In February of 2017, when after weeks of frost, Montana warmed sharply and the snow began to melt in patches, two school children from Whitefish decided to take a walk along a forest road near Beaver lake.

In one of the clearings, they saw something strange.

A giant twisted snowman standing in the middle of an empty space.

As if waiting for the sun to finally destroy it.

Skewed sideways with dirty layers of snow, it looked not festive, but threatening.

The teenagers decided to come closer.

As soon as they saw what was sticking out of the half-melted side of the figure, one of them screamed.

A human hand was peeking out from under the snow, pale and frozen, with a silver ring on its finger.

This was the beginning of an investigation that brought back to the town of Whitefish teacher Ellen Sanford, who had disappeared 2 months earlier and revealed one of the darkest secrets of the winter forests of Flathead.

On December 12th, early in the morning, the town of Whitefish woke up to a layer of fresh snow.

The night frost had made the air crystal clear, and the trees were covered with shiny frost that resembled glass.

It was on a day like this that 24year-old Ellen Sanford decided to go on one of her favorite winter walks.

For her, it was not an escape, but a normal part of her life.

The part where she could finally take a break from the noise of the school corridor and feel the silence of the forest.

According to surveillance footage, she left her home on the outskirts of Whitefish at in the morning.

She was wearing a light thermal jacket, gray ski pants, and high red boots.

On her shoulders was a black hiking backpack with snowshoes attached to the top.

It took her about 20 minutes to get to the Nordic Brew coffee shop, according to the city’s video monitoring system, which recorded her on the sidewalks of Central Avenue.

The coffee shop employee recalled that Ellen ordered a large latte and a croissant and looked normally smiling as she said during the interview.

She was not in a hurry and looked out the window several times as if she was assessing the weather.

Not a single detail that could indicate anxiety or danger.

According to the barista, she said a short phrase about a great day for a hike, but the employee could not reproduce the exact words.

8 hours and 45 minutes.

A camera near the exit of the coffee shop showed Ellen putting on gloves, adjusting her backpack, and heading to the bus stop.

The driver of the route, a man named Frank Calder, said during questioning that she boarded the bus at the Central Avenue stop at approximately 15 minutes.

He remembered her because she greeted him as she stood by the validator and politely asked him to stop at the turnoff to the trail where no one usually gets off.

The bus route was to ski resorts, so the bus was half empty.

According to the driver, Ellen was standing by the window staring at the sun’s glare on the snow drifts.

He did not notice anything strange or suspicious.

At 40 minutes, the bus pulled over to the side of the road, a place that was not officially listed as a bus stop.

Ellen said, “Thank you.” Got off, adjusted the straps of her backpack, and waved twice at the driver.

That was the last time she was seen alive.

Then the darkness begins.

According to the passengers, no one else was getting off in the area except Ellen.

There were no other cars or pedestrians on the side of the road.

The Sweet Creek Trail began a few dozen yards from the landing site, a narrow strip that went deep into the snowy forest.

By in the morning, Ellen’s cell phone signal was still registered by the network.

According to the billing data, the last activity was recorded about an hour after she got off the bus.

Then the phone went silent.

Experts assume that the battery could have been discharged due to the severe cold, but they do not rule out mechanical damage.

When Ellen didn’t show up at home at the appointed time and didn’t call her parents as she always did after hiking, the family immediately became worried.

On the morning of December 13th, when she did not show up for school, the administration called the police.

Given the lack of their own transportation and the preliminary information about the route, the search team was sent to the forest area near the Sweet Creek Trail.

Volunteers from the North Valley Search Unit organization were the first to arrive.

They started combing the trail from the beginning, moving in narrow chains.

The weather in the morning was stable, minus 10, light wind, and light snow.

But by the afternoon, the sky was overcast and a severe blizzard began to approach.

According to one of the volunteers, Rick Donovan, the snow was falling like a wall.

Everything was mixed into a white patch that was impossible to navigate.

By the evening, the new layer of snow was almost 2 feet thick, and even the tracks of the dogs that were brought in to search for her disappeared within minutes.

Since the girl had gotten off the bus on an unofficial side of the road, there were no accurate markers to help us understand where she had turned.

The trail was snowed in that day, and in the narrow coniferous corridors, the snow was held in thick layers that hid anything that might indicate her movement.

For 3 days, the rescuers combed the area from the beginning of the route to the first elevation changes.

They used thermal imagers to check areas over a yard deep.

All efforts were in vain.

Not a single thread, not a single discarded item, not a single fresh print.

The white noise of the blizzard seemed to have erased every possible clue.

On December 15th, the trail was officially closed to hikers due to the high level of danger.

Flathead County detectives began interviewing locals and fishermen who sometimes used the trail, but no one saw Ellen or any suspicious persons that day.

