In the fall of 2023, Ranger Marcus Jenkins was checking an old firereak trail in the northern part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park when he saw something strange at the top of a tall chestnut oak tree.

From a distance, it looked like a scarecrow or a dummy.

The silhouette of a person suspended from thick branches 20 feet above the ground.

The arms were spread out and tied to the side branches with a thick rope.

The legs dangled down and the head was bent forward like a hanged man.

Jenkins stopped and took out his binoculars.

What he saw made him immediately call for backup.

These were not rags or a mannequin.

These were bones, a human skeleton covered with faded scraps of fabric and held on the branches by a system of ropes and wire.

The skull was covered with something like a hood.

The bones of the arms were attached to the branches in such a way as to create a crucified posture, and the ribs were visible through the torn clothing.

For 33 years, these remains had hung from a tree 4 m from the nearest hiking trail.

For 33 years, they were blown by the wind, washed away by the rain, scorched by the summer sun, and covered by winter snow.

For 33 years, no one saw them because the tree stood in a remote part of the forest where almost no one went.

It was the body of 26-year-old Emily Carter from Chicago, who disappeared on October 7th, 1990 while hiking alone on the Ramsay Cascades Trail in the eastern part of the park.

Her case remained open for 33 years, and her parents died without ever knowing what had happened to their daughter.

Emily Carter arrived at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on October 3rd, 1990.

She was traveling alone in a rented Jeep Cherokee, which she left in the parking lot near the visitor center in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

It was her first trip to the Appalachians.

Prior to that, she had worked for three years as a manager at an advertising agency in Chicago and took a two-week vacation to clear her head and be alone with nature.

As she wrote in a letter to her friend Laura Simmons, Emily had experience hiking.

In college, she was part of a hiking club, went to the mountains of Colorado, and spent weekends in the forests of Wisconsin.

She knew the basic safety rules.

Always share your route plan.

bring enough water and stay on the trails.

But this time, something went wrong.

On October 4th and 5, Emily took two short walks on popular trails, Laurel Falls and Alam Cave.

She stayed at Elkmont Campground, signed the visitor log every evening, and talked to other hikers.

Campground manager Robert Hayes remembered her as a friendly, quiet woman who loved to photograph birds.

On October 6th, Emily met David Morrison, a 32-year-old wildlife photographer from Asheville, North Carolina, at the campground.

They struck up a conversation by the campfire.

Morrison talked about the bears he had photographed in the park and the best places to watch deer.

Emily showed him a map and asked for advice on which trail to choose for a long day hike.

Morrison suggested Ramsay Cascades, an 8-mile roundtrip trail leading to a 100 ft waterfall through old growth forest.

It was a moderately difficult route with an elevation gain of about 2,000 ft and a travel time of 5 to 6 hours.

He warned Emily that the days were short in October and that she would need to leave early to get back before dark.

On October 7th, at 7 in the morning, Emily left the campground.

Caretaker Hayes saw her load her backpack into the car.

She was wearing a blue windbreaker, black hiking pants, and a gray cap.

In her backpack were water, sandwiches, a raincoat, a flashlight, a map, and a Canon AE1 camera.

At a.m., she parked at the start of the Ramsay Cascades Trail in the Greenbryer area.

This was confirmed by a couple of tourists, James and Susan Collins from Atlanta, who saw her getting out of her car.

Susan remembered that Emily smiled at them and said, “It’s a beautiful morning for a hike.” Those were the last words anyone heard from her.

James Collins asked if she was hiking alone.

Emily replied that she was, but that it was an easy trail and she planned to be back by 300 p.m.

Collins invited her to join them, but Emily politely declined, saying she wanted to go at her own pace.

At that morning, Ranger Thomas Wilson drove past the Greenbryer parking lot and saw Emily’s car parked near the trail.

He didn’t pay much attention to it.

There were always five or six cars there on weekends.

