In June of 2019, 25-year-old San Francisco based designer Jessica Logan traveled to Yusede National Park for a weekend.

She planned to take a series of photographs for her project about loneliness in the wild.

On June 2015, at in the morning, a camera at the entrance to the park captured her silver Hyundai Elantra.

At 10 in the afternoon, she posted a selfie on social media near Upper Yoseite Falls, a smiling face against a background of white fog.

This was the last confirmed evidence that Jessica was alive.

4 days later, her friend reported her missing.

The car was found in a parking lot near the trail head, the keys inside, a bottle of water, and a map marked North Dome on the seat.

The dogs picked up the trail but lost it near a rocky area where the trail forks.

The search lasted 2 weeks.

Nothing was found.

No backpack, no phone, no clothes.

4 years have passed.

In August of 2023, a group of geology students taking measurements in an abandoned granite quarry 30 m from Yoseite came across a partially filledin trench.

In the soil was a human silhouette preserved by cold and dust.

A white plastic card was pinned to the skeleton’s chest.

On it was an inscription made in marker.

I wasn’t private enough.

Police identified the remains as Jessica Logan.

Her case, which had been in the archives for years, returned to the headlines not as a Yoseite disappearance, but as a murder.

On June 15th, 2019, 25-year-old Jessica Logan, a San Francisco-based interface designer, arrived at Yoseite National Park.

Her silver Hyundai Elantra was captured by a security camera at the entrance to the valley at 20 minutes in the morning.

Upper Yoseite Falls, returned Sunday.

This entry was the first and last document of her route.

Jessica often traveled alone.

Her colleagues recalled that such trips were a way for her to clear her head after work.

She was not in the habit of taking risks.

She always informed her family about where she was going and never strayed from the official trails.

That day, the weather was hot, the sky was clear, and the temperature was about 90° F.

The park was bustling with life, tourists, children, cameras, laughter.

At 14 hours and 30 minutes, Jessica called her friend Kylie Bennett.

According to Kylie, the conversation was short.

The girl sounded excited, said she had met a friendly guy with a fun dog, and was advised to try the side trail, where there are fewer people and a better view of the falls.

The cell phone records confirmed the call was made from the Yoseite Falls area.

40 minutes later at 15 hours and 10 minutes, a selfie appeared on her profile.

A smile, the sun in the lens, and a white wall of water behind her.

This photo received more than a 100red likes, but no one paid attention to a detail that would later become the subject of analysis, the reflection in her sunglasses.

When zoomed in, you can see a fuzzy human figure and a light spot that looks like a dog.

On Sunday night, Jessica did not get in touch.

Her phone stopped answering.

A friend thought she was late because of a bad signal.

On Monday morning at , Jessica did not show up for work.

Colleagues tried to text her on her messenger.

No response.

The same day, Kylie contacted the Ranger Service.

At in the evening, a park patrol found her car in a parking lot near the beginning of the upper Yoseite Falls Trail.

The car was locked with a bottle of water, a road map marked north dome, and a small photo album with flower stickers inside.

There were no signs of a struggle or haste.

The rangers began their standard search procedure.

At 900 p.m., a group of dog handlers was brought in.

The dogs picked up the scent of the car as they moved up the main trail, but lost the scent after half a mile, where the gravel turns into a rocky rise.

The place is called the split of the shadow.

Here the main trail splits into two directions, one leading to an observation deck, the other to a lesserknown branch used only by experienced hikers.

The search lasted until late at night.

A helicopter flew over the valley.

Search lights illuminated the canyons, but there were no results.

On Tuesday morning, volunteers and local guides joined the operation.

Every square yard of the area around the trail was checked.

In the stream below the waterfall, they found the remains of garbage, a plastic bottle cap, a candy bar wrapper, but experts did not find Jessica’s DNA on them.

By Thursday, more than 30 square miles of the surrounding slopes had been searched.

Ranger Scott Williams, who coordinated the operation, said in a report, “It is likely that the hiker has wandered off the trail, but the direction is unknown.” After a week passed, the official search phase was shortened.

Her family came to Yoseite and put up posters with their daughter’s photo at bus stops, cafes, and campsites.

“She never did anything stupid,” the mother said during a brief interview with local news.

If she’s missing, something happened.