The forest simply swallowed her up.

Two weeks later, when the temperature dropped even lower and the area of the forest became dangerous, even for professional rescuers, the active search was stopped.

The case was temporarily reclassified as a missing person.

The official police report stated that weather conditions and the absence of traces make further search impossible until the situation improves.

All that remained was the silence of the winter forest where every sound seemed muffled by a layer of snow.

And in the depths of the trees was an answer that no one had imagined at the time.

After 2 months of dead winter, Montana finally experienced an atypical warming for this region.

According to the local weather station, the temperature remained above freezing for several days, causing the snow cover to melt in uneven patches, exposing dry grass, roots, and dark frozen ground.

This abrupt change in weather led to one of the most eerie scenes ever seen in Flathead County.

Around noon, a group of local teenagers, four boys from Whitefish, went for a walk along a trail along the shore of frozen Beaver Lake.

At this time of year, the lake was usually a place for ice skating and winter walks, but the old tourist picnic areas located in the woods on the western side had long been neglected and abandoned.

That’s where the boys ended up, walking at random through the thawed snow.

According to one of them, who later told the police officers, a strange white mountain between the trees first caught their attention.

When they got closer, it became obvious that it was not just a snow drift.

A giant snowman stood in the clearing, completely out of proportion, almost human-sized and broader in the shoulders than any usual winter joke.

Its shape had been mangled by melting.

The top was bent forward, the sides sagged, and the surface was smeared with earth and dry pine needles.

In old reports, the rescuers later noted that the snowman looked like someone had definitely spent a lot of time creating it.

The layers were tightly packed, compacted several times, and even the traces of large hands at the bottom were still visible despite the thaw.

At first, the boys stopped at a short distance, joking that the snowman looked scary, but there was nothing to indicate the real horror inside.

One of them came closer and noticed something peeking out of the layer of dirty snow on the right side, a thin, light strip that looked like a branch.

He took it to be a piece of wood or roots that had gotten caught in the snow while he was modeling.

When he sat down to take a closer look, he said it looked like someone had just stuck a stick in there.

When he touched the protruding object, a piece of melted snow collapsed.

The teenager jumped away and the snow crust fell to the ground, revealing what was hidden inside.

A human hand fell out of the half softened mass, pale, half blue from the frost with a thin silver ring on the ring finger.

The boy started screaming.

One fell into the snow.

The other ran away, but later returned to call his mother from his cell phone.

She immediately called the rescue services.

According to protocol, the first Flathead County police crew arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the call.

Officers immediately restricted access to the lawn, set up tape, and waited for forensics.

The snow structure was captured on photos and video before dismantling.

Reports indicate that due to the warm day, the snow crumbled almost effortlessly.

The upper layers were easily separated, freeing up space inside.

The picture inside was horrifying.

In the center of the snowman lay a human body tightly pressed by layers of snow.

It was found that it was folded into a fetal position with its knees pulled up to its chest and its arms pressed to its body.

According to preliminary estimates by forensic experts, the snow mass was specially compacted around the body, creating a kind of capsule.

The temperature of winter days kept this capsule solid for weeks, hiding the body inside.

Professional rescuers worked to remove the body without damaging important traces.

Each layer of snow was weighed and separately photographed as even in the snow, hair, fiber particles, or traces of biological material could be preserved.

According to the report, fragments of fabric found near the body indicated that some of the girl’s clothes could have been removed before she was buried in the snow.

The identification took place the same evening.

A forensic expert from the Callispel Center confirmed that the person found was Ellen Sanford.

The identification was based on dental data and a unique ring that her parents had given her for her 20th birthday, which they had reported to the police during the first interview.

What was particularly striking was that the location of the discovery was just a few miles from the point where she was last seen alive.

The county rescue hanger confirmed that the area had not been checked during the December search due to difficult terrain.

Elevation, tree debris, and fog created a situation where snow quickly covered any possible tracks.

In addition, the December blizzard, according to meteorologists, could have covered the area with a thick layer of snow within a few hours.

The police described the clearing in detail that day.

There were layers of wind dust and dry leaves on the old picnic tables.

The area looked as if no one had been there for years.

In the center stood a snowy structure that could hardly be called random.

The height of the structure exceeded the height of an average person, and the density of the layers hinted at a long and deliberate work on it.

Photographic reports show that the surface of the snowman was covered with branches and debris which probably stuck to it during the molding process.

This contradicted the idea of natural snow accumulation or falling mass from the trees.

Volunteers who helped comb the area after the body was found recalled an eerie feeling as if the clearing had long been chosen for something secret.

One of the search participants said in his testimony, “It felt like the snowman had been there for more than a day or two, it was as if someone had arranged this place for something.

