchez and her 21-year-old companion, Aaron Turner, disappeared without a trace in the dense forests of Colorado.

6 months of excruciating suspense followed until an emaciated Aaron, looking like a dirty homeless man, was found hundreds of miles away.

What really happened to the young people in the wilderness? And what terrible secret turned the young man into an unrecognizable shadow of himself? You will find out in this story.

June 15th, 2015, in the Roosevelt National Forest, Colorado, was unusually hot.

The air was so still and thick that it seemed as if the Rocky Mountains themselves were frozen in anticipation of something inevitable.

It was on this morning that 20-year-old Kate Sanchez, a journalism student described by her family as an extremely disciplined and responsible person, and her 21-year-old companion, Aaron Turner, went for a short walk in the mountains.

Kate was the true heart of her family, a girl whose punctuality and habit of always keeping her family informed of her plans made her subsequent disappearance absolutely impossible to understand.

According to the official investigation, the couple arrived in the area 2 days before the tragedy.

They rented room 12 in a small roadside cottage called the Mountain Wind located near the town of Lions.

The owner of the establishment recalled during interrogation that the young people seemed absolutely calm.

According to him, they did not look like professional climbers, but rather like ordinary students who decided to change the cityscape for mountain freshness.

Their room remained untouched after the disappearance.

On a massive wooden table was Kate’s open laptop, chargers, several textbooks, and a change of clothes were lying nearby.

Investigators noted that even wallets with some cash and bank cards remained in the room.

On the bed was a tourist guide book open to a page describing the route to the abandoned quaries.

According to the mobile operator’s data, the last activity on Kate’s phone was recorded at 20 minutes in the morning of June 15th.

She sent a short message to her mother.

We’re going out to the Miller Gulch Trail.

Be back by , love.

This was the last confirmation that the girl was safe.

When Kate didn’t call at , her mother, Patricia Sanchez, felt paralyzed with fear.

In her testimony to the police, Patricia would later say, “My daughter has never in her life broken a promise to get in touch.

If she said , that’s what she meant.” At that afternoon, Robert Sanchez, the girl’s father, contacted the Forest Service.

Within 45 minutes, the First Ranger patrol arrived at the empty parking lot at the Miller Gulch trail head.

A silver sedan stood alone on the gray dusted gravel lot.

The car was carefully locked.

Through the glass, the patrol officers could see Kate’s sunglasses and a spare light jacket on the front passenger seat.

For experienced rescuers, this was the first warning sign.

In the mountains of Colorado, where the weather changes instantly, leaving outerwear in the car meant full confidence that the hike would be as short as possible.

On June 16th, 2015, at in the morning, a large-scale search operation began.

The temperature at that time was 58° F, three specialized K9 teams, and a helicopter equipped with thermal imaging.

The investigation revealed that the pair planned to take a ciruitous route that ran past the abandoned lion’s quaries, an area with extremely difficult terrain and deep brush hidden creasses.

Ranger Michaelelsson, who coordinated the teams, noted in the report that the search dogs were only able to confidently follow the scent for the first 300 yards of the trail, after which the scent suddenly disappeared on an open rocky plateau.

Over the next few days, the rescuers carefully examined every square foot of land within a 5m radius.

They roped down narrow crevices, checked old concrete drainage systems near the quarry, and inspected dense stands of mountain mahogany.

Not a single clue was found, not a scrap of fabric from a backpack, not a single set of footprints on soft soil, not a single lost item.

Search experts emphasized that in the absence of precipitation, at least some physical traces of the two people’s presence should have been preserved on the dry needles.

However, the forest remained completely, almost ominously silent.

The number of volunteers grew to 120 on the fifth day of the search.

Kate’s parents and Aaron’s family actually moved into the coordination headquarters.

The volunteer organization’s report documented that the Miller Gulch route had been walked at least 30 times by different groups.

They looked under every fallen tree and examined the bottom of every dried up stream.

Particular attention was paid to the abandoned minehafts near the lion’s quarry, a place that locals tried to avoid, calling it a stone trap because of the unstable ground.

Kate Sanchez and Aaron Turner simply disappeared in broad daylight, leaving their loved ones in a state of endless despair.

