ut your parents and grandparents, MyHeritage will make the rest of the process super quick and easy, searching over 19 billion historical documents to help connect your family members to your tree. There's a really cool feature called Instant Discoveries that will link you with countless people from your lineage, dating back several generations, introducing you to so many people that you probably never even knew about. I was able to trace my family all the way back to 1695. I found that on my maternal grandmother's side, my family were descendants of Native Americans. On my maternal grandfather's side, we all came from Europe. On my father's side, things were a lot more simple. We've basically lived in Mississippi for hundreds of years, even before the United States was even founded, and we're all still here today too. The really cool thing about MyHeritage is that it'll even link you with documents, photos, and pretty much anything else that's been stored in the database regarding your family, letting you take an even closer look at the lives of these people you've never even known about. If you happen to find some old photos of your family, they even offer a feature to colorize these photos, bringing new life to these people that have long since passed. It's a super cool service, so I'd strongly urge you guys to check it out. If you click the link in the description, you'll not only be given a 14-day trial, but you'll also get 50% off your membership. Give it a try and let me know what you find. You never know we'd actually be related somewhere along the line. Thanks to MyHeritage for sponsoring today's video. Laura Babcock was just 23 years old in the summer of 2012. Laura had a core group of friends that she depended on, as well as a family who cared deeply for her. She was known for having the most sincere love for dogs, but she also had aspirations of starting her own family one day and eventually settling down with someone she loved. Laura's personality was described pretty interestingly by one reporter who recalled her as being the perfect mixture of optimistic and conflicted. Laura was a strong young woman, but she also had a few demons. Laura had struggled with her mental health in the past, but she was on the path to making things better for herself. In 2012, she just graduated from college and got her degree in English as well as drama. She'd been attending the University of Toronto for a number of years and was super excited to finally put her life as a student behind her so that she could get to work on her career. She'd been spending her time searching for a more permanent job where she could begin to place her roots and grow, but she quickly learned that finding an honest, good-paying job isn't as easy as some people would make it seem. After spending quite some time trying to find a suitable position and being unable to do so, Laura started to get impatient. Worse yet, she'd begun having disagreements with her parents. Although Laura was 23 and equipped with a solid education, she continued to live at home with her parents while she tried to make ends meet. Her parents were happy to have her, but they had strict rules that she was expected to follow. This was the cliche situation of stay at home as long as you want, but if you live under my roof, you live by my rules. Laura respected this to a certain extent, but tensions began to rise when Laura began to push back on her parents' rules about curfew. She'd missed curfew multiple times in the past, and this was beginning to be a problem for her parents. Rather than agreeing to her parents' rules, Laura decided that enough was enough and she'd moved out on her own. Well, sort of. She moved out, but she wasn't entirely on her own just yet. She wasn't able to afford her own place to stay, so she opted to hop from couch to couch, bouncing between the homes of her various friends. While this certainly isn't a great lifestyle decision, Laura just needed some space and time away from her parents while she tried to establish herself as her own person. Her father clarified that she'd not been banished from their home due to her curfew violations, but he made it clear that he didn't approve of her coming home at two or three in the morning multiple times a week, which is when Laura eventually opted to just move out. Without a job and desperate for money, one of Laura's friends introduced her to a new idea. While waiting for a more traditional job that utilizes her degree, why not try joining the escort business? To put it plainly, an escort is someone who's paid for their companionship. Escort services are widely available to people of all genders and walks of life, and most of the time, it just involves accompanying someone to an event or just paying the person to hang out with you and be friendly. But sometimes escort services require more than simple friendship, depending on the client's requirements and requests. Laura was apprehensive about this line of work, but she knew that she needed money and she needed it quickly, so she opted to give it a try. Those around Laura noticed that pretty soon after she joined this particular workforce, her mood began to change. Her father recalls this time in her life and says that it was clear that Laura was growing frustrated. He said she always seemed agitated and on edge and would have a hard time staying still. One of her friends recalled her time working as an escort and said that Laura had a lot of emotional issues, but that they understood each other and overall Laura was a happy and outgoing person. But by the spring of 2012, that had begun to change. A darkness had begun to envelop Laura and