” This opinion was later confirmed by the investigators who found that the snow had been compacted in a period of severe frost when the snow easily took shape and held firm.

While forensic scientists continued to investigate the site, detectives began interviewing local residents, owners of cottages near the lake, and fishermen who sometimes came to the reservoir in winter.

No one saw anything that could hint at the presence of a stranger or suspicious activity on the lawn.

And more importantly, no one had seen Ellen herself in the area after she got off the bus.

The only thing that remained indisputable was that the body had been inside the snowman for a long time.

In fact, since the moment of her disappearance.

Now, the detectives faced the most difficult task to understand who and why created this eerie winter grave and how the victim ended up in a place where, according to all logical assumptions, she could not have been there by accident.

Ellen Sanford’s body was brought to the morg late in the evening of February 18th.

The snow that was still clinging to her hair and clothes melted under the heat of the lamps, revealing the true picture.

The medical examiner, Dr.

Jordan Maddox, began the autopsy the next morning at in the presence of a forensic scientist and an assistant who recorded all observations and protocols.

The general condition of the body indicated that the death was caused by hypothermia.

However, the expert emphasized that the process was long.

The lungs showed characteristic signs of slow hypoxia, which meant that the victim had retained consciousness, at least partially, for some time after being immersed in the cold.

The frostbite on her fingers and toes was pronounced, but not permanent.

Investigators concluded that Ellen was still alive at the time of the tying.

The skin of her wrists and ankles clearly showed strangulation marks.

They did not have the sharp edges typical of rope or plastic ties.

Instead, the marks were wide, uneven, and had a slight pile that left microscopic particles on the body.

Laboratory analysis conducted on the same day revealed acrylic and wool fibers in the footprints.

The conclusion was unequivocal.

The limbs were bound with a soft material similar to winter scarves or woolen belts.

This could indicate a deliberate attempt not to inflict pain but to restrict movement.

At the same time, the expert noted that there were no signs of a struggle.

There were no scratches or abrasions on the hands and the nails remained intact.

There were no signs of violent blows, cuts, or internal injuries.

The report states, “The treatment of the body before death did not have the character of a brutal physical attack.

Instead, there were a number of signs of deliberate positioning and changes in the victim’s appearance.

This was the key point during the examination.

When a layer of snow was removed from Ellen, it turned out that she was not wearing her own ski jacket.

The jacket was found folded nearby, neatly, as if it had been laundered.

Instead, she was wearing a bright red knitted sweater with white reindeer and large patterns stylized as a children’s Christmas outfit.

It was much smaller in size than an adult woman would need.

The sleeves barely covered her forearms and the bottom of the sweater was pulled up to her chest, stretched unnaturally tight.

The pathologist’s report states that the sweater was put on after the first signs of freezing appeared on the body.

This was established by the absence of skin reactions under the pile of fabric.

In other words, Ellen was no longer able to move or resist on her own at that point.

But the most eerie thing was her face.

Under the layer of melted snow, bright red cheeks were found as if painted with children’s colors or the cheapest supermarket cosmetics.

The lips were also painted with an uneven layer of pink lipstick.

According to the laboratory, her skin contained residues of color pigments typical of low-quality decorative cosmetics, the kind usually sold in holiday kits for children.

The experts assumed that the makeup had been applied before the freezing.

There were light traces of fingerprints on the cheeks and bridge of the nose, as if someone had smeared blush on the face with slow movements.

It was not a chaotic gesture, but a deliberate repeated process.

In the pocket of the sweater pressed against the body, they found one object, a classic mintstick wrapped in a festive wrapper.

The production date on the label indicated early December.

The report officially states the candy may have been placed in the pocket after death or shortly before.

No traces of saliva were found on the packaging.

The forensic experts who examined the body in the morg unanimously agreed that the perpetrator’s behavior was ritualistic and playful.

He did not just deprive the victim of the ability to move.

He changed her appearance, clothes, and appearance, creating an image that resembled a doll rather than a person.

The state of her hair attracted special attention.

It was gathered in two sloppy ponytails fixed with children’s rubber bands with plastic stars.

These rubber bands did not belong to Ellen.

They were not among her personal belongings, and neither friends nor colleagues had ever seen such accessories on her hair before.

This was confirmed by the testimony.

The soles of her boots had been cleared of snow as thoroughly as if someone had done it by hand.

on the laces of her shoes found microparticles of dirt mixed with pine needles, but without the characteristic signs of long-term movement.

This meant that after she was tied up, she hardly moved on her own.

The forensic expert specifically described the position in which Ellen was found.

Her body was twisted tightly and placed in a mass of snow as if someone was trying to fold a human figure into a compact shape.

Such poses are sometimes recorded in cases where criminals hide bodies in narrow spaces.

But here the situation was different.

