In June of 2017, 22-year-old Kate Levy disappeared without a trace in the Cleveland woods.

Four years have passed, and when a thermal drone participating in a training flight detected a faint heat flash under the roots of an old black oak tree, no one could have guessed that this invisible spot would lead the investigation back to the horrifying truth.

It was not an animal, not a technical anomaly.

It was a buried body and a mystery that finally revealed the name of the killer.

On June 15th, 2017, at dawn, 22-year-old Kate Levy locked the door of her San Diego apartment and headed east to the Cleveland National Forest.

According to her cell phone provider, her phone last checked in at around in the morning on the stretch of freeway leading to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a finding confirmed by police when they analyzed her route.

According to her friend, who later told detectives, Kate was planning a dayhike on the South Fork Trail and intended to go to the Garnet Peak Overlook, which she had read about a few weeks earlier on a travel forum.

This point was little known, a little off the main route.

And Kate, according to her friends, loved just such places, remote, quiet, with the opportunity to be alone.

At and 40 minutes in the morning, a camera in a parking lot near the start of the South Fork Trail captured Kate’s silver sedan.

The video shows her getting out of the car, checking the contents of the trunk, and closing the door.

It is also clear that she did not take her backpack and phone with her.

Both remained in the car.

Detectives will confirm this later.

Kate took only a small waste bag with water and a flashlight, expecting to go to the observation deck and return no later than noon.

According to the ranger on duty that morning, the weather was stable.

Dry air, light winds, and clear visibility.

It was a typical summer day in the San Diego mountains, a day with nothing that might seem dangerous.

At in the morning, one of the hikers, a middle-aged man, later told police that he had seen a young woman who looked like Kate’s photo.

He was walking along the trail in the opposite direction and noticed that the girl had stopped at a fork in the road, looking at a map printout.

He described her as focused, but not concerned.

This was the only confirmed contact with the witness that day.

Kate was supposed to return home by evening, but after , her friend started texting her without reply.

Around 900 p.m., she called Kate’s parents who lived in another state, and it was they who insisted on contacting the police.

However, the official procedure allowed an adult to be reported missing after 24 hours of absence.

The search did not begin that night.

On June 16th, a little after 9 in the morning, rangers found Kate’s silver sedan in the same spot where the camera had captured it.

The car was locked, the windows rolled up.

Inside were her phone, wallet, backpack with all the kit for a day hike, and a light overnight plan, water, power bank, first aid kit, knife, rain cover, and a light topographic atlas of the area.

This detail alerted the detectives from the very beginning.

Kate was an experienced traveler and leaving her backpack in the car meant either a spontaneous decision to go for a short walk or a misjudgment of the route.

At exactly 10:003 minutes, the search operation was officially launched.

The first to go were the dog handlers.

According to one of them, the dog immediately picked up the trail and followed it for about 150 yards deep into the canyon.

But where the soil became rocky, the smell disappeared.

Similar cases occur in regions with a high content of sand and granite chips.

The trail literally breaks off in areas where the odor does not stay on the surface.

However, experienced rescuers described it as too sharp a break, atypical for a normal transition between soil types.

By noon, more than two dozen volunteers were already working.

Within a radius of several miles from the parking lot, they examined all the side trails, small hollows, and entrances to dry stream beds, but nothing.

There were no signs of a struggle, no belongings, no fragments of clothing that could be hers.

It was as if she had simply ceased to exist after setting out on the route.

On the evening of June 16th, two helicopters joined the search.

They were working with thermal imaging cameras, but the dense chaparel and sharp elevation changes greatly hindered the view.

Trees on the slopes of the canyon created shadows that made it impossible to see even a human silhouette.

According to the cameraman of one of the crews, they flew over the area until the last light was allowed and found nothing.

No heat spots, no movement, no remnants of the camp.

On June 17th, detectives retrieved footage from the parking lot surveillance camera and confirmed that no one had approached Kate’s car since she left it.

This cut off the version of the attack in the parking lot.

But at the same time, it raised another question.

what happened to her on the trail in such close proximity to civilization.

An official report from the sheriff’s office notes that the South Fork Trail area is considered one of the safest trails in the Cleveland Forest.

There have been virtually no attacks on tourists there.

However, there are areas far from the main trail where there is neither communication coverage nor traffic during the day.

Kate was interested in such branches.

This was confirmed by comments from the hiking forum where she was active on the eve of her disappearance.

Her posts indicated a desire to find little known viewpoints where there are no crowds and you can be in silence.

On the day of her disappearance, the temperature rose to a level that could have caused exhaustion during intensive walking.

But rescuers emphasized that even in this case, people usually leave traces, abandoned clothes, a bottle, and attempt to mark the path.

There was nothing here.

By the evening of June 17th, more than 30 people had combed the slopes, crevices, shallow, dry waterways, and pine thicket within a few miles of the parking lot.