there was nothing her family could do to stop it. By July of that year, Laura stopped contacting her family and soon after, she was never heard from again. It quickly became clear to those around her that Laura had been hiding some dark secrets from those that she held closest. Laura's boss, the owner of last-minute escorts, recalled that Laura had big aspirations of becoming an actress. He remembered Laura fondly, explaining that she worked for him at multiple times in the past. Outside of this, three other men spoke up about their time working with Laura. All three men agreed that they'd never had intimate relations with her. Their business was purely professional, but a couple of other people she worked with weren't as open about the time they spent with Laura, leaving a lot of room for speculation. One of her former clients was a TV and film producer who let Laura stay at his house for at least two weeks. Another of her clients was a doctor who offered to help Laura pay for an apartment so that she could be on her own. But both this doctor and all of Laura's other clients stopped hearing from her in early July of 2012. It was around the same time that a man named Delin Millard reappeared in Laura's life. Delin and Laura went way back. They met back in 2008 and dated for a short while before calling things off. Delin was incredibly well off financially speaking. He's often described as a millionaire and was the heir to the thriving business, Millard Air, which is an aviation company based out of Toronto. When Laura and Delin met, they hit it off instantly. They would share an on-again-off-again relationship before eventually losing contact sometime in early 2009. By 2010, Laura had moved on and met a new man named Sean Lerner. Sean and Laura shared a much deeper relationship and dated for about a year and a half before things were broken off around Christmas of 2011. We'll get back to Sean in just a minute, but around the same time that the relationship had begun to fall apart, Laura was struggling pretty seriously. She'd been admitted to a hospital in August of 2011 after she confessed to doctors that she felt as though she cried all hours of the day and was suffering from serious bouts of depression and anxiety. But it's never been publicly revealed why she was having these issues. It's possible that she was simply coming to terms with the fact that her relationship was falling apart, but it's also possible that there were deeper issues here that just haven't been shared publicly. Laura eventually confessed that she'd begun to harm herself, and that's when doctors began to take her case a bit more seriously, with one report suggesting that she began taking antidepressant medication as a result. By April of 2012, about six or seven months later, Laura had returned to the hospital at least 12 more times due to various mental health issues. Laura was losing it, and she was spiraling quickly. Her friends began to grow increasingly concerned, but there was very little that they could do other than just be there for her and comfort her. To make matters even worse, this is when Dylan Millard came back into the picture. While Dylan and Laura had broken up about four years prior, they still kept in touch from time to time. With Laura now being single, she decided to reach back out to Dylan to see if there was anything left between the two of them. And as luck would have it, there was, but there was also a catch. Dylan had begun dating someone about a year prior to this, sometime in early 2011. His new girlfriend, Christina, was a bit of an interesting character. She and Laura had multiple arguments, and what it ultimately boiled down to was Christina being jealous of the bond that Laura and Dylan shared. It was clear that there was something special between the two of them, and Christina felt threatened by this. To make matters even worse, Dylan and Christina weren't even in a committed relationship. While they were technically together, Dylan says that they were in an open relationship, and he claims that Christina was aware that he was actively sleeping with other people, one of these people being Laura. In February of 2012, Laura turned 23, and on her birthday, she received a text from Christina. The text read, happy birthday. A year ago today was the first time I slept with Dylan. Laura, seemingly unfazed by this, responded by saying, that's fine, I slept with him a couple weeks ago. It was clear from this moment on there was some serious bad blood between the two, but Dylan wanted no part of it. It would seem that Dylan wasn't looking to reignite anything serious with Laura. This became clear when he texted her a short while later and explained that he felt that Laura was a bad influence for him. He requested that she not contact him anymore until she'd made a quote huge leap of self-discovery.  