10 days after the search began, the park returned to its normal rhythm.

Tourists were again taking pictures of the waterfall, and a poster with Jessica Logan’s smiling face remained nearby on a tree near the parking lot.

The wind tore off the edges of the plastic.

The sun faded the colors, and it seemed as if nature itself was slowly erasing her traces.

On Tuesday, June 18th, the search operation in Yoseite National Park took on a scale not seen in years.

The rangers were joined by volunteers from the Sierra Club organization.

20 experienced climbers, dog handlers, and several local residents who knew the trails better than any map.

A helicopter with a thermal imager circled the valley all day.

At the center of the operation, at a makeshift base near the waterfall, a team of coordinators worked.

On a large whiteboard, colored markers marked each sector to be checked.

At in the morning, the dogs picked up the scent again from the parking lot at Upper Yoseite Falls, but the scent disappeared a few hundred yards away, where the ground turned into a rocky ledge.

The rangers examined the slopes to the very foot, looking under rocks, into crevices between boulders, and into river whirlpools.

They found nothing.

During the first 3 days of the operation, they examined the area from the foot to the north dome, which is more than 30 square miles.

They studied everything.

Old shepherd’s trails, stream beds, even dry grotto where traces of temporary shelter could remain.

The rain that fell on Wednesday night washed away most of the footprints, making the search much more difficult.

Ranger reports show that each group returned empty-handed.

They did not find any of Jessica’s belongings.

No backpack, no sneakers, no cap she was wearing in the photo.

A volunteer named Clare Hudson recalled, “It was like looking for a person who never existed.

The park was silent.

On Thursday, June 20th, police began interviewing visitors who were in the vicinity of Upper Yusede Falls that day.

The data from the registration logs showed more than 140 signatures, but no one remembered the girl matching the description or the man with the dog she had mentioned during the last call.

Several tourists talked about a man in a red jacket, but a check showed that he was another visitor who had left the park that day.

When it became clear that the trail had completely disappeared, the first theories emerged.

The first was an accident, a possible fall from one of the lookout rocks, but there were no traces of a body or pieces of clothing.

The second was an attack by a wild animal, particularly a grizzly bear, which sometimes enters the area.

However, experts quickly rejected this version.

No blood, hair, or typical signs of a struggle were found on the ground.

The third hypothesis was a sudden cardiac arrest or other medical cause, but there was also a lack of evidence.

The park service notified the press of a missing person report.

Local media ran short stories with Jessica’s photo.

Journalists called her an independent traveler and cited statistics.

Over the past 10 years, eight people have disappeared without a trace in Yoseite, most of them never found.

On June 23rd, the search area was expanded to the Merrced River.

Divers checked the underwater recesses where fragments of trees or rocks sometimes linger after floods.

The water was clean, clear, but empty.

A week later, the situation had not changed.

The park service began to reduce the number of patrols.

The diary of the search coordinator for June 27th reads, “The probability of finding her alive is minimal.

No signs of violence or a body.” On June 29, the press gathered at the Logan family home in San Francisco.

Jessica’s mother, Carol, read a short statement.

We are grateful to everyone who is looking for our daughter.

We believe she is out there somewhere waiting to be found.

Two weeks after the start of the operation on July 3rd, the search was officially suspended.

Jessica Logan’s case was classified as missing.

On the National Park Service website, her name was added to the database of unresolved cases.

The report states, “Disappearance on the territory of Upper Yoseite Falls.

No signs of foul play found.” After that, the valley again plunged into silence.

Tourists walked the same paths, took pictures of the same landscapes, but some of the rangers later admitted that in the evenings, it seemed to them that the park was breathing differently, quieter, more alert.

In August of 2023, 4 years after Jessica Logan’s disappearance, a group of geology students from the University of Berkeley conducted field research in the vicinity of a small abandoned granite quarry known locally as Cresten Mine.

The quarry was once used to quarry stone for bridges and road fortifications, but production stopped in the late ’90s.

Since then, the quarry has been overgrown with pine trees and shrubbery, turning into a place where time seems to have frozen.

On August 23rd, around in the morning, students were examining the southern section, a deep trench partially covered with granite fragments.

The ground was dry, the surface cracked from the heat.