At the end of June 2015, the official phase of the search was suspended due to the complete lack of results.

The case became an unsolved disappearance under unexplained circumstances, leaving only the silence of hot stones and thousands of unanswered questions.

On December 21st, 2015, the night in Witchah, Kansas, was unusually cold.

The temperature dropped to 22° F, and a sharp north wind chilled to the bone everyone who dared to stay outside.

The industrial zone on the outskirts of the city, where private warehouses are located, was completely deserted at this time.

However, at 2 hours and 11 minutes after midnight, the piece of the area was broken by a sharp alarm that went off at the interlogistic warehouse.

Local police officer James Miller, who was patrolling the neighborhood at the time, arrived at the scene within 4 minutes.

According to his official report, he noticed broken glass in a small window at the back of the building.

After illuminating the area with a powerful flashlight, the officer saw a man trying to hide behind massive metal containers.

The offender did not resist.

On the contrary, he froze, covering his face with his hands from the bright light.

When he was handcuffed, Miller noted in the detention report that the young man was in a terrible state.

The detainee looked like a person who had been in complete social isolation for months.

His clothes had turned into dirty rags, and he had a heavy smell of wood burning and unwashed body.

His face was overgrown with a thick unckempt beard, and deep black shadows lay under his eyes.

The officer noted that the young man weighed no more than 120 lb, which given his height was a critical indicator of exhaustion.

He was shivering not only from the cold but also from deep internal shock, not saying a word the entire way to the police station.

At police station number four in Witchah, the officer on duty began the standard identification procedure.

Since the detainee did not have any documents on him and refused to give his name, his fingerprints were taken to be checked against the national NSA database.

At 45 minutes in the morning, the computer system produced a result that left the officer on duty stunned for a few seconds.

A photo of a young man with a clean shaven face and clear eyes appeared on the screen with a red mark next to it.

Missing most wanted.

It was 21-year-old Aaron Turner who disappeared without a trace 6 months ago in the mountains of Colorado with Kate Sanchez.

The news of Aaron’s discovery instantly galvanized the detectives who were working on the Colorado disappearance case.

In the morning, the first official interrogation began, and the recording of it later became a key document in the investigation.

According to the detectives present in the room, Aaron was extremely nervous, constantly looking back at the door and drinking water greedily, holding the glass with both hands.

When he finally began to speak, his voice was hoarse and barely audible.

Aaron said that on June 15th, 2015, he and Kate were intercepted on the Miller Gulch trail by two unidentified men in camouflage clothing.

He said the attackers acted professionally and quickly, threatening him with firearms.

The young man claimed that he and his girlfriend were separated almost immediately after the capture.

He was transported to an unknown destination blindfolded and placed in a basement room which he described as a place with concrete walls and many closed rooms.

Aaron assured investigators that he did not see Kate during his detention but heard her muffled cries behind the wall several times which gave him hope that she was alive.

According to the interrogation report, Aaron said that about two months ago, he managed to take advantage of the inattention of one of his captors and escape through a vent or a small window under the ceiling.

However, he did not go to the police immediately.

The young man explained this by paralyzing fear.

According to him, the captors repeatedly said that they would kill Kate and all members of his family if he even talked to law enforcement.

That’s why he spent the last 8 weeks hiding among the homeless in industrial areas of different cities, constantly traveling on freight trains until he finally ended up in Witchah.

This testimony had an explosive effect on the investigation headquarters.

The police had their first real vector of movement in 6 months.

If Aaron’s words were true, it meant that somewhere within Colorado or neighboring states, there was a secret holding facility where 20-year-old Kate Sanchez could still be waiting to be rescued.

Detective Harris, who flew in from Colorado to speak with Aaron in person, noted in his notes, “The guy looks like he’s been through hell.

His story sounds fantastic, but his physical condition and panicked fear of every noise in the hallway speak for themselves.

While doctors were giving Aaron a full examination in a closed wing of a local hospital, police began an urgent search of all abandoned buildings, basement, and farmland within a 50-mi radius of the Roosevelt National Forest.

The young man’s every word about a basement with different rooms was analyzed by mapping experts.