It was very clear that Dylan was done with Laura, but Laura's version of events paints a different picture. While Dylan claims that Christina knew about his promiscuity, Laura doesn't believe that Christina knew the extent of Dylan's actions. A text that she sent to another friend named Andrew suggests that Dylan was cheating on Christina behind her back and the two weren't actually in an open relationship. Laura seems to have regretted hooking up with Dylan to an extent, because she believed he and Christina were on the same page, but would soon learn after that they weren't. I'll spare you all of the he said she said drama and cut to the chase. In April of 2012, Christina had had enough. She wanted Laura out of their lives for good and Dylan admitted that he was willing to make that happen. He texted Christina and told him that he'd take care of Laura. He didn't even beat around the bush about it. When Christina asked what he planned to do, he said, quote, first I'm going to hurt her, then I'll make her leave. I will remove her from our lives. By June of 2012, Sean Lerner, the man who Laura had been dating for about a year and a half stepped back into her life. He'd heard about how bad off she was and he wanted to do his best to help her. The two had no plans of getting back together, but Sean still cared for Laura deeply and wanted to help her get back on her feet. Sean had also learned that Laura had begun working for last minute escorts. When he found out about how bad of shape she was in, he paid for her to stay in a motel for a few days and even gave her an iPad so that she could look for apartments in the area. When he pressed Laura about her involvement in the escort business, she repeatedly assured him that her business was not of a sexual nature and that she was nothing more than arm candy for lonely men. Sean says that he still believes there was more to it than this. If this weren't bad enough, several of Laura's friends also explained that around the same time, they have reason to believe that Laura had developed an addiction to illegal substances. Laura, to put it lightly, was not having a good time. You can't help but feel terrible for her after everything she'd been through, but at the same time, we also have to admit Laura was an adult capable of making adult decisions. It seems that she just kept making one bad decision after another and it let her down a path that it quickly became too treacherous to come back from. All throughout this time, despite Laura's claims that she didn't want to be involved with Dylan and despite his claims that he didn't want to be involved with her either, Laura and Dylan remained in almost constant contact. In fact, in the days leading up to her disappearance, Laura and Dylan spoke on the phone at least 100 times. I wasn't able to confirm if this communication was via calls or texts, but either way, they were still on speaking terms and they were making the most of it. The two had made plans to meet up on the evening of July 3rd and later that night, Laura headed toward Kipling subway station in Toronto where Dylan picked her up, driving her to his home. An hour later, Laura's phone turned off and would never come back on again. Now fair warning, the case takes a rapid nosedive from here and the events all take place rather quickly, one right after the other. So buckle down and maybe even take some notes because things are about to get crazy in very rapid succession. After Laura met up with Dylan that evening, Dylan sent out a text message at around 7.30 PM to his friend, Mark Smitch. The message read, I'm on a mission, back in one hour. No further texts were sent after this. The very next day, Sean Lerner received a notification that the iPad that he'd given Laura had suddenly been renamed Mark's iPad. Safe to assume that Dylan's aforementioned friend, Mark, had come into possession of Laura's iPad. But how? Immediately after this, Dylan took a photo on his cell phone, showing an object wrapped in a blue tarp located on his farm in Waterloo. And it's been suggested that this photo was shared with Mark. Later that same day, Dylan accepted a same day delivery for a brand new mattress. I think we can all tell what's probably going on here. Laura spends the night, then all of a sudden Dylan's taking photos of something wrapped in a tarp, then buying a new mattress, things were getting fishy to say the least. But if this wasn't clear enough, things are about to get worse. In the days leading up to all this, Dylan had contacted his mechanic friend and asked him to make arrangements to deliver an animal incinerator to his farm. This incinerator arrived on July 5th, two days after Laura was last seen. This brings us to July 14th, 2012, the day that Laura's family decided to file a missing person report. See, Laura was known to lose touch with her parents from time to time. After all, they were still caught up in a bit of a disagreement at this point. But it was incredibly unusual for Laura to not make contact with her friends. It's been noted that she spoke to her friends literally every single day up to this point. But when the missing person report was filed, Sean Lerner says that police didn't seem concerned in Laura's case at all, especially after they learned about her mental health issues and her work as an escort. It was almost as if they completely shut down after learning this. Nine days passed by without any leads coming to or from the police who were working the case. But on the evening of July 23rd, Dylan sent a text message to Mark saying barbecue has run its warmup. It's ready for meat. Immediately after this text was sent, Dylan made a Google search, seeking the correct temperature for cremation. Soon after, Dylan took a photo of Mark standing next to the cooker. The objects that were seen inside the cooker at this point were later described by a forensic expert as resembling human bones. By late July, Laura's final phone bill was delivered to her parents' home. Desperate for answers, her parents opened the bill and looked at her call history. They immediately noticed that the final calls she made worked to Dylan, someone she'd supposedly written off and moved on from. This was the biggest red flag her parents could have possibly found. And they immediately called all her other friends desperate for more information about her secret relationship with Dylan. One of the people her parents reached out to was Sean Lerner. Sean took it upon himself