The only thing they found were broken branches on one of the narrow branches that could have been left by anyone in recent weeks.

nothing that could be called a direct lead in the case.

On the fourth day, the search officially changed its status from an attempt to find a living person to a body recovery operation.

This is a standard procedure when enough time has passed and no signs of life have been found.

But even after that, more than a dozen volunteers continued to search the area.

By the end of the week, it became clear Kate had disappeared within a route generally considered safe and there was no sign of her after the first few hundred yards.

The report stated possible fall into a gorge, heat stroke, encounter with an unknown person, but there was not a single fact that would confirm any of these versions.

5 days later, the family gave the first official statement to the press.

Kate’s father said that his daughter always acted carefully and responsibly and that they do not believe this disappearance was an accident.

At the time, the sheriff’s office did not rule out any scenario.

The search lasted 11 days and was curtailed due to the lack of results.

Kate Levy’s case was transferred to the unsolved missing person’s unit.

Nothing was found.

No trace of her, no belongings, no body.

The Cleveland wood swallowed her up without any explanation, and for several years, it seemed that the mystery would never be solved.

Exactly 4 months have passed since the rangers last saw Kate Levy’s silver sedan at the start of the South Fork Trail.

October of 2017 brought cold nights to the Cleveland National Forest and morning fog that hung in thick patches between the pines, lingering in hollows and over rocky outcroppings.

It was at this time that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office along with the volunteer group Caltech Search and Rescue was conducting a scheduled training exercise on the use of a new thermal imaging drone.

According to the volunteer coordinator, the goal was to learn how to recognize small thermal deviations on complex terrain as soil and vegetation indicators change faster in the fall than in the summer.

For the test flights, we chose an area north of the South Fork Trail, an area rarely visited even by experienced hikers.

The terrain was rugged, dark chasms between granite boulders, dense chaparel, winding narrow paths, and in some places covered with dry manzanita seeds.

The forest seemed quiet, but this silence was deceptive.

In some places, the rangers say even the wind sounded different, as if it were sliding over stone without touching the leaves.

On the morning of October 14th, at 42 minutes, according to the flight log, drone operator Mark Reynolds spotted an anomaly.

On the thermal imaging screen, where the entire slope was uniformly cold, one spot stood out as having a faint but steady heat.

It was under a large dried black oak tree with a root zone covering several square yards.

According to Reynolds, the shape of the spot was elongated and too still to be an animal.

He marked the coordinates and passed them on to the ground team as per procedure.

Volunteers who were nearby recalled that the operator did not seem alarmed.

It was just a training exercise for them.

The ground team arrived at the site in less than half an hour.

The area turned out to be inaccessible.

The branches of the chaperel closed almost tightly and the undergrowth was so thick that it was possible to get to the oak tree only slowly, clearing the way with shovels and hooks.

Investigators would later note in their report that this location was extremely unlikely to be an accidental hiker stop because the trail ran much higher and had no branches leading to the tree.

The rescuers saw that the soil under the massive roots was soft and gave way under the weight of the foot.

This alerted them.

The moisture after recent rains could have softened the surface, but the nature of the subsidance looked artificial.

According to one of the group members, the top layer of earth was unnaturally loose, as if someone had recently worked here.

After a few minutes of careful shoveling, a dull gray fabric soaked in silt appeared beneath the root.

At first, they thought it was the remains of a tent or garbage.

But when the rescuers picked out a corner of the tarpollen from the ground, it became clear that it was rolled up very tightly.

It looked like human intervention, not a natural process.

When the tarpollen was carefully straightened, the smell of damp soil mixed with a Swedish note of decomposition.

Inside was the body of a young woman pinned down by her own weight against the compacted layer of silt.

Her clothes, sweatpants, and a pale white t-shirt were half decomposed but well preserved.

These were the clothes that her relatives later confirmed Kate Levy was wearing on the day she disappeared.

Detectives and a forensic team were immediately called to the scene.

They arrived in a little over an hour.

The forest greeted them with silence, which contrasted sharply with what was happening near the oak tree.

The area around the tree was marked with yellow tape, and the volunteers were sent back to the command post.

From that moment on, the area became a full-fledged crime scene.

The first thing investigators noticed was the condition of the soil.

Fresh landslides of the surface layer showed that someone had laid the tarp not too long ago.

However, it was difficult to establish the actual date due to natural subsidence processes.

Forensic experts suggested that it could have been there for several months, but did not rule out a more recent action.

The nature of the burial was sloppy.

It was not a deep grave, but rather a temporary shelter.

The roots of the oak tree partially covered the body, forming a natural niche.

The most surprising thing was the origin of the heat spot.

The thermal imager showed that the tarpolin and the bottom layer of silt retained residual heat.

According to the experts, this could have happened because the soil heated up in the direct sun during the day and the fabric retained its temperature longer than the surrounding cold space.