The space was sufficient, but the body was still compressed as much as possible.

The documents state, “An attempt to make the figure look like a toy or a decorative element is likely.” The most important point of the autopsy was to determine the time of death.

Based on internal indicators and the condition of the tissues, the experts concluded that Ellen died the night after her disappearance, that is within the first day.

However, the key fact that caused the investigators the most concern was another.

The conditions in which she was found before her death showed that she was not left to fend for herself in the middle of the forest.

She was held for some time and kept alive.

All the details, the sweater, makeup, hairstyle, body posture, mint cane formed a single image.

The girl was being transformed.

She was not physically abused, tortured using traditional methods or tried to hide the traces of violence.

The killer was doing something else.

He was playing.

And it was this pattern of behavior that became the first real hint of his psychological profile.

March days in Montana are always unstable.

Morning frost gives way to a thaw and sleep turns roadsides into gray mush.

It was in this weather that Detective Marcel Rosario first presented the team with a preliminary psychological profile of the man who turned Ellen Sanford’s disappearance into one of the most bizarre cases in the county’s history.

Rosario had been working in the department for almost a decade and had encountered strange cases before, but this time he lacked a logical motive.

All the details they received after the autopsy did not fit the standard picture of a violent crime.

Following procedure, he called in a consultant psychologist, Dr.

Leela Kendrick, a behavioral forensic specialist who worked with the county on difficult cases.

At one of the meetings, she read out her first conclusions, not as a guess, but as a formed professional analysis based on what was known about the body, posture, clothing, and the unusual ritual under the snow cover.

According to her profile, the killer was a man, a local resident, or a person who had been in the vicinity of Whitefish for a long time.

He knew the forest well, navigated its complex terrain, and knew how to move in such a way as not to leave clear footprints in the snow.

Importantly, no weapon or aggressive behavior was found, meaning that the motive was not sexual, selfish, or dominantly sadistic.

The behavior resembled something else, a regression, that is the return of the adult psyche to childhood reactions.

The protocol contains the wording probable mental disorder of development or trauma of childhood which fixes the person in the mode of slowed adulthood.

Probably the object of his attention is not the victim but what the victim symbolizes.

According to Kendrick, in such cases, the victim is not perceived as an adult.

She becomes a toy, an object of play, a part of a fictional world that replaces the social interaction from which the perpetrator is isolated.

It was the doll’s makeup, the children’s sweater, and the mint straw in his pocket that became the key markers of his thinking.

The psychologist drew attention to another detail.

This choice of attributes is not spontaneous.

It is almost always associated with memories and traumas experienced at a particular age.

And since all the items were winter themed, the most likely source of trauma was Christmas itself or the period around it.

Children are especially sensitive to the events of this holiday and psychological disorders are often fixed on the symbols of the winter cycle.

Kendrick noted, “The perpetrators actions are not hateful.

They demonstrate a desire to maintain control over an object he idealizes.

He is not killing out of anger.

He is freezing the moment in order to continue the game.

This conclusion dramatically changed the direction of the investigation.

Instead of looking for a classic maniac, Rosario’s team began to consider the possibility of a person who lives in isolation and is not allowed to exist in a normal rhythm by the social structure.

The killer could be friendly or even invisible to society, but have a deep inner breakdown.

The first steps were to work through the databases of medical institutions, the histories of patients diagnosed with mental or behavioral disorders, and the registers of those who lived on the outskirts of the forest without official documents.

Experience showed that in remote areas of Montana, there were many hermits, people who lived on old farms, in hunting cabins, or abandoned trailers, refusing any contact with society.

The police began to go around the farms north of Whitefish as well as the area between the settlements of Whitefish and Only.

These were large snow-covered areas with few roads that turned into almost impassible strips of ice in winter.

The officers took with them a photo of Ellen and a sketch prepared by a psychologist, not a portrait, but a set of behavioral traits that neighbors or local farm workers might recognize.

The first result was the testimony of an elderly couple who lived on the outskirts of Oli.

They recalled a man who sometimes walked past their property in the woods.

According to them, he never came close, just watched from afar and then disappeared between the trees.

He was not aggressive, not loud, but rather scared, and always dressed out of season in an old winter jacket, even in the summer months.

The couple also noticed that the man had a strange way of holding his hands as if they were weighed down by invisible objects, as is sometimes the case with children with developmental disabilities.

Another farmer on the whitefish side of the creek said that he had seen an unknown man several times across the creek building strange structures out of branches, something like hut frames or large figures that looked like Bigfoot but without snow.

He described him as a man who behaved as if he was replaying a game that had been forgotten by everyone but himself.

The police recorded another disturbing element.

Several local hunters mentioned that they had seen snowy structures in the depths of the forest much earlier, long before Ellen’s disappearance.