to reach out to Dylan, asking if he had any information about Laura. He sent Dylan a text that read, quote, I'm not looking to point a finger at anyone, but we're concerned about Laura and it looks like you were the last person to correspond with her. Dylan initially ignored these texts, but the two later set up a time to meet at a local Starbucks to chat about the situation. When the date finally rolled around, the two spoke briefly before Dylan began making allegations that Laura was nothing but an addict who continued hounding him hoping for a fix. Dylan says he repeatedly denied Laura's requests and had no involvement in her disappearance. But then he made a pretty shocking statement. As the two ended their conversation, Dylan informed Sean that he should have, quote, no reasonable expectation of finding her. This brings us to August of 2012 when the pieces finally began to fit together. Mark had invited a few of his friends over to his mother's home and they were hanging out in the garage when Mark began rapping. I can't tell if he was rapping as a joke or if he was serious about it, but my gosh, is it awful. Look, if you go swimming, you'll find a phone. Find a phone. Find a phone. If you find a phone, if you go swimming, you'll find a phone. Lay out, smash it on me. In this weird rap, Mark says that she started off as skin and bone and now she lays on ashy stone. And he ends the segment by claiming, if you go swimming, you can find her phone. I don't know about you, but this sounds like a confession if I've ever heard one. Mark's friends were apparently shocked by this as well and that's why they eventually agreed to testify against Mark, saying that he would later confess to claiming a girl's life, burning the remains and then disposing of the evidence in a lake. Mark was very clearly terrible at keeping secrets. This was all investigators needed to pin both Mark and Dylan for the disappearance of Laura Babcock. But this isn't the end of the case by any means. After detectives learned of Mark's ridiculous confession, they obviously pieced together the connection to Laura Babcock's case. But they also started to reinvestigate another crime that involved Dylan's own father, Wayne Millard. Wayne had lost his life a while back, but investigators initially ruled that he'd claimed his own life, resulting in Dylan becoming the heir to his father's multi-million dollar estate. But now that they learned the extent of Dylan's involvement with Laura, they wanted to re-examine his father's case, planning to pin Dylan for that crime as well. If this weren't bad enough, investigators also learned of a third man who was involved with Dylan. This man had listed a pickup truck for sale on a local shopping app and Dylan and Mark showed up to test drive it. While out driving the car, they claimed the life of the owner and presumably stole the truck. This victim was also disposed of in the duo's makeshift incinerator. Now, the story of Dylan and Mark goes much deeper than this and pretty much everyone who knew the two were somehow involved in the case, with the female friend of the two even being accused of helping clean up the scene of the crime and destroying evidence. If you'd like to see a more in-depth look at the crimes of these two, just let me know in the comments and I may revisit this in the future. But for today's video, I wanna stay focused on Laura Babcock. For the duo's crimes against Laura, they were each sentenced to 25 years behind bars. Even though Laura's remains have never been found, Dylan has since appealed the charges placed against him regarding the disappearance of Laura, but it seems safe to assume that these appeals will most likely be denied. Thankfully, Laura's family were finally able to get justice for the horror that their daughter was put through. But in the end, this doesn't bring Laura back. Doesn't really solve anything at all. We may never know why Dylan went to such drastic means to get Laura out of his life. There's truly no sense to it.  But it doesn't change the fact that the damage is already done. Ali Costiel was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but had always dreamed of attending the University of Mississippi. When she was finally given this chance, in her eyes, life couldn't have gotten much better. But then things changed. Investigators say that there weren't any clues or evidence that could have tipped off Ali's friends before her life was tragically cut short on that July afternoon. Detectives who arrived at the scene of the crime couldn't understand how someone could have done such a thing to a well-behaved, easy-going student.  Ali Costiel was 21 years old in 2019, attending Mississippi State University in Oxford, Mississippi. Oxford, Mississippi is a relatively small town. There isn't a whole lot going on there. I was there just a couple weeks ago, and best I could tell, it was a town that didn't have much to offer outside of a few restaurants and outdoor stores like tractor supply. With the population of about 25,000, it's a quaint little town, very quiet, and certainly a great place for college students to live, as there's only so much trouble you can get into in such a small, lazy town. The University of Mississippi is really the main draw for the town, and I think it's safe to assume that the college is likely where the town gets most of its money as well. The university has an acceptance rate of around 90%, but the reason most people go here is likely because its tuition is relatively low, compared to other similar schools. And with the graduation rate of about 65%, it fits right in line with schools that may cost 10 times as much, while