On August 16th, 2022, three hunters, Dan, his brother Ryan, and their friend Marcus, were walking along an abandoned trail deep in the Chugich National Forest in southern Alaska.

They were looking for a place to set up camp before the start of moose hunting season when they stumbled upon something that prompted them to immediately call the police and turned them into witnesses to one of the most gruesome and mysterious investigations in the state’s history.

The trail they were walking on had not been used for years.

Vegetation had nearly engulfed it.

Signposts had rotted and collapsed, and the only traces of human presence were dilapidated hunting blinds built back in the 1980s.

It was about 5 km from Bertha Creek campground, where a family of Seattle tourists had disappeared without a trace 3 years earlier.

Dan was walking ahead, cutting a path through the alder thicket when he saw a massive dome-shaped formation among the boulders.

At first, he mistook it for an abandoned hunting blind, but as he got closer, he realized it was a giant antill almost 2 m high and about 3 m in diameter.

The size was unusual even for Alaska, where forest ants build impressive nests, but this one looked abnormally large.

Ryan, who was following behind, stopped next to his brother and whistled as he looked at the structure.

He said he had never seen an antill of this size.

Marcus took out his camera, wanting to take a picture for his hunting blog.

But at that moment, Dan noticed something that made him freeze.

A white bone was sticking out of the base of the antill where the soil was loose.

Not a stick, not a root, a bone long with distinctive joints at the end.

a human femur.

Dan yelled at his brothers to stop and not come any closer.

He was a former paramedic and had seen human remains often enough to recognize them at first glance.

They backed away from the antill and Dan took out his satellite phone.

The signal was weak, but he managed to get through to the emergency services.

He reported the find, gave the coordinates, and was instructed to wait at the site.

The wait took almost 4 hours.

During that time, Marcus walked around the perimeter, examining the area and found several more bones scattered within a 10- m radius of the antill.

Some were gnawed, some were partially covered with earth and leaves.

One of the bones, part of a skull with a distinctive crack, lay under a layer of moss at the base of a boulder.

When the state police and forensic experts arrived, they were accompanied by investigator Brian Harper from the homicide division who had flown in by helicopter.

Harper was an experienced detective who had worked in Alaska for more than 20 years.

But even he later admitted that what he saw that day was one of the strangest and most disturbing crime scenes of his career.

The forensic team began carefully excavating the antill, documenting each layer.

Human remains were found inside and around the nest.

Not one skeleton, but at least two adult humans.

The bones were partially dismembered, scattered, some with animal teeth marks.

But their arrangement was strange.

They weren’t just dumped or left on the surface.

They were partially buried, as if someone had tried to hide them, using the antill as a natural cover.

But the most gruesome discovery was what the forensic experts found when they dismantled the central part of the antill.

There, under a layer of earth and twigs, lay remains wrapped in old decayed raincoats.

The material was so worn that it was barely holding together, but the shape remained intact.

These were bodies wrapped and bound with electrical cords that had cut into the fabric and bones.

Harper ordered all the remains to be evacuated to the state morg in Anchorage for detailed examination.

The crime scene was cordoned off and the collection of all possible evidence began.

Soil samples, pieces of fabric, fragments of cords, metal objects found nearby.

The examination of the remains took several weeks.

When the results came in, they confirmed the worst fears.

The DNA matched that of the missing Reeves family.

Scott, 36, his wife, Jenna, 32, and their eight-year-old son, Lucas.

But there was one terrible detail.

Among the bones found in the antill were the remains of only two adults.

The child was not there.

Let’s go back 3 years to July 2019.

Scott and Jenner Reeves were an ordinary family from Seattle.

Scott worked as a software engineer at a large technology company and Jenna was an elementary school teacher.

Their son Lucas had just finished second grade and loved nature, animals, and adventure.

The family often went camping.

It was their tradition, a way to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and spend time together.

In the summer of 2019, they decided to go to Alaska.

Scott had always dreamed of going there, showing his son the wilderness, seeing glaciers and perhaps bears from a safe distance.

They rented an SUV in Anchorage, bought supplies, and headed south to Chugotch National Forest, one of the largest national forests in the United States, a place of stunning beauty, but also a place that is wild and potentially dangerous.