Not all provided exact dates, but one of them said he had come across a giant distorted snowman late last winter, but hadn’t given it much thought.

writing it off as a prank by local teenagers.

Detective Rosario entered all the evidence into a single map, overlaying the roots the unknown man could have taken.

The circle narrowed to the area between Beaver Lake and an old forest road that had long since stopped being cleared.

There were abandoned trailers, an old forers hut, and several abandoned sheds.

Places where something or someone could easily live or hide.

someone who no one took into account in the daily life of the county.

It was becoming clear to the police that they were not dealing with a random killer, but with someone who lived in a parallel reality in his own childhood winter world, separated from society.

And this reality was stable enough to go on for many years unnoticed.

In April, when Montana’s snow was still clinging to the northern slopes in patchy patches, Detective Marcel Rosario spent two weeks in the newspapers archives department looking through old issues from a time before the internet reached every corner of the state.

He was looking for any mention that could explain the behavior of a man who could turn a grown woman into a doll and bury her in the snow.

The psychological portrait suggested that the roots were almost always in childhood.

An old metal catalog with yellowed folders contained everything from highway accidents to news from school fairs.

And it was there in the shelf labeled crime chronicles of the ’90s that Rosario came across a thin clipping from the December issue of 1998.

The article was written briefly without emotion as small local newsrooms usually did.

The headline sounded unremarkable.

Boy with frostbite hospitalized after incident with farm family.

The article described that on Christmas Eve, the Wayne family, farmers at the foot of Beaora became involved in a child abuse case.

A 10-year-old boy was locked in an unheated basement for breaking a glass Christmas tree ornament.

That evening, the temperature dropped to a critical level.

According to a social worker quoted in the article, the child was found in a state of severe hypothermia and partial loss of sensation in his fingers.

The boy’s name was Tobias Wayne.

This name had previously appeared in the lists of possible forest hermits, but it did not attract much attention at the time.

Many inhabitants of mountainous areas lived in seclusion, and the lack of contact was not considered unusual.

But after reading the archival article, the picture changed.

The clipping indicated that his parents had been deprived of their rights and Tobias had been transferred to state custody.

Rosario learned from the documents in the Department of Social Services archive that the boy had changed foster homes several times.

The report for 2004 reported numerous episodes of regressive behavior, unwillingness to talk to adults, and constant holding of some homemade figures made of branches.

The notes of the caregivers included, often repeats winter rituals, afraid of dark rooms, incapable of everyday social contact, perceives punishment as part of his holiday.

The last phrase struck Rosario the most.

It echoed the profile that Dr.

Kendrick had created, a trauma tied to the winter holidays.

Then the information was interrupted.

At the age of 18, Tobias left the foster care system and disappeared from the lists with no fixed address or job.

The only trace is a brief record that he inherited his grandfather’s old woods cabin located about 5 miles from Whitefish on what was turning into private but long abandoned land.

The site had no electricity and was accessible only by narrow seasonal trails.

The search for further references led the detective to several oral testimonies.

The first was the owner of a small farm on the way to who admitted that he sometimes saw a young man approaching the backyard and asking for food.

According to the farmer, the man never looked up, spoke in a sporadic, almost whispered manner, and always kept his hands gloved, even in the heat of the summer.

The farmer described him as childlike, quiet, and completely harmless.

Another family recalled that about five or 6 years ago, a young man came to their house several times, offering to bring firewood or fix the fence in exchange for warm soup or an old sweater.

The hostess described him as a child in an adult’s body, adding that he only smiled when he saw winter decorations, even though it was the middle of summer.

Another witness, a hunter who often hiked in the mountains in winter, said he had noticed strange structures made of branches in the forest that looked like play shelters.

According to him, they did not look like the work of teenagers.

Some structures were too smooth, as if assembled with great care.

On one of these houses, he found a frozen minttock glued to the bark of a tree.

At the time, he thought someone was just playing a joke, but now he realized that it could be an important sign.

All these fragments scattered over the years, and people’s memories formed a single line.

Tobias Wayne was alive, living in the woods and avoiding all contact.

His adult life was a reflection of his childhood trauma, isolation, attachment to winter symbols, repetitive rituals, and a tendency to build figures and shelters.

A check of government databases confirmed that Wayne had no bank accounts, medical records for the past 10 years, a phone number, or any official residence.

His only document was an old birth certificate.

He had never been listed in the employment registry.

The next step was to interview several farmers who bordered the plots with his grandfather’s old hut.

One of them recalled that he sometimes saw smoke in that direction in winter, but thought it was hunters or tourists who had gone too far.

And one more detail was important.

None of the locals could remember Tobias ever coming close.

He always kept his distance.

He watched from behind the trees.

He pretended not to exist.