When one of the students, 22-year-old Elias Ferguson, kicked a large stone, something that at first glance resembled a piece of tarpollen, or an old jacket peaked out from under the layer of dust.

A few seconds later, he realized that it was a cloth stretched over the bones.

According to eyewitnesses, everyone froze.

Ferguson called the teacher, Dr.

Harry Clement, who was leading the group.

He ordered no one to touch the discovery and immediately called the local Mariposa County Sheriff’s Department.

The report was registered at 30 minutes.

A forensic team and a patrol car were dispatched to the scene.

When investigators descended into the trench, they found the body lying about 6 ft below a layer of stone chips.

The sun had dried out the tissues and the remains looked as if they had been mummified.

The clothes were partially preserved.

>> >> jeans, a thin jacket, and the remains of a shoe.

A white plastic card the size of a badge could be seen pinned to his chest with a large rusty nail.

On it, in black marker, faded but still legible, was written, “I was not private enough.” The officer who first approached later noted in his report, “The inscription made me feel cold.

It felt like whoever did it was addressing us, not the victim.

” The trench was immediately fenced off.

A forensic scientist, an evidence collection technician, and two FBI representatives arrived at the scene who had been called in because of possible involvement in serial cases.

The work lasted until the evening.

Every fragment, every branch was photographed.

The body was carefully removed and placed in an airtight bag for transportation to the Fresno Forensic Laboratory.

A preliminary assessment indicated that the body had been in the ground for several years.

The degree of skin preservation, dryness of the tissues, and condition of the hair indicated natural mummification in dry soil conditions.

The skeleton was female of medium height.

The very next day, DNA analysis conducted at the state laboratory confirmed the worst.

The remains belonged to Jessica Logan, who disappeared in Yoseite in June of 2019.

The results matched the profile stored in the National Park Service database.

The news spread instantly.

From San Francisco to Fresno, the media repeated the same sentence.

The body of missing hiker Jessica Logan has been found.

A card on her chest reads, “I wasn’t private enough.” The police officially reclassified the case from a missing person to a murder.

The head of the investigation, Sergeant Daniel Hayes, called the discovery a deliberate message.

In his brief commentary, he noted that the way the body was placed indicated deliberate concealment with the expectation of delayed discovery.

The place where the body was found was not part of the tourist roads.

It was accessed by an old technical road overgrown with brush and unsuitable for driving.

The distance to Yoseite’s borders is about 30 mi, but according to experts, you can only get there if you know the area or have the coordinates.

No personal belongings, phone, camera, jewelry, or documents were found nearby.

The only item that could have a trace of the killer was a card.

It was sent for examination.

It was reported that the plastic was cheap, of the kind sold in ordinary stationary stores.

The inscription was made with a black marker in large letters without dashes by a hand that the experts described as neat controlled.

Jessica’s family was notified in person.

Her mother and brother traveled to Mariposa County the next day to officially confirm the identification.

Their presence was brief, just signing the documents and a few minutes in the morg.

A family representative told reporters, “We have been waiting for an answer for four years.

We have received it, but now we have even more questions.” The Crest and Main Quarry was closed to the public.

After that, a warning tape and a sign reading, “Investigation is ongoing were installed at the entrance.” In the evening of the same week, local residents said they heard the sound of a helicopter hovering over the site.

There was no official comment on this.

All the materials were transferred to the District Department of Serious Crimes.

In the documents, Jessica Logan’s case was marked with a new number and a short wording.

Victim identified.

Cause of death is violent.

Crime committed by an unknown person.

A few days after the discovery of Jessica Logan’s remains, the case was transferred to the Mariposa County Major Crimes Unit.

The investigation was led by Detective Harold Mitchell, a former Federal Bureau agent who specialized in serial murder cases.

For him, it was not just a new challenge.

Time is always the main enemy in such cases.

The first task was to examine the evidence found in the quarry.

A plastic card nailed to the victim’s chest was sent to a forensic laboratory in Fresno.

It was found to be a standard white badge blank that can be purchased at any office supply store.

The plastic is cheap without any manufacturer’s markings, and the nail is an ordinary construction nail.

There are no fingerprints on the surface, and a layer of dust and rust has completely destroyed any possible micro traces.

No unauthorized DNA was found on the card.

