In July of 2015, construction workers were dismantling the old Hansen Homestead farm, preparing the grounds for a new ranch.

The last thing left standing was a warped wooden toilet overgrown with weeds.

When an excavator picked it up with a bucket, the bottom of the structure suddenly fell off, revealing a dark hole that had been covered with earth and debris for years.

At first, the driver thought it was a piece of wood.

But when one of the workers shown a flashlight down, everyone froze.

At the bottom, among the compacted soil, dirt and old boards were human bones.

A skull pressed sideways against the wall of the pit.

The arms were turned upward as if they had once reached for the light.

A body that someone had put there on purpose and left to die in silence underground.

The sheriff was called immediately.

At that time, none of the people present even suspected that the pit contained the remains of a woman who had been searched for since the fall of 2010.

For 5 years, Lorie Jensen’s family had been waiting for even a hint of a trace, and her last resting place had been right under the old toilet that was to be demolished that morning.

On October 24, 2010, in the early morning hours, 32-year-old Lorie Jensen left her home in Gillette, Wyoming.

She worked as a freelance photographer, taking on private commissions and expeditionary projects.

and this one for the historic Wyoming archive required her to walk through several abandoned sites from the Great Depression.

One of them was the old Hansen Homestead Farm, lost between the hills of Bear Lodge in an area where cell phone service disappears after a few miles from the main road.

At about and 15 minutes in the morning, she called her husband, Jeremy Jensen.

According to him, Lorie was brief.

I’m getting off the highway onto a dirt road.

It’s going to be quiet.

The police will use this call as a starting point.

After that, Lorie never got in touch again.

Going to the farm was just a regular job for her.

Camera, tripod, spare batteries, memory cards.

Everything was always in the same yellow backpack.

Lorie knew the landscape, had filmed there many times, and didn’t consider this trip to be the least bit risky.

Her friends described her as a cautious person, but without fear of the wilderness.

Colleagues recalled that Lorie could work alone for hours, listening only to the sound of the wind and the click of the shutter.

When she didn’t return home that evening, Jeremy first assumed she was late because of the pictures.

But 20 hours passed, then 21, and her phone kept giving the same signal.

Out of range.

Around in the evening, the man contacted the sheriff’s department dispatcher.

The report states that he spoke steadily, but it was clear that he was on the verge of panic.

The next morning, the search operation was officially launched.

Crook County police, volunteers from the Rocky Mountain Search Dogs Group, and several volunteers who knew the Bear Lodge Mountain area all set out to search the area.

The weather conditions were typical for late October.

cold winds, night frosts, and an afternoon sky darkening.

The dogs were led to fresh samples of Lor’s clothing, but the scent was lost several hundred yard from the track.

2 days later, about 5 m from the farm, one of the volunteers spotted a yellow SUV almost completely hidden in a dense thicket of aspen.

The vehicle was locked.

Inside were a wallet, documents, a travel thermos, and a notebook with working notes.

Only the backpack with the equipment and Lori herself were missing.

There were no signs of a struggle, no fingerprints of strangers, not a single clear tread on the ground, as if the car had been placed there carefully and deliberately.

Detectives reconstructed its route using the data from the mobile operator.

The last phone signal was recorded at about 20 minutes in the area where the asphalt road gives way to a narrow forest strip.

After that, there was complete silence.

No calls, no messages, no access to the network.

A National Guard helicopter made several flights over the canyons and forest, but the tree cover was too dense to see through.

On the third day of the search, one of the rescuers signaled a possible trace, a dark stain on a rock that could have been blood.

A rapid test showed a negative result.

The spot was classified as unrelated activity.

Jeremy was at the search headquarters every day.

According to the sergeant, he brought old maps, tried to advise on routes, and remembered every trip Lorie had taken.

After the fourth day, he said a phrase that would later be recorded in the case file.

She couldn’t have just disappeared.

Someone saw her.

The police checked all the registered hunters who were in the area of Bear Lodge at the time.

None of them noticed the woman, the car, or any movement on the old trails.

On the fifth day of the search, the detectives first started talking about the crime.

The reason was the absence of any of Lor’s belongings outside the car.

No camera, no backpack, nothing that could have been left behind in case of a fall, injury, or encounter with a wild animal.

That’s when the kidnapping with intent to rob theory first came up.

But it was in the air.

The wallet was in the car, the cards were there, and the cash was also there.

Only the equipment and the man were taken.

The search lasted more than a week.

Dozens of yards of forest, several abandoned sheds, dry stream beds, and old wells were examined.

On the third week, the operation was switched to passive monitoring.

Each new find in Krook County was checked for a possible connection to Lori, but not a single signal matched.