At 100 p.m.

a couple of hikers, Michael and Jennifer Rogers from Nashville were returning from Ramsay Falls and encountered a man in his mid30s wearing a camouflage jacket and black cap on the trail.

He was walking quickly, almost running downhill, looking at his feet.

When the Rogerses greeted him, he nodded briefly without stopping.

Michael remembered that the man had a large olivecoled hiking backpack and a scratch or cut on his right hand that was bleeding.

Jennifer asked if he was okay.

The man muttered something like, “I’m fine.

I slipped and walked on by.” The Rogers’s continued their descent and thought no more about the encounter.

At in the afternoon, when Emily was supposed to return, her car was still in the parking lot.

At in the evening, when it started to get dark, it was still there.

At in the evening, parking lot attendant Kevin Bradley noticed that the Jeep Cherokee hadn’t moved.

He checked the interior.

It was empty.

He called the Ranger office and reported a possible problem.

Ranger Thomas Wilson arrived at the scene at p.m.

He walked around the parking lot, shown his flashlight at the trail head, and called Emily’s name several times.

There was no response.

Wilson contacted the dispatcher and requested the start of a search operation.

At in the evening, a group of four rangers set out along the Ramsay Cascades Trail with flashlights and radios.

They walked four miles to the waterfall, checked the surrounding area, shown their lights along the trail, and called out.

There were no signs of her.

At midnight, the search was suspended until morning.

At in the morning on October 8th, a full-scale search operation began.

23 park rangers, 15 volunteers from the local rescue service, two search dogs, and a helicopter participated.

The search area covered the Ramsay Cascades Trail and the surrounding forests within a two-mile radius.

By noon, the dogs had found a trail.

They led the group up the trail to a fork at an elevation of about 4,000 ft where an old abandoned fire road branched off from the main trail.

This road is not marked on tourist maps, but it is visible on the ground, an overgrown track once used by Forest Service trucks.

The dogs turned at this fork and traveled about 300 yard, then stopped.

The trail ended.

Dog handler Jason Reeves said this could mean that the man got into a car or was carried away.

But there were no cars on the fire road.

It had been blocked by gates and chains since 1987.

Rangers combed the surrounding forest, checking ravines, streams, and rocky outcrops.

Nothing.

By the evening of October 8th, the search area had expanded to five square miles.

A helicopter with a thermal imager was deployed, but the dense forest canopy prevented effective scanning of the ground.

On October 9th, Sevier County police contacted Emily’s employer in Chicago and her parents.

Robert and Susan Carter arrived in Gatlinburg on October 10th.

Her father told Detective Mark Holloway that his daughter was an experienced hiker and could not have simply gotten lost.

Her mother added that Emily had always been cautious and planned everything down to the smallest detail.

On October 11th, Detective Holloway interviewed everyone who had been in the park on October 7th.

James and Susan Collins confirmed that they had seen Emily in the parking lot that morning.

Michael and Jennifer Rogers told him about meeting a stranger in camouflage on the trail.

Holloway asked the Rogers to describe the man in more detail.

Michael recalled.

White, about 35 to 40 years old, thin, about 6 feet tall, dark hair under a cap, stubble on his face.

The cap was black without logos.

The jacket was camouflage, possibly military.

The backpack was large, hiking style, olive or dark green in color.

On his right hand was a fresh scratch or cut, blood flowing down to his wrist.

The detective organized a survey of all parking lot attendants in the Greenbryer area.

Kevin Bradley, who was on duty on October 7th, said he saw several cars but did not remember any camouflage jackets.

There were no video cameras in the parking lots.

On October 12th, the police checked the list of regular park visitors, licensed hunters, and local residents with a reputation for being recluses.

They found three men who fit the description.

Howard Mitchell, a 42-year-old Vietnam veteran who lived in a trailer 10 miles from the park.

Clarence Wade, a 37-year-old hunter who had been arrested several times for poaching, and Ray Dawson, a 39-year-old former ranger who had been fired for violating protocol.

All three were questioned.

Each had an alibi.