The only part that retained a marker trace was the beginning of the phrase.

Experts confirmed that the inscription was made with a medium thick black pigment marker known by its manufacturer’s code which is sold throughout the United States.

That is, there were no unique features.

At the same time, forensic experts examined the body.

Preliminary conclusions, the death was caused by asphyxiation.

There were signs of compression in the neck area characteristic of strangulation.

There were no injuries or fractures except for old abrasions.

Everything pointed to calm, deliberate actions.

Detective Mitchell focused on the psychological profile of the killer.

A consultant psychologist, Dr.

Seth Brown, who worked with the department, developed a profile, organized, rational, no emotional outbursts, a person with a high level of control and an internal sense of superiority.

The inscription on the card is not an impulsive gesture, but part of a plan, a kind of appeal to society.

Dr.

Brown noted in his conclusion, he didn’t just want to kill.

He needed to be heard.

The card is his way of speaking, of controlling the time and moment of discovery.

It was important to him that the message was read, but not immediately.

During a briefing at the district office, investigators compared the case to other cases of missing tourists in national parks.

There were no direct matches, but the very structure of the crime, control, ostentation, cold accuracy hinted at experience and repetition.

Mitchell called it a handwriting without mistakes.

He began with the victim’s closest connections.

In San Francisco, Jessica’s colleagues, former partners, friends, and acquaintances were interviewed.

They all described her the same way.

Quiet, intelligent, a bit reserved, but without enemies.

None of the witnesses reported any suspicious contacts before the trip.

The only person who provided any new information was her friend, Kylie Bennett, the one who received the last call from Jessica on the day she disappeared.

During the interrogation, she confirmed the details of the conversation that were already known from the phone records.

The time was about 2.

The place was the top of the trail near the waterfall, and the tone was joyful.

Jessica said that a friendly guy with a dog was walking next to her and offered to show her a shortcut to the viewpoint.

She described him as nice with a soft voice wearing a green shirt.

Kylie admitted that she didn’t think much of it at the time.

Her friend often met tourists while traveling, but after the disappearance, these words became an obsessive detail that she could not forget.

It was the mention of the guy with the dog that became the first and so far the only clue in the case.

The detective ordered to obtain surveillance footage from the park, gas stations, and cafes along the highway Jessica was driving to Yoseite.

However, the four years since her disappearance had destroyed most of the digital archives.

Even her cell phone data was no longer stored.

The only thing that could be collected were photos of tourists from open sources who had posted their pictures on social media that day.

The analysts checked more than a thousand photos, looking for any similarities.

A green shirt, a dog, a random silhouette against the rocks.

There were no results.

The investigation was at a dead end.

But for Mitchell, this silence meant not the end, but the beginning.

In his notebook, he made the first entry in Logan’s case.

Crime with intent.

The message is not for her, it’s for us.

The guy with the dog is the key.

After reinterviewing Jessica’s friend, Detective Harold Mitchell focused the investigation on the only real lead, an unknown man with a dog.

According to the witness, he was the last person to communicate with the girl before she disappeared.

During the first two weeks after the body was identified, Mitchell’s team went through the archives.

All available surveillance camera footage from June 2019 was requested from Yusede Park.

at entrances, hotels, gas stations, and tourist destinations.

Most of the video has already been erased or damaged by moisture.

The surviving fragments recorded in poor quality showed an endless stream of cars, faces outside the windows, and glare from the glass.

Not a single clear shot could be found that would confirm the presence of a man with a dog next to Jessica.

Then the detectives turned to indirect sources.

They began to study the social networks of tourists who were registered in the park that day.

The analysts found hundreds of photos of people in front of the waterfall, on observation decks, and at campsites.

Several photos did show men with dogs, but none matched the time and place.

All the owners of the animals that were identified were interviewed and had confirmed alibis.

Mitchell expanded the search to the surrounding villages.

During the week, the investigators visited local cafes, tourist equipment stores, and car rentals.

At the El Capitan Grill Cafe, employees recalled only a few travelers with dogs, but none of them matched the description.

One was an elderly man with a black Labrador, the other a young couple with a retriever.

No recordings from the internal cameras were preserved.

At the Yoseite Valley Field gas station, the cashier recalled a customer with a dog around the same week Jessica disappeared.