Officially, the case was classified as cold at the end of November.

>> >> The documents state that the person’s whereabouts are unknown.

There are no traces of life.

Jeremy insisted on continuing the search at his own expense, but after the winter, even he admitted that all logical avenues had been exhausted.

The last entry in the materials of that year is a statement by one of the rescuers.

If she reached the farm, her foot should have left a trace, but there is nothing left.

This silence is not normal.

It was this silence that became the main feature of the case.

It was as if Lori had disappeared into the mountains of Bear Lodge, leaving behind only a locked car and a last call made on a dirt road where the connection is lost in a few seconds.

Months passed and the Hansen Homestead neighborhood remained abandoned.

The old buildings were tilting even more and weeds were sprouting through the cracked boards.

No one connected this place with Lor’s disappearance anymore until 5 years later when people from Wyoming land developers decided to clear the farm for new construction.

And there in the dust and rot under a building that should have been demolished long ago was the truth that they had been waiting for all those years to find in vain.

In July of 2015, the abandoned Hansen Homestead site was officially transferred to the ownership of Wyoming land developers.

According to the documents, the territory was to be cleared for a private ranch.

In fact, it was a ruin where everything was so rotten that trees were sprouting through the floor of old buildings.

Workers who arrived on the site on the first day recalled that the farm looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry and no one had ever returned.

The largest buildings, a barn, a house, and an old garage collapsed in the first two days.

Boards crumbled under the bucket as if they were made of ash.

The last thing left was an old wooden toilet, a lonely stall that stood alone, overgrown with nettles and dry weeds.

According to the driver, the structure was so light that he expected to simply toss it aside with a bucket and hand the area over to his colleagues for final leveling.

At about in the morning, when the excavator rested the bucket on the sidewall of the toilet, the top part shifted sharply, crunched, and fell to the side.

A dark chasm opened up underneath.

At first, the workers thought it was just an old cesspool, but the ground around it had sagged suspiciously deep, and something glistened in the sunlight from the bottom of the hole.

The driver stopped the machine, and called his colleagues.

One of them took a flashlight, stood on the edge of the pit, and slowly walked along the bottom with the light.

All three later described the same moment in their reports.

We saw a skull.

It was looking up as if it was waiting for someone to finally look in.

A human skeleton was lying at a depth of about 2 m.

The bones were partially covered with earth and old boards, but the shape of the skull, spine, and ribs were clearly visible.

The body seemed to have lost its flesh long ago, and time had made the remains dry and brittle.

Another thing was striking, the position of the arms.

The bones of the elbows were raised upward, pulled toward the narrow opening that had once been the mouth of an old toilet, a subtle, striking detail that would later become key to the experts conclusions.

The witnesses called the sheriff immediately.

The place was surrounded by tape and the work was ordered to stop.

The first photos were taken with official cameras around noon.

The report states, “The remains are lying face up, arms outstretched, legs bent.

The pit has partially collapsed, but the shape of the bones indicates that the body was not moved after death.” While the investigative team was inspecting the collapse, two workers felt a shiny metal object among the debris.

It was lying a little to the side of the main mass of bones.

At first glance, it was just a heavy thing that someone might have dropped long ago.

But the investigators immediately made a note.

The object was lying under a layer of soil and rotten wood.

That is, it fell into the pit at the same time as the body.

The experts expanded the area by a few more yards.

Every piece of wood, every fragment of old cloth was brought to the surface.

The bones were moved carefully, documenting their position.

Soil samples were taken from different depths as the layering could suggest the age of the burial.

The work lasted until late in the evening, but the main thing became clear in the first hours.

The person did not fall there by accident.

The position of the body, the discrepancy between the depth of the pit and its actual filling, the absence of any debris between the layers of soil at the level of the chest.

All this indicated that the victim was placed in the pit intentionally and then the pit was filled in partially just enough to hide it.

While the anthropologists were analyzing the remains, the sheriff interviewed the workers.

The driver who first lifted the toilet said only, “I realized it was a human when I saw the smile on the skull.

It’s not like a skull.

It’s like a grimace.

It gave me a chill.” Another worker added that they had tried to cut the weeds before removing the cabin, but there was no sign that anyone had ever approached the toilet.

The ground around it had not been touched for years.

By the evening, forensic scientists from Cheyenne arrived and opted for a conservative methodology, an extended excavation inside the pit with full documentation of the soil layers.

Since the structure had been standing for almost a century, the sedimentary layers were like an open book and this book showed that the body was not there in the 30s nor in the 50s.

Later, experts will establish the approximate age of the remains.

But even before that, it became clear that this was not a random historical skeleton.

This is a modern victim.

