A road trip meant to save their relationship ended in silence.

5 years later, a metal trunk is discovered in an abandoned motel containing what raises more questions than answers and holding secrets that no one expected.

What truly happened to Jake and Emily? Jake Warren was 26 years old in the summer of 2018.

He had sandy brown hair that caught the light just right and he carried his camera everywhere.

Photography wasn’t just his hobby.

It was his passion, his escape, his way of seeing beauty in the world.

He had this easy smile that made strangers feel comfortable.

The kind of person who could walk into any room and make friends within minutes.

Emily Carter was 24.

She was working on her master’s degree in environmental science, always carrying notebooks filled with observations about the natural world.

She had this quiet intensity about her, the way she’d study everything around her with careful, thoughtful eyes.

They’d met 3 years earlier in a coffee shop near campus.

Jake had been taking photos of the morning light streaming through the windows when Emily asked him about his camera.

That conversation lasted 4 hours.

They discovered they both loved road trips.

Both dreamed of seeing America the way their grandparents had slowly, deliberately through small towns and forgotten highways.

By 2018, their relationship had hit some rough patches.

Graduate school kept Emily busy, and Jake’s freelance photography work meant unpredictable income and long stretches away from home.

They’d been arguing more, laughing less.

The spark that brought them together seemed to be fading.

That’s when Emily suggested the trip.

2 weeks Massachusetts to California.

Route 6, the old highway that most people had forgotten.

The one that took you through places time seemed to have left behind.

We need this, Emily told her sister Sarah over the phone.

We need to remember why we fell in love.

Jake agreed immediately.

He’d been wanting to document the forgotten corners of America anyway.

And Emily’s scientific mind always found fascinating details he missed.

They were perfect travel partners, balancing each other’s perspectives.

They spent weeks planning.

Emily created detailed itineraries, researching small towns and historical sites.

Jake mapped out photo opportunities and scenic viewpoints.

They booked rooms at family-owned motel instead of chain hotels.

wanting the authentic experience their grandparents might have had.

The night before they left, Emily’s mother called, “Are you sure about this trip, honey? Some of those small towns can be “Mom, we’ll be fine.” Emily interrupted.

“It’s 2018, not 1950.” “Besides, Jake’s with me.” Mrs.

Carter wanted to say more, but held back.

Her daughter was independent, smart, cautious.

If anyone could handle a cross-country road trip, it was Emily.

June 15th, 2018.

Jake’s blue Honda Civic was packed with everything they’d need for 2 weeks on the road.

Emily had made sandwiches for the first day.

Jake had charged all his camera batteries and packed extra film for his vintage Polaroid.

They started posting on Instagram immediately.

Jake behind the wheel.

Emily navigating with an old paper map spread across her lap.

The first few days were everything they’d hoped for.

Small diners with the best coffee they’d ever tasted.

Roadside attractions that made them laugh.

Sunsets over corn fields that took Jake’s breath away.

Emily kept a detailed travel journal writing every night before bed.

She documented not just where they went, but how they felt.

How Jake’s eyes lit up when he found the perfect shot.

How she felt when he looked at her the way he used to in college.

Day three.

Stopped at this tiny diner in Ohio.

The waitress had been working there for 30 years.

She told us stories about all the travelers who’ve passed through.

Jake took her picture by the window.

I think we’re remembering why we work so well together.

Day five.

Made it to Missouri.

The motel owner’s dog followed us around all morning.

Jake’s getting better at talking to strangers for his project.

I love watching him work.

Their Instagram followers were invested now.

Friends commenting on every post, living vicariously through their adventure.

Emily’s sister Sarah checked their posts religiously, sometimes calling just to hear about their day.

By day seven, they’d reached Colorado.

The mountains were more beautiful than either of them had imagined.

Jake was shooting three rolls of film a day.

Emily was collecting plant samples and taking detailed notes about elevation changes and soil composition.

They seemed happy.

Their posts showed genuine smiles, inside jokes, the easy comfort of a couple rediscovering each other.

Whatever problems they’d been having at home seemed to be melting away with each smile.

But something was about to change.

On June 22nd, they reached Clear Creek, Colorado.

It wasn’t much of a town, maybe 800 people, one main street surrounded by mountain wilderness.

The kind of place where everyone knew everyone, where strangers stood out.