The family arrived at Bertha Creek Campground on July 17th.

The campground was located in a remote part of the forest near a fast flowing creek surrounded by tall spruce and pine trees.

In the summer, the campground was usually filled with tourists.

But that year, due to recent rains and poor road conditions, there were few people, only three or four families scattered across the campsites.

The Reeves set up their tent on site number seven, a little away from the others, closer to the forest.

Their camping neighbors, a retired couple from Oregon named Tom and Barbara, later told investigators that they had seen the family on the first evening.

They said Scott seemed friendly and outgoing, talking to Tom about plans for the next day, asking about the best places to fish and go on short hikes with a child.

Jenna was cooking dinner over the campfire, and Lucas was playing with a toy truck by the tent.

Everything seemed perfectly normal, just a typical family enjoying their vacation.

On the morning of July 18th, Tom saw Scott again.

It was around a.m.

Scott approached their camper, asked about nearby hiking trails, and wanted to find something easy, suitable for an 8-year-old child.

Tom recommended the trail to Berts Falls, about 2 m from the campground.

an easy route, well marked, popular with families.

Scott thanked him and said they would probably go there after breakfast.

That was the last time anyone saw the Reeves family alive.

Tom and Barbara left the campground later that day, continuing on their route.

Other campers were either busy with their own affairs or were in other areas too far away to see site number seven.

Rangers patrolled the area, but not daily.

The campground was self-service with campers paying through a machine and enforcing the rules themselves.

On July 22nd, 5 days after the last contact, the car rental company became concerned.

The Reeves family’s SUV was due to be returned on the 21st, but it had not been returned and no one was answering their calls.

The company contacted the police and reported the missing car and customers.

The state police began an investigation.

They contacted the National Forest Service and learned that the family had registered at Bertha Creek Campground.

On July 23rd, rangers arrived at the campground to investigate.

What they found was disturbing.

The family’s tent was still standing on site number seven.

It was closed, zipped up, and everything inside was neat.

Sleeping bags, backpacks, clothes, food.

The fire pit was clean with no signs of recent use.

Everything looked as if the family had stepped out for a short while and planned to return.

But the rented SUV was not at the site.

Rangers expanded their search and found it about 800 m from the campground on an old abandoned forest road that led deep into the woods.

The car was parked on the side of the road, keys in the ignition, trunk open.

Everything was inside the car.

documents, Scott’s wallet with money and credit cards, Jenna’s phone on the front seat, and a child car seat in the back.

There were no signs of a struggle, blood, or violence.

The police immediately declared the family missing and organized a large-scale search and rescue operation.

Dozens of volunteers, dogs, helicopters, everyone was involved.

They combed the area around the campground along trails, streams, deep in the woods.

They looked for traces, clothing, any signs of where the family might have gone.

They found only one thing.

Lucas’s bright blue backpack with dinosaurs on it.

It was lying in the bushes about a kilometer from where the SUV was found.

The backpack was empty, the zipper open, with no personal belongings inside.

The dogs tried to pick up the scent, but the rain that had fallen over the previous days had washed away most of the smells, and the trail was quickly lost.

The search continued for 3 weeks.

Hundreds of square kilometers of forest were combed.

All known trails, caves, gorges, and rivers were checked.

Divers searched the deep sections of streams and lakes.

Nothing.

It was as if the family had vanished into thin air.

The official version offered by the state police was grim, but it seemed to be the only logical one.

The family had probably encountered a bear.

Bear attacks are rare in Alaska, but they do happen, especially if people are inexperienced or accidentally get too close to a mother bear with cubs.

Perhaps the bear attacked and dragged the bodies deep into the forest where they were eaten or scattered by wild animals.

The absence of remains was explained by the fact that Alaska’s forests are vast and the bear could have dragged its victims for miles to inaccessible places where people simply did not look.

But there were details that did not fit this theory.

Why was the SUV so far from the campsite on an abandoned road? Why was the trunk open? Why were all their personal belongings left in the car, wallets, phones, documents? If they went hiking, why didn’t they take the essentials? And why was the child’s backpack found empty and open? Scott and Jenna’s family refused to accept the bear theory.

