In July of 2019, Frank Develin, the owner of a small ranch near Westcliffe, decided to inspect the abandoned site of the Old Stone Creek Ranch base, which he had long planned to purchase for pasture expansion.

The old barn had been there since the ‘9s, skewed and overgrown with weeds with broken windows that gave off a pungent smell of mold.

And inside, among the dust and rotten boards, was an oblong bundle of several old carpets.

They were neatly folded, evenly folded, too neat for a place that hadn’t been used in years.

Frank leaned over to get a better look, but a pungent, damp smell wafting from beneath the carpets made him wary.

It wasn’t the smell of old fabric.

It wasn’t the smell of mice.

It was something rotten, frozen, and it made his chest feel uneasy.

He was about to throw back the edge of the carpet, but his hand froze.

The shape of the bundle was too regular and the smell too alive, as he described it later.

And that was enough for him to realize that he couldn’t touch it.

The names that had been in the local newspapers for months immediately came to mind.

27-year-old Valerie Dixon and 26-year-old Annie Casease, two friends from Denver, who had disappeared on the Rainbow Trail in November and had not been found by rangers, volunteers, or helicopters.

Frank took a step back.

The smell, the suspicious geometry of the bundle, and the strange order of the abandoned barn all added up to an uneasy feeling.

Nothing good could be happening here.

He went outside and called the police from the yard.

That morning, Frank Develin did not know that he had stumbled upon the answer that had been searched for 8 months in the San Isabel Mountains to no avail.

On November 21st, 2018, a Saturday at about in the morning, cameras in the parking lot at the beginning of the Rainbow Trail captured a gray Subaru Forester slowly pulling up to an information stand.

Two young women with large hiking backpacks can be seen getting out of the car.

They were 27-year-old Valerie Dixon and 26-year-old Annie Casease, friends from Denver who had gone on short mountain hikes and knew the roots of the San Isabel National Forest well.

According to the ranger on duty who was checking the visitor log that day, the girls entered the information kiosk at about in the morning.

In the return plan column, they indicated the evening of the following day.

That’s when Annie was supposed to send her brother a short message via satellite messenger, a tradition she followed on every trip.

According to Annie’s brother, the message did not arrive at p.m.

or later.

He assumed that the network might have gone down in the mountains or the device might have run out of power.

It was only the next morning when the silence continued that the family tried to call both girls.

Their phones were turned off which made sense because they had left them in the car as they always did when hiking, saving battery and relying on the messenger.

On November 22nd around in the morning, concerned relatives filed a missing person’s report.

The first to arrive were two US Forest Service rangers who checked the parking lot.

In the backseat of the Subaru were spare clothes, map booklets, and two thermoses that the girls planned to take back after the hike.

The car was locked, and there were no signs of damage or tampering.

The search and rescue operation began the same day after .

The rangers engaged volunteers from Kuster County, two canine teams, and a state rescue helicopter.

The weather at the time was consistently cold, but without precipitation, and according to forecasters, the Cold Spring Creek area was experiencing sub-zero temperatures at night, making it difficult to survive if the hikers got lost.

The Rainbow Trail was searched from the beginning to the branch to the South Colony Lakes tract.

The standard search methodology was used.

Groups moved in a chain, keeping a distance of several yards, inspecting every ravine, every rocky ledge, and areas where trees had fallen.

On the evening of November 22, the helicopter made two passes at a minimum altitude, but the dense spruce forests and complex shadows of the terrain made it impossible to see anything on the ground.

The next day, the search was expanded.

They checked the side trails of Grape Creek Trail and Hermit Pass Road.

According to one of the rescuers, they examined several makeshift campsites where hikers stay, but found no trace of a tent, no sign of a fire, or any equipment that could have belonged to the girls.

The dog teams received some of Valeri and Annie’s clothes from their relatives.

The dogs were released right from the parking lot where the car was parked and the trail did follow up to a point at an area about a mile from the trail head.

The smell broke off.

The dog handlers report stated the trail diverges.

The dog loses direction.

This could indicate several possible options.

They changed direction, came to a rocky area, or someone else left a similar scent.

On the third day, volunteers from Colorado mountain communities joined the operation.

The total search area was about 30 square miles.

They examined all potentially dangerous areas, steep slopes, landslides, and dry creek beds.

At several points, the rescuers came across traces of old campsites, but they were not related to the disappearance.

According to the group’s coordinator on duty, they expected to find at least some trace.

a piece of cloth, food packaging, a shoe print.

There was nothing.