And it was this small difference that led to the discovery of the body.

The inspection of the site lasted several hours.

The body was not completely buried.

Only a few inches of earth covered it.

This did not indicate an attempt at a full burial, but rather a quick, hasty concealment.

The forensic examination at the site noted that the victim’s arms were lying along her torso, not twisted or bound.

However, this did not answer the question of the cause of death itself.

The body was in a state of partial decomposition, and tissue damage could only be assessed after a detailed analysis in the laboratory.

A few yards away from the tree, detectives found small fragments of dry bark mixed with soil that could have been signs of a struggle.

However, experts later noted that such fragments could also have come from animals or from the natural breakdown of the tree.

It was extremely difficult to detect a specific person’s footprint in this area.

Dry streams, loose soil, and dense chaparel absorbed traces almost instantly.

Most telling in the whole picture was the fact that the place where the body was found was far beyond what is considered a logical route for a tourist.

From the main trail, one had to go sideways through thorny bushes with no reason to move in that direction.

According to one of the rangers who inspected the area after the body was found, the tourist could not have been here by accident.

To pass this area, one had to know about it or have a specific goal.

The discovery dramatically changed the status of Kate Levy’s case.

From now on, it was no longer a disappearance in the wilderness.

It became a potential murder.

And it was the thermal drone which was supposed to show the terrain and animals, not solve crimes that became the first completely unexpected clue in this story.

There were still many unknowns ahead.

The cause of death, the circumstances, the identity of the culprit.

But on that day, the forest finally stopped being silent.

It gave away something important, something it had been hiding for months under the roots of an old oak tree.

After the discovery of the tarpollen with the body, the area around the old black oak was immediately closed to outsiders.

Rangers stretched yellow tape over a wide radius to secure the perimeter from any accidental intrusion.

Investigators arrived within minutes.

The forest, which had seemed deserted and indifferent just yesterday, now suddenly looked like a living system where every piece of bark, every lump of soil could be evidence.

Dr.

Erica Silva, a San Diego County pathologist, began examining the body surface as soon as it was freed from the tarp and silt.

According to the technicians on hand, she worked slowly with concentration, not allowing hints of emotion.

Her conclusion was informal as it usually is when an expert has not yet issued an official report.

Signs of mechanical esphyxiation.

The structure of the cervical tissues, their deformationation, and traces of compression indicated the use of a foreign object, probably a rope or belt.

The details could be established only after a full laboratory examination, but the overall picture spoke for itself.

It was not a fall, not an accident, not a sudden medical condition.

It was a deliberate taking of life.

The ground under and around the oak tree became the object of careful analysis.

The forensic team worked according to the classic procedure.

First photographing, then marking the divisions and gradually removing the surface soil layer.

According to one of the technicians, the soil was too light in the first few inches, as if it had just been dug up, but below that it was compacted by years of natural processes.

This confirmed the assumption that the body was placed here in a hurry without a deep grave.

The first important clues emerged within the first hour of work.

At a height of about one yard from the ground in a crack under the bark, they found a fragment of blue nylon rope, a short worn thread with a characteristic fibrous structure.

The technicians noticed that it did not get stuck in the bark naturally.

The fibers were compressed as if the rope had been pulled or torn near the tree.

The material itself was strong enough to be consistent with sports, hiking, or utility ropes used to secure equipment or secure cargo.

It was not an item of Kate’s clothing.

There were no such ropes in her possession as later shown by the inventory of items from her car.

The second piece of evidence was found a few steps from the root of an oak tree.

One of the volunteers who was allowed to work on the periphery of the search area under the supervision of the investigator noticed a black plastic button in the grass.

It was elongated, smooth, but with several characteristic scratches on the side.

The forensic team noted that the scratches were directional and sharp, as if the button had been stepped on or torn off with a sudden movement.

Most importantly, it did not match any of Kate Levy’s clothing items.

It was a piece of another type of clothing, probably outerwear, a jacket, vest, or work overalls.

A separate team of technicians analyzed the shoe prints, but the area around the oak tree proved to be ungrateful for such work.

A thick layer of dry leaves and branches that had accumulated over the years formed a buffer that made it almost impossible to read the clear patterns of the sole.

Only at the edge of the perimeter where the soil was more exposed was a shoe print with an aggressive tread found.

It was blurred and did not allow us to compare it with a specific model.

But the experts noticed an interesting detail.

The step did not lead in the direction of the main path, but deeper into the thicket.

This could mean that the person who was there knew the area and was moving deliberately, not accidentally lost.

At the same time, detectives conducted a so-called silent inspection of the wider perimeter.

They were looking for additional traces, matches, wrappers, food debris, plastic fragments, any object that could have been left near the murder scene.

In an area about a few dozen yards to the north, they found the remains of an old campfire.

The ashes were old, and the coals were covered with a white coating, which is typical of fires that have long since died out.