The search dog that circled the perimeter did not find any traces outside the pit itself.

This meant that there were no tools of the crime, personal belongings, or any other objects nearby that could suggest who the person was, except for one detail that had no name or significance at the time, just a shiny metal found next to the bones.

At about 19 Taj, the remains were transported to the forensic department in Cheyenne.

The pit was preserved until the next day to re-examine the site in daylight.

The reports of that day contain one characteristic note.

The skeleton was found in a position suggestive of a possible attempt to rise.

Death occurred in a position inside the pit.

This wording would later become key.

While still on the scene, one of the investigators said a phrase that would be included in the report.

This does not look like a long abandoned skeleton.

It looks like someone who died in a trap.

That night, no one in Crook County knew that this discovery would reopen an old case that had been considered hopeless for 5 years.

Someone had put a man in that pit and covered it with a structure that stood for more than seven decades until the day an excavator bucket accidentally removed the lid from this story.

The remains found on the farm were taken to the forensic center in Cheyenne early in the morning.

The formal identification procedure began before sunrise.

Anthropologists examined the condition of the bones, the degree of preservation, and took the first measurements.

After the initial comparison, it became clear that they were looking at a woman of approximately the same age as the missing photographer, Lorie Jensen.

But the official conclusion had to be made by dental analysis.

After receiving the dental records provided by the relatives, the experts conducted a detailed comparison.

The shape of the roots, old fillings, old medical work on one of the mers.

Everything matched completely.

A clear entry appeared in the protocol.

Identification confirmed without error.

The search operation, which had reached a dead end 5 years ago, had finally received an answer to the first of many questions.

But it was only part of the truth.

The real horror was revealed during the autopsy.

The pathologist began a detailed examination of the skull.

At the back in the occipital area, he found a linear fracture, long, straight, caused by a strong but not penetrating blow.

According to the expert, the blow was not fatal.

The bone edges did not show signs of severe destruction characteristic of fatal injuries.

the material state.

The injury caused severe pain and possibly led to partial loss of consciousness, but could not have killed instantly.

This meant that Lorie was conscious, at least partially, when her body was inside the narrow abandoned pit.

During the cleaning of the cranial cavities, the pathologist found small particles of soil.

The analysis showed that their composition corresponded to the soil from the bottom of the toilet pit.

The presence of soil in the nasal openings and upper respiratory tract proved that she had been breathing while inside.

It was one of those conclusions that are recorded without emotion, but which completely changed the understanding of events.

The bones of the limbs added another layer of tragedy.

The position of the hands was documented when the skeleton was lifted.

Both upper limbs stretched upward, fingers pointing toward the former opening.

The pathologist described it as a pose of an active attempt to get out.

The legs were bent under the body as if the woman was trying to stand up or push off the slippery bottom.

All signs pointed to the fact that she had regained consciousness in the darkness and began to struggle.

The forensic medical commission came to a single conclusion.

Death was caused by asphixxiation.

The case file formulated this as an acute lack of oxygen in a confined space with toxic fumes.

The pit, which had not been used for decades, had accumulated poisonous gases.

For a person with a head injury, disoriented and trapped in a cramped space, there was almost no chance of survival.

But even that was not all.

While cleaning the evidence, experts identified a foreign metal object found near the ribs.

At first glance, it was just a heavy object that had been underground as long as the body.

After a multi-stage washing, drying, and chemical cleaning of the surface, the engraving became visible.

The emblem of the airborne division and three letters SRVI shown on the body.

It turned out to be a branded metal lighter, heavy, massive, and not cheap.

It did not belong to the victim.

Lorie did not smoke, which was confirmed by both her friends and husband during interviews.

In addition, there were no signs of her own fingerprints on the lighter.

This meant only one thing.

Someone else brought the item and lost it at the time of the crime.

Trace evidence experts tried to recreate the possible mechanism of how the lighter got into the pit.

The modeling showed that its fall could not have been accidental on the part of the victim.

Instead, it could have happened to a person standing over the hole and leaning down, controlling the body’s fall.

Given the weight of the object and the fact that it fell to the bottom, the conclusion was simple.

The lighter slipped out of the pocket of the person who threw Lorie down.

Given the position of the skeleton, the situation looked as if the woman had not just been thrown.

She had been thrown in a hurry without intent to kill, but with cold indifference.

Detective Alan Brooks received the results of the examinations at the end of the second week.

In his official report, he wrote, “We are dealing with the deliberate taking of life or with actions in which complete indifference to the victim’s condition borders on extreme cruelty.” His attention was immediately drawn to the metal object because all previous searches in this case had not yielded any material trace of an unknown third party.

The lighter was the first.