There were no indirect signs of the women’s presence on the route after in the morning that day.

On the fourth day, the weather worsened.

The temperature at night dropped to severe minus and it started to snow.

The rescuers continued the search until late in the evening, but the snow began to hide fresh tracks, making further work almost useless.

After a week of active phase, the operation was officially switched to passive search mode.

The report submitted on November 29th stated, “It is likely that the tourists have deviated from the main route.

The search is difficult due to weather conditions and difficult terrain.” The families of Valerie and Annie continued to come to Cold Spring Creek for several more weeks, organizing their own volunteer groups.

One of the volunteers recalled that they even checked abandoned areas where hunting hideouts once stood, but they found nothing there either.

In December, after consultations with experts, the case was officially classified as disappeared under unexplained circumstances.

All active resources were curtailed.

The only thing left on the Rainbow Trail was a poster with photos of two young women who disappeared within half an hour of registering in the visitor log.

The forest was silent.

It did not give any answers.

The spring of 2019 came abruptly in the San Isabel Mountains.

The snows melted unevenly, leaving wet spots in the hollows.

And in the open areas, dark patches of earth appeared under the sun, which had been cold and silent all winter.

It was on a day like this in early July that 50-year-old ranch owner Frank Develin went to inspect the neighboring territory of the former Stone Creek Ranch base.

He had been interested in the land for a long time.

Several abandoned buildings, old pastures, and a barn that, according to local rumors, was used as a tool storage facility back in the ’90s.

According to Frank himself, he didn’t expect to see anything but rubble and debris.

When he approached the wooden building, the old wall crunched from a light gust of wind.

The door was hinged on a single hinge, and as soon as Delin pushed on it with his shoulder, it swung open, releasing a heavy smell of damp wood, dust, and something else sour, frozen, like the smell of an old cellar.

Frank turned on the flashlight.

A spot of light slowly slid across the junk.

broken crates, empty feed sacks, plywood swollen with dampness.

It was then that he noticed a bundle in the corner.

It was oblong, made up of several old carpets that lay too flat, too neat for an abandoned building.

In his testimony, Develin said that at first he thought someone had left bales of garbage or old furniture in the shed.

But as he got closer, he saw one of the carpets sinking in slightly, forming outlines that resembled a human body.

Even before he bent down to the bundle, Frank could smell the same faint odor wafting through the dust and old fabrics.

It wasn’t pungent, but heavy and warm.

the smell he had smelled many years ago on a farm after an animal died.

It was then, he says, that he realized he must not touch the bundle.

Frank immediately left the barn and called the Kuster County Sheriff’s Office.

He reported finding what looked like human remains wrapped in old carpets.

An official report was taken at 17 hours and 18 minutes, after which a crew was sent to the scene.

According to the deputy sheriff, the team arrived in less than half an hour.

Two officers, a forensic technician, and a paramedic.

They immediately restricted access to the building by placing yellow tape around the entrance.

Carefully wearing gloves, they moved the bundle closer to the light to avoid unnecessary damage.

The first layer of carpet was so old that it crumbled at the edges with the slightest movement.

There was another layer inside, a dense woolen one made, according to forensic experts, in the ‘9s at the latest.

When it was unwrapped, a cloud of dust rose into the air, and the partially mummified remains of two people became visible, lying sideways as if they were trying to fit into a space that did not correspond to the size of a human body.

Their clothes were preserved in fragments.

a fragment of a dark fleece jacket, the sleeve of a blue thermal t-shirt, and a piece of linen bandage.

Two details turned out to be the most valuable for identification.

A thin leather bracelet on the left wrist of one of the women and a small tattoo on the inside of the second woman’s rib.

The bracelet, as Annie Case’s brother later confirmed, was a gift from her mother for her 25th birthday.

And the tattoo on Valerie Dixon, a small outline of a flower, was included in the description that the family gave to the rescuers during the search.

The official identification took place the next morning at the Celita morg.

Relatives were not allowed in the room.

Identification was carried out by clothing, jewelry, and available anatomical coincidences.

The medical examiner’s report stated, “Both bodies show signs of natural drying and partial mummification characteristic of low temperatures and dry mountain air.

Death occurred several months ago.

At the same time, forensic experts continued to work in the barn.

They noted that the carpets were lying flat on the floor with no signs of haste.

There was no blood, no signs of struggle or dragging, indicating that the bodies had been moved to the barn after death, wrapped and left there.

The forensic technician noted an important detail.

There was a thin strip of clean, untouched dust under the bundle, which meant that the object had been lying still for many months and had not been touched since it was placed there.