They’d planned to stay one night at the Valley Pines Motel, a small familyrun place that had been operating since the 1960s.

The building was old but clean with individual cabinstyle rooms arranged in a horseshoe around a central parking area.

Emily posted their last Instagram photo at 6:47 p.m.

The two of them standing in front of their cabin room 12 with the mountains in the background.

Jake’s arm around Emily’s shoulders, both of them squinting into the late afternoon sun.

The caption read, “Mountain and good company.

last push tomorrow to Utah.

The desk clerk, a college student named Danny Morrison, remembered them clearly.

They’d seemed like any other young couple passing through, tired from driving, but friendly.

Jake had asked about good spots for sunrise photography.

Emily had inquired about hiking trails.

“They seemed normal,” Dany would later tell police.

“Maybe a little tired, but happy.

The guy was really into his camera stuff, but other guests at the motel that night would remember something different.

Mrs.

Henderson, an elderly woman traveling to visit her grandchildren, was staying in room 10, two doors down from Jake and Emily.

Around 1000 p.m., she heard voices from their room.

Not arguing exactly, but intense conversation.

A man’s voice, then a woman’s, then the man again.

I couldn’t make out words, she told investigators, but it sounded like they were discussing something serious.

Around 11:30 p.m., she heard footsteps in the hallway.

Fast footsteps, like someone was in a hurry.

Her room’s peepphole showed the hallway, but by the time she looked, whoever it was had passed.

At 11:47 p.m., Emily sent her final text message.

It went to her sister Sarah.

I don’t like the way that guy in the lobby keeps looking at us.

Call you tomorrow.

Sarah was already asleep.

She didn’t see the message until the next morning.

By then, it was too late.

Danny Morrison arrived for his morning shift at Valley Pines Motel at 700 a.m.

on June 23rd.

The parking spot in front of room 12 was empty.

The blue Honda Civic was gone.

This wasn’t unusual.

Many guests left early to beat traffic or catch sunrise at scenic spots.

But when housekeeping knocked on room 12 at 10:00 a.m., no one answered.

They used their key.

The room was neat.

Too neat.

The bed was made with hospital corners, something the housekeeping staff definitely hadn’t done the night before.

Jake and Emily’s belongings were gone.

Clothes, camera equipment, Emily’s journals, everything.

The only signs they’d been there at all were two coffee cups in the sink and a small wet spot on the carpet near the window as if someone had spilled water and tried to clean it up.

Danny called the number on Jake’s registration form.

No answer.

He called Emily’s number straight to voicemail.

We figured they just checked out early and forgot to turn in their key.

Dany explained later.

Happens all the time.

But Emily’s sister Sarah was starting to worry.

Emily had promised to call.

Emily always kept her promises.

When Sarah tried calling and got voicemail, she felt the first cold touch of fear.

By afternoon, Sarah was calling every few hours.

By evening, she was calling the motel directly.

They checked out this morning.

Danny told her left around dawn, I think.

But Sarah knew Emily.

Emily didn’t leave anywhere at dawn unless there was an emergency.

Emily hated getting up early.

Emily would have called.

That night, Sarah called their parents.

By morning, they were all calling the police.

The Clear Creek Police Department wasn’t equipped for a major missing person’s case.

Chief Rodriguez had been dealing with petty theft and drunk driving for 15 years.

Missing tourists were rare and they usually turned up within a day or two.

embarrassed about forgetting to check in with family.

But when Jake’s Honda Civic was found on June 25th, everything changed.

The car was 12 miles outside Clear Creek, parked at a trail head leading into the Rocky Mountain Wilderness.

The doors were locked.

The keys were nowhere to be found.

Inside, police found Jake’s backup camera bag and Emily’s hiking boots.

That’s when we knew this wasn’t just a communication breakdown.

Chief Rodriguez said later, “People don’t hike into the mountains without their boots.” The car had been there for at least 2 days, maybe three.

A park rangered seeing it, but assumed the owners were on a multi-day backpacking trip.

Now, it looked ominous, abandoned among the pine trees with no explanation.

Search and rescue teams combed the wilderness for a week.

They found nothing.

No footprints on the trails, no camping signs, no trace that Jake and Emily had ever entered those mountains.

The investigation shifted back to Clear Creek.