They hired a private investigator, demanded that the investigation continue and suspected foul play.

But without bodies, without evidence, without witnesses, the case stalled.

By the end of the summer of 2019, the search was officially called off and the case was classified as a missing person’s case under unexplained circumstances.

The Reeves family became another tragic statistic.

People who disappeared in the Alaskan wilderness whose bodies were never found.

This continued for 3 years until August 16th, 2022 when hunters found an antill.

When forensic pathologist Dr.

Emily Chen from the state morg in Anchorage began examining the remains recovered from the antill.

She immediately realized that this was not a typical case of death in the wild.

Dr.

Chen had been a medical examiner for more than 15 years and had seen many victims of bear attacks, accidents, and drownings.

But what she saw on the table was different.

Her preliminary report dated September 10th, 2022 was shocking.

The remains of the man identified as Scott Reeves showed signs of blunt force trauma to the skull.

The skull was fractured in the occipital region with a crack running through the parietal bone.

The nature of the injury indicated a blow with a heavy object, possibly a rock, an axe, or a metal pipe.

The blow was delivered with great force, enough to break the bone and damage the brain.

Dr.

Chen concluded that this injury was almost certainly fatal or at the very least resulted in immediate loss of consciousness.

In addition, multiple fractures were found on the bones of the right arm, the metacarpal bones, wrist, and radius.

The nature of the fractures indicated defensive wounds as if the victim had tried to defend herself from the attack by raising her arm before the blows.

The remains of the woman identified as Jenna Reeves, showed even more horrific signs of violence.

A metal object, a sharpened nail about 10 cm long, was found in the chest area between the third and fourth ribs.

It was driven deep, penetrating the ribs to the area where the heart should have been.

Dr.

Chen noted that this was a deliberate act.

The killer knew where to strike to inflict a fatal wound.

In addition, signs of fractures and separated felanges were found on the bones of the woman’s hands and feet.

Several fingers were broken postmortem or shortly before death.

And the nature of the fractures indicated intentional impact, torture, or attempts to make the victim talk.

But the most disturbing discovery was that the remains were found wrapped in raincoats and tied with electrical cords.

This was not the work of an animal or the result of an accident.

It was murder followed by concealment of the bodies.

Dr.

Chen also noted the presence of marks on the bones, indicating that the bodies had been exposed to the elements for a long period of time.

The bones were bleached by the sun, covered with traces of insects and rodents, and partially damaged by ants that had built a nest around them.

She estimated that the deaths had occurred about 3 years ago, which coincided with the date of the family’s disappearance.

But there was one question that bothered everyone working on the case.

Where was the child? Among the remains found in the antill, there were no bones that could belong to an 8-year-old boy.

Forensic experts thoroughly combed the area around the antill, expanding the search area by a kilometer in each direction.

They used metal detectors, ground penetrating radar, and cadaabver dogs.

Nothing.

Lucas Reeves had disappeared.

Two possible scenarios emerged.

Either his body had been hidden elsewhere or he was still alive.

Detective Brian Harper led the criminal investigation.

His team began by reconstructing the events of 3 years ago.

They returned to the original evidence, the testimony of Tom and Barbara, an elderly couple who had seen the family for the last time.

Harper met with them in person at their home in Oregon at the end of September.

Tom and Barbara were shocked by the news that the bodies had been found and that it was a murder.

They cried as they remembered the lovely family they had seen at the campground.

They said Scott was friendly, Jenna was smiling, and Lucas was cheerful and curious.

Harper asked if they had noticed anyone else at the campground, anyone suspicious or unusual.

Tom thought for a moment, then remembered one detail.

He said that on the morning of the 18th, while talking to Scott, he had seen another man at the edge of the campground.

The man was standing by his pickup truck fixing something in the back.

Tom hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now looking back, it seemed strange to him that the man was alone, without a family, and that his pickup truck looked old, rusty, and unlike a tourist vehicle.

Tom couldn’t remember the man’s face.

He was far away, about 50 m.

But he remembered that the pickup truck was dark green or blue with a dent in the driver’s door, and that the man was wearing a camouflage jacket and a baseball cap.

That was the first clue.

Harper returned to Alaska and began checking the National Forest Service records.