The sheriff’s office examined the surrounding area.

No one found any tire tracks and there were no signs of heavy dragging.

The distance from the campsite to the barn was approximately 3 and 1/2 miles and it passed through areas of dense coniferous forest.

According to the sheriff’s deputy who recorded the initial examination, it is unlikely that the bodies could have been moved without a vehicle.

However, there were no traces of a vehicle on the former ranch property either.

Two days later, the sheriff’s office officially confirmed to the public that the bodies were those of Valerie Dixon and Annie Casease, the tourists who had disappeared the previous November.

Local newspapers ran headlines about the gruesome discovery.

The women’s families traveled to Westcliffe, but did not give any official comment.

According to close friends, they just wanted to know what happened in the mountains on that cold autumn night.

The barn at the abandoned Stone Creek Ranch has since become a place that people try not to mention out loud.

Locals are reluctant to talk about it even in the summer when the smells are gone.

Only one thing was obvious to everyone who worked at the scene.

No one buries bodies so neatly if they are just trying to get rid of a find.

It looked like someone’s deliberate work and someone had a reason for it.

The bodies of Valerie Dixon and Annie Casease were sent to the PBLO Forensic Center the very next morning after the discovery.

According to a report later released by the Park County Coroner’s Office, the investigation lasted several days.

Pathologists took apart the remains layer by layer, recording every detail that had survived after several months in the mountain air.

The first important conclusion was that the bones of both women had no traces of external violence.

There were no fractures, no impact injuries, no signs of a struggle.

The forensic expert noted the temperature factor played a key role.

Based on the remains of the tissues, the condition of the internal organs, and the degree of dehydration, it was determined that the death was caused by hypothermia, most likely at night.

But the analysis of Annie’s stomach contents was the most surprising.

It contained traces of a plant poison, spotted Kikuda.

This plant grows on the swampy banks of several streams in the San Isabel forest.

According to a botonist consultant involved in the examination, scikad affects the nervous system in minutes, causing disorientation, hallucinations, and motor disorders.

This coincided with the version that the hikers could have lost their bearings, wandered off the main trail and found themselves in an unprotected area during a sharp cold snap.

At the same time, work continued at the site where the bodies were found.

The forensic team returned to the Stone Creek Ranch barn with the task of checking every square foot of the floor.

It was then during the third hour of reinspection that a torn map of the national forest was found under the bottom layer of carpeting.

It was folded several times and partially pierced by a nail that had once been used to nail the floor.

An alternative route was circled on the map, a thin, nervous pencil line that went not through the main rainbow trail, but through the remote white pine tract.

According to the former head of the local forest service office, the rescuers knew this area well.

Difficult terrain, old swamps, a large number of poisonous plants, and no marked trails.

Even hunters don’t go there, he told investigators.

The map was immediately sent for examination.

Several partial fingerprints were found on its surface.

After checking them through the database, it became clear who they belonged to.

Daniel Shaw, a former Forest Service ranger who was fired two years ago for misconduct.

Several complaints against Shaw were stored in the Forest Services archives.

Hikers claimed that he offered non-ouristy routes and sometimes led people through dangerous areas, justifying it by saying it’s faster or it’s the real Colorado nature.

One witness recalled that Shaw boasted of knowing secret passages that were not marked on official maps.

According to a former colleague, Daniel used to carry his own modified maps with him where he marked roads and detours with a pencil.

In official circles, he was known as the trail reviser because he was constantly reworking existing trails, believing that it’s good for tourists to see more wilderness.

After discovering his fingerprints on the map, investigators officially implicated Shaw as a person who could have been involved in changing Valerie and Annie’s route.

There was no direct evidence of his involvement at the time, but the map with his footprints was the first real lead in the case after 8 months of complete obscurity.

A separate group of forensic experts analyzed the condition of the carpets in which the bodies were wrapped.

They were old, but not neglected.

Traces on them indicated that they had been stored in a dry place, probably in a room without drafts and direct sunlight.

On one of them, tiny particles of white pine needles were found, a species that grows mainly in the highlands of white pine.

Another important detail is the way the carpets were tied.

All three were folded in the same way, using a double knot that forest service workers use when transporting heavy equipment.

Investigators invited several current and former rangers to evaluate and all three independently confirmed.

This is the work of a person who is used to packing cargo in the field.

They began to investigate whether Shaw could have been in the Rainbow Trail area the previous fall.

It turned out that he lived in the town of Cela, less than an hour’s drive from where the girls disappeared.