Police interviewed every guest who’d been at Valley Pines Motel that night.

Most had checked out and continued their travels, but everyone who could be reached told the same story.

A quiet night, a normal young couple, nothing suspicious, except for Mrs.

Henderson.

She told police about the voices, the footsteps, the intensity she’d heard through the walls.

Something was wrong, she insisted.

I’ve been married 43 years.

I know the sound of people having serious trouble.

Jake’s parents drove 18 hours straight from Massachusetts.

Emily’s family was right behind them.

They set up in Clear Creek’s only hotel, turning the lobby into an unofficial command center for their own search efforts.

The families printed thousands of flyers.

They canvased every business in town, every gas station for a 100 miles in each direction.

They hired a private investigator when the local police seemed overwhelmed.

Sarah, Emily’s sister, became the public face of the search.

She gave interviews to local news stations, posted on social media, organized volunteer search parties.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that Emily’s last text message was crucial.

She said, “That guy in the lobby,” Sarah repeated to anyone who would listen.

“She was specific.

It wasn’t just general anxiety.

Someone was making her uncomfortable.

But the Valley Pines motel lobby was just a small reception area.

Danny Morrison was the only staff member on duty that night.

He swore he hadn’t interacted with Jake and Emily after they checked in.

Hadn’t even seen them after they went to their room.

Maybe she meant another guest, Dany suggested.

But the registration records showed only five occupied rooms that night and police had spoken to everyone.

The private investigator, a former Denver police detective named Marcus Flynn, started digging deeper.

He discovered something that made everyone’s blood run cold.

Over the past 15 years, seven other people had gone missing along the same stretch of Route 6.

All were young travelers.

All had last been seen at small motel.

All had vanished without a trace.

This isn’t random, Flynn told the families.

This is a pattern.

The first disappearance had been in 2003.

A college student named Michael Torres driving solo from Denver to visit family in Utah.

Last seen at a motel in Riverside, Colorado, 40 mi from where Jake and Emily vanished.

His car was found a week later in a completely different town.

No sign of Michael.

2007.

A young couple from Texas.

Lisa and David Reeves vanished from a motel in Milfield.

Their RV was found abandoned at a rest stop three towns away.

2011, Rachel Martinez, a traveling nurse, disappeared from a motel in Pine Ridge.

Her car was recovered 2 weeks later in a grocery store parking lot 60 mi away.

2014.

Another couple, Mark and Jennifer Walsh, last seen at a motel in Cedar Falls.

All small towns, all along Route 6.

All budget motel run by local families.

All victims in their 20s or early 30s.

All vehicles found miles away from where they’d last been seen, always abandoned in puzzling locations.

Flynn created a map marking each disappearance with a red pin.

The pattern was chilling.

Someone was hunting along Route 6, selecting victims from vulnerable roadside motel, making them disappear without a trace.

But who and how? The FBI finally took notice.

Agent Patricia Wells arrived in Clear Creek with a team of specialists.

They reopened all the cold cases, looking for connections Flynn might have missed.

What they found was even more disturbing.

Agent Wells discovered that several of the motel where people had vanished were connected.

Not officially, they were all independently owned and operated, but there was a maintenance and supply company called Rocky Mountain Services that serviced many of them.

Rocky Mountain Services was owned by a man named Thomas Briggs, 62 years old, lived alone in a cabin outside Cedar Falls.

He’d been running his small business for 20 years, providing everything from plumbing repairs to pest control for budget motel across the region.

Briggs had access to rooms, keys, schedules.

He knew when guests checked in and out.

He could come and go from these motel without raising suspicion.

When agents went to interview him, they found his cabin empty.

Neighbors said they hadn’t seen him in months.

His business phone had been disconnected.

His bank accounts were closed.

Thomas Briggs had vanished just as completely as his alleged victims.

But there was no evidence linking him to any of the disappearances.

No fingerprints, no witness identifications, no paper trail, just proximity and opportunity, which wasn’t enough for charges even if they could find him.

The families were devastated.

Bate thought they were close to answers, but instead they had more questions.

Where was Thomas Briggs? Was he responsible for eight missing people? And if so, what had he done with them? Months passed, then years.

The FBI task force was reassigned to other cases.

The families never stopped searching, but the trail had gone completely cold.