According to her, he was a white man in his 30s with a short haircut and a brightly colored hiking jacket.

The dog was a light colored golden retriever-like dog.

The cashier remembered that the man was calm, even too collected, and spoke without an accent.

However, she could not recall the exact date.

This description matched the details provided by Jessica’s friend, but without video or corroboration from other witnesses.

The information remained only speculation.

Mitchell’s report states, “The coincidence is general, not individual.

There are thousands of tourists of this type.

There are no elements to identify a specific person.” In order not to lose track, investigators turn to a database of registered dog owners in three surrounding counties.

More than 300 people fit the criteria of male 30 to 35 years old, owner of a Labrador or retriever visiting Yoseite in the summer of 2019.

They were gradually checked through park visitor passports, lodging reservations, and campsite records.

The survey lasted a long time.

Some of the owners had already changed their place of residence.

Others had nothing to do with the event.

None of the people checked matched the description of their behavior.

Most had clear confirmation of where they were on those days.

In the course of analyzing the collected material, the experts tried to create a generalized portrait of the wanted man.

Approximately 30 to 35 years old, athletic build, short haircut, dressed in typical tourist equipment, a backpack, bright jacket, cap.

The dog was a golden or white retriever, well-groomed and obedient.

Everything looked so familiar that it left little chance of identification.

While talking to the rangers, one of them remarked, “If he was really here, he could have been walking alongside hundreds of others.

In such a crowd, even a criminal is just another tourist with a dog.” Weeks passed.

The materials were checked again.

The photos were enlarged to the highest resolution.

Each stain, glare, silhouette was analyzed separately.

But the person who could be the key to the case remained invisible.

No one remembered his face.

No one could say for sure whether this man even existed.

In the final report, Detective Mitchell summarized briefly, “Subject is tentatively identified, probably present in the park on the day of the disappearance, but unable to identify, the trail is losing clarity.

And although the investigation formally continued, everyone realized that the thread that was supposed to lead to the truth had broken.

The shadow with the dog had dissolved among the thousands of nameless tourists who come and go in the valley that Jessica Logan had last seen.

In September of 2023, analysts from the state crime lab joined the investigation of Jessica Logan’s case.

Their task was to check whether the murder had any signs of systematic nature.

Investigators are used to the fact that crimes that seem to be isolated at first glance sometimes turn out to be part of a larger picture.

Under the leadership of detective Harold Mitchell, a small team was created that worked exclusively with archival materials.

It included a DNA identification expert, forensic analyst, and profiler from the FBI, Rebecca Stinson.

She had experience working with serial killings in remote areas and immediately noticed a detail that most people missed.

The words on the card found near Jessica’s body were not just a warning, but a judgment.

This type of phrase is often used by criminals who want to give their crime a symbolic meaning.

The analysts began checking databases of unsolved murders in California’s national parks and forests over the past 10 years.

Within days, an alarming parallel emerged.

In 2016, a young San Diego backpacker named Noah Whitmore disappeared in the Sequoia National Forest.

His body was found only 3 years later, 50 mi from where he disappeared.

According to the official report, the body was found by hunters during a hunt.

It was lying in a gorge between boulders, partially covered by branches.

And on his chest, nailed in the same way with a large rusty nail, was a white plastic card with the words, “I lost my way,” written in black marker.

The same material, the same type of font, even the structure of the phrase, a short sentence in the past tense addressed to oneself or to society.

No fingerprints or DNA were found in the Witmore case either.

At the time, it was seen as an isolated murder without a motive.

Now, it looked different.

Detective Mitchell traveled to Tari County where the Witmore case file was kept.

The old files were yellowed and most of the photos were low resolution.

But even they show that the card was nailed with the same type of nail and the body was in what experts called a posed position.

arms folded across the chest, head tilted to the side as if the criminal was trying to create a certain composition.

After that, Mitchell invited behavioral psychology experts to conduct a comparative analysis.

Profiler Stinson concluded, “We are dealing with a man who thinks in terms of a system, a ritual.

He does not act randomly.

His crimes have a logic that only he understands.” The phrases on the cards are probably part of a series in which each sentence carries a moral or symbolic connotation.

Jessica was not private enough.

Whitmore lost his way.