The police report stated that he did not have a stable job at the time, but often appeared in the wooded areas of Kuster and Chaffy counties.

Investigators also found that 2 weeks before Valerie and Annie disappeared, he bought topographic maps at a Westcliffe Outfitters store.

The salesman recalled in his testimony, he asked if there were any recent maps showing side roads.

He said the official trails were too crowded.

Thus, for the first time, the investigation received a direction.

There was a person whose activities could explain how the tourists ended up far off the trail.

But to understand his role in the events, investigators needed more than a map and fingerprints.

The investigation was just beginning, and there were too many questions that were not yet answered in the San Isabel forest.

After discovering Daniel Shaw’s prince on the map, investigators obtained a search warrant for his home in Salida.

It was a small duplex on the outskirts of town with a weedy yard and an old pickup truck that stood still as if it hadn’t been started in a long time.

Shaw did not resist.

According to the detective who conducted the first interrogation, the former ranger looked exhausted but not afraid, as if he had been expecting to be visited for a long time.

In his testimony, he confirmed that a few weeks before the disappearance of the tourists, he had indeed sold the map to an unknown man.

This man introduced himself as Robert, contacted him through a hiking forum, and offered him money for an alternative route that passed by the marked trails.

Shaw said he was unaware of the man’s intentions, and thought the deal was safe.

According to Shaw, the buyer was tall in his late 40s, had short gray hair, and a prominent scar on his left cheek, a detail he remembered immediately.

He was wearing a dark jacket and worn jeans and spoke calmly but coldly.

This description interested the investigators, and they started looking for contact points where Robert could appear.

Two days later, while checking cameras along the route Valerie and Annie had taken, investigators came across footage from a gas station in Westcliffe, a camera mounted under a canopy above the pumps captured a gray pickup truck pulling up a few cars behind the girl’s Subaru.

A zoomedin shot shows a man standing next to his car, looking in the direction of the tourists.

His face was half covered by a baseball cap, but the scar on his left cheek remained visible.

After that, investigators decided to conduct an in-depth analysis of the carpets in which the bodies were wrapped.

At the request of the forensic scientists, an in-house laboratory technician performed a spectral analysis of the fibers.

The result was atypical.

The material matched wool carpets produced at the Wolverine Textiles Factory, a company that had closed more than 15 years earlier.

They were no longer produced and the remains were sold to private dealers and antique stores.

It was an important trail.

Only one store in the region was actively selling carpets from those years, the Star Colorado Trader antique store in Canyon City.

The detective was sent there and in his notes he noted that the owner, James Falner, recognized the rugs at first sight.

He confirmed that a year ago he had sold a batch of six old wool rugs to a man named Victor Grant.

Faulner described the buyer in the same way that Shaw described Robert.

Same height, same way of speaking, same scar on his cheek, only the name was different.

The check revealed that Victor Grant was a non-existent person.

His real name was Martin Rhodess.

Roads was not a hiker, was not a hunter, and had no connection to the Forest Service.

His criminal history included an arrest for poaching in the San Isabel National Forest, for which he served 3 years in the Fremont Correctional Facility.

During the trial, he repeatedly argued with prosecutors, stating that wild lands belong to wildlife, not to city dwellers with their backpacks.

The extract from the verdict contained a description of the psychologist strong dislike of tourists tendency to isolation belief that human presence harms nature.

After his release, roads did not return to legal work.

He lived mainly in temporary shelters near Wet Mountain Valley, often changing his name, buying things for cash, and remaining invisible.

Locals recalled sometimes seeing him in the mountainous areas where he moved with little or no clothing to protect him from the weather as if stewing in his own philosophy of solitude.

One of the key points was that the forest services archives contained a complaint against roads dated about a year before the girls disappeared.

According to the tourist who filed it, a man in camouflage suddenly appeared in an unmarked area and said that people should stay away from the mountains because they did not understand the laws of the forest.

At the time, the complaint was not taken seriously.

When the investigators compared the photo from the database with the footage from the gas station, there was little doubt.

The man who had been watching Valerie and Annie was the same Martin Rhodess.

To establish his possible movements, investigators analyzed all the purchases he could have made.

Falner from the antique shop said that Grant was interested in old gear that works well in wet climates, carpets, ropes, metal hooks.

He also remembered a phrase the buyer said before leaving.

Tourists think the forest is their friend.

The forest is a test.

Faulner passed this phrase on to the investigators in his own words.

The carpets purchased by roads were examined separately.