Kate Sanchez’s family, having received the news of Aaron’s return, felt a ray of hope that had almost faded.

The girl’s father, Robert, [music] in a brief comment to the press recorded at the entrance to the police station said, “If he could come back, then so can Kate.

We’re going to find that basement no matter what it takes.” However, the investigators had no idea how tangled this thread would turn out to be and what dark spots would begin to appear.

December 22nd, 2015 was a turning point in the investigation which had previously been considered hopeless.

Aaron Turner’s testimony about his abduction and prolonged detention in the basement forced Lammer County detectives to go back to the very beginning to the events that preceded June 15th.

While Aaron was under the care of doctors in Kansas, the investigative team began a thorough review of all police reports, call logs, and complaints coming from the Roosevelt National Forest area in the 2 weeks prior to the couple’s disappearance.

While analyzing the digital archives, Detective Harris came across a short report dated June 5th, 2015.

The document referred to a disturbance at a small roadside store called Blue Ridge located just 6 milesi from the Miller Gulch trail head.

According to the report, a local resident and a young man had been involved in a violent conflict that day.

When investigators arrived at the store, the owner, Elias Thorne, confirmed details of the incident that had not previously been considered relevant to the case.

According to Elias Thorne, at approximately 14 hours and 30 minutes on June 5th, Aaron Turner accidentally hit an old dark pickup truck parked nearby in the parking lot with his car door.

Known throughout the neighborhood for his difficult temper and uncontrollable outbursts of anger, [music] Thorne described the situation as a real explosion of hatred.

Marcus Wayne jumped out of the car and publicly scolded Aaron A.

Witness recalled that Wayne behaved extremely aggressively, reduced the [music] distance to a minimum, and according to the store owner, literally muttered a promise to give the boy serious problems that he will remember for the rest of his life.

Kate Sanchez, who came out of the store at that moment, tried to calm her husband down, but he only got even angrier.

This piece of the puzzle fit perfectly into the new theory of the investigation.

Marcus Wayne had not only a motive dictated by his pathological aggression, but also the technical ability to carry out the threats.

His reputation for avoiding social contact and spending most of his time in the woods made him an ideal [music] candidate for the role of kidnapper.

In addition, Marcus owned an old dark Ford pickup truck that was often seen on forest roads at atypical times.

On December 24, 2015, at in the morning, a special task force with detectives arrived at Marcus Wayne’s property.

His farm was located on a remote spot 3 mi from the main highway and bordered the territory of an abandoned sawmill that had been in his family since the 50s.

The place looked bleak.

Dilapidated wooden structures covered with gray lykan, rusty remains of industrial machinery, and dense shrubbery that closely approached the house.

The investigators special attention was drawn to the old sawmill.

It was a massive two-story building with a basement that partially went under the hillside.

During the search, according to the official protocol, detectives found a heavy iron door leading to the basement.

The air there was cold and saturated with the smell of dampness and oil.

Each step on the concrete floor echoed, creating an oppressive sense of confinement.

Detective Harris later noted in his reports that the layout of the sawmill basement was strange.

Numerous partitions formed small enclosed rooms which at first glance matched the description provided by Aaron Turner in his first statement.

Marcus Wayne behaved defiantly during his arrest.

According to the arresting officers, he showed no fear, only contempt.

When asked about Kate Sanchez’s whereabouts, he responded with silence or short, rude [music] denials.

His background, however, spoke for itself.

Three documented incidents of assault in the past and numerous complaints from neighbors about animal cruelty.

The investigation was confident that they had found their man.

Large-scale excavations began on the farm.

Rescuers used special equipment to check every square yard of land around the sawmill.

Dog handlers with specially trained dogs examined every crevice in the concrete floor of the basement, hoping to find even the slightest biological trace of Kate.

The tension grew with each passing hour.

Everyone from the rescuers to the missing girl’s parents believed that somewhere here behind these thick concrete walls or under a layer of old sawdust was the truth about what happened on June 16th.

While forensic scientists were collecting soil and dust samples in the sawmill’s basement, Marcus Wayne was taken to an interrogation room.

Investigators hoped that psychological pressure and witnesses to his conflict with Aaron would force him to talk.