It looks like an attempt to punish for something the killer perceives as guilt.

In November, the team reviewed more than 20 more unsolved cases from California 4 of them had common features.

Lone hikers, no robbery motive, bodies found years later in remote locations, always with signs of deliberate placement.

In two cases, there were small objects near the remains that could be symbolic.

A fragment of a root map, an iron hook from a backpack.

None of these cases were connected until analysts noticed the time sequence.

About 3 years passed between the murders.

A working hypothesis emerged.

The unknown acted systematically, choosing lone travelers, mostly in large natural areas where it was easy to disappear among the crowd.

He is not interested in financial gain.

His goal is ritual, an internal order, perhaps a belief in his own mission.

Mitchell wrote in his memoirs, “This is not a hermit or a madman living in the woods.

This is a person who has knowledge of the area, uses technology, and has experience in moving through difficult terrain.

He probably lives in a city and returns to normal life after each crime.

Parks are hunting grounds for him.

The new investigation strategy was built around this idea.

Now, the task was not only to find traces of Jessica’s killer, but also to understand how he thinks, how he chooses the moment, and the victim.

At the end of the year, the police officially recognized the connection between the Logan and Whitmore cases.

For the media, this was a sensation.

A serial killer operating in national parks uses cards as a signature.

For investigators, it was the beginning of a new phase of the hunt.

In early January of 2024, when the investigation seemed to have reached a dead end, an analyst from the major crimes department filed a report that changed the course of the case.

While checking the databases of companies with access to Yusede’s hiking trails, he came across a name that had never been in the files before.

It was Mark Raldi, a 34year-old head of logistics for a private travel company called Sierra Trekking Services.

The company organized campsites, transfers, and equipment rental for visitors to the national park.

Employees had access to the reservation system and schedules of tourist routes.

In fact, to the lists of people who reported where and when they were going.

This meant that someone on the inside could know who was traveling alone, what trails they were choosing, and when they were going to hike.

Mitchell became interested.

A check showed that Raldi had been with the company for more than 5 years and had an impeccable reputation.

His description matched the suspect’s profile that had been drawn up earlier.

A man in his 30s, calm, organized, and socially adapted.

He lived in Mariposa, 30 mi from Yoseite, with a golden retriever named Cooper.

When detectives obtained permission to view the company’s parking lot surveillance footage, they discovered that on the day Jessica Logan disappeared, June 15th, Raldi’s car left the office at in the morning, even though he was officially off that day.

The car did not return until after midnight.

This was not recorded in any official documents.

The next step was to interview the employees.

Several colleagues recalled that after Jessica’s disappearance, Mark was too well-versed in the details of the case.

He knew the time she left for her route, even the point where her phone signal disappeared.

One of the managers told investigators these details had not yet been made public, and he said he had seen everything.

A check of his work and vacation schedule revealed a strange pattern.

Each of the dates when he took a day off or a short vacation coincided with periods of disappearances in various national parks in California.

Copies of customer itineraries that were not officially part of his duties were found on his work computer.

This confirmed that Raldi had access to personal data of tourists and could choose potential victims.

The evidence collected was enough to obtain a search warrant.

On the morning of February 19th, detectives arrived at his home on the outskirts of Mariposa, a small two-story cottage with light walls and a well-kept garden.

Neighbors described the owner as a quiet, polite man who walked his dog every morning, greeted everyone, and never aroused suspicion.

During the search, the first thing that caught my eye was the almost sterile order.

There were no personal belongings in the living room, only a computer, books on logistics and behavioral psychology.

There was a collection of tourist maps and guide books on the shelves.

Everything looked like the room of a person who plans trips but does not go on them for the sake of relaxation.

In the garage, among the boxes of office supplies, they found a plastic package with a dozen blank badges identical to the card found near Jessica’s body.

Next to it was a black marker and a package of large nails.

Experts later found that the type of metal and size matched the nail used to nail the card to the crime scene.

In addition, there was a camera on the shelves with a large number of pictures of nature, rocks, forests, trails, but not a single human face.

A folder on the computer called roots contained more than a 100 files with park maps and coordinate marks.

Some of them coincided with the locations of other bodies which were now considered to be connected.

After the search, the house was sealed.

All the materials were sent for examination.