On their edges, forensic experts found traces of a specific substance, preservative wax, which was used by hunters to protect the fabric from moisture.

This detail confirmed that the owner knew how to cope with the long stay of things in the open air.

The next step was to determine the connection between Shaw and Roads.

Daniel Shaw insisted that the first time he saw roads under the name Robert was when he sold him the map.

He acknowledged that he asked too many questions about unmarked trails, but did not attach any importance to it.

According to Shaw, the man behaved confidently, spoke little, but knew the topography of the area better than the average tourist.

Thus, the investigators got a chain.

Map, carpets, fake name, gas station camera, real person, Martin Roads.

But there was one more question.

Why did Roads take Shaw’s map? And why did he choose the route that led Valerie and Annie to a place where people don’t usually go? This question became the center of the investigation.

But the answer to it still had to be found among the debris, traces, and shadows left in the San Isabel forest by a man who decided to rewrite the rules of nature in his own way.

When the investigation moved on to establishing Martin Rhodess’s whereabouts, it turned out that he had long ceased to exist as an ordinary person.

His last official address in the city of Pueblo was no longer verifiable.

The house had been bought by students a few years ago, and according to them, when they moved in, the place was empty.

Neighbors recalled only an old green SUV that sometimes appeared on the street and a lone man in camouflage who came just to spend the night.

Formerly, Roads had no job, no property, and no contacts.

He was not listed in any documents.

In the mountains, he was always present.

The first breakthrough in the search came after Daniel Shaw’s phone history was seized.

A week before the disappearance of Valerie and Annie, he received a short call from a pay phone on his cell phone.

He was found in the parking lot of the Alpine Mountain Equipment Store in Salida.

The store itself had its own camera above the entrance, but the archive for that day had already been erased.

The shop owner agreed to see a printout of the images of the suspected men.

When the detective showed him the enlarged image of the gas station, the shopkeeper recognized the customer immediately.

He said that he had purchased special gloves for climbing rocks, a strong climbing rope, and oldstyle metal carabiners.

According to the seller, the client said that city tourists have lost respect for the mountains and that someone should remind them that nature does not forgive thoughtlessness.

The seller passed this phrase on from his memory.

The receipt bore the name Victor Grant.

But after checking the database, investigators found that this was a fake name that Roads had been using for at least 2 years.

The search for the SUV became the next priority.

Roads preferred to remain invisible, but his green Jeep Cherokee, old with torn seats and a tarp covered trunk, was seen several times at remote checkpoints.

Witnesses recalled that he always parked the vehicle so that it was not visible from the road deep behind fur trees in depressions under the shadow of rocks.

The date of the breakout was the same day that investigators checked the parking lot near the white pine trail.

There, at the very edge of the parking area under an overhanging pine tree, they found an abandoned car that matched the description.

a green Jeep Cherokee with dirty license plates and a layer of dust that indicated the car had been there for several weeks.

Inside the car, detectives found things that roads would never have left behind without a reason.

On the passenger seat was a crumpled dry ration packet, and in the glove compartment were old tourist maps with pencil markings.

Some of the lines coincided with the trails of the San Isabel forest, but most of the markings referred to unmarked areas.

narrow gorges, the ends of old hunting trails, overgrown beds of seasonal streams.

A small vial with the remains of a plant liquid was found on the back seat.

Analysis showed traces of the same secuda found in Annie’s stomach contents.

The liquid was mixed with water, indicating that it could have been used as an infusion.

In the trunk, investigators found a small metal box with a combination lock.

After opening it, they found a hardcover notebook, the diary of Martin Roads.

It was the diary that became the first direct evidence that he was involved with the girls.

On its pages were entries describing Roads not just as a hunter or a hermit, but as a man who considered himself a defender of wildlife from the intrusion of human noise.

His entries reflected a peculiar ideology, a mixture of hatred, bigotry, and the belief that he had the right to regulate the flow of tourists.

In the last entry, which was dated the same day as Valerie and Annie’s disappearance, Roads wrote, “Two arrogant girls on Rainbow Trail.

They think the woods are a backdrop for their photos.

Nature is not an amusement park.

They learn the true price of loneliness.

The recording was made carefully without any signs of haste.

Roads described the girl’s route, noting that he had observed them in the parking lot.

Later, he talked about diverting attention and blocking a side path.

After the diary, investigators searched the surrounding area to see if roads had left any other hiding places.

For several hours, they combed the forest edge in the bed of a dried up stream.

Not far from the SUV, they found a place that looked like a temporary camp.

The remains of a fire, crumpled dry grass, and several plastic food packages.