However, Marcus only looked at the detectives with his heavy, unblinking eyes, creating a wall of hostile silence around him.

The grounds of the abandoned sawmill became the epicenter of anticipation.

Every sound of a metal shovel hitting stones made Kate’s parents’ hearts beat faster.

They were convinced that evil had finally been named and addressed and that the Denum was only hours away.

But the winter forest around Wayne’s farm kept its secret as tightly as it had 6 months earlier.

December 25th, 2015.

While most Coloradoatans were celebrating Christmas, the detective task force was working in overdrive, studying hundreds of hours of surveillance footage that had been collected within a 20 m radius of the Roosevelt National Forest.

The key object of interest was Marcus Wayne’s dark pickup truck.

The investigation gained access to the archive of a private gas station called Rocky Mountain Fuel, located at the exit from Lions towards the mountain range.

According to the video review protocol, at 12 minutes in the morning on June 15th, 2015, the camera recorded a dark-coled vehicle identified as a Ford moving in the direction of the Miller Gulch Trail.

The quality of the recording did not allow for a clear distinction of license plates due to a layer of dust on the bumper, but a distinctive dent on the rear left fender matched the description of Marcus Wayne’s car provided earlier by the owner of the Blue Ridge store.

Moreover, at 21 hours and 45 minutes on the same day, a similar vehicle was spotted on its way back just 30 m from the Wayne Farm.

This discovery was the catalyst for decisive action.

A county judge issued a warrant for 24-hour surveillance of Marcus Wayne and a full search of his property.

Detective Harris, who led the team, noted in his notes that Marcus behaved like a man with nothing to lose.

He ignored the presence of police cars at his driveway, defiantly going about his business.

But his aggression was evident in the smallest of ways.

Sudden movements, [music] throwing tools around, and hostile glances toward law enforcement.

On December 26th, at in the morning, a second, more detailed search of the farm and the adjacent abandoned sawmill began.

Forensic officers used powerful search lights to illuminate the dark corners of the old shop.

Officer Stevens, who took part in the raid, described the room as a concrete maze underground.

The sawmill basement was divided into several sections by heavy partitions made of rough wood and metal mesh.

There was a persistent smell of machine oil and stale moisture in the air, and the floor was covered with a thick layer of sawdust mixed with [music] dirt.

In the center of the basement, the detectives found two isolated rooms with massive bolts on the doors.

Inside were old metal shelves and empty boxes.

According to Officer Stevens, as recorded in the report, the layout of these rooms was strikingly consistent with Aaron’s [music] descriptions of separate confinement.

Anyone in one of these sections could not see what was happening in the other, but could hear sounds clearly through the vents in the ceiling.

This gave the investigation confidence that they were [music] one step away from solving the crime scene.

During the search, Marcus Wayne himself was in [music] his apartment building under the supervision of two officers.

According to their testimony, he was sitting in a chair, keeping his eyes on the window overlooking the sawmill.

When Detective Harris asked him directly where he had been on the night of June 15th, Marcus only briefly replied that he had been sleeping in his bed, but could not provide any witnesses to [music] corroborate this.

His reputation as a bomb man with uncontrollable anger only served to heighten suspicions.

Neighbors interviewed during this period described Wayne as a person capable of prolonged revenge for the slightest insult.

The crime lab began a thorough examination of Marcus’ pickup truck.

Fragments of rope and an old tarpolin with traces of an unknown substance were found in the body of the vehicle.

Each finding was documented as potential material evidence.

The investigators worked in low temperatures that dropped to 15° F, but the tension around the farm was so high that the cold was hardly felt.

At the same time, psychologists who worked with the case file indicated that Marcus Wayne’s profile fits the profile of an organized attacker with territorial grievances.

His fanatical attitude [music] toward his property and a conflict with Aaron over a minor scratch on his car could have been the trigger that led to the kidnapping.

The police were sure Marcus saw the young men as disturbers of his peace and decided to teach them a lesson in the most brutal way possible.

3 days of continuous searching of the sawmill and the farm did not bring the main thing, a direct biological trace of Kate Sanchez.

Despite the fact that every detail of the basement coincided with Aaron’s story, detectives found no blood, food remains, or personal belongings of the girl.