After additional cleaning, the surface of the engraving was almost intact.

The division’s emblem and letters were applied in a factory.

Such things are not bought by chance.

They are usually given to veterans or ordered personally.

This meant that the detectives finally had an object that could lead to a person.

Experts emphasized that the owner could not return the lighter.

To get it out of the pit, it was necessary to completely dismantle the toilet structure.

This was the point that detectives considered the most important.

The person who left the object knew for sure that the victim had fallen down and stayed there and that no one would see that place for years to come.

The evidence, which accidentally slipped into the darkness, became the only silent thing that could name the attacker.

After receiving the results of the forensic examination, Detective Alan Brooks focused the investigation on who might have been on the old farm at the time of Lor’s disappearance.

Formerly, the Hansen Homestead property had been in a legal limbo since 2009.

The former owners had gone bankrupt.

The heirs had shown no interest, and the transfer of title documents were stuck in court.

This meant a simple thing.

No one had any control over what was happening there.

Local rangers who were the first to be interviewed referred to the area as a gray zone.

According to them, in those years, the farm often attracted people who did not want to be seen.

These included solitary hunters who avoided the official seasons, teenagers from the neighborhood who used the old buildings for parties, and groups that the rangers called butchers poachers who specialized in elk and deer.

Detective Brooks requested police report archives for the period between 2009 and 2011.

The goal was to find any activity in the Bear Lodge area that might indicate an alien presence.

In his report for 2009, he came across the first signal, a complaint from a local farmer about nightshots near an abandoned site.

The patrol then went out but found no people or traces of vehicles.

Three episodes related to the illegal shooting of elk have already appeared in the reports for 2010.

All of them were centered around old hunting trails that ran less than a mile from the farm.

One report mentions finding a makeshift carcass processing area, several steel hooks, a wooden stake with deep notches, and traces of blood that the patrol attributed to poaching at the time.

Brooks paid particular attention to the officer’s note.

The hooks and hanging loops were inside an abandoned shed.

It looks like a temporary workshop.

This was consistent with what experienced poachers might have done.

They could not take the entire moose, so they dismantled the carcasses on the spot, working in a hiding place.

These were the people who could have access to the empty farm buildings.

Later, the archives contained a description of a group of three people who were seen nearby in 2009.

middle-aged men traveling in an old pickup truck the color of dark clay.

They were not officially identified because the patrol did not have time to catch up with them.

However, two witnesses recalled a distinctive detail.

Two large bags with liquid dripping from the body of the pickup were hanging from the back.

At the time, the police believed it was moose or deer meat.

Subsequent inspections of the area showed that there were drops of blood mixed with dirt on the dirt road.

All of this could have remained a simple episode of poaching if not for another document, a report from a ranger at the Black Hills National Forest.

It mentioned unknown males using old farm buildings for sleeping.

The record was made in the fall of 2010, a few weeks after Lorie’s disappearance.

The ranger described them as rough, silent, with well-worn equipment and suggested that they might be involved in the collection and sale of antlers.

At that time, elk antlers brought considerable profit on the black market.

Poachers would cut off the entire head of the animal or even cut the antlers from live, weakened animals, leaving them to die.

It was a job that was usually done by people with minimal social ties and maximum rigidity.

Brooks began compiling a list of all the people who had been arrested in Crook County for hunting law violations over the course of several years.

The total list came to more than two dozen names.

Some of them were locals.

Others were visiting seasonal workers who could disappear as quickly as they appeared.

The most important thing was to find those who had access to the farm in October of 2010.

And here the archive provided the first serious match.

A private report by a hunting inspector documented a pursuit of a group of poachers in the bear lodge area about a week before Lorie disappeared.

The patrol was tracking a pickup truck that was traveling without headlights and lost sight of it at a turnoff leading to a farm.

The report states the vehicle disappeared between the barns.

It was impossible to follow it further due to the darkness.

Combined with the fact that the farm was completely abandoned, this created favorable conditions for illegal activities.

The old buildings, no one controlling the territory, and the silence around them were the perfect place to haul trophies, hide equipment, or hide themselves.

Brooks met with two rangers who patrolled the area in those years.

One of them recalled seeing a man with signs of military training in the area.

short haircut, massive figure, confident movements as if practiced.

He was alone without a car and carrying a heavy backpack.

The gamekeeper didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but he remembered that the stranger was walking toward the farm, even though all the hunting routes were in the opposite direction.

Another huntsman recalled an incident when he heard the sound of metal at night, something heavy rattling against the metal frame of an old barn.

At the time, he assumed it was an animal, but now, in light of the new information, the sound took on a completely different meaning.

Brooks also checked records of temporary settlements of seasonal workers during that period.