Investigators noted that the place was organized as an observation post.

Part of the trail was visible from it, but the camp itself was hidden by dense spruce bushes.

One of the detectives later noted in the report, “Someone was living quietly here.

The person knew how to disappear.

After the diary was discovered, it became obvious roads had planned his actions in advance.

It was no accident that he showed up on the Rainbow Trail that day.

It was no accident that he bought rope, gloves, and carpets.

And it was definitely not by chance that he chose to camp near White Pine, one of the most dangerous tracks in the forest.

Everything indicated that he was watching the tourists, studying their route ideas, and looking for a moment when they would be vulnerable.

But despite the waypoints, the SUV, and the diary, Roads himself was not in the White Pine area.

He disappeared the same way he always did, without a trace, like a shadow that moved ahead of the investigation.

This was where the most difficult part of the hunt began.

Finding a man who trusts the forest more than the human world.

After Martin Rhodess’s diary was seized, the investigation got its first full look at his thinking.

It was not just a hermit’s notebook.

The forensic report called the diary an archive of a strange personal ideology.

In addition to descriptions of expeditions, the pages contained a collection of newspaper clippings.

Most of the clippings concerned accidents in the San Isabel Mountains.

They were underlined with a pen, and some had short notes next to them.

Three cases immediately caught the investigators attention.

A hiker’s sudden fall into a mountain creasse, mushroom poisoning near Copper Creek, and the hypothermia death of a young woman who went off the trail during the fog.

All three tragedies occurred on trails that Roads mentioned in his diary, and all three of the victims were solo hikers.

In none of those cases did the police find any signs of foul play.

But now that these clippings were found in the notebook of a man who called himself a defender of the forest, a new question has arisen.

Were those incidents accidental? In parallel, the forensic laboratory continued to analyze the materials found in the Stone Creek Ranch barn.

As part of the re-examination of Valerie Dixon and Annie Caseas’s clothing, forensic scientists drew attention to a detail that at first seemed unimportant.

Microscopic fibers found on the inside of Valerie’s thermal shirt.

Comparison showed that the fibers matched the material of the old wool carpets found in the barn.

But this time, the analysis provided an unexpected additional layer of information.

The fibers contained particles of a rare herbicide that had long since been discontinued.

The herbicide belonged to a series of products that were used in the ’90s by only a few local farms in the Wet Mountain Valley.

Information was found in the archives of the state department of agriculture.

One of these farms was the family farm of Martin Rhodess’s parents.

After their death, the farm was taken over by him and later sold.

This meant one thing.

The things he used to hide the bodies had been stored on the farm for years in the same room where herbicides were once used.

The investigators went to the former farm.

The premises had long belonged to another owner, but the old barn where the equipment was stored remained almost untouched.

Rusted metal hooks still hung on the walls and part of the wooden floor was covered with brown stains.

The remnants of chemical solutions stored in canisters more than two decades ago.

The report stated the smell of chemicals and old wool remained in the room.

Remains of rolls of fabric identical to those used to make the carpets were found on the lower shelves.

Another discovery was two empty canisters of the same type of herbicide found on the girl’s belongings.

The forensic technician noted that the particles could have remained in the fibers for years, especially if the fabric was kept indoors.

In addition to the chemical traces, investigators began looking into Roads’s personal background to see if there was anything in his biography that could explain his behavior in the mountains.

Former neighbors in the valley recalled that after his parents died, he hardly ever came to town.

He handled all his household chores himself, lived in seclusion, and hardly interacted with other people.

One of his neighbors, who was shown the photo by investigators, said that Martin was always drawn to the forest as if it was his second home.

School records showed several visits to a psychologist for increased anxiety and aggressive reactions to group work.

Later he left school and worked mostly seasonally, most often in forestry.

All of this formed a detailed picture.

Martin Roads was a man who lived for decades between people and wildlife, but always chose the latter.

He knew the trails as if he had laid them himself.

He knew where the chickweed grew, where the swamps remain dangerous even in August, where he could pass unnoticed by others.

In his diary, he mentioned phrases about the games of the forest and the trials of those who claim territory that does not belong to them.

These entries were not a direct confession, but they contained enough disturbing hints for investigators to assume that the tragedies, which had previously been considered accidents, might not have been accidental.

When the forensic experts completed their reanalysis, they passed on another important detail to the investigation.

They found traces of soil on Annie and Valerie’s boots that were specific to one particular area, the western slope of the white pine tract.

It was a narrow strip of rocks where only certain types of coniferous trees grew and where the soil had a special concentration of mineral impurities.