Rosario compiled all the evidence into a report that became the first documented proof that what they were looking at was not a sudden crime or an accident.

It was the result of many years of drifting outside of society, stuck in his own winter childhood traumatic reality.

And now the detectives realized that in order to find answers, they would have to go deep into the forest to the place where Tobias Wayne had been hiding for years and where his childhood fears had taken on forms that could kill.

The cabin, which according to the documents was supposed to belong to Tobias Wayne’s grandfather, could not be reached by regular transportation.

The old forest road leading to Stillwater Lake was virtually lost.

Parts of the road were overgrown with dense shrubs, while others turned into muddy areas where the mud hid old roots and tree debris.

According to the Forest Service, the road had not been cleared for at least 10 years and was officially considered impassible.

The SWAT team moved slowly, meter by meter, clearing the branch and marking the path with GPS tags.

Detective Marcel Rosario walked at the tail of the convoy, taking photos of every element that seemed suspicious.

When the group reached a small clearing, the hut became visible through the trees.

It stood off to the side as if pressed against the hillside.

The building was old with cracked logs covered with moss.

However, the main detail was not the walls.

Spring rained outside and around the hut was a Christmas reality frozen in time.

The entire perimeter of the house was covered with garlands.

Some of them, once electric, had not been lit for a long time.

The wires were chewed up and the bulbs were partially knocked out.

Others were homemade, made of colored scraps of fabric, thread, and pieces of foil.

Dozens of toys were hanging from the trees around the area.

processed bones of small animals, torn tin lids, sticks wrapped in colored ribbon.

Some of them were covered with dirt and frost, while others looked quite fresh, as if they had been added recently.

Experts later noted that some of the structures resembled distorted copies of Christmas decorations.

Some of the operatives called the scene a Christmas cemetery, although this phrase was not officially included in the report.

The police moved cautiously.

It was obvious that this was not an ordinary apartment, but a place that had lost touch with reality.

The footprints in the ground were chaotic.

Small shoe marks, trampled areas near the windows, holes in the snow where someone had probably sat or stood for a long time.

Near the door, there were small toys made of stones and branches stacked in rows as if someone was having a party.

The door of the hut was unlocked.

The special forces opened it without resistance.

Inside, the smell of dampness, old wood, rotten paint, and dust immediately hit them.

The room was illuminated only by the rays of daylight that made their way through the narrow cracks between the boards.

From the first seconds, it became clear that this was not just a place to live.

It was a scene assembled from the wreckage of someone else’s life.

a frozen copy of a holiday that someone was trying to recreate with desperation and morbid obsession.

The walls were densely covered with clippings from old magazines.

Most of them were holiday photos, children near Christmas trees, families wearing sweaters with reindeer, advertising images of holiday gifts.

Some of the pictures were cut unevenly, torn in places, but still carefully glued.

Next to them were handdrawn drawings, primitive, childish, made with wax crayons.

The subjects were repeated.

Snowmen, Christmas trees, a little boy with large round cheeks drawn as if the author did not know how to work with proportions.

There were piles of Christmas paraphernalia on the floor.

Empty boxes of decorations, old garlands, broken toys, several pairs of children’s winter mittens that had long since lost their color.

In the corner was an empty tin with uneaten porridge.

All of this was mixed with hay, pieces of cloth, and zoo tools.

Evidence that Tobias Wayne, although living in his own world, had to survive somehow.

In the far corner of the room, we found something that caused the greatest tension among the audience.

A strange mannequin stood on an old chair.

It was assembled from pillows, branches, and long sticks wrapped in balls of thread.

The figure was about human height.

It was wearing a ski jacket, bright blue, clean, almost undamaged.

When the detectives cautiously moved closer and checked the label, there was no doubt it was Ellen Sanford’s jacket.

It was the same one she wore on the day she disappeared.

The officer who worked on the initial inspection of the scene confirmed this with photos provided by the family.

The mannequin was standing as if waiting for someone.

The stick arms were raised forward and slightly apart creating the illusion of a hug.

Around his neck over his jacket was a ribbon with a small toy star on it.

This detail was later used in psychological analysis as a marker of unrealized play.

On the table next to the mannequin was a book, a children’s collection of folktales with colorful illustrations.

Between the pages was a card with a photograph.

Detective Rosario picked it up with a glove.

It was Ellen’s driver’s license.

The report indicated that Tobias used it as a bookmark.

The book itself was open to a page with a story about a snow princess in which a character falls asleep in a winter forest and waits to be found and brought home.

There were several empty paint containers on the shelves.

Some of them had red or pink marks on them.

These shades matched the makeup found on Ellen’s face.

Laboratory analysis later confirmed that the pigment from the containers and the pigment on her skin matched completely.

The silence inside the hut was especially frightening.