The bases included several people who lived on the outskirts of Sundance, worked in logging or on private ranches, and poached in their free time.

It was these groups that most often used abandoned buildings as a place to stay.

cheap, quiet, and unclaimed.

After comparing all the documents, the detective made the first interim conclusion.

There were unauthorized persons on the farm during the period of Lorie’s disappearance, familiar with the area, physically strong and practically invisible to official structures.

They could have seen someone else’s car, heard the click of a camera, or encountered it by accident.

The farm, thought to be a forgotten ruin, turned out to be a place where dozens of people had been passing unnoticed for years.

And among those shadows was probably someone who had a direct connection to what happened to Lorie Jensen.

With the discovery of the lighter engraved with SRV, the investigation had a thread to pull for the first time.

Detective Alan Brooks sent the item for examination and at the same time began checking military archives, veterans lists, and databases available to the department.

The work was routine, but due to the uniqueness of the initials and the fact that the emblem belonged to a specific airborne division, a match was found quite quickly.

The documents listed a man named Clint Ray Walker, a resident of Sundance, a former serviceman who had never been able to return to normal life after his service.

An archival note stated that Walker was discharged due to disciplinary violations and psychological instability.

No specific wording was given in the military dossier, but it was noted that he was prone to impulsive aggression.

The next step was to check local employment records.

It turned out that in the period around Lorie Jensen’s disappearance, Clint worked as a laborer on oil wells for Black Hills Energy Services.

It was a typical job for people with a history of violence, hard shifts, grueling physical labor, and dangerous conditions.

Former co-workers who were interviewed recalled Walker as a man of a rough disposition who explodes over the smallest things.

One employee said that Walker kept to himself, didn’t make friends with anyone, but he could work as if he didn’t care about his own health.

Company reports indicate that he was fired in the fall of 2010.

The reason was the theft of a copper cable that he allegedly tried to sell privately.

Officially, it was reported as a violation of discipline, but the accompanying report from the manager also pointed to strong suspicion of methamphetamine abuse.

It was after this incident that Walker disappeared from the formal labor market.

Detectives checked his address.

According to records, he was living in an old trailer on the outskirts of Sundance in an area described by neighbors as cluttered and dangerous.

People in the neighborhood had two words to describe his life.

The perpetual smell of smoke and banging in the middle of the night.

Neighbors recalled that after his dismissal from the oil field, he began to appear with a rifle more often than a normal hunter would.

He was seen on forest roads at any time of the day, sometimes with backpacks with unknown contents.

No one could say where he worked after losing his official job, but many speculated that he lived off of random money and hunting.

Several former drillers mentioned another feature.

Walker carried a heavy silver Zippo lighter with him at all times.

One of them said that Walker called it his mascot from the service.

According to another, Clint would flick it nervously during smoke breaks, even when he wasn’t smoking.

This habit was recorded as a characteristic.

When detectives analyzed the route that could connect Walker to Hansen Homestead Farm, another disturbing detail emerged.

From his trailer to the abandoned farm, there was an indirect but well-traveled road through a forest area known to local poachers.

According to the foresters, this road had been used unofficially for decades and was not mapped.

It was the road most often used by those involved in illegal hunting.

In the Crook County database for 2010, there was one protocol recorded which at the time of Lor’s disappearance was considered secondary.

A patrolman stopped a pickup truck in which Walker was traveling.

The report states that they found residue of moose blood and recent cuts on the metal surface in the back.

The driver was then released due to lack of concrete evidence, but he was put on an informal list of possible poachers.

This record was the first direct evidence that Walker could have spent significant time in the same forests where Lorie was last seen.

Then there is another important episode.

In one of the informal conversations, a former oil company employee said that he saw Walker after he was fired hung with knives and a rope over his shoulder.

He walked to his pickup truck at a gas station and according to the witness, flicked his lighter in the way that people who have experienced severe stress on duty do.

This gesture, insignificant on its own, meant a lot when combined with the engraving on the object from the pit.

Detectives checked records related to metal sales during that period.

At the scrapyard, there were several transactions from a man with the initials SV that could have belonged to Walker.

He handed over small batches of copper wires and old tools, which confirmed his unemployed lifestyle.

Special attention was paid to the geography of his movements.

During the interview of eyewitnesses, one of the hunters mentioned that he had seen a man who looked like Walker near the old barns of the farm.

This happened around the time of Lor’s disappearance.

According to him, the stranger was carrying something heavy in his hands and had a metal latch or carbine hanging from his belt.

The hunter did not pay attention to this at the time, but during the second interview, he added that the man looked like he knew where he was going.