However, among several unburned branches, they found a trace of melting thin plastic.

Forensic experts explained that this could be a residue from the burning of packaging or a small object.

However, it was impossible to establish its origin without additional examination.

Detectives also recorded the condition of the oak tree.

The tree was old and partially dried out with strong, thick roots that formed a natural depression.

This structure made it an ideal place to quickly hide the body.

One of the investigators noted in the report, “This place was not chosen by chance.

It is a point that has to be reached on purpose.” Forensic experience shows that murderers operating in remote areas often choose natural hiding places, ravines, tree roots, dryream beds.

But in this case, there was something unusual.

The tree did not stand on a deserted slope but on a kind of transition between two types of terrain.

On the one hand, there was a dense thicket and on the other a steep rocky rise.

This meant that the person who buried the body was physically fit and well-versed in the terrain.

A separate group of experts analyzed pollen and plant debris on the surface of the tarpollen.

The preliminary results announced on the spot indicated several types of plants that did not grow near the black oak, but were common in the area south of the site.

This meant that the body could have been moved here from another location.

If this is confirmed by the laboratory, the investigation will receive an important vector, the location of the original crime.

While the technicians were working to recover the evidence, detectives were reviewing the data collected over the past months about Kate’s disappearance.

They checked routes, analyzed highway camera footage, and contacted the rangers who were on duty that July shift.

But now, with the bodily evidence, the case was moving to a different plane.

It was no longer an accident hypothesis.

It was a clear criminal event with signs of a struggle, a cover up, and probably a deliberate choice of location.

By the end of the day, only marker marks, dull indentations from technical tripods, and neatly closed containers of evidence remained under the black oak tree.

The forest looked quiet again, but this time it was different.

Dense, burdened.

It felt like the presence of someone who had once come here unnoticed and remained a shadow between the roots of an old tree.

After the discovery of Kate Levy’s body, the investigation entered a phase where every little thing could be decisive.

Detective Anna Mendoza and her partner, Detective Luis Rodriguez, focused on Kate’s personal life, trying to find a logical motive and a person who could have led her to a violent death.

The first thing they studied was the data from her phone, calls, messages, emails.

In the last weeks before her disappearance, she hardly communicated with unfamiliar contacts.

Everything revolved around work, a few friends, and one name that immediately aroused the investigator’s interest.

Matthew Harris, Kate’s ex-boyfriend, the man she broke up with a few months before the hike.

According to her friends, the breakup was painful but not scandalous.

No one mentioned any threats or aggression.

On the contrary, Matthew seemed to take it all in stride without any outbursts of emotion.

However, the detectives knew that in cases that begin with a disappearance, former partners are the first to be checked.

Matthew Harris came to the police station voluntarily.

At the time he was 24 and worked as a mechanic at the Elcasian AutoPros car service.

According to employees who were later interrogated, he never missed a shift, never had any conflicts, and was considered a calm guy who worked too hard.

The video recording of the interrogation shows that he looked confused and pale as the news of the body found shocked him.

The report also states that Harris’s emotions were perceived as sincere.

His alibi for the day of Kate’s disappearance seemed ironclad.

He worked a full shift which was confirmed by his colleagues and in the evening he went to his parents’ house in Tmacula.

Both the mother and father independently confirmed this during interviews.

The detectives also checked the surveillance cameras at the car repair shop which showed that Matthew was indeed at work almost all day.

There was no way he could have been in the Cleveland woods without leaving digital traces.

But the case did not stand still.

While investigators were analyzing Kate’s personal life, the forensic team continued to work with the physical evidence found near the black oak tree.

One of the first results was the origin of the black plastic button.

The laboratory found that it belonged to a Timber Crest work jacket, a model that was launched 2 years ago and was widely used by construction workers, seasonal laborers, hunters, and forestry workers.

It was a mass-roduced garment available in most outfitters stores, but the main thing is that it was definitely not part of Kate’s clothing.

This meant that an unauthorized person was present.

When the detectives started working with this information, another unexpected clue appeared.

One of the volunteers who helped in the search for the body recalled a detail that had previously seemed trivial to him.

On the day Kate disappeared, he saw an old khaki SUV parked deep in the woods on a dirt road that was rarely used.

The volunteer described it as a Ford Explorer with a scratched front bumper.

In his opinion, the car did not belong to the rangers.

He knew the service vehicles well.

He didn’t have time to memorize the license plate, but he emphasized that the car looked out of place in that part of the forest.

This description became the first real external trace in the case.

The detectives created a list of all old SUVs of the same color and model registered in the region.

The work was difficult.

There were many cars of this type and most of them belonged to people who had been in the forest many times.

Hunters, fishermen, residents of remote homes.

Each such owner had to be checked, interviewed, and their roots compared to the date of Kate’s disappearance.