Jake and Emily Warren Carter became another unsolved mystery.

Another set of missing posters that slowly faded and were replaced by newer tragedies until 2023.

The Red Haven Lodge had been abandoned for over a decade when the demolition crew arrived.

Built in the 1950s, it had closed in the early 2000s when the interstate bypass diverted traffic away from the old highways.

4 years it sat empty, windows boarded up, weeds growing through cracks in the parking lot, a forgotten relic of America’s roadside past.

The town of Milbrook had finally decided to tear it down.

The land would become a small park, something more useful than a decaying eyesore.

On March 14th, 2023, the demolition crew began their work.

They were clearing out the interior when crew chief Ramon Martinez noticed something odd in the storage room behind the main office.

The room was locked, but not with a standard door lock.

Someone had secured it with a heavyduty padlock, the kind used on storage units.

The metal door showed signs of damage, as if someone had tried to force it open years ago, but given up.

Probably just old motel supplies, Martinez told his crew.

But curiosity got the better of him.

They cut the lock.

Inside the small, dusty room covered by a spiderweb sat a large metal trunk.

It was old militarystyle, the kind soldiers might have used decades ago.

The metal was rusted in places, and along the edges were dark stains that looked suspiciously like dried blood.

The trunk itself was locked with an antique mechanism that had seized up over the years.

Martinez called his supervisor.

The supervisor called the police.

By afternoon, the Milbrook Police Department had called the state investigators who called the FBI.

Agent Patricia Wells, now 5 years older and carrying the weight of too many unsolved cases, stood in that storage room looking at the trunk.

She had a terrible feeling.

She knew what they were going to find inside.

The trunk was transported to the state crime lab in Denver.

Forensic technicians worked for hours to carefully open the corroded lock without damaging whatever evidence might be inside.

When the lid finally lifted, the room fell silent.

Emily’s travel journal sat on top.

Its leather cover stained and warped, but still recognizable.

Beneath it, Jake’s camera.

Not his main digital camera, but the vintage film camera he bought specifically for this trip.

The kind that used actual film, the kind he’d been saving for special moments.

Emily’s flower crown from their Instagram photos, now dried and brittle.

Jake’s sneakers soaked with something dark that had long since dried into the fabric.

Jake’s backup memory cards in a plastic bag.

And at the bottom of the trunk, sealed in separate evidence bags, were items that made the forensic team exchange grim looks.

Personal belongings that clearly came from other victims, other trips, other lives cut short.

Agent Wells opened Emily’s journal with gloved hands.

Turning to the last entry, Emily’s handwriting, usually neat and precise, was shaky.

Hurried.

June 22nd night.

Something’s wrong here.

Jake thinks I’m being paranoid, but I’ve seen the same man three times today.

First in the diner at lunch, then at the gas station.

Now he was in the motel lobby when we checked in.

He keeps staring at us, not just looking staring like he’s studying us.

Jake says, “It’s a small town.

We’re bound to see the same people, but this feels different.

I’m scared.

We aren’t alone here.” He keeps walking past our door.

I hear footsteps stopping, then starting again.

I don’t want to worry, Sarah, but if something happens, the entry ended mid-sentence.

The rest of the page was blank.

Jake’s camera contained four rolls of film.

Three were completely destroyed by moisture and time, but one roll, protected by being deeper in the camera mechanism, had partially survived.

The lab’s photo specialist worked carefully to develop what images remained.

Most were damaged beyond recognition.

Ghostly shadows and chemical stains where Jake’s careful compositions had been, but six photos were partially visible.

The first three were clearly from their trip.

Emily laughing at a roadside attraction, a sunset over farmland, the entrance sign to Clear Creek.

Normal vacation photos that matched what they’d been posting online.

The fourth photo showed the Valley Pines Motel at night, taken from inside their room looking out the window.

The parking lot was dimly lit by a single security light.

You could make out the shape of their Honda Civic and one other vehicle, a dark pickup truck.

The fifth photo was blurrier, clearly taken in poor light.

It showed the motel hallway, the camera angled as if Jake had been holding it low, trying not to be seen.

In the far corner of the frame was a shadow, human- shaped but indistinct.

The sixth and final photo was the most disturbing.

Taken from what appeared to be the same hallway, it showed a figure approaching the camera.