Mitchell had a doctor’s appointment in Knoxville on October 7th from a.m.

to noon.

Wade worked at a car wash in Seville from a.m.

to p.m.

Dawson visited his mother in Mville as confirmed by neighbors.

On October 13th, the search resumed with renewed vigor.

Drones were used.

The Ramsay Cascades Trail was searched five times.

Side ravines were combed.

Caves and rock shelters were checked.

More volunteers joined the search.

About 80 people formed chains and methodically searched sections of the forest.

By October 15th, no traces of Emily had been found.

Rangers found an old hiking boot, a sock, and a plastic bottle, but nothing that belonged to the missing woman.

On October 16th, the search operation was officially concluded.

Ranger Chief Daniel Carter said at a press conference that the park service had done everything possible.

The search area covered more than 15 square miles.

All trails, streams, waterfalls, and dangerous areas had been checked.

The probability of finding Emily Carter alive was practically zero.

Her parents refused to believe it.

Robert Carter hired a private search team from Asheville.

On October 22nd, six people with dogs retraced the route.

They found another clue.

On an abandoned fire road where the trail ended, there was a truck tire print in the ground.

Private investigators photographed it and handed it over to the police.

Trace expert William Harris determined that it was a tire track from a BFG Goodrich Allterrain TA, a popular model for pickup trucks and SUVs.

Thousands of vehicles in the region used these tires.

The print was partially blurred by rain, but the expert estimated that it was 3 to 5 days old, meaning it could have been made around the day of Emily’s disappearance.

Detective Holloway expanded the investigation.

He checked the owners of pickup trucks and SUVs within a 50-mi radius.

The list was huge, more than 2,000 people.

He narrowed the search to men between the ages of 25 and 50 with criminal records or suspicious behavior.

That left 123 people.

By the end of November, 57 of them had been checked.

Nothing suspicious.

The rest had either moved away or refused to be interviewed without a lawyer.

On December 1st, 1990, the case of Emily Carter’s disappearance was officially transferred to the cold case file.

It remained open, but the police took no active measures.

Detective Holloway told the parents that he would continue to follow up on any leads that might arise.

Robert and Susan Carter returned to Chicago in mid December.

They left their contact information at all police stations in Tennessee and North Carolina, at the park ranger office, and at hospitals and shelters.

Every month, Robert called Detective Holloway and asked for news.

Each time, the answer was the same.

Nothing new.

In April 1991, a local hunter found an old backpack in the woods 12 mi from the park.

Inside were rainamaged clothes, an empty canteen, and scraps of a map.

The rangers checked the items.

It was not Emily’s backpack.

In July of that year, a hiker stumbled upon a skeleton in a ravine near the Alam Cave Trail.

The alarm was raised and the police were called.

It turned out to be Deerbones.

In October 1991, exactly one year after Emily’s disappearance, her parents returned to the park.

They held a symbolic memorial service at Ramsay Cascades.

They put up a cross with a plaque that read, “In memory of Emily Carter, forever in our hearts.

” The cross stood for 3 months, then was swept away by a winter storm.

5 years passed, 10 20.

Emily’s case became one of hundreds of unsolved disappearances in national parks.

Her name was added to the list of missing persons on the National Park Service website.

Sometimes true crime enthusiasts discussed her case on forums, constructing theories.

Accident, encounter with a bear, kidnapping, voluntary disappearance.

Robert Carter died of cancer in 2009.

Susan died of a stroke in 2016.

They never found out what happened to their daughter.

On September 27th, 2023, Ranger Marcus Jenkins was checking the northern part of the park after receiving a report of illegal logging.

Someone reported seeing a truck with a trailer on an old logging road in the Cottonwood area.

It was a restricted area accessible only to service vehicles.

Jenkins rode his ATV along an overgrown fire trail that had not been used since the late 90s.

He was 34 years old, had been a ranger for 11 years, and knew the park like the back of his hand, but he had never been to this part of the forest.

It was an area with no trails, no markers, no reason to go there.