Detective Mendoza contacted the Forest Service to get a list of people who had hunting permits during the summer months.

Some of the hunters used these old SUVs because they were more convenient for traveling on dirt roads.

At the same time, those who had criminal records or were found to have committed violations in the forests were also checked.

Among these people were seasonal workers who moved between cities from time to time working on short-term contracts in construction or bushwhacking.

They were the ones who most often wore timber crest jackets in 2015.

Some of them lived in temporary trailers, others in old railroad cars on the edge of the forest zone.

Some of them worked without documents, which made their work even more difficult.

At the same time, investigators were trying to establish the route of the mysterious Ford Explorer.

They interviewed the rangers who patrolled that part of the forest on the day of the disappearance, but none of them had seen the vehicle.

This could have meant that the SUV had passed through at the wrong time when their patrol shift had already ended or when they were in another area.

They also started checking private houses located near the forest.

Some of the residents recalled hearing the sound of engines coming from the canyon in the afternoon hours of that day.

One man, a farmer, claimed to have seen a khaki SUV in the distance as he was leaving his farm.

He described the vehicle in the same way as the volunteer, old, scuffed, with rusty sills, but he did not recognize any license plates.

At this point in the investigation, detectives were increasingly inclined to believe that the car was a random offender who could have acted spontaneously, someone who didn’t know Kate and met her by chance on a remote trail.

There were few such cases in the forests of Southern California, but they did exist, and the fact that the body was buried in a hurry and shallow manner only reinforced this version.

Another way of thinking suggested that the perpetrator could have been a local, a person who knew the terrain well, and may have been in those thickets more than once.

Kate’s disappearance occurred in an area where casual tourists hardly ever go.

To get to the place where the tarp was found, you either need to know about this point in advance or have been wandering through the forest for a long time using your own roots.

The Ford Explorer could have been the first significant clue, but so far the detectives have been moving only on assumptions.

There was no clear identification of the car.

No one who could have owned such a vehicle could be linked to the area where he disappeared that day.

It looked as if the driver had appeared there for a short time and disappeared without leaving a trace.

Meanwhile, forensic experts continued to analyze the rope fiber.

Initial findings showed that the material was part of a rope with a rather specific weave, which is rarely found in household goods.

According to experts, it is more often used to secure loads or for equipment used in outdoor work.

This again brought the suspect’s profile closer to workers in forestry or construction crews.

Slowly, step by step, the investigators were putting together a mosaic where every detail could change the direction of the case.

But at this stage, its contours remained vague.

An old SUV, a rope, a button from a work jacket.

All of these pointed to an outsider.

But none of these threads had yet turned into a path to a specific name.

The search continued, but so far the forest was silent.

After weeks of checking, calling, matching, and feudal trips to remote areas of the forest, the detectives finally got a name that matched almost everything they had gathered from previous findings.

One of the owners of an old khaki Ford Explorer registered within a few miles of the Garnet Peak area was a 45-year-old hunter from the town of Pine Valley, Jacob Thorne.

His car not only matched the model and color, it had a distinctive scratch on the bumper that was seen by two different witnesses.

This gave detectives a reason to go to Pine Valley.

According to neighbors who investigators later spoke with, Jacob was not the type to seek out company.

Most described him as a withdrawn, abrasive man who lived alone, kept several dogs, and frequently went into the woods, even on days when hunting was banned.

One of his neighbors said that Thorne went to the mountains as if he worked there and could disappear for days without explanation.

When detectives arrived at his home, Jacob acted aggressively from the first minute.

He came out on the porch wearing camouflage pants and a vest as if he was going on another mission.

According to Detective Rodriguez, Thorne spoke too fast and too loud, but at the same time could not answer simple questions.

He claimed to be in the Cleveland woods almost every week, but categorically denied seeing anyone who could be Kate.

His alibi for the day of her disappearance was unclear.

At first, he said he was alone on a hunt.

Then, he clarified that he doesn’t remember exactly.

The detectives noticed his Ford Explorer parked outside the house.

The car had the same scuff marks on the fender and bumper mentioned by the volunteer.

While visually inspecting the trunk, Anna Mendoza noticed a Timberrest work jacket, the same brand whose button was found near the Black Oak Tree.

In place of the button was an empty space with traces of a fresh tear.

This was the first significant match that required an immediate response.

After a brief meeting, the detectives requested a search warrant.

Suspicion was based on the matching car, work jacket, and lack of a clear alibi.

When the warrant was obtained, several officers and the investigative team entered Jacob Thorne’s home.

Inside, they found a typical hunter’s home, wooden walls, old trophies, the smell of oil, and weapons on the wall.

But it was in the garage that they found something that made everyone in the room freeze.

There was a cardboard box on the top shelf of a metal cabinet.

It was dusty and covered with a piece of tarpollen as if someone was trying to reduce its visibility, but not trying too hard.