However, circumstantial evidence, camera footage, the absence of an alibi, and the witness’s accurate description of the premises outweighed the doubts.

Marcus Wayne officially remained under roundthe-clock surveillance as the prime suspect in the kidnapping and alleged murder case.

Kate’s family was in a state of agonizing anticipation, peering at every news item about the progress of the investigation at Wayne’s farm, hoping that the concrete walls of the old sawmill would finally give up [music] their secret.

The dark pickup truck in the twilight of the forest became a symbol for everyone of the inevitable disaster that unfolded 6 months ago on the Miller Gulch Trail.

December 28th, 2015 was the day when the investigation’s confidence in Marcus Wayne’s guilt began to show the first serious cracks.

While the operatives continued to excavate the old sawmill, Detective Harris and his team in Lammer County began an indepth analysis of every detail of Aaron Turner’s testimony.

They were looking for what is known in forensic science as touch points.

Small spontaneous facts that cannot be made up if you have truly experienced a tragedy.

However, instead of corroboration, the detectives began to find anomalies that did not fit into any logical scheme.

The first serious alarm was an acoustic discrepancy.

During additional interrogation in Witchah, the record of which was transmitted to Colorado at in the morning, Aaron Turner repeatedly emphasized one specific detail of his imprisonment.

He claimed that in the basement where he was held, he could hear the loud sound of running water all the time, day and night.

The young man described it as a monotonous, powerful humming sound reminiscent of the roar of a waterfall or a fastmoving mountain river flowing just outside the wall.

Aaron claimed that the sound was so intense that sometimes he could not hear his own thoughts.

Detective Harris personally traveled to Marcus Wayne’s farm to verify this detail.

He stood in the center of the sawmill basement where every partition and every iron door visually matched Aaron’s description.

However, the room was absolutely silent, almost grave.

The nearest water body, a small stream that dried up in the summer, was 3 mi away from Wayne’s property.

Even during heavy rains, its noise could not reach the basement walls.

The investigation brought in hydraologists who confirmed that there was no underground river or powerful drainage channel within a 10-mi radius of the farm that could create the sound effect described by Aaron.

This was the first indication that the young man was describing a place that had nothing to do with Marcus’ farm.

Even more startling were the results of Aaron’s extended medical examination received from a Kansas City clinic on December 29th.

Dr.

Elliot Woods, a leading rehabilitation specialist, prepared a detailed 20page report.

According to his conclusions, Aaron Turner’s physical condition categorically contradicted the story of his six-month stay in a locked basement.

Dr.

Woods noted in the report that Aaron’s blood vitamin D levels were quite normal for a person who spends a lot of time outdoors.

Prisoners who are completely isolated from sunlight for more than 2 months inevitably develop severe hypovitaminosis which leads to specific changes in the structure of the skin and bones.

Aaron’s skin despite the general exhaustion and dirt showed signs of intense solar arythemma and uneven tanning which is typical for prolonged exposure to the open air not dark concrete.

In addition, the medical examination did not reveal the expected muscle atrophy.

A person locked in a small room for 6 months loses a significant amount of muscle tone in the legs due to the lack of normal motor activity.

Instead, the calluses on Aaron’s feet and the condition of his ligaments showed that he had been walking long distances for a long time.

Dr.

Woods summarized, “The patient looks like someone who has lived a nomadic lifestyle in the wilderness or in an urban jungle, but he certainly hasn’t spent the last 6 months shackled in a basement.” Detectives began to analyze Aaron’s behavior from a different perspective.

A forensic psychologist who watched the interrogation recordings noticed how the young man described different rooms.

He did it too methodically, as if he had studied the building’s layout in advance, but got lost in elementary everyday questions, such as what the food he was brought looked like, or how exactly his escape took place.

Whenever the question became too specific, Aaron began to show signs of a panic attack, which now seemed to the investigators not to be a consequence of trauma, but a conscious mechanism of protection against exposure.

On December 30th, 2015, a closed-d dooror meeting was held at the sheriff’s office.

Detective Harris placed two photographs on the table.

One of the basement of Marcus Wayne’s sawmill, the other a map of the county’s water resources.

The discrepancy was obvious.