The image was too degraded to make out facial features, but you could see the outline of a large man and something in his hand that might have been keys or might have been something else.

These photos had been taken hours after Emily’s last journal entry.

Jake had apparently felt the same unease, had started documenting whatever was making them both nervous.

The timestamp on the camera showed the last photo was taken at 2:17 a.m.

on June 23rd, just hours before the motel desk clerk assumed they’d checked out early.

The blood evidence told a story that no one wanted to hear.

DNA testing confirmed that blood found throughout the trunk belonged to both Jake and Emily.

The amount suggested serious injuries, possibly fatal, but there were other DNA traces in the trunk as well.

Degraded samples that matched some of the other missing person’s cases.

Michael Torres from 2003, Lisa Reeves from 2007.

The evidence suggested this trunk had been used multiple times by the same person for the same terrible purpose.

The forensic team found one clear fingerprint on the inside of the trunk lid.

It was degraded but analyzable.

They ran it through every database.

Criminal records, military service, employment backgrounds.

No match.

Whoever had left that fingerprint had never been arrested, never served in the military, never worked a job requiring background checks.

They were a ghost in the system.

The trunk itself provided more clues.

Serial numbers indicated it had been manufactured in 1987, sold through military surplus stores.

The lock mechanism was vintage, probably original to the trunk.

This wasn’t something picked up recently.

Someone had owned this trunk for decades.

Most disturbing was the discovery of modification marks inside the trunk.

Someone had installed additional hardware, metal loops that could be used for restraints, ventilation holes that had been carefully drilled and then covered with mesh.

This wasn’t a crime of passion.

This was equipment carefully prepared and maintained over years.

Agent Wells stood in the lab looking at the evidence spread across examination tables.

After decades in law enforcement, she thought she’d seen everything.

But this case was different.

the calculated nature of it, the careful planning, the systematic hunting of innocent travelers.

Someone had been using Route 6 as their personal hunting ground for 20 years.

The breakthrough came from an unexpected source.

A retired motel owner named Margaret Clearwater read about the case in the Denver Post and called the FBI tip line.

I think I know that trunk, she said.

Margaret had owned the Sunset Motel in Cedar Falls from 1985 to 2010.

She remembered Thomas Briggs well.

He’d done maintenance work for her for 15 years.

Reliable, quiet, always professional.

But there was something about him that had always made her uneasy.

He knew too much about the guests, Margaret explained to Agent Wells.

He’d mentioned things about people staying there, things he shouldn’t have known.

who was traveling alone, who had cash, who seemed nervous or lost.

Margaret remembered the trunk specifically.

Briggs had stored it in her motel’s maintenance shed for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“He’d said it contained family heirlooms, things he didn’t have room for at his cabin.

“I helped him move it once,” Margaret said, her voice shaking slightly.

“It was so heavy.” He said it was full of his father’s military gear.

But now I’m wondering what if it wasn’t empty then either.

The timeline was becoming clearer.

Briggs had used the trunk for years, storing it at various locations where he worked.

When Margaret sold her motel in 2010, he’d moved it to Red Haven Lodge, which had been abandoned for years by then.

The perfect place to hide evidence.

But why had he left it there? Why not dispose of it completely? Agent Wells had a theory.

Killers like this often keep trophies, she explained to the families.

They want to revisit their crimes to remember the power they felt, but they also need to hide the evidence.

An abandoned motel is perfect, hidden, but accessible.

The question now was whether Thomas Briggs was still alive, still hunting, still adding to his collection.

The FBI launched a nationwide manhunt for Thomas Briggs, but it was like chasing a ghost.

His social security number hadn’t been used since 2018.

No credit cards, no bank accounts, no employment records.

He’d gone completely off the grid.

Investigators dug into his background.

Born in 1956 in rural Wyoming, Thomas Briggs had lived a seemingly ordinary life.

High school graduate, no college, various manual labor jobs, construction, maintenance, repairs, never married, no children.

His parents had died in the 1990s, leaving him completely alone.

But neighbors from his cabin in Cedar Falls told a different story.

Briggs had been odd, antisocial.

He worked mostly at night, slept during the day.

They’d sometimes see him loading or unloading heavy items from his truck in the early morning hours, but he’d never been friendly enough for anyone to ask what he was hauling.