When the box was removed and opened, there were things inside that could not possibly belong to a grown man, a hunter who lived alone.

It contained several women’s bracelets, some heart-shaped pendants, and silver coins, a pair of cheap earrings, and a pink notebook with a crumpled cover.

The items looked worn, some old and worn, others almost new.

None of it belonged to Kate Levy.

However, the mere presence of such items in the suspect’s home instantly raised the alarm.

The detectives looked through the contents of the box in complete silence.

It looked like a collection of trophies or a clumsy attempt to hide other people’s belongings that could compromise the owner.

According to a forensic scientist who examined the find, the contents made it feel like something much more disturbing than just lost items.

Jacob was invited into the house under surveillance.

He saw investigators holding the box.

According to the officer standing next to him, his reaction was a dramatic drop in emotion from aggression to stuper.

When asked where these things came from, he could not answer clearly.

At first, he said that he found them in the woods, then that they were given to him.

However, neither version had a logical explanation.

The pink notebook drew special attention.

It was an inexpensive notebook with ballpoint strokes on the cover and torn pages inside.

It contained no names or direct instructions.

But by the nature of the manuscript, forensic experts quickly realized that it was a personal diary of a teenager.

It contained phrases similar to school notes and vague entries about friends.

The pages were torn out in some places.

It was impossible to find out whether Thorne himself had done this or whether he had found it in this form.

On the table in the garage were several cans of hunting oil and a rope with frayed ends different in structure from the one whose fiber was found near Kate’s grave.

Nevertheless, investigators included it in the evidence in case a connection was made between the items.

In Jacob’s bedroom, they found an old military chest containing photographs, some of which were torn in half.

None of them showed Kate, but some depicted young women in hiking gear.

None of the faces matched any of the missing persons in the region.

After the search, Jacob Thorne was arrested on suspicion of murder.

The investigation received the first full-fledged portrait of a man who vaguely resembled the profile of a possible perpetrator.

A hunter who often went into the woods, drove an old SUV, wore a jacket with a missing button, and had a chest with women’s clothes that did not belong to him.

The detectives, according to the report, felt they were one step away from solving the case.

Everything looked convincing.

an old Ford Explorer, the jacket, aggressive behavior, trophies, a vague alibi.

For the first time in the months of investigation, a person who fit the profile perfectly appeared, but not a single piece of evidence was direct yet.

A laboratory, expert opinions, and long hours of comparing facts awaited which could either finish off the suspicion or completely destroy it.

After the arrest of Jacob Thorne, it seemed that the investigation was about to take a final turn.

But the deeper the detectives analyzed his behavior, the less convincing the accusations looked.

During the interrogation, Thorne did not change his main line.

He called all the things found in his garage fines that he had collected over the years, stumbling upon them while hunting or walking through the forest.

According to Thorne himself, many tourists lose jewelry, keychains, notebooks, and he just picked them up without attaching much importance to it.

This habit seemed strange, but not criminal.

None of the bracelets or pendants matched Kate Levy’s.

The pink notebook was not hers either.

When the pathologist sent back the first results of the examination, the main blow to Thorne’s case was something else.

Neither Kate’s DNA nor fibers similar to those on the body were found on the jacket, which had been suspected because of the buttons detachment.

The contents of the box looked disturbing, but did not prove a crime.

Detectives checked the story of the button separately.

Thorne’s friend, with whom he had been hunting the day before the incident, confirmed that he had seen him catch his jacket on a dry branch.

The button remained on the tree, and Thorne himself commented on it.

This episode added to the technical analysis of the fabric forced investigators to admit that the coincidence with the evidence was accidental.

They also checked his movements on the day of Kate’s disappearance.

Although the first testimony was vague, reconstructing the route with the help of Hunter’s testimony, Pine Valley camera footage and fuel purchase data showed.

Thorne had indeed spent most of the day in another area several miles from where Kate was last seen alive.

By the end of the analysis, it was clear that he could not have physically made it to that area.

He was not charged.

The report states the person is excluded from the list of suspects.

Jacob was released, although the detectives discussed his creepy hobby for a long time.

Again, a dead end.

However, it was at this point that the case received an unexpected impetus.

Not from the forest, not from Thorne’s house, but from digital data.

One of the analysts working with a retrospective of cellular activity on the day Kate disappeared noticed a subtle but critical detail.

The base stations at the edge of the forest registered a brief network connection, not only for Kate’s phone, but also for another device moving from the same area.

The signal was weak and unstable, but enough to give us a direction.

This second vehicle belonged to Matthew Harris.

At first, this was suspicious.

His alibi had already been checked.

He looked grieving and sincere, but digital data is rarely wrong.

When Detective Mendoza invited Matthew back for a second interview and showed him the printed map with his movements, his reaction was immediate.

He was embarrassed, hesitant, paused for a long time, and then gave a new explanation.