This area was never part of the official routes for tourists.

It was too dangerous, too remote, and known only to those who had been traversing these forests alone for decades.

Now, the investigation understood.

Roads didn’t just know about the trails.

He systematically explored them, created his own routes, analyzed the behavior of tourists, and collected information about incidents that could be unfortunate only at first glance.

Everything pointed to the fact that the true scope of what he was doing in these mountains was much broader than the disappearance of two young women.

He had been active for years, and the investigation was on the verge of uncovering an even darker truth.

The search for Martin Roads lasted several weeks.

Groups of rangers, K-9 teams, and volunteers from mountain teams combed the White Pine area.

However, the forest that roads knew better than anyone else did not give up its inhabitant.

The tipping point came when the detectives decided to check all abandoned industrial sites within a few miles from old hunting huts to abandoned mines.

It was then that they came across the North Colony Mine, a mine that had been closed in the early 2000s due to its emergency condition.

The documents stated that the mine had long been blocked due to the risk of a collapse, but in fact, the entrance remained partially open.

Traces of an old path, crumpled pine needles, and fragments of stones showed that someone had been walking back and forth regularly.

It was dark, damp, and cold inside.

But a few dozen yards down, flashlights illuminated a narrow side corridor where tools had once been stored.

It was there that they discovered the room that Roads had turned into a hiding place and temporary home.

The room was small but carefully furnished.

There was an old kerosene lamp on a wooden table and neatly stacked metal boxes next to it.

In the corner was a sleeping bag that had long since absorbed the smell of dampness and smoke.

On the opposite wall hung photographs attached with rusty nails, the faces of tourists who had disappeared in the national forest over the past few years.

Each photo had a pencil signature, date, place, and a brief assessment of the person’s behavior.

Investigators have identified some of these tourists.

Their disappearances were previously considered accidents.

But now, in the light of what they found, it became clear that they were part of someone’s gruesome system.

There was a metal box on the floor near the table.

It contained personal belongings Roads had collected as trophies, a piece of camera strap, car keys, a piece of fabric from a backpack.

Among them are Valerie Dixon’s credit card, and a small plastic hair clip that, according to relatives, Annie Casease always wore.

All of these items were put together in a strict almost pedantic system.

Forensic scientists noted in the report, “The objects are not assembled randomly.

This is a catalog.

A person recorded each meeting as a surveillance record.

But the most valuable find was another diary, a different one from the one found in the Jeep Cherokee.

It had no markings on the cover.

Inside were dated entries covering a period of about 1 year.

It described the day Valerie and Annie disappeared.

Their last hours were reconstructed solely from Roads’s words recorded in these notes.

He wrote that he had been following them since the Rainbow Trail parking lot.

His notes made it clear that he did not just happen to be on the trail that day.

He knew in advance that two women would be hiking the trail.

Information he received through the same hiking forum where he bought the map from Shaw.

Roads went on to describe how he followed the girls at a distance, checking their behavior.

According to him, when they took a break by a stream, he seized the moment.

While the tourists were taking pictures of the area, he went to their water bottles and replaced some of the contents with the infusion of chory he was carrying.

It sounded almost unbelievable, but laboratory tests confirmed that traces of the same liquid remained in Valerie and Annie’s backpacks.

After that, according to his notes, he followed them further and waited for the first symptoms of disorientation to begin.

In his diary, he wrote, “They slowed down, started arguing about the direction.

This is the moment when the forest takes the week.” His notes indicate that he deliberately made noise in the bushes several times to throw them off the main path.

And when they chose the wrong direction, he appeared to them, pretending to be a tourist who knew a shortcut.

According to the notes, he led the girls toward White Pine Gorge, an area that was officially considered dangerous due to sudden temperature changes.

It was there, he said, that he waited for the night.

The following entries were the hardest to read.

Roads described how he watched them in the dark from a distance as the girls tried to find their way in the thick fog and bitter cold.

He recorded all their reactions as if he were conducting a cruel experiment.

His notes included the phrase, “They lay down under a rock.

Each thought it was temporary.

The frost taught them respect.” There was no mention of physical contact or violence.

He did not intervene.

He simply observed documenting the process that he called a test of nature.

In a morning entry the next day, Roads noted, “Two bodies, silence.

The forest has done its work.” He went on to describe actions that have already been confirmed by experts.

He moved the bodies closer to the old road and then to a barn on the Stone Creek Ranch property.

There, he said he put them in order.

The diary mentions a strange element that he called a ritual.