“He gave me the creeps,” admitted Janet Torres, who’d lived a quarter mile away.

“He’d drive past my house at all hours, never waved, never acknowledged anyone.

My husband said I was being paranoid, but there was something wrong with that man.” The most disturbing discovery came from the cabin itself.

When agents finally got a warrant to search it, they found it had been methodically cleaned.

Every surface scrubbed, every personal item removed.

But in the basement, they found something Briggs had missed.

A detailed map of Route 6 marked with colored pins.

Red pins at locations where people had vanished.

yellow pins at motel where he’d done maintenance work.

Blue pins at places where victim’s vehicles had been found.

The map covered the entire Route 6 corridor from Massachusetts to California.

There were more red pins than the FBI had known about, possibly indicating additional victims who hadn’t been connected to the case.

At the bottom of the map, in careful handwriting, was a list of names.

Jake Warren and Emily Carter were on that list.

So were all the other confirmed victims, but there were 12 names on the list.

The FBI had only identified eight victims.

Four more families somewhere in America might be waiting for answers they didn’t even know they needed.

When news of the Trump discovery broke, it became a national story.

Cable news networks picked up the case.

True Crime podcasters analyzed every detail.

Social media exploded with theories and speculation.

The story had everything that captured public attention.

Young Love, a cross-country adventure gone wrong.

A serial predator who’d operated for decades without detection.

The contrast between Jake and Emily’s happy Instagram posts and their terrifying final hours created a narrative that millions of people couldn’t stop following.

Sarah Carter Warren, she’d taken Emily’s name to honor her missing sister, became reluctantly famous.

Every news outlet wanted interviews.

She did them all, hoping publicity might generate leads.

Emily was the most careful person I knew,” Sarah said on a national morning show.

“She researched everything, planned everything.

She wouldn’t have put herself in danger willingly.

Someone took that choice away from her.

The publicity generated hundreds of tips.

Most were useless.” People claiming to have seen Jake and Emily in places they couldn’t possibly have been or offering theories based on true crime TV shows.

But a few tips provided crucial information.

A truck driver named Bill Patterson called to report that he’d seen Thomas Briggs at a truck stop in Nevada in late 2019.

Briggs had been driving a different vehicle, not his old pickup truck, but a newer van with tinted windows.

I recognized him from the news photos.

Patterson said he was filling up gas cans, not just his tank, like he was preparing for a long trip somewhere remote.

A convenience store clerk in Utah remembered selling camping supplies to someone matching Brigg’s description in early 2020.

He bought everything you’d need to live off the grid for months.

She said water purification tablets, canned food, propane tanks, paid cash for everything.

The trail led west toward the vast wilderness areas of Nevada and California, where someone could disappear for years without being found.

As the investigation expanded, Agent Wells team worked to identify the additional names on Briggs List.

Using missing person’s databases and old police reports, they began to put faces to the names.

Jessica Hoffman, a graduate student who’d vanished in 2005 while driving cross country for a job interview.

Her car had been found in Arizona, hundreds of miles from her planned route.

Ryan and Ashley Moore, newlyweds who’ disappeared in 2009 during their honeymoon road trip.

Their families had always believed they’d had an accident in the mountains, but their bodies were never found.

Alex Chin, a freelance journalist who’ vanished in 2016 while researching a story about declining small towns along old highways.

Each new identification brought fresh grief to more families, but also new determination to find answers.

The victims weren’t just statistics anymore.

They were real people with real lives, real dreams that had been stolen.

Emily’s parents, Robert and Linda Carter, started a foundation to help families of missing persons.

They partnered with other victims families to fund private investigators, lobby for better police resources, and provide support for people going through the nightmare they knew too well.

“We can’t bring Emily back,” Linda said at the foundation’s first press conference.

“But maybe we can help other families find their answers sooner.” Jake’s father, David Warren, took a different approach.

A software engineer by trade, he learned everything he could about digital forensics, and data analysis.

He spent his free time combing through social media posts, traffic camera footage, and cell phone records, looking for patterns the official investigation might have missed.

“There’s a digital trail somewhere,” he insisted.

Nobody disappears in 2018 without leaving some kind of electronic footprint.

His obsession worried his wife, but she understood it.