Unfortunately, Bertha Creek Campground was self-service with no visitor registration, surveillance cameras, or permanent rangers.

Tourists paid through a machine, dropping envelopes with money and information about themselves into a box, but many did not do so, simply arriving and leaving.

Harper asked the rangers to recall if there had been any complaints about suspicious people in the area during that period.

One ranger, a young guy named Kyle, recalled that in the summer of 2019, they had received several reports of illegal hunters in the southern part of the forest.

People complained about offseason gunshots and traps set on the trails.

The rangers patrolled the area, but found no one.

Harper dug deeper.

He requested data on people arrested for poaching in the Chugotach National Forest Area over the past 10 years.

The list was long, several dozen names.

Most were locals, some from Anchorage, some from small towns in southern Alaska.

One name caught his attention.

Randall Hawks, 48 years old, a resident of the small village of Hope about 40 miles from the campground.

Hawks had been arrested in 2017 for illegally hunting moose out of season and setting traps on public land.

He received a fine and a suspended sentence.

In 2020, he was arrested again, this time for possessing illegally obtained bear meat and attempting to sell bear bile on the black market.

He spent 6 months in prison and was released on parole in 2021.

Harper checked his criminal record.

In addition to poaching, Hawks had convictions for unlicensed possession of a firearm, aggravated assault, a bar fight in 2012 that left the victim with a concussion, and suspicion of burglary, although the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

Hawks was known to local law enforcement as a difficult, aggressive man who lived alone in a cabin in the woods, hunted illegally, and avoided contact with the authorities.

Neighbors described him as a recluse with a quick temper.

Harper decided to visit Randall Hawks.

The village of Hope was tiny, less than 200 residents, one grocery store, a bar, and a post office.

Most of the houses were scattered in the woods, connected by dirt roads.

Hawk’s cabin was 5 miles from the center of the village at the end of an overgrown trail that was barely passable by a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Harper arrived there on September 28th with two state police officers.

They drove along the trail until they saw the cabin, an old dilapidated log structure with a crooked porch and boarded up windows.

An old pickup truck stood nearby, dark blue, with rust and a dent in the driver’s door.

The description matched the one Tom had given.

Harper knocked on the door.

No answer.

He knocked again, louder, and introduced himself.

Silence.

The officers walked around the cabin, looked in the windows.

It was dark inside, no signs of movement.

Harper tried the door handle, locked.

He took out the search warrant he had obtained before the trip based on the match between the pickup truck’s description and Hawk’s criminal history.

The officers broke down the door and entered.

Inside the cabin, it was dirty and cluttered.

There was one large room with a bed in the corner, a table, a stove, and shelves with canned food and jars.

The walls were hung with animal horns and skins, deer, moose, bears.

In the corner were guns, four rifles, and two shotguns, which, as it turned out later, were unregistered.

But Harper was interested in something else.

He began searching the room, looking for any signs of a connection to the Reeves family.

The officers searched the shelves, looked under the bed, and checked the stove.

In a wooden chest against the wall, one of the officers found a bundle wrapped in an old rag.

He unwrapped it.

Inside were children’s clothes, a t-shirt with a picture of dinosaurs, size eight, synthetic fabric shorts, small sneakers.

Harper photographed the clothes and sent the photos to Jenna’s parents, who were assisting in the investigation by providing information about the family.

They confirmed that these were Lucas’s clothes.

They recognized the t-shirt, which had been bought especially for the trip to Alaska.

This was evidence linking Hawks to the family’s disappearance, but Hawks was not in the cabin.

Harper gave the order to put him on the wanted list.

His last known movements were checked.

No one had seen him for several weeks.

Neighbors said that he often disappeared for long periods of time, going into the woods, hunting, and living there for weeks.

The search for Hawks began.

The police checked all the known places where he might be, hunting cabins, abandoned camps, places where he used to set traps.

They distributed his photo and asked the public to report any sightings.

Meanwhile, forensic experts examined the evidence from the cabin.

The children’s clothing was sent for DNA analysis.

The results came back 2 weeks later.

Traces of blood were found on the t-shirt that matched Lucas Reeves’s DNA.

This confirmed that the child had been in Hawk’s cabin.