Neither birds nor wind could be heard inside.

It was as if the whole forest was holding its breath.

On the window sills were neatly folded mint sticks, some in wrappers, others broken in half.

Traces of snow figures being made here were everywhere.

pieces of ice in a bucket, a wet rag, an open album of children’s drawings, where on the last page, someone had drawn a huge snowman with a small person inside.

They also found something else in the hut, an old photograph of a boy, 10 years old, thin, with two round cheeks.

On the back, a ballpoint pen wrote, “To Toby, Christmas, 97.” In the photo, he was standing by the Christmas tree looking at a new toy, and behind him, the open doorway to the basement was dark.

Investigators noted that the entire hut was actually a museum of frozen time.

Every object showed that for Tobias, Christmas never ended.

He collected his world, reconstructed it, and recreated scenes from his memories.

And now they had a new element, a grown woman who he was trying to integrate into his childhood reality, just as he had integrated magazine clippings for his own drawings.

Tobias himself was not in the hut.

But every inch of space screamed that he had been here just yesterday.

As the police examined the rooms one by one, they felt that somewhere very close to them was the answer that had led them to this eerie house of eternal Christmas.

After inspecting the hut, the special forces dispersed around the area, combing every ravine, every bush, and every patch of damp soil.

According to the group’s report, the search was complicated by the fact that due to the spring thaw, the ground had turned into a continuous, muddy mess, and the remnants of snow were kept only in the shade of dense fur trees.

It was there behind the house near a thin stream that had not yet completely frozen over that one of the soldiers noticed a short hunched figure.

The man was sitting on the ground almost touching the trunk of a tree with his shoulder.

He had a pile of dirty wet snow in front of him which he was trying to mold into a ball.

His movements were slow and uncertain.

He took the snow in his hands, squeezed it, but it immediately fell apart.

According to the report, he was constantly sniffling and repeating short phrases as if he was talking to himself.

The special forces stopped a few yards away.

The commander gave the signal and the group began to surround him.

Tobias Wayne did not even look up.

He sat leaning forward, tamping snow into something that only vaguely resembled the bottom of a snowman’s ball.

Next to him were two branches laid crosswise, and a little further away was an old scarf with a child’s pattern of stars.

All this was part of what he was trying to revive.

When one of the officers said his name, Tobias finally slowly raised his face.

The report states, “Eyes reened, dilated.

Behavior disoriented, regressive, does not realize the threat.

He did not try to run away or hide.

It seemed that he did not even realize who was standing in front of him.

For a few seconds, he just stared as if trying to recognize the people in uniform.

Then his hands reached for the snow again.

According to Detective Rosario, who approached him after the SWAT team had secured the area, Tobias behaved like a child caught in a bad game.

He was shaking either from cold or emotion and kept repeating, “I have to mold it.

I have to mold it until it melts.” When asked about Ellen, he did not respond at first.

Then, according to the officer, it was as if something switched in his mind.

Tobias looked at the wet snow dripping through his fingers and spoke in fragments with trembling lips, phrases that were recorded verbatim from the detective’s words.

The snow princess fell asleep.

I made her a castle, white, to keep her warm.

The sun spoiled it.

She melted.

I didn’t want her to melt.

His voice was described as colorless, as if he were repeating words he had learned long ago that had lost their logical meaning for him, but retained their emotional attachment.

He spoke of Ellen as if she were a character in a fairy tale or part of a winter ritual.

he could not complete.

The special forces recorded that he did not show aggression during his arrest.

Unlike many suspects, he did not try to grab the officers, did not shout, did not resist.

He only tried to touch the snow on the ground a few times as if he wanted to continue unfinished business.

The official record states, “The behavior of the detainee is passive, emotionally unstable with pronounced signs of a regressive state.” Tobias was brought to his feet.

He stood motionless, allowing the handcuffs to be fastened and all the while sobbing quietly.

One of the officers noted in his report that he did not look like a person who understood the crime.

Rather, he looked like a child who had lost a toy.

His clothes had traces of dried paint on them, the same as the ones found in the hut.

On his sleeves were remnants of snow and pine needles.

On his collar was a piece of red thread identical to the one used to create homemade toys on trees.

When he was placed on a fallen tree and given a blanket, he continued to talk to himself.

The observation report describes that he repeated the phrase, “She was supposed to stay with me.” sometimes adding, “I wanted her to be happy.” Like in a fairy tale.

For investigators, this was the key to understanding the motive.

All of Tobias’s actions were not motivated by aggression, but by a distorted desire to save.

In his mind, the snowman was not a grave, but a protection, a continuation of a childhood game that he tried to play over and over again, as if freezing time.

After the detention, the area behind the hut was thoroughly examined.