Aaron Turner had described a place that looked like Wayne’s basement, but sounded [music] and felt like something else entirely.

A logical but eerie question arose.

How could Aaron know the layout of the sawmill in such detail if he had never been a prisoner there? And most importantly, why was he so insistent on sending the police to this particular address? The shadow of suspicion began to slowly shift from the aggressive recluse Marcus Wayne to the victim himself.

Detectives realized that the story of the kidnapping could be just a skillfully constructed facade hiding a completely different, much darker reality.

The hope of finding Kate Sanchez alive in the basement with the sound of water was melting away with each passing hour, leaving behind only the feeling of a big lie that had yet to be unraveled.

The investigators decided to change [music] tactics and start checking Aaron himself.

every minute of his life before his disappearance and every step he took after that fateful morning in June.

On January 4th, 2016, the investigation into the disappearance of Kate Sanchez entered a phase [music] that detectives later called the war on digital shadows.

While Aaron Turner continued to insist on the kidnapping theory, a team of technical experts from Denver completed an in-depth analysis of the cloud storage and account activity of both young people.

Since Kate’s smartphone was never found in the car or on the trail, the only source of information about her last hours was data automatically synchronized with the servers of the Sport Track fitness app.

According to the official report of the police IT department, the results were stunning.

Aaron Turner claimed during interrogation that the attack occurred almost instantly after they hit the trail at about in the morning.

However, the data from Kate’s bracelet painted a completely different picture.

The device recorded a steady heart rate and the girl’s active movement up the slope until minutes in the morning.

Moreover, the intensity of the load indicated that she was not just walking, but overcoming difficult sections of the route at a normal pace, which would have been impossible for a person being forced at gunpoint.

The geoloccation data raised even more questions.

A mobile tower located on top of Deer Mountain recorded the last faint signal from Kate’s phone at 12 hours and 12 minutes.

The coordinates pointed to the area of the abandoned Lion’s Quarry, which was 3 and 1/2 miles from where Aaron said they were attacked by their kidnappers.

This meant that Kate or someone with her phone was near the quarry 4 hours after the alleged crime was committed.

Detective Harris noted in his diary, “Numbers don’t know how to lie or feel fear.

They just record facts, and those facts directly contradict every word Aaron said.” In parallel with the technical analysis, investigators conducted repeated witness interviews.

On January 9th, 2016, Detective Stevens met with a group of experienced hikers from the Rocky Mountain Hikers Club, who had hiked the Miller Gulch route in the opposite direction.

On that fateful day, June 15, the senior member of the group, Thomas Miller, confirmed on the record that they had been on the plateau from in the morning until in the afternoon.

He said they saw no dark pickup truck, no armed men in camouflage, and heard no cries for help.

The mountains are a natural resonator, Miller told the detective.

In this quiet weather, the sound of a gunshot or a scream can travel for miles.

We only heard the wind.

Rangers from the Roosevelt National Forest also provided their patrol reports.

On January 11th, it was confirmed that on the day of the disappearance, all maintenance visits to the quarry had been cancelled and the only entrance for service vehicles remained locked with a massive chain that showed no signs of damage.

This completely refuted the possibility that Marcus Wayne or anyone else could have driven unnoticed to the foot of the cliffs in a large vehicle to load the two prisoners.

The more the detectives delved into Kate’s digital world, the more clearly the profile of falsification emerged.

An analysis of Aaron Turner’s recent posts [music] showed that a week before the hike, he had been asking online about methods of survival in the wild and ways to move anonymously between states.

These search engine queries were made from his home computer at in the morning.

For the investigation, this was a wake-up call.

The young man could have been preparing for his disappearance in advance, carefully crafting a cover story.

Detective Harris, looking through the call records, noticed another detail.

Aaron’s phone was turned off at exactly 15 minutes, 5 minutes before Kate sent her last message to her mother.

This coincidence seemed suspicious, as if Aaron wanted to make sure that his own location could not be tracked by cell towers while he was acting.

Tensions in the sheriff’s office peaked in mid January.

Despite the absence of the main physical evidence, the girl’s body, or her personal belongings, circumstantial evidence began to form a logical chain where the central figure was not the aggressive Marcus Wayne, but an exhausted homeless man who had returned from Witchah.