But where was he now? Alive or dead? Harper questioned Hawk’s neighbors trying to gather information about his behavior in the summer of 2019.

One woman who lived about a mile from his cabin recalled a strange detail.

She said she saw hawks at the end of July that year when he drove past her house in his pickup truck.

He usually ignored her and didn’t say hello, but this time she noticed that there was something covered with a tarp in the back of his truck.

The shape was strange, oblong, as if he were carrying something large.

She didn’t think much of it at the time, assuming he was transporting a deer or bear he had hunted.

But now, looking back, it made her uneasy.

Harper continued to dig.

He requested footage from traffic cameras, gas stations, and any other locations where Hawk’s pickup truck might have been recorded.

In July 2019, one camera at a gas station 50 miles from Bertha Creek showed a pickup truck similar to his refueling on July 19th, the day after the family disappeared.

The video was grainy, but you could see a man in a baseball cap refueling the car and walking over to pay.

He paid in cash, didn’t talk to the cashier, and drove away quickly.

The cashier, interviewed later, vaguely remembered the man.

She said he was nervous, hurried, and didn’t look her in the eye.

All the evidence pointed to Randall Hawks, but he was still missing.

On October 14th, 2022, almost 2 months after the remains were found, hunters in another part of the Chugach National Forest stumbled upon an abandoned hunting cabin hidden in the dense forest.

The cabin was small, dilapidated, with no electricity or running water.

Inside they found the body of a man.

It was Randall Hawks.

He had been dead for several weeks, possibly since late August or early September.

The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, suicide.

Next to the body lay a revolver with one empty shell casing in the barrel.

On the table was a note written in uneven handwriting.

The note was short but shocking.

Hawks wrote that he regretted what he had done, that he never intended to kill, that it was an accident that got out of control, that he had met a family in the woods while checking his traps, that they had argued because the father accused him of poaching and threatened to report him to the rangers.

That he got angry, hit the man with a rock, and didn’t think he would kill him.

That the woman started screaming, and he panicked and silenced her.

That it all happened too fast.

But there was only one line in the note about the child, and it was bloodcurdling.

Hawks wrote that the boy had run away into the forest, that he had looked for him, but couldn’t find him, that he was afraid the child would die there alone, that he hoped someone would find him, but that too much time had passed, and he didn’t know what had happened to the boy.

The note ended with the words that he couldn’t live with what he had done, that he saw their faces every night, that the only way out was death.

Harper read the note and felt a mixture of relief and anger.

Relief that the killer had been found and was dead, that justice had been served in some sense, but anger that Hawks had taken the answer to the main question with him to his grave.

Where was Lucas? According to the note, the child had run into the woods after his parents were murdered.

But that was three years ago.

An 8-year-old boy alone in the Alaskan wilderness without food, without shelter, without survival skills.

The chances of him surviving were practically zero.

But the bodies were never found.

Harper organized a new search operation focusing on the area where the parents remains in Hawk’s cabin were found.

They combed the forest within a 10 km radius.

They used dogs, drones, thermal imaging cameras.

They checked every cave, every ravine, every abandoned building.

Nothing.

Lucas Reeves had vanished without a trace.

The case was officially closed in December 2022.

The murders of Scott and Jenna Reeves had been solved, and the killer was dead.

The remains of the parents were handed over to their families for burial.

But the case of Lucas Reeves remained open as a missing person case.

Harper couldn’t accept that the child had simply disappeared.

He continued to work on the case in his spare time, sifting through evidence, looking for any clues.

One detail bothered him.

Lucas’s clothes found in Hawk’s cabin were clean without dirt or damage, only traces of blood.

>> >> If the child had run away into the woods, as Hawks wrote, why were his clothes in the cabin? Why were they clean? Harper returned to Hawk’s note and reread it dozens of times.

Something in the wording seemed strange.

Hawks wrote that the boy had run away, that he had looked for him but couldn’t find him.

But what if that was a lie? What if Hawks knew where the child was but didn’t want to admit it? Or what if something else had happened? Harper consulted with psychological experts specializing in criminal behavior.

They offered several theories.

One of them was dark.