They found several crumpled snow figures, the remains of unsuccessful modeling attempts falling apart from heat or lack of humidity.

There were three sticks near the stream, which were probably used to assemble the hands of the snow princess.

Kneeling marks were found in the wet sand, evidence that he had been kneeling for a long time working on his castle.

The investigators concluded Tobias was not trying to escape.

He was convinced that he was doing the right thing, returning Ellen to his imaginary world fixed in his childhood.

In this world where Christmas lasts forever, people don’t leave, disappear, or betray.

And that’s why he didn’t realize that he was actually taking the life of a person he perceived as a perfect doll.

Everything that happened by the stream in the shadows of the trees confirmed his psychological profile.

He really wasn’t a hunter or a maniac.

He was a grown man who never grew up stuck in the winter nightmare of his childhood where the world looks like a fairy tale, but a fairy tale that hurts.

The trial in Tobias Wayne’s case did not last long, but the atmosphere in the courtroom was such that it was remembered for months to come.

Ellen’s family sat in the front row.

Her mother clutched a handkerchief and her father, according to eyewitnesses, kept looking at the floor as if to avoid facing anything that might remind him of the last hours of their daughter’s life.

The press was almost not allowed.

The case had a sensitive psychological aspect, and the prosecutor’s office and the judge refused to turn it into a media spectacle.

Tobias sat in the dock.

He was being held down by two convoy officers, but he did not try to resist.

According to a journalist who was authorized to attend the first hearing, Wayne looked completely detached, and didn’t understand what was happening.

He blinked frequently, breathed rapidly, and when someone in the room accidentally bumped a chair or made a sudden movement, he flinched like a frightened child.

The psychiatric examination lasted for many weeks.

A commission of three independent expert doctors who had access to his entire life history submitted a large-scale report to the court.

It stated that Tobias Wayne suffered from a severe mental disorder, schizophrenia, with deep regression.

His emotional and cognitive development corresponded to that of an 8-year-old child.

He did not understand the irreversibility of death.

He did not perceive his actions as a crime.

He did not realize the consequences.

According to the experts, Tobias’s behavior was characterized by a distorted idealized ritual that had been formed over the years, starting with the unfortunate Christmas he spent in the basement.

It was this experience, according to the doctors, that became the basis for all his subsequent pathological behavior.

A psychiatrist who conducted lengthy interviews with him wrote in his report, “His reality is separated from ours,” “In it, time does not move forward.

Everything is frozen in it.

” The district attorney stated that the case did not have the classic elements of a crime.

Tobias did not act with the intent to kill.

All the actions were part of a regressive pattern of behavior that reproduced a childhood pattern.

He was playing in a winter fairy tale in which he had trapped himself.

The testimony read in court did not contain emotional descriptions.

Everything was as documented as possible.

Excerpts from psychiatric observations were read out separately, including the moments when Tobias cried because the snow ruined the princess’s face or when he asked to take away the sun because it made her sad.

The defense lawyer filed a motion to declare him insane.

The prosecutor’s office did not object.

The only dispute was the place of Wayne’s further stay.

Experts unequivocally stated that a regular prison was unacceptable.

He would not be able to understand the regime, the rules, would not have the ability to adequately interact with other prisoners.

And most importantly, he did not pose a criminal threat in the classical sense.

The judge, a woman with 30 years of experience, read out the decision in a level tone, not allowing emotions to break into the proceedings.

The court ruling officially declared Tobias Wayne insane and sent him for involuntary treatment at the Montana State Psychiatric Hospital in Warm Springs.

The term is indefinite.

The right to review is only after a thorough conclusion of a commission of psychiatrists.

According to court officials who were present when the sentence was announced, Tobias only nodded as if he did not fully understand the meaning of what was said.

Ellen’s family left the courtroom quietly.

Her mother clutched a small box to her chest containing a mintstick she had found in her daughter’s sweater pocket.

It was the only item she asked to be returned as a symbol of the fact that one person’s illness had destroyed their family’s entire life.

A month after the trial was over, Ellen’s parents founded the Safe Paths Foundation.

The initiative was to fund the installation of individual beacons for solo hikers in areas of northern Montana.

According to local news reports, this program has already saved several hikers the following year when they got lost during winter crossings.

As for the locals, Beaver Lake has become a place they have begun to avoid.

Even in the warmer months when the grass covered the shores and the sun reflected in the water, they said that it was too quiet there, as if the air was colder.

Local fishermen told journalists that they sometimes saw the outline of a large white figure in the fog and immediately returned.

The phantom snowman became part of local legends, not because people believed in ghosts, but because a reminder of the terrible always gives rise to a form that seems almost alive.

And each such form, even in the heat, reminded us that sometimes evil is not intended.

Sometimes it is just a broken childhood that has not melted with the