About a mile from the main road, Jenkins stopped to check the map on his GPS.

Looking up, he saw a strange silhouette high in a tree.

The old chestnut oak towered 90 ft high, its trunk 4 ft thick.

About 20 ft above the ground in the fork between the trunk and a thick branch, a figure hung.

The arms were spread out to the sides and attached to two side branches.

The legs hung down and the head was tilted forward.

Jenkins first thought it was a scarecrow or a doll, some kind of strange joke.

Local teenagers sometimes did things like that.

But when he got closer and looked through his binoculars, he realized it was no joke.

The skull was covered with a decayed hood through which white bone was visible.

The chest was covered with scraps of blue fabric.

Perhaps it had once been a jacket.

The ribs protruded outward.

The spine was bent.

And the pelvis was held up by a pair of decayed ropes.

The arms, or rather the bones of the arms, were tied to the branches with a thick climbing rope, yellowed and overgrown with moss.

The legs hung freely, the feet missing.

Jenkins called for backup at in the afternoon.

By , Ranger Chief David Thompson, Detective Sarah Collins from the Savior County Police Department, two forensic technicians, and a fire crew with a ladder truck had arrived on the scene.

Removing the body proved more difficult than expected.

30 years of ropes had cut into the wood of the branches and become overgrown with bark.

They had to be sawed off.

By in the evening, the remains had been lowered to the ground and laid on a tarpolin.

It was the complete skeleton of a woman.

Technician Robert Haynes, who had worked as a forensic expert for 20 years, immediately said that death had occurred at least 20 to 30 years ago.

The bones were clean with no traces of soft tissue faded by the sun and rain.

Some of the clothing had been preserved, scraps of a blue nylon jacket, remnants of black trousers, and fragments of cotton underwear.

There were no shoes.

A crack was found on the skull.

An examination later confirmed that it was the result of a blow with a blunt object to the back of the head at the base of the occipital bone.

The blow was strong and most likely fatal.

There were signs of abrasions and scratches on the bones of the wrists and ankles, suggesting that the victim had been tied up while alive.

On the right hand on the middle finger failinsx there was a thin silver ring with the initials EC engraved on it.

Detective Collins photographed the ring and sent the picture to the missing person’s database.

A match was found 2 hours later.

Emily Carter who disappeared in October 1990.

The description of the ring was in the file a gift from her mother on her 21st birthday.

The DNA test took a week.

On October 5th, 2023, the results confirmed that the remains belonged to Emily Carter.

Detective Collins reopened the old case.

She studied all the reports, interrogation transcripts, and search operation maps.

The body was found 4 and a half miles from the Ramsay Cascades Trail outside the search area in 1990.

It was deep in the forest, far from any trails, in an area where neither tourists nor rangers ventured.

Forensic experts analyzed the ropes.

It was a bluewater climbing rope popular in the9s.

11 mm thick static load, the kind used by rock climbers and rescuers.

The knots were professional boline knots on the wrists, figure8 knots on the branches.

Whoever hung the body knew what they were doing.

3 ft above the body on the tree, they found marks from metal spikes or hooks.

Someone had climbed up the trunk.

This confirmed the theory.

The killer had used climbing equipment to lift the body to a height and secure it to the branches.

Detective Collins interviewed all the rangers who had worked in the park in 1991.

Most had already retired or resigned.

Thomas Wilson, who led the search for Emily, died in 2018.

Ranger Daniel Carter, who headed the service in the ’90s, moved to Florida.

He was found and interviewed by phone.

He didn’t remember the details, only that they searched thoroughly.

But the park is huge and it’s impossible to check every acre.

Collins contacted detective Mark Holloway, who handled the case in 1991.

He was 79 years old and lived in a nursing home in Knoxville.

His memory was failing, but he remembered some things.

He said he had always suspected the man in camouflage that the Rogers’s had seen on the trail.

He had never been able to find him.

Holloway asked to be told when the killer was found.