For the police, this was enough to officially name Mark Raldi as the main suspect in the case of Jessica Logan’s murder and a number of possible related crimes.

The official statement from the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office the next day sounded dry.

Physical evidence has been discovered that implicates a travel company employee in at least two murders in national parks.

For those who knew Rinaldi personally, this was unthinkable.

He was one of those who are called ordinary people.

Punctual, friendly, impeccably dressed.

But it is in people like him that it is most difficult to see the monster.

Mark Raldi was detained on Thursday evening, February 22, near his home in Mariposa.

It was about when he was returning from a walk with his dog.

According to the officers involved in the detention, he did not resist or try to escape.

He simply stopped when he saw the police cars, let go of the leash, and raised his hands.

His face remained calm.

When asked his name, he answered clearly.

He was silent on everything else.

Neighbors who witnessed the incident recalled that the dog sat quietly by his owner’s side while he was being put into the car.

One of the officers said later, “He behaved as if he knew this moment would come.

There was no fear in him, only indifference.” After his arrest, Raldi was taken to the Mariposa District Office.

The interrogation protocol began at 900 p.m.

At first, he refused to comment, citing his right to remain silent.

However, a few hours later, after familiarizing himself with the evidence, he agreed to testify.

The report states, “Behavior is calm, controlled, no emotional reaction.” When asked about the motives for his actions, he answered briefly, “I was not hunting them.

I was just correcting mistakes.

He went on to explain that he had never felt hatred for tourists or nature.

He did not consider himself a fanatic.

According to him, it all started with an aversion to disorder, to the way people behave in places that should be clean, quiet, and organized.

His profession as a logistician taught him to see systems, flows, and patterns.

He wanted everything to work as it should.

His wording is recorded in the minutes.

There is too much noise in the world.

People don’t know when to stop.

I was just trying to restore balance.

According to Detective Harold Mitchell, who was present at the interrogation, he said these words without a shadow of emotion as if he were commenting on a bus schedule.

When it came to selecting the victims, Raldi explained that he used the company’s service databases.

He saw all the bookings, found out who was traveling alone, and checked social media profiles.

Then he chose those who, in his opinion, violated certain principles of order.

He compiled a list of candidates, those who, in his words, were flaunting themselves or clogging the system.

Jessica Logan was on the list because she was too active in sharing her roots, geolocations, and photos.

In his confession, he called her too open and added that people like this break down the boundaries that separate the personal from the public.

He bought the marker and cards in bulk at a regular store.

He made the inscriptions in advance.

Each text, he said, was a commentary on a mistake.

I was losing my way.

I wasn’t private enough.

I didn’t listen to the warnings.

All the phrases that appeared on the cards became part of his system.

He called them corrections.

A psychologist who observed the interrogation described the suspect’s behavior as extremely rational.

He did not show remorse, did not make excuses.

His logic was impeccable in his own eyes.

He saw himself not as a criminal, but as a controller of chaos.

The expert report states, “He was not acting under the influence of emotions, but out of the conviction that he was making the world more efficient.

A search of Raldi’s computers confirmed his words.

In folders named order and corrected, files with routes, dates, and brief notes were stored.

Some records contained only names in brief wording.

Too noisy, went to the wrong place, too confident.

When asked why he did not bury the bodies deeper, he replied, “They had to be found.

Otherwise, the message had no meaning.

” This was the culmination of the confession, the moment when it became clear that his crimes were part of a deliberate ritual.

Each murder was an action within his own order.

At the end of the interrogation, the district attorney stated that Raldi had fully admitted guilt to several of the murders.

He was placed in custody without bail.

He remained silent during the transportation to the detention center.

One of the officers who accompanied him later told reporters, “He didn’t look like a murderer, but like a man who left the office after a normal day’s work.

Neighbors said they had never seen anything suspicious.

His house was clean and well-kept.

His dog was always fed.

The grass was trimmed.

He would say hello, help with deliveries, lend tools.” The same man they called the perfect neighbor now confessed to a series of murders committed to correct the imperfections of the world.

When the case went to trial, its materials already numbered hundreds of pages.

However, even the most detailed documents did not explain the main thing.

How an ordinary person, friendly and inconspicuous, could become a carrier of cold, impersonal evil.