According to him, he cut a strand of hair from each girl’s head to signify the completion of the transition.

These strands were kept in two separate envelopes found next to the photographs.

The investigator’s report stated, “The ritual has no specific religious or cultural origin.

Most likely, it is a personal symbolic practice of the subject.

The discovered cash and diary were the key to understanding what happened.

But at the same time, they opened up many more questions.

After all, Roads’s notes contained hints of dozens of other meetings about which there was no information in the official archives.

The forest held more than one secret, and Roads left some of them in his notes, but not all of them.

like where he disappeared to after his last entry.

After the discovery of the cash at North Colony Mine, Colorado authorities announced a large-scale manhunt for Martin Roads.

The search area was expanded by tens of square miles.

The operation involved a special sheriff’s unit, trail hunters, canine teams, and a helicopter with a thermal imager.

Reports indicate that during the first two days, all routes known to roads were checked, including the inaccessible sections of White Pine Gorge and the southern slopes of Humbult Peak.

There was no result.

Judging by the footprints in the mine, he had left a few hours before the detectives got there.

At the exit of the mine, they found only shoe prints going toward a deep spruce forest.

But after a 100 yards, the trail disappeared.

The ground was rocky, and under the trees was an old pine needle carpet that did not hold prints.

Later, one of the hunter travelers described it in his report as follows.

He moved as if he knew every stone.

Further from the trail, he walked the way other people walk on the road.

On the third day of the search, the helicopter found an abandoned facility, an old hunting shelter half a mile from the mine.

There were fresh traces of the site.

ashes, an uneaten candy bar, and an empty water bottle.

But there were no personal belongings.

It seems that roads left the place in a hurry, but managed to take everything that could give away his route.

On the sixth day, we inspected a hard-to-reach area along the slope where an old hunting passage was located.

It was previously believed to be impassible due to rock slides.

However, the investigators found a narrow passage between the rocks.

so narrow that only one person could pass through it.

A thin layer of dirt with a characteristic palm print remained on the stone.

Experts compared the print with Roads’s data and the match was high.

Investigators concluded that it was through this passage that he entered a remote area where there were no old hunting trails.

This meant only one thing.

He disappeared in places that he knew by instinct and where it was almost impossible to reach even for trained searchers.

On the seventh day, the search officially changed its status to limited.

The official wording, the probability that the suspect is in the search area has significantly decreased.

Unofficially, he simply disappeared.

The families of Valerie Dixon and Annie Casease received what is called closure in such cases.

The bodies were returned to the families.

Burials were held, but there was no inner peace.

According to relatives, they hoped for at least an arrest for the opportunity to ask final questions to the person who took their daughters.

But instead, they were left with the silence of the mountains, which sheltered the evil and preserved it along with their gorges.

On the day of the anniversary of the disappearance, an early November morning, Valerie’s mother stepped out onto the porch of her Denver home and saw a small bouquet of wild flowers tied with thin faded lace on the doorstep.

There were no security cameras.

Neighbors saw nothing.

The bouquet consisted of plants that grow in the highlands of the San Isabel forest.

There is no official report on this incident, but the family reported it to detectives.

They wrote down the information, but indicated that the source could not be determined.

A few months later, the sheriff’s office began receiving isolated reports from tourists.

All of them sounded about the same.

Someone saw a figure in camouflage in a remote part of the forest, similar to a person watching from a height or from behind trees.

One hiker said he spotted the silhouette on White Pine Ridge at sunrise.

The person was standing silently on a rock and when I blinked he was gone.

Another group of hikers reported that someone moved parallel to their trail, keeping their distance and not approaching but not completely out of sight.

None of these reports have been confirmed.

There is no evidence.

There are only the testimonies of people who describe the same detail.

A scar on his left cheek visible even in the mountainous penumbra.

Officially, the case of Martin Rhodess is still open.

It is listed as an investigation into a person suspected of a series of deaths and intentional causing of dangerous situations in the national forest.

Unofficially, it has become a legend.

In the San Isabel Mountains, what the locals call a shadow between the trees appears from time to time.

A person without a home, without an address, without a past.

The figure is credited with the ability to move silently, to know paths that are not on maps, and to appear only when the mountain sounds subside.

For some, it’s just a horror story.

For those who have lost loved ones, it is a reminder that the forest can hide more than just dangerous weather or wild animals.

Among sunny paths and picturesque landscapes, evil can live, and it doesn’t need dark sellers.

Trees, silence, and the certainty that no one will find it where it feels at home are enough for