Another witness, an employee of a gas station on the highway leading to the farm, said that he saw Walker on the highway that October, dirty, tired, but very focused.

The witness claimed that he was buying cheap coffee and holding a silver lighter for a long time.

It was this testimony that became important to Detective Brooks.

There were too many coincidences to ignore.

When Brooks compared all the data, he came to an intermediate conclusion.

Clint Ray Walker was the only person in the area whose initials matched the markings on the lighter, had access to the farm, was in the area of Lorie’s disappearance, and led a lifestyle that fully matched the profile of the alleged attacker.

The most important thing to find out was whether he could have been at the farm on the same day that Lorie went missing and whether that metal object was an accident or his own signature on the crime.

When the name of Clint Ray Walker appeared in the case file, not just as a possible suspect, but as a person with a direct connection to the object found near the body.

Detective Alan Brooks began to work through his immediate circle.

>> >> The main task was to find someone who could confirm or deny his stay at the Hansen Homestead farm in the fall of 2010.

The list of contacts that were obtained after an official request included the name of a woman, Sarah Lynch.

The documents indicated that she lived with Walker at the time in an old trailer on the outskirts of Sundance.

The address had to be searched among several altered records.

After 2010, the woman moved several times and avoided any official contact.

Only after long negotiations did she agree to talk, but on the condition that her name would not be published in public documents.

Sarah’s testimony was one of the most disturbing elements of the investigation.

She said that she had lived with Walker for about a year before and after his dismissal from the oil field.

According to her, the last months were like living with a man who was gradually losing control.

She recalled a particular day mid-occtober 2010 around the time Lorie disappeared.

Walker returned to the trailer late in the evening, not with the black fuel oil that was a familiar sign of his work, but with blood and clay stains on his clothes.

He was already unemployed at the time, so the I was working explanation didn’t make sense.

Sarah claimed that Walker seemed agitated, excited, and overly aggressive at the same time.

He walked around the trailer as if he was looking for something, dropping things, nervously wiping his hands with a towel, even though there was nothing visible on them.

Sarah also noticed a detail that the investigation considered critical.

That evening, she saw that Walker did not have his metal lighter, the one that all his colleagues called his lucky charm.

The woman said she then asked him, “Where is your lighter?” And that’s when he exploded.

The report states the witness reported that after the question, the suspect hit her in the face and threatened her not to ask any questions.

That same evening, she said Walker ordered her not to talk about what she saw and threw away the clothes he returned in.

Sarah went on to confirm another important fact.

She knew about the Hansen Homestead Farm because she had traveled there several times with Walker.

According to her, he called the place the butcher shop because it was where he skinned the carcasses of animals he killed in the woods.

He chose the pharmacy because its buildings stood as if everyone in the world had forgotten about them.

Sarah recalled that there were hooks hanging inside the old sheds, and sometimes there were traces of blood on the floor, not fresh, but recent enough.

The woman claimed that after his release, Walker stopped looking for a normal job, but continued to bring home money.

In her opinion, it was money for meat and horns that he sold through truckers he knew.

He would often return from long trips with empty backpacks, sometimes with shops, sometimes with new knives.

Sarah said that during those periods, he acted as if he was in a kind of fog and that she was afraid to ask him too many questions.

During one of the searches of the trailer after their argument, she saw an object that she remembered for a long time.

According to her, it was an expensive professional camera, not like the ones used by amateurs.

She did not know the technical details, but described a black body with a large lens.

When she asked him where the camera came from, Walker had only one word to answer.

I found it.

He sold it the next day for cash.

The money, Sarah said, he spent on drugs.

Detectives recorded her every word.

The camera that went missing from Laura’s backpack was never found during the initial investigation.

Despite this, Sarah’s testimony coincided with the time and circumstances of the photographers’s disappearance.

She could not have known the details of the case.

At the time of Lor’s disappearance, her name was not widely covered in the media.

The coincidences were too precise to be considered coincidental.

Another important point from her testimony, Walker referred to the farm several times as a convenient place where no one would find anything until the whole thing fell apart.

Sarah said that sometimes he said this half- jokingly, but gradually she began to be frightened by the way he said it, not as a joke, but as a warning.

According to the woman, after that October evening, Clint became more aggressive and the trailer itself turned into a place where she lived in fear.

She left him after several beatings, taking only her clothes.

She never dared to return to the trailer and did not try to find it after the breakup.

During the second interview, the woman said a phrase that became a key for investigators.

Something happened to him that day.

He came back differently than usual, as if he had done something and couldn’t live with it.

But he didn’t feel guilty.

When Detective Brooks finished recording her testimony, a clear outline emerged in the case file for the first time.