offering what's essentially the same exact education. This is likely why Allie Costfield was so determined to attend the University of Mississippi, a great school, a great price, and usually great people. Allie was attending college with the plans of graduating with a degree in marketing. She was scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2020, much sooner than many of her friends and peers, as she'd been attending summer school on top of her regular college courses. Allie had dreams of getting a job in the fashion industry in some capacity, though she never revealed specifically what type of fashion marketing job that she'd been hoping for, at least not publicly. Allie didn't just attend the University of Mississippi, though. She wasn't just a run-of-the-mill student. She had a fierce passion that few people will ever match. Allie had helped found the Alpha Phi sorority and was even the president of the school's golf club. If this weren't enough in her free time, she would also help teach fitness classes in the area as well. I don't know how she managed to find time to do all these things, but with summer school stacked on top of all this, it's pretty clear that Allie was a very busy person, but she always made sure to save time for friends and family. Her mother recalled Allie's dreams of attending the University and said that she didn't only have plans of carving out a great career for herself, but she also dreamed of meeting her future husband at the school. Allie felt confident that she'd be able to find a suitable partner and settle down with an honest man by the time she graduated. In the fall of 2016, Allie believed that she had finally met this man. When she ran across, Brandon Thies fell, a student that she fell ahead over heels for. But unfortunately, these feelings were not mutual. Allie's friends say that they did their best to warn her about Brandon, but she was blinded by his presence. For whatever reason, Allie was drawn to him with a magnetic intensity. She just couldn't keep her mind off of it, but unfortunately, these feelings were far from mutual, but Allie couldn't let him go. Over the course of the next few years, Allie would learn a lot about herself after realizing how low she'd be willing to go to keep Brandon around. Oddly enough, Allie didn't actually meet Brandon Thiesfeld while the two were on campus. She actually met him in Fort Worth, Texas back in 2016, but quickly learned that he was a student at the University of Mississippi. For Allie, this likely seemed like the stars were all finally aligning and their relationship was meant to be, but tragically, this simply wasn't true. Now, at the time, Allie certainly didn't know this, but everyone around her knew exactly the type of person that Brandon really was. Brandon was a part of the in-crowd. He was popular from the very beginning, at least with other guys' age. As far as women, well, as soon as they actually got to know him, they'd usually go running the other way, but that wasn't true for Allie. She couldn't get enough. According to various friends and acquaintances, Brandon was, well, a terrible person. Now, I don't go around throwing insults like this very often, but I'm serious. Brandon was the very definition of a piece of human garbage. All of Allie's friends recall him as being a total tool. All he ever talked about was his father's money and how he could do whatever he wanted because his dad would always bail him out. It didn't matter if what Brandon was doing was illegal or simply immoral. He'd do whatever he wanted all the time, always, no matter who he heard in the process. One of Allie's friends spoke about Brandon and while this friend rushed to remain anonymous, she described him as a pig. She said that he would use his family's money to do whatever he wanted and that he'd have six different girls around him at one time sitting back and laughing at them. She ended her remarks about Brandon by describing him as, quote, super misogynistic. Other friends recalled Brandon in a similar fashion. They said that he was raised as a, quote, daddy's boy and that he had no regard for women whatsoever. He viewed them as little more than property to be played with. One friend recalled that he would constantly badger every female that he came into contact with in the dorms. He'd hang out with them, get what he wanted out of them and then move on to the next one. Unfortunately, this seems to have been the case with Allie as well. Allie was deeply infatuated with Brandon. In the early stages of their relationship, Allie was under the impression that the two were exclusive and that they had started dating, but according to Allie's family, she couldn't have been more wrong. Allie's mother recalled Allie coming home from college one day and announcing that she'd met a boy, specifically a boy from Texas. Her mother says that for whatever reason, Allie was always interested in Texas and the people from Texas. So when she met a boy from one of her favorite places, she couldn't have been happier. Allie initially described Brandon as nothing more than a crush, but it soon became clear that they were far more than that. Maddie Norris, one of Allie's closest friends, says that she never even met Brandon. According to Maddie, Brandon always had better things to do than meet Allie's friends and family. Maddie would later describe the relationship between Allie and Brandon as on and off again, but for Allie, Brandon was the only person she cared about. Allie's friends say that she was repeatedly crushed by Brandon. She would constantly make plans with him then he would never show up. She'd invite friends over to