That evening, he allegedly went to the woods after work to be near a place that reminded him of Kate.

His words are already a reconstruction described in Detective Mendoza’s report.

The document states that he explained that when he saw the parking lot filled with patrol officers and volunteers, he turned around and drove back immediately without notifying the police because he didn’t want it to be misinterpreted.

The problem was that this was exactly what confused the situation.

His previous testimony categorically denied being in the area of the disappearance that day.

Now, it turned out that he was there and at a time that partially coincided with Kate’s last phone activity.

These discrepancies were too significant to ignore.

The detectives knew that either Matthew was hiding something small and insignificant or he was lying about an event that was of key importance.

The analysts continued to process cellular data.

Matthew’s route led away from his workplace, confirmed by the cameras, and further east toward the forest.

He didn’t stop at any stores or gas stations.

His phone appeared in the coverage area of the forest stations only once for a short pulse.

Then it disappeared again.

One thing was clear, he was there.

He was traveling the same road Kate was on, at least until the moment her phone stopped signaling.

That didn’t automatically make him guilty, but it did shatter the confidence the investigation had.

After the first check, when Detective Rodriguez reviewed the tapes of the first interview, he noticed a detail.

Matthew avoided describing specific time periods when talking about that day.

He spoke in generalities, but the date of Kate’s disappearance was too significant to be confused.

Investigators now had to revisit everything they knew about Matthew Harris.

his connections, his relationship with Kate, his conversations before the breakup, his movements after work.

The most important thing was that he had lied in at least one way.

For the detectives, this was a signal that the case had changed direction again.

The forest was no longer the only place to look.

Now, they had to understand why Matthew had returned there that evening and what exactly he was trying to hide.

After digital evidence cast doubt on Matthew Harris’s initial alibi, investigators decided to act as quickly as possible.

Any delay could lead to the loss of important evidence.

When the district court granted a search warrant for his apartment and car, detectives went to the address unannounced to prevent the possibility of destruction of his belongings.

His old sedan was parked in the courtyard of the residential complex.

Unremarkable with scratched paint on the hood.

A car used by a mechanic on a regular basis often retains traces of his profession.

Oil under the hood, small spare parts in the cabin, tools rolling around in the glove compartment.

But this time, the investigators were interested in something else, something that could be hidden.

The search of the trunk began with a standard procedure, removing the interior trim, checking niches, technical cavities, and the area under the spare tire.

When one of the technicians lifted the heavy rubber pad, they found a small roll of blue nylon rope under it.

It was rolled up tightly with a label that had long since fallen off.

But the very structure of the fibers, their thickness, weave, thin strip of light threads, completely matched the fragment found under the bark of the black oak tree.

The forensic experts put the rope in a separate container and labeled it as an item that requires a full fiber analysis.

At this point, it became clear that the similarity of the materials was no coincidence.

The group then went to Matthew’s apartment.

His home was small, one room, neat.

A room, a kitchen, a laundry room, a bathroom.

During the search, the investigators acted methodically.

There was nothing suspicious in the closets.

Ordinary clothes, work overalls, sweatpants.

But the laundry room attracted the most attention.

In the laundry basket, in the pocket of an old pair of jeans, they found a small rectangular piece of paper.

It was a ticket from an automated car wash.

The date on it was June 16th, the day after Kate Levy disappeared.

Importantly, Matthew had never mentioned visiting the car wash before, and his initial testimony did not contain any details about his movements the next day.

The interview notes made by Detective Rodriguez state that he did not provide a specific explanation for his actions on the 16th.

The ticket was the first confirmation that he was hiding part of his itinerary.

After the search was completed, Matthew Harris was invited back to the police station.

The situation was different than during the first interview.

Then he looked depressed and bewildered by the tragedy.

Now he was reserved, tense, as if he realized that the circle was narrowing.

According to Anna Mendoza, who wrote in her official report, the moment she laid the photos of the rope from his trunk and the ticket from the car wash in front of him was a turning point.

Her words are reproduced from the document.

After the demonstration of the items, the suspect’s behavior changed dramatically.

He lost concentration, began to avoid eye contact, and his breathing became shallow.

Matthew was silent for a long time.

Then he began to explain the findings.

The rope, he said, was a leftover from an old tent that he had sold a year earlier.

The ticket was an accidental drive because the car was covered in dust, but both versions did not stand up to scrutiny.

First, the tent rope has a different composition and a different weave structure.

Comparing it to the crime scene sample, even at the level of visual examination, showed a complete match.

Secondly, the car wash is located halfway to the Cleveland Forest.

This meant that Matthew was returning from that area the morning after Kate disappeared.

He knew that the police were already working in the parking lot, which is probably why he didn’t dare to drive any closer.

But the most important thing was that he did not mention the car wash during the first interrogation.

This proved that he had deliberately concealed this fact, even though there was nothing criminal about washing the car.