The need to do something, anything, to feel like they weren’t just helpless victims of someone else’s evil.

David Warren’s analysis eventually paid off.

Using cell phone tower data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, he was able to track the movement of Jake and Emily’s phones on their final day.

The phones had last pinged towers near Clear Creek at 11:52 p.m.

on June 22nd, 5 minutes after Emily sent her final text.

But here’s what was interesting.

The phones had moved.

Between midnight and 3:00 a.m., the phones had traveled 37 mi east, pinging towers along Route 6 in a pattern that suggested they were in a moving vehicle.

The final ping came from a tower near the Red Haven Lodge at 2:43 a.m.

Then nothing.

The phones either died or were destroyed.

Someone drove from Valley Pines Motel to Red Haven Lodge in the middle of the night, David explained to Agent Wells, and they had Jake and Emily’s phones with them.

This was the first concrete evidence linking the two motel.

It suggested that whoever took Jake and Emily had transported them from where they were staying to the abandoned motel, where their belongings would later be found.

But it raised even more questions.

Why Red Haven Lodge? what was special about that location and what had happened during those three hours between the motel.

David’s analysis also revealed something else troubling.

The cell phone movement pattern wasn’t random.

The vehicle had made specific stops along the route, pausing for 10 to 15 minutes at locations that corresponded to other motel where victims had vanished.

It was as if someone was checking on something at each location or visiting trophies.

Following David Warren’s digital evidence, investigators began examining all the abandoned motel along the Route 6 corridor.

What they found was a network of forgotten places that had become perfect hiding spots for someone who knew the area well.

Sunset Valley Motor Lodge, closed since 2006.

Police found evidence that someone had been using the empty rooms recently.

Sleeping bags can food.

Signs of long-term camping.

Desert Winds Motel shuttered in 2011.

The manager’s office contained maps and notebooks with detailed information about guests who’d stayed there years earlier.

Pine Ridge in abandoned since 2015.

In the basement, investigators discovered a workshop setup, tools for lockpicking, key duplication, and vehicle modification.

Thomas Briggs hadn’t just been killing people.

He’d been building an infrastructure to support his hunting.

These abandoned motel were way stations, places where he could hold victims, store evidence, and plan his next moves.

The scope of it was staggering.

This wasn’t just a serial killer.

This was someone who’d spent decades creating the perfect system for making people disappear.

Agent Wells realized they weren’t just hunting one man anymore.

They were dismantling an entire network of evil that had been operating in plain sight for 20 years.

But Briggs himself remained a ghost.

Every lead seemed to end in another abandoned building, another closed bank account, another false identity that led nowhere.

Another breakthrough came from an unexpected source, a parking ticket.

Agent Wells team had been analyzing traffic camera footage from truck stops and rest areas across the western states, hoping to spot Briggs van.

It was tedious work, thousands of hours of grainy footage, looking for one vehicle among millions.

But in September 2023, a junior analyst named Kevin Park noticed something interesting in footage from a rest area outside Bakersfield, California.

A dark van with Nevada plates parked for several hours in the overnight section.

The license plate was partially obscured by mud, but computer enhancement revealed enough digits to run a search.

The van had been ticketed three times in the past year.

Twice in California, once in Oregon, all for parking violations at remote locations.

The tickets had been issued to a Robert Mitchell with an address in Eureka, California.

But when agents checked, Robert Mitchell had died in 2019.

Someone was using his identity.

The address led to a run-down trailer park outside Eureka, surrounded by redwood forests.

The trailer registered to Robert Mitchell was at the very back of the park, partially hidden by overgrown trees.

When the tactical team surrounded the trailer on October 3rd, 2023, they expected it to be empty like everywhere else they’d searched.

But smoke was coming from the chimney.

Someone was home.

Thomas Briggs emerged from the trailer with his hands raised.

At 67, he looked older than his years, gaunt, bearded, wearing clothes that had seen better days.

He didn’t run.

He didn’t resist.

He just stood there in the morning mist, looking at the agents surrounding him with an expression that was almost relief.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said quietly.

Agent Wells had arrested hundreds of criminals in her career, but she’d never seen anything quite like this.

Most killers either denied everything or tried to justify their actions.

Briggs just nodded when they read him his rights, as if he’d been expecting this moment for years.