meet him but he'd disappear just hours before the meetup. She'd scheduled dates or phone calls, but he was never around. This all reached a breaking point in the summer of 2019. By this point, Allie and Brandon had been involved with one another on some level for about three years. But then Allie dropped a bombshell on Brandon. She sent him a text message and announced that she might be pregnant. She also sent a photo showing a pregnancy test result that came back as inconclusive. At this point, Allie was a senior in college planning to graduate in just a few short months in the following spring. She revealed her possible pregnancy to Brandon on the 14th of June at around 10, 15 p.m. While Brandon always did his best to dip and run whenever Allie reached out to him, this time was different. He responded almost immediately by saying that she should just take the plan B pill and move on with her life. He added that he had no plans to keep a child saying, quote, I do not want a kid at all. Just minutes later, this was followed by another text that read, I'm serious, no kid at all.  I will not help at all. Immediately after these texts, Allie set up a time to meet with Brandon about this supposed pregnancy, but he never showed up, go figure. She scheduled multiple follow-up meetings as well, but it didn't show up to a single one of them. He would always concoct some sort of excuse in claiming he was busy or had other plans or simply forgot. It wouldn't be until July of that year that Brandon would finally get around to meeting with Allie, but he didn't plan on simply meeting up with her. He had much bigger plans and a much darker secret. Allie and Brandon had once again made plans to meet up on the evening of July 19th, 2019. At this point, Allie was expected to have been about three months pregnant, but interestingly, police found surveillance footage from that night showing that she'd been at a bar. She got an Uber after leaving the bar and was seen driving home alone, suggesting that she'd likely been drinking. This took place at 11.52 p.m., just a couple hours later at 1.28 a.m., believe it or not, Brandon actually showed up for their planned meeting. He picked up Allie and the two drove down to a fishing camp at Sardis Lake. According to photos that were taken at the scene of the crime, the two had been drinking white claws and eating junk food throughout their drive to the fishing camp. Mind you, this was taking place while the two were operating under the assumption that Allie was pregnant, and for anyone that might not be aware, white claws are alcoholic and junk food ain't great for a baby either. The two arrived at the fishing camp at around 2.15 a.m., and according to those who live nearby, around this same time, a series of shots rang out in the night. A woman who was walking her dog reported hearing the shots between 2.15 and 2.30 a.m., pretty much the exact same time that Brandon and Allie would have arrived. By 10.30 a.m., that same morning, a police officer was passing through the area while conducting his routine patrols of the camp, and that's when he came across a crime scene. Based on the crime scene photos and police officer testimony, when he arrived at the camp, he found Allie lying face down on the ground.  There was also a jacket placed on a nearby picnic table. When he approached Allie, it became clear that she had lost her life after being hit by multiple rounds at a somewhat close range. The officer stated that upon closer inspection, Allie had been hit a total of nine times, though 11 shell casings were found nearby, leaving two rounds unaccounted for. The investigator said that in all of his years in the service, he'd never seen someone be hit so many times before. As soon as police confirmed the identity of Allie, they immediately got to work on the case, interviewing her closest friends and family members. In particular, they were interested in the testimony of Allie's friends. After speaking with multiple friends and acquaintances, detectives quickly noticed that there was one name that repeatedly came up in conversation. Brandon Thesefeld. Brandon was a difficult person to track down, but police were eventually able to get in touch with him and they asked him to come in for questioning. They didn't reveal that he was a suspect as far as I can tell. They purely explained that they wanted to hear his testimony from the night of the crime, but Brandon treated the police in the same way that he treated all the women in his life with blatant disrespect. He told the officers on at least three occasions that he would meet them at a specific location at a specific time, but he would never show up. Once he lied on this third occasion, police got much more serious and spoke with a judge and requested to obtain a warrant for his arrest, as well as gain access to his cell phone data. The judge granted this request and police began to trace Brandon's movements by using his cell phone. They quickly learned that he wasn't even in the state of Mississippi any longer. He had packed his bags and was hanging towards Tennessee without ever notifying them. Needless to say, this wasn't going to fly, so police tracked him down after issuing a bolo for his truck, an $80,000 Ford F-150 that he purchased once again with daddy's money. About two hours after issuing the bolo, Brandon was arrested in Memphis. As soon as police searched Brandon's truck, things got much worse for him. They found a 40-caliber weapon that he had been hiding, a weapon that matched the one used at the scene of the crime. Brandon was immediately extradited back to Mississippi, but believe it or not, things would only get