Perhaps Hawks had taken the boy, kept him in the cabin for a while, then killed him, and hidden the body in a place where no one would find it.

The suicide could have been the result of guilt over killing the child.

Another theory was more plausible, though unlikely.

Perhaps the child had indeed run away and someone else had found him.

Perhaps another tourist, a hunter, a hermit.

Perhaps this person took the child without knowing that he was from the missing family or knowing but deciding not to report it to the authorities.

The third theory was the most frightening.

Perhaps the child had died in the forest and his body had been completely eaten by animals.

Bears, wolves, and scavengers could have completely destroyed the small body in a matter of days, leaving no bones behind.

But Harper couldn’t accept any of these theories without proof.

He kept searching.

In January 2023, he received a strange phone call.

A woman from a small village in northern Alaska about 300 m from the crime scene called the hotline that was still active for information about Lucas.

She said she had seen a boy who looked like Lucas in their village a few months ago.

Harper immediately drove there.

He met with a woman who introduced herself as Cynthia.

She worked as a nurse at the local clinic.

She said that in October 2022, an old hermit came to the clinic with a boy who was about 11 or 12 years old.

The boy had fallen and broken his arm, and the old man had brought him in for treatment.

Cynthia remembered that the boy was quiet, said almost nothing, only nodded or shook his head in response to questions.

The old man said that the boy was his grandson, that they lived in the forest, that they didn’t trust hospitals, but the fracture was serious and help was needed.

Cynthia put a cast on it, gave him painkillers, and sent them on their way.

She didn’t ask many questions, although something about the situation seemed strange to her.

The boy looked frightened, avoided eye contact, and his clothes were old and dirty, as if he lived in very difficult conditions.

She didn’t connect this with the missing child until she saw the news about the Reeves case in November.

Then she remembered the boy and thought that maybe it could have been him, but she wasn’t sure.

3 years had passed and the child could have changed a lot.

Harper asked her to describe the old man.

Cynthia said he was about 70, maybe older, with a long gray beard, dressed in a worn jacket, and spoke with an accent, possibly Scandinavian.

He didn’t give his name, paid in cash, and left quickly after his treatment.

Harper checked all the registered residents of the village, but no one matched the description.

He questioned other residents, asking about hermits living in the surrounding forest.

Several people remembered an old man who sometimes came to the village for supplies, but no one knew where he lived or what his name was.

They said he lived somewhere in the mountains alone without electricity avoiding people.

Harper organized a search in the mountains around the village, but the area was vast, difficult to access with hundreds of places to hide.

After 3 weeks of fruitless searching, the operation had to be called off.

Was it really Lucas or just a coincidence? Another boy who looked like him? Harper didn’t know.

But this lead gave him hope.

Hope that Lucas might still be alive.

Today, more than a year after the remains were found, the Reeves case remains one of the most mysterious and tragic stories in Alaska’s criminal history.

Scott and Jenna were buried by their families.

The funeral ceremonies were held in Seattle and attended by hundreds of people, friends, colleagues, relatives.

Everyone mourned the tragic loss, the senselessness of their deaths at the hands of a man who in essence killed them over a stupid argument.

Randall Hawks was buried in a municipal cemetery in an unmarked grave without ceremony.

No one came to say goodbye to him.

His name became a symbol of evil and cowardice.

But Lucas Reeves remains on the missing person’s list.

His photo still hangs on the walls of police stations across Alaska, and his case is still open.

Investigator Brian Harper retired in 2023, but continues to work on Lucas’s case as a volunteer.

He follows up on every new piece of evidence, checks every report of boys found or spotted in remote locations.

He hasn’t given up hope.

Some consider this naive.

Realists say that an 8-year-old child could not have survived alone in the Alaskan wilderness.

That even if someone else took him, too much time has passed.

The trail is too cold.

But others, like Harper, cling to a faint hope.

To the story of Cynthia, the nurse who saw the boy with the old man.

for the possibility that somewhere deep in the Alaskan wilderness, in a cabin in the mountains or in the forest, Lucas Reeves is alive.

Perhaps not even remembering who he is, where he came from, what happened to his parents.

Because sometimes in this cruel world, the only thing left is hope.

And as long as there is even the slightest chance that the child is alive, the search will not