A person who had access to the farm, worked at night, hid his travels, came home covered in blood, lost his lighter on those days, and was in possession of someone else’s expensive camera.

Sarah Lynch could not prove what happened on the farm, but her words convincingly showed that Walker brought home more than just dirt on his clothes in October 2010.

He brought home a silence that he could not explain.

After Sarah Lynch’s testimony, the investigation moved forward.

Detective Alan Brooks was no longer working with a likely suspect.

He was now working with a specific person who had the motive, access, physical capabilities, and psychological profile that matched the circumstances of the crime.

The hardest part was to find Clint Ray Walker alive before he disappeared for good.

For several days, police combed motel, truck stops, and bars in Crook, Campbell, and Weston counties.

These were the kinds of places that men like Walker usually chose.

cash, no security cameras, and quick changes of locations.

A Sundance patrol officer reported seeing a pickup truck similar to Walker’s vehicle near a bar in Morcraftoft, a small town that was usually a stopover for people looking for cheap booze and quick fights.

The police decided to act immediately.

It was a noisy evening and the copper nail bar was packed to capacity.

According to the bartender, a man who looked like Walker was sitting in the corner at a table, more silent than talking, but acting like he had everyone’s attention.

That’s how he was found, sitting with a half empty bottle of beer, unresponsive to the noise around him.

The arrest was quick.

Two officers approached him from behind while a third blocked his exit.

According to the report, Walker did not resist, but he looked at the officers for a long time so that one of them had to keep his hand on his holster.

The report states, “The detainees behavior is hostile, but controlled.

He is not protesting, but demonstrates a willingness to respond physically.” A series of interrogations began at the Morcraftoft station.

At first, Walker remained silent.

He sat motionless with his arms crossed over his chest and looked past the detective.

Only after an hour did he speak.

His first words were short.

You were wrong.

He repeated this several times until Brooks placed a clear bag on the table with the lighter found next to Lorie Jensen’s remains.

According to protocol, the reaction was sharp.

Walker clenched his jaw and looked away.

At first, he said that the lighter could have been stolen by someone from the drilling team.

However, he did not answer any further questions.

When the investigators reminded him that he himself wore the item around his neck on a chain, as former colleagues had said, Walker changed his tactics.

He now claimed that he had lost it a long time ago.

The interrogation lasted several hours.

Walker tried to use the skills that his former colleagues testified he had acquired both in the army and in the oil fields, speaking in fragments, avoiding direct answers, and changing the subject.

Brooks wrote in his notes, “Behavior indicates a deliberate attempt to stall.” However, time was working against Walker.

Investigators deliberately questioned him in detail about the Hansen Homestead farm, recalling witnesses who had seen him in the area in those months.

When Brooks asked if he had been there in October of 2010, Walker subtly changed his posture, a gesture the detectives described as a sign of internal tension.

A few minutes later, he said that he had passed by the farm sometimes, but never went in.

This was the first direct contradiction to Sarah’s testimony.

It was the one that the investigators used.

They didn’t mention her name, but described the facts.

Discarded clothes, no lighter, coming home covered in blood.

Then, for the first time during the entire interrogation, Walker looked away from the detective and towards the wall.

On the audio recording, he is heard to be silent for a long time and then speak softly.

You can’t prove anything.

The facts proved more than he thought.

The key moment occurred when Brooks announced the results of the examination.

The report, which the detective read aloud, clearly stated that Lorie Jensen was alive when she fell into the pit and that the lighter that belonged to Walker fell down at the same time as her body.

At this point, according to the officer’s description, Walker’s behavior changed.

He began to sit still, but his posture lost its aggressive tone.

The pressure was increased, but Walker formally pleaded not guilty.

The breakthrough came only after detectives reminded him of his illegal hunting.

They said they had information about the pickup truck’s movements, witnesses, and findings in the barns, and most importantly, about the camera he had sold.

No one mentioned the make, model, or color, but the phrase, “An expensive camera found that month was the last detail that broke his silence.” According to the detective, Walker nervously clenched his hands.

Then he said, “She wasn’t supposed to be there.” After that, a partial confession began.

Walker did not describe the details in full, but he said the key thing.

On the day of Lorie’s disappearance, he was at the farm to hide another carcass.

He claimed that he did not intend to kill anyone.

According to him, Lorie appeared suddenly, was taking pictures of an old barn, and saw something she shouldn’t have.

He said he was afraid that she would call the police or rangers and that everything would collapse.

Then came the blow.

He was unable to explain what he hit with, but researchers speculated that it was some heavy tool from the shed.

A blow that did not kill her, but knocked her down.

Then his testimony became fragmentaryary.

He said that he didn’t plan anything like this, but had to do something.