Detective Collins pulled up the list of suspects from the 1991 case.

Howard Mitchell had died in 2005 of cerosis of the liver.

Clarence Wade was serving time in a Tennessee prison for armed robbery.

Ray Dawson, a former Ranger, lived in Mville and worked in a camping equipment store.

Collins and her partner, Detective Jason Turner, visited Dawson on October 14th.

He was 72 years old and looked tired and sick.

He lived alone in a small house on the outskirts of town.

When the detectives asked about the Emily Carter case, Dawson said he remembered her disappearance.

He was no longer working as a Ranger at the time, but he followed the news.

Collins asked if he owned a pickup truck or SUV in 1991.

Dawson replied that yes, he had a Ford Ranger.

What kind of tires? He didn’t remember.

Was he in the park on October 7th, 1991? Maybe, but he couldn’t say for sure.

It was over 30 years ago.

Could he climb trees? Yes, he had experience with climbing equipment.

Rangers were trained for rescue operations on cliffs.

The detectives asked for permission to search the house and garage.

Dawson agreed without a lawyer.

They found old climbing equipment in boxes, ropes, carabiners, belay systems.

The ropes were a different brand, Sterling, not Bluewater.

But that didn’t prove anything.

He could have changed his equipment in 30 years.

Collins asked Dawson to take a voluntary polygraph test.

He refused, saying he didn’t have to prove anything.

The detectives couldn’t arrest him.

They didn’t have a warrant or any direct evidence.

They checked his financial records for 1991.

No suspicious purchases.

They checked his Ford Ranger truck.

He had sold it in 1994, and the new owner had long since scrapped it.

It was impossible to check the tire treads.

Detective Collins returned to the list of pickup and SUV owners from the 1991 case.

Of the 123 people, 47 were already dead.

31 had moved out of state.

The rest were questioned again.

No one confessed.

No one provided any leads.

On October 30th, 2023, the investigation reached a dead end.

The detectives had a victim, a crime scene, and an approximate date of death.

But they had no killer.

They had no witnesses.

They had no suspects DNA.

The only lead was a man in camouflage whom the Rogerses had seen 33 years ago.

But Michael and Jennifer Rogers divorced in 2003.

Michael died in 2017.

Jennifer lived in California and remembered almost nothing.

Detective Collins asked an artist to create a photo fit based on the Rogers description.

The result was a blurred image, a middle-aged man with dark hair, stubble, a cap, and a camouflage jacket.

There are thousands of men like that in Tennessee.

The sketch was published in the local press, but there were no responses.

In November, the team of forensic experts returned to the tree where they had found the body.

They combed the surrounding area within a radius of 100 yards.

They looked for traces of a camp, buried items, anything.

They found only a few rusty beer cans, the remains of a campfire, and an empty 22 caliber shell casing.

But any of these could have been left there by anyone over the past 30 years.

On the trunk of the tree about 6 ft up, they found a strange mark, a carved symbol resembling a cross with two horizontal lines.

Experts suggested that it was a mark left by the killer as a reference point, but analysis showed that the symbol was more than 50 years old.

It was an old logging mark unrelated to the case.

Detective Collins contacted the FBI.

She requested a check of the database of serial killers who were active in the southeastern United States in the 1980s and 1990s.

Three suitable candidates were found.

William Sha Green, who killed four female tourists in Kentucky between 1989 and 1992.

Derek Thomas, who kidnapped women in Georgia and Alabama, and Kevin Lee Hunter, who attacked lone female travelers in the Appalachian.

All three were checked.

Green had been serving a life sentence in a Kentucky prison since 1993.

Thomas was executed in 2007.

Hunter died of an overdose in 1999.

None of them had passed through Tennessee in October 1991 as confirmed by prison records and testimony.

In December 2023, the case was officially declared an unsolved murder.

A press conference was held in Knoxville.

Detective Collins told reporters, “We know Emily Carter was murdered.

We know her body was hung from a tree like a scarecrow or a trophy.