Inside the trailer, investigators found a meticulous record of his crimes.

photo albums filled with pictures of his victims.

Not just Jake and Emily, but all 12 people on his list.

Pictures taken before, during, and after their deaths.

Pictures that would haunt the investigators for the rest of their lives.

There were journals, too, detailed accounts of how he’d selected his victims, followed them, planned their abductions, written in the same careful handwriting they’d seen on the Route 6 map.

But most chilling were his future plans, lists of potential victims he’d been watching, motel he was considering for future hunting grounds, routes mapped out across the entire western United States.

Thomas Briggs hadn’t been finished.

He’d just been getting started.

In the interview room at the FBI field office in Sacramento, Thomas Briggs told his story with the detached comm of someone discussing the weather.

Agent Wells had to remind herself several times that she was listening to a man confess to 12 murders.

It had started in 2003.

He explained he’d been doing maintenance work at a motel when he encountered Michael Torres, a young college student traveling alone.

Something about the young man’s vulnerability had triggered something in Briggs.

He was so trusting, Briggs said, his voice eerily flat.

so sure that the world was a safe place.

I wanted to show him how wrong he was.

The first killing had been clumsy, unplanned.

But Briggs had discovered he was good at making people disappear.

Over the years, he’d refined his methods, learned from his mistakes, built the network of abandoned motel that served as his hunting grounds.

He targeted couples and solo travelers who were passing through, people whose disappearance wouldn’t be noticed immediately.

He studied their social media posts, their travel patterns, their vulnerabilities.

Jake and Emily had caught his attention because they were documenting their trips so thoroughly online.

They were showing the whole world where they were, where they were going.

He said made them easy to track.

For 3 days, he shadowed their Route 6 journey.

In Clear Creek, he used a master key to slip into their motel room at night.

His voice remained detached as he described how he made sure they could not leave that room alive.

Afterward, he meticulously prepared their remains, sealing them inside heavy plastic before placing them in an old metal trunk he kept for that purpose.

“The room was spotless when I left,” he said with a faint smile.

But I guess a little always finds its way.

That little was what investigators later saw.

Splashes of red blood stains on the edges of the trunk, nearly invisible after years in storage.

It was the only trace he left behind.

Agent Wells had to leave the room twice during the confession.

Even after decades of dealing with the worst humanity had to offer, this level of casual evil was overwhelming, Briggs led investigators to the remote locations where he disposed of his victim’s bodies scattered across the wilderness areas of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California.

12 graves that had been hidden for years.

Jake and Emily were found in a canyon outside Moab, Utah.

They’d been buried together.

Even in death, they hadn’t let go of each other.

The other victims were recovered one by one.

Michael Torres in the Colorado mountains.

The Reeves couple in a Nevada desert.

Rachel Martinez in a California forest.

Each family finally getting the closure they’d been denied for years.

At Jake’s grave, investigators found his main camera, the digital one he’d been using throughout their trip.

Somehow, it had survived.

The memory card contained hundreds of photos from their journey, images of the happiness and love they’d shared right up until the end.

Emily’s parents requested that the final photos not be released to the media.

Those last moments of their daughter’s life belonged to the family, not to public curiosity.

Sarah Carter Warren visited the grave site in Utah.

She brought flowers, sunflowers, Emily’s favorite, and Jake’s last role of undeveloped film, the one police had saved as evidence.

“You found each other,” she whispered to the graves.

“And you never let go.

That’s love.” Jake and Emily were finally laid to rest.

Their families decided to bury them together in a small cemetery outside Emily’s hometown in Massachusetts.

The gravestone reads simply, “Jake Warren and Emily Carter.

Together forever.

Love conquers all.” Thomas Briggs pleaded guilty to all charges.

In exchange for avoiding the death penalty, he provided detailed information about each of his crimes and helped locate all the victim’s remains.

He was sentenced to 12 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

At his age, it was effectively a death sentence.

He would die in prison, forgotten by everyone except the families whose lives he destroyed.

The trial brought no satisfaction to the families.

Justice had been served, but it couldn’t bring back the people they’d lost.

It couldn’t restore the years of wondering, the nights of lying awake imagining what had happened.

Thomas Briggs died in prison in January 2024, 8 months after his conviction.

He had a heart attack in his cell alone, unmorned.

He took his secrets with him.