His words hinted at a panicked decision to hide the body in a place that only poachers knew.

He did not seem to realize or did not want to realize that the woman was still alive when he threw her down.

The last statement he made during this interrogation was central.

I just wanted everything to disappear, just like before.

It was after these words that law enforcement officials formalized the charges.

The main thing that remained ahead was to testify to all this in court.

But there was no doubt for the investigators.

The man who left Lori to die in the dark was sitting in front of them.

The trial of Clint Ray Walker began in the city of Sundance in the spring of 2016.

Although it was a local case, it quickly attracted statewide attention.

Wyoming rarely saw a trial where the chain of evidence recreated a 5-year story that began with a sudden disappearance and ended with the discovery of a body in a place no one would ever look for.

The courtroom was small but packed.

Lorie’s family sat in the front row holding a photo of her, the one from her work badge for the archive.

In the dock, Walker looked the same as he had when he was arrested, a calm stiffness that showed no emotion.

According to the psychologists present at the trial, he behaved as if he were an observer, not a central figure.

The prosecutor’s office presented the case clearly.

The first to be announced were the results of the forensic medical examination, a fracture of the back of the head, the presence of soil in the airways, and a characteristic body position that indicated attempts to escape.

The expert conducting the analysis spoke in a steady voice, but paused several times, not to emphasize anything, but to collect himself.

It was recorded that for someone with more than 20 years of experience, this was one of the most emotionally difficult reconstructions.

Then there is the lighter.

In court, it was called a silent witness.

It became the material object that linked the crime scene to a specific person.

The emblem of the airborne division, the initials, the massiveness of the object, the testimony of Walker’s former colleagues who confirmed that it was his favorite thing.

All this formed an evidentiary line that the defense could not break.

The prosecutor’s office presented the lighter not just as an object, but as part of the chronology.

It fell into the pit at the exact moment the victim fell into it.

It was this wording that became the key.

Neither the defense nor outside experts were able to challenge the logic of this conclusion.

Sarah Lynch was called to the stand.

She testified reluctantly, nervously, constantly clenching her hands.

The judge interrupted her testimony several times to let her calm down.

She spoke about the day Walker came home covered in blood, about the fact that he had thrown away his clothes, about the absence of a lighter, about how he flew into a rage when she asked about her, about the camera he found.

These were words that contained no embellishment.

The woman spoke about the horror of everyday life as if it were a familiar reality.

The jury, according to the notes of the court psychologist, reacted to her testimony with noticeable tension.

Patrol officers confirmed that Walker had been seen repeatedly in the Bear Lodge area.

Rangers recalled the poaching trails he used.

One of them said he had seen him closer to the farm than any other local man.

The words heard from the lips of the forester had their own special weight.

These people know well who appears in the wilderness and when.

When it was Detective Brook’s turn, he voiced for the first time what had remained off the record.

Over the years, he had seen many brutal crimes, but few people leave a man to die in the dark and silence, fully aware that he is still alive.

The judge did not allow detailed assessments, but the key wording was recorded in the transcript.

The defense tried to put forward a version that someone else could have dropped the lighter or that Walker does not remember the events due to an emotional breakdown, or that Sarah has a personal grudge.

But the report drawn up after Walker’s interrogation showed that he admitted to being at the farm on the day Lorie disappeared.

This fact alone was devastating to any alternative version.

The trial did not last long.

The judge scheduled the hearings to avoid delays and the evidence was presented in such a structured way that the jury could only assess its sufficiency.

The legal part was completed quickly.

The jury deliberations lasted less than 3 hours.

This was recorded in the journal.

The verdict was announced without hesitation.

Guilty of first-degree murder.

guilty of concealing the body, guilty of obstructing the investigation.

When the judge announced the life sentence without the possibility of parole, Walker did not move.

He just sat there looking in front of him.

One of the guards later said that it seemed like he was expecting the decision.

For the first time in 5 years, Lorie’s family was able to bury her.

The ceremony was a private affair attended only by relatives and a few close friends.

According to a family friend, Lorie’s mother said quietly, “She’s finally home.

” This episode does not appear in the case file, but it was mentioned quietly and respectfully at Sundance.

As for Lorie’s belongings, almost everything was lost.

Her camera was never found despite attempts to track its sale.

The money Walker had received had long since disappeared, along with his drug addiction of the time.

The old farm where it all happened no longer existed.

The owners of the site had completed the dismantling of the buildings, including the old toilet under which the truth had been hidden for years.

The area was leveled and prepared for construction.

The locals said that now it is quiet, different than before.

Not the kind in which someone is lost, but the kind that comes after the last question has been answered and the answer cannot be changed.