The only thing it could have done was to destroy the traces.

When the investigators compared the time of the barcode from the car wash with the cellular data, it turned out that Matthew was in the area during the time period when Kate’s phone last recorded a weak connection.

The two activities, hers and his, were separated by less than half an hour.

This data did not provide an answer to what exactly happened, but it clearly emphasized that he was closer to the forest than he admitted.

Matthew’s behavior during the second interrogation became the centerpiece of that day.

According to Anna Mendoza, he spoke faster than usual, got lost in details, and sometimes contradicted himself.

He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t said anything about visiting the forest, why he kept silent about the car wash, why he remembered the rope only after it was found.

A chain of small, indirect but logically connected clues began to form a sinister picture.

The rope was a coincidence.

The car wash, a coverup, a phone signal, convergence of roots, inconsistencies, multiple.

The detectives acted cautiously.

None of the evidence was direct, but it was their connections that were strong.

The intersection of roads, things, and time.

In a memo, Anna Mendoza noted that at this stage of the case, it remained to find a key element that will confirm or completely destroy the suspicion.

There was only one link left.

The one that could connect all the fragments into a single picture.

The one that would explain why Matthew lied and what exactly he was doing in the woods that night.

After the discovery of the rope, the car wash ticket, and Matthew Harris’s inconsistent explanations, the investigation focused on what could definitively confirm or deny his involvement.

The detectives filed a court request for wiretaps.

The arguments were convincing, contradictory testimony, covert trips to the woods, and circumstantial evidence that matched too closely.

When the warrant came into effect, the analysts listened to several days of recordings.

Most of the conversations were mundane.

Work, car parts, short responses to friends.

But one of the conversations stood out.

It took place late at night when Matthew was talking to his cousin.

The report written by the interception technician states, “The interlocutor’s voices were tense.

Their intonations were muffled.” Matthew avoided answering his brother’s questions directly.

But at some point, he said a phrase that became decisive for the investigation.

She made me do it.

She ruined everything.

I did not know how else.

According to the official interpretation, this was not a direct confession, but the content and context in the eyes of the investigation became key evidence of intent and possible motive.

At the same time, a new witness emerged, an employee of a coffee shop in Elkon.

She contacted the police on her own after watching the news about the reopened investigation.

According to the woman, on the day of Kate’s disappearance, she saw Matthew at the coffee shop in the early afternoon.

He ordered two cappuccinos.

This was also recorded on the video from the camera, which was later seized by detectives.

Matthew looked like he was waiting for someone looking around the street, constantly looking at his phone.

This fact contradicted his previous version where he claimed that he had gone to his parents’ house immediately after work.

No one saw who the second drink was for, but the fact that he bought it proved it.

Matthew had not told the truth about his route or his intentions that day.

While the detectives were analyzing the new information, the team of officers received another warrant to search the garage of the Elcasian AutoPro service center where Matthew worked.

The first search was superficial.

The lockers were checked but not completely dismantled so as not to disrupt the workflow.

This time they went deeper.

In the far row behind the boxes of parts in Matthew’s individual locker under his crumpled work gloves, they found an old cell phone wrapped in an oil cloth.

It was turned off without a SIM card and the screen was broken in the upper corner.

Matthew’s fingerprints were found on the case.

When the experts got permission to recover the deleted data, the phone brought the answer to what the police had been trying to find for months.

The internal memory contained a series of photos taken on June 15th, the same day Kate went into the woods.

Kate was in the pictures.

She was standing against the backdrop of the path among the chaperel, smiling, looking at the camera.

She was alive, healthy, wearing the same t-shirt she was found months later under the roots of an old oak tree.

The photos did not contain any geoloccation, but the background was definitely recognizable, as confirmed by rangers who knew the area well.

South Fork Trail, a section half a mile from the viewpoint.

This is where Kate is believed to have met her killer.

This was the final link the detectives were missing, the report stated.

Photographs show that Harris was with the victim on the day she disappeared.

This completely contradicts all of his previous statements and indicates a deliberate deception of the investigation.

After that, events developed rapidly.

Matthew was arrested.

During interrogations, he remained silent or repeated phrases about an accident without giving any logical explanation.

His lawyer tried to explain the photos by saying that they met by chance, but in combination with other evidence, this version did not stand up to criticism.

The prosecutor’s office filed an indictment charging him with first-degree murder.

The court agreed with the prosecution’s arguments, recognizing that the indirect but numerous evidence links formed a complete picture of premeditation.

Matthew Harris was sentenced to life without parole.

Kate Levy’s case was closed.

But the key question, the one that haunted both detectives and relatives, remained unanswered.

What exactly happened on the trail that day? What did Kate say or what did she do or did he do that led to her death? The phrase from the wiretap was the only one that hinted at a motive.

She ruined everything.

But what exactly remained buried with his silence behind the prison walls?