We don’t know who did it.

If anyone has information about a man in a camouflage jacket who was on the Ramsay Cascades Trail on October 7th, 1990, please contact the police.” The media picked up the story.

Headlines read, “Hiker found hanging from tree after 33 years.

skeleton in national park, killer on the loose, mystery of the scarecrow in the Great Smoky Mountains.

The case was discussed on true crime forums, in podcasts about unsolved crimes, and on YouTube channels.

Some put forward theories.

Some said it was the work of a local who knew the park inside out.

Others suggested that the killer was a tourist who happened to meet Emily on the trail.

Others believed it was a ritual killing, hanging the body from a tree as a symbolic act.

Psychologist Janet Wilson, who consulted with the police, said that displaying the body in this way indicates the killer’s desire to control and dominate.

Hanging the body from a tree is a way of making the victim a permanent part of the landscape, an eternal scarecrow that will hang there for years.

This points to a sadistic personality with a need to demonstrate power.

In January 2024, an anonymous caller informed the police that there was another tree with a suspicious figure in the woods outside Seavierville.

A team of rangers went to the site.

It turned out to be an old scarecrow that a local farmer had hung up to scare away crows.

False alarm.

In February of that year, Detective Collins received a letter from a woman named Linda Harris.

She wrote that in October 1991, her brother, James Harris, had returned home from a trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park with a scratch on his arm and in a strange mood.

When she asked what had happened, he replied, “Nothing.

I just fell.” Linda didn’t think much of it at the time, but now seeing the news about Emily Carter, she remembered.

Collins checked the information.

James Harris, now 61, lived in Asheville.

He worked as a builder, had been married twice, and had three children.

No criminal record, no problems with the law.

Detectives visited him on February 19th.

Harris said he had been in the park in October 1991 walking along several trails, but did not remember the exact dates.

He did indeed get a scratch on his arm.

He tripped and fell on a sharp rock.

He didn’t meet any women on the trail and didn’t see anything suspicious.

He had an alibi.

His wife confirmed that he returned from his hikes every evening and never stayed out overnight.

The detectives asked him to take a DNA test to rule him out.

Harris agreed.

The results showed that his DNA did not match the only biological trace found on the rope, a microscopic fragment of skin stuck in the fibers.

The DNA of this fragment was male, but did not match any person in the database.

By March 2024, the investigation had stalled again.

Detective Collins checked another 46 people on the list of suspects, interviewed dozens of witnesses, and combed through the archives.

Nothing.

The killer had vanished into the past.

The only clue was the unknown man in camouflage.

Collins tried to reconstruct his route.

If the Rogers’s met him at p.m.

coming down the trail, then he could have committed the crime between a.m.

and noon.

That gave him 3 hours to meet Emily.

attack her, kill her, drag her body into the woods, and hang it from a tree.

But how did he transport the body? It was more than four miles of rough terrain from the Ramsay Cascades Trail to the tree.

Carrying a corpse through dense forest, climbing an old fire road, and dragging the body up a tree required physical strength, time, and equipment.

Either he had a car nearby, or he hid the body somewhere closer and then returned at night.

Collins checked the weather reports for the 7th and 8th of October, 1991.

The night was clear with a temperature of about 40° F.

The moonlight made it possible to see without a flashlight.

The killer could have acted at night using the darkness as cover.

Another theory, the killer was not alone.

Two men could have carried the body more easily, lifted it into a tree, and secured it with ropes.

But this complicated the picture.

It meant looking for two suspects instead of one.

In April, Detective Collins contacted a serial murder expert from the FBI’s behavioral science unit.

Dr.

Martin Lawrence studied the case files and compiled a psychological profile of the killer.

In his opinion, it was a man between the ages of 25 and 45, physically strong with experience working outdoors, possibly a hunter, ranger, forester, or military man.

He knew the park well, possibly living nearby or visiting it frequently.

Hanging the body from a tree indicates a need for display and control, as well as a ritualistic element.