The detectives realized that Aaron’s legend about the basement, kidnappers, and threats to the family was just a skillfully constructed set designed to hide what really happened near the lion’s quarry.

Each new bite of information retrieved from the servers destroyed the story of the Witchah ghost step by step.

Kate Sanchez was not a helpless victim who was shared with her boyfriend at in the morning.

She continued her journey deeper into the woods, unaware that her own digital activity would become the main accuser for the man she trusted with her life.

6 months later, the investigation was preparing for a decisive step, a direct confrontation with Aaron Turner, where he would have to explain why the numbers spoke a completely different language than he did.

However, the most important question still hung in the air.

Where exactly on these three and a half miles between the trail and the quarry did Kate Sanchez’s life’s journey end? January 20th, 2016 was the day that the artificially constructed structure of lies that Aaron Turner had carefully maintained over the past month finally collapsed under the weight of irrefutable evidence.

The interrogation began at in the morning in the small interview room of the county [music] police station.

The air in the room was dry and heavy, and the only window, barred by metal mesh, looked out onto the gray wall of the neighboring building.

Detective Harris and Detective Stevens placed several folders on the table in front of Aaron.

Medical reports from Kansas, cell [music] tower printouts, and a detailed log of Kate Sanchez’s fitness bracelet activity.

For the first two hours, Aaron remained silent, only occasionally repeating memorized phrases about men in camouflage and concrete basement.

However, Detective Harris began to methodically destroy every element of his legend.

When the data on the young man’s perfect vitamin D levels and the absence of muscle atrophy were laid out on the table, [music] Aaron looked away for the first time.

The real blow came when he learned that Kate was active near the lion’s quarry [music] at in the afternoon, 4 hours after they were allegedly abducted.

According to the interrogation report, at this point, Aaron began to nervously clench his fingers and his breathing became shallow and intermittent.

[music] At 13 hours 45 minutes, the moment came that [music] the detectives called a complete psychological breakdown.

Stevens turned on an audio recording of the sound of water near Marcus Wayne’s farm, or rather a recording of absolute silence broken only by the wind.

He asked Aaron where exactly in this basement was the sound of the river that he had talked about so much.

The young man suddenly covered his face with his hands and leaned low over the table.

His shoulders began to shake and the first words of the truth that he had been hiding for 215 days came out through his fingers.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.

It was only a second,” he whispered.

And this voice captured on tape sounded like the voice of a man who had finally surrendered to his own conscience.

According to Aaron’s new testimony, which he began to give at , the tragedy of June 15th, 2015, had nothing to do with the kidnapping.

The couple did go to the lion’s quarry, but their outing was marred by a tense argument that had been going on for several days.

The conflict peaked at around 30 minutes when they reached the edge of one of the quarry’s most inaccessible areas, a rocky plateau with deep crevices hidden behind dense mountain mahogany scrub.

Aaron told investigators that Kate announced her intention to end the relationship immediately after returning from the hike.

She turned around to walk back to the car, but Aaron, gripped by resentment and despair, abruptly grabbed her right arm, trying to stop her and make her listen to him.

The movement was too much.

Kate, who was standing on the unsteady stones at the very edge of the hidden creasse, lost her balance.

Her feet slipped on the dry granite scree, and she fell backwards into a narrow chasm that was over 15 ft deep.

The young man claimed that he rushed to the edge and called out to her, but only silence was the answer.

He had no rope or flashlight with him, and descending into such a creasse without special equipment was deadly.

Instead of running to the car and calling rescuers, which might have saved Kate if she had been alive, Aaron succumbed to panic.

He imagined the police accusing him of premeditated murder because of the bruises on her arm and their history of conflict.

In his mind, as he explained to the detectives, the only way out was to disappear completely.

Aaron spent several more hours at the creasse.

It was during this time that he turned off his phone, but forgot about Kate’s phone, which continued to send signals to cell towers.

He carefully gathered all the small items that could point to the place of the fall, and tried to disguise the entrance to the gorge with rocks and branches.

Terrified of being caught, he left his car in the parking lot, hoping it would confuse the investigation and walked deeper into the forest.

Over the next 6 months, Aaron Turner turned into a ghost.

He said that at first he lived for weeks at a time in remote parts of the Roosevelt National Forest, eating what he found in the woods and supplies he stole from tourists summer homes.

Later he made his way to a railroad junction and took freight trains to Kansas.

Living among the homeless in Witchah was a form of self-punishment for him, but also the best disguise.

He deliberately did not wash, grew a beard, and learned to avoid any visual contact with passers by.

The story of the basement and the kidnappers was born in his head long before he broke the warehouse window.

He specifically chose Marcus Wayne as the ideal suspect, remembering their conflict at the store and used his knowledge of the layout of the old sawmill, which he had once casually inspected during his walks.

Detective Harris, listening to this confession, noted in the report that Aaron spoke of Kate in the past tense with a strange, detached apathy.

He was more concerned about how he looked in the eyes of the law than the fate of the girl he left in the darkness of the gorge.

Every detail of his escape from conscience showed cold calculation mixed with deep selfishness.

At the end of the interrogation, which lasted 8 hours, Aaron Turner signed a formal confession to deliberately misleading the investigation and failing to help a person in danger.

He agreed to show the exact spot where Kate [music] Sanchez took her last step, thus ending her family’s six-month agony.

As he was led down the corridor to the pre-trial detention center, the young man did not look like a murderer, but like a man who had finally unburdened himself of an unbearable burden without thinking that this burden had buried another life forever.

On January 21st, 2016, at in the morning, a convoy of four police SUVs and a rescue vehicle drove toward the abandoned lion’s quarry.

The temperature that morning had dropped to 10° Fahrenheit, and the frozen ground was covered with a thin layer of prickly frost.

In the back of the lead vehicle, handcuffed and under strict surveillance by detectives, sat Aaron Turner.

His face was pale and devoid of emotion.

He only occasionally pointed the way as the convoy turned into obscure forest lanes.

At about and 30 minutes, the group stopped at the eastern edge of the quarry, a place where granite blocks formed a chaotic maze overgrown with thick and thorny mountain mahogany shrubs.

The entrance to the creasse was cluttered with rocks and dry pine branches.

According to the scene report, the creasse was over 15 ft deep and had a narrowing at the bottom, making it nearly invisible from above.

Ranger Michaelelsson, using climbing equipment, was the first to descend to the bottom of the stone trap.

In the rays of the flashlights, the rescuers found what they had been looking for for the past 7 months.

At the bottom of the gorge lay the remains of Kate Sanchez.

[music] Next to her, half covered with dust and small stones, was her digital camera in a broken case.

The investigator noted in his report that the girl’s body was partially protected from wildlife by the depth and narrowness of the crevice, which allowed him to preserve key evidence for examination.

On January 24, 2016, the Lammer County Medical Examiner released the official autopsy results.

According to the findings, Kate Sanchez died instantly from multiple fractures of the base of her skull and cervical vertebrae sustained during a fall on sharp rocks.

No signs of foul play, struggle, or gunshot wounds were found.

This fully confirmed the version of an accident that became fatal due to the panic and cowardice of the only witness.

The trial of Aaron Turner began in March 2016.

The young man was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for manslaughter, failure to help a person in danger, and deliberately misleading the investigation, which led to the waste of state resources and the harassment of an innocent person.

Marcus Wayne was officially acquitted of all charges.

However, according to his few acquaintances, he was never able to return to his normal life.

His reputation in the town was irrevocably damaged by months of suspicion.

Two months after the trial, Marcus sold his farm and sawmill and left the state for good, leaving no new address.

In late January, the Sanchez family was finally able to bury their daughter.

A small ceremony took place at a local cemetery to the soft rustle of pine trees.

Patricia Sanchez later said in a conversation with journalists that the hardest thing for her was the realization that Kate could have been saved if Aaron had simply dialed 911 in the first minutes.

The story of Kate Sanchez became a tragic reminder of how one wrong moved by a panicked fear of responsibility can turn an ordinary walk in the mountains into a series of ruined lives.

Lions’s career was over, but the silence that rained over the gorge forever retained the echoes of that fateful June morning.