The killer wanted the victim to remain in plain sight even if no one found her.

Lawrence suggested that the killer may have committed other crimes, but they remained unsolved.

Such behavior is rarely isolated.

He advised checking cases of missing women in neighboring states and national parks between 1985 and 2005.

Collins requested data from the National Park Service.

She received a list of 18 women who had disappeared in the Appalachins during that period.

Six of them were found dead, but the causes of death were different.

Falling off a cliff, drowning, bear attack.

12 remained missing.

Among them was Sarah Thompson, a 30-year-old teacher who disappeared in Shannondoa National Park in Virginia in 1993.

She was last seen on the old Rag Mountain Trail.

The search was unsuccessful.

The case was closed.

Collins contacted Virginia detectives.

They found no connection between Emily’s and Sarah’s cases, but agreed to resume the search in the area where Thompson disappeared.

In June 2024, a team of rangers with drones combed the forests around Old Rag.

They found nothing.

By September 2024, the Emily Carter case remained unsolved.

Detective Collins continued to work on it in her spare time, but she had many other cases to deal with.

Emily’s killer, if he was still alive, remained at large.

Ranger Marcus Jenkins no longer patrols the northern part of the park.

He was transferred to another area at his own request.

He told his colleagues that he couldn’t drive past that tree without feeling uneasy.

Every time he looked at the tall chestnut oaks, he thought he saw something hanging up there, swaying in the wind.

The tree where Emily’s body was found still stands.

The National Park Service did not cut it down.

It is a living tree, part of the ecosystem.

But the rangers installed a hidden surveillance camera in case the killer returned.

In 8 months, the camera only captured deer, squirrels, and one bear.

The Emily Carter case made it onto the list of Missing 411, a series of books about mysterious disappearances in national parks.

Author David Polites mentioned her case in a chapter about strange circumstances of disappearances.

He noted an unusual detail.

The body was hung like a scarecrow, as if the killer wanted to create a permanent exhibition in the forest.

True crime enthusiasts have come up with several theories.

The most popular one is that the killer was a hermit living deep in the park’s forests far from the trails.

Such people are called forest people or wild people.

They avoid civilization, build shelters in caves or abandoned huts, hunt and gather food.

Some of them are mentally unstable.

An encounter with such a person could have ended in tragedy.

But Detective Collins considers this theory unlikely.

A hermit would hardly have access to professional climbing equipment.

The knots on the ropes were too technically proficient for a wild man.

It was the work of someone who knew what they were doing.

Another theory, the killer was a ranger or a former ranger.

This explains the knowledge of the area, access to equipment, and climbing skills.

Ray Dawson, a dismissed ranger, remains a suspect, but without evidence, he cannot be charged.

The third theory, the crime was committed by a random psychopathic tourist who happened to be in the park that day.

After the murder, he left, disappeared in another state or country.

Perhaps he is dead.

Perhaps he has committed other crimes somewhere else.

But finding him after 33 years is virtually impossible.

Detective Mark Holloway, who led the investigation in 1991, died in October 2024 without ever finding out who killed Emily Carter.

At his funeral, Detective Collins placed a photo of Emily on his coffin and said, “We’re still looking.

I promise.” Emily Carter was buried in Chicago next to her parents in November 2023.

The headstone reads Emily Carter, 1964 1990.

beloved daughter home at last.

The case remains open.

If anyone knows anything about the man in the camouflage jacket who was on the Ramsay Cascades Trail on October 7th, 1990, the Severe County Police Department asks that they contact the hotline.

Every October, Great Smoky Mountains National Park Rangers conduct safety briefings for hikers.

One of the rules is never hike alone on remote trails.

Always tell someone your route.

Always carry communication devices.

The park is beautiful, but it does not forgive mistakes.

And every year, when the leaves turn yellow and fall, one of the rangers drives past the old chestnut oak in the northern part of the park, looks up, and checks the branches just in case.

Because if the killer did it once, he might do it again.