worse from here. When police were doing their best to tie Brandon to the scene of the crime, they requested access to Ali's phone records. While they obviously found the weapon that was used in the crime, they didn't have any sort of motive, and without a motive, it would be a bit more difficult for a jury to find Brandon guilty. Well, it wouldn't take long for them to uncover a mountain of evidence that simply couldn't be ignored. When they began looking through Ali's Apple Watch and iPhone, they were able to use her location data, her fitness data, and her text messages to paint a remarkably clear picture of when the crime took place, how it played out, and what role Brandon had played in things. They were able to confirm via Apple iMessage that Brandon was the last person to have seen Ali on the night that she disappeared. Not only this, but they were able to match their location data to the exact same location at the exact same time. But then came the most damning evidence of all. When looking at the contents of Ali's text messages, they learned that for three months, Ali had been leading Brandon to believe that she was pregnant and that the baby was his. Brandon, naturally terrified, refused to do the right thing and just meet up with Ali to talk it over and figure out what role she wanted him to play in all of this. Brandon pretty clearly didn't want a child, but Ali continued to push him to talk about the possibilities. In the end, Brandon made a rash decision that would change the history of his community forever. Police were able to prove that Brandon, terrified of, quote, ruining his life, decided to claim Ali's life and the life of her unborn baby. Or did he? Well, yes, he did claim the life of Ali, but a shocking revelation was announced when an autopsy was conducted on Ali's body. She wasn't pregnant, nor was there any indication that she had been at any point in the recent past. So what was with this strange pregnancy test that she showed to Brandon? Well, who even knows? There are a million reasons why a pregnancy test could come back inconclusive, but it seems that Ali was riding this train for as long as she possibly could, maybe just hoping to get a meeting with Brandon. But here's the thing. We have no way of knowing if Ali knew that she wasn't pregnant. We have no way of knowing if she really was just straying him along. But what I find really odd is that for the three months that she believed she might have been pregnant, she never bothered taking a follow-up pregnancy test to confirm one way or the other. But the most crucial piece of evidence in my book that proves that she likely knew that she wasn't pregnant was her attendance at the bar that night and the white claws that were found at the scene of the crime. Ali was a smart girl. She almost certainly knew that if she was pregnant, then she shouldn't be drinking. To me, this seems to allude to the idea that Ali may have been so deeply in love with Brandon that she was willing to do almost anything just to get a few moments alone with him and try to hash things out.  And the thing that bothers me most is that if Brandon had half a brain, he could have pieced all this together as well. But instead, he decided to put an end not only to their relationship, but to an entire life. Ali had been working so hard to get her degree so that she could begin her dream career. She tried so hard to love someone and begin a life with someone, but unfortunately it was someone who just couldn't love her back. Ali had everything going for her, but this moronic monster stole all of that and more. After Brandon's arrest, police came across a handwritten note in which Brandon accepted responsibility for his actions. The note was addressed to his parents and he explained that he was sorry for what he had done and sorry for the pain that he had caused them. He explained that he'd been having dark thoughts for quite some time, years leading up to the crime. He said that he couldn't explain where these thoughts came from, but that he'd finally acted on them and deeply regretted his actions. At the end of it all, Brandon was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole once he turns 65. It would seem that at long last, Brandon had finally committed a crime that his dad couldn't bail him out of. It was August of 2011 when Caitlin Markham was last seen. She'd been working on her laptop on the evening of August 13th with a friend noting that she wasn't her usual happy-go-lucky self. She was very reserved and may have even seemed as though something was bothering her, but we don't know for sure. Caitlin was last seen alongside her fiance just before 11 p.m. that evening, but by the following morning, she was gone. Her fiance reported her as a missing person but her case went cold almost as quickly as it had begun. Her remains would be found two years later and the state of her body was, well, confusing. The crime scene just didn't make sense. And worse yet, police were at a loss for who could have been responsible until they uncovered a shocking clue in the investigation. Before we dive into today's story, I wanna let you know about today's sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a nutritional supplement that helps with immune support, focus, recovery, and energy. AG1 is an all-in-one powder that is great for helping fulfill your daily nutritional needs as every serving contains 75 ingredients, including vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and so much more. I've given AG1 a try personally and the results have been great so far. The flavor is surprisingly solid and it's not at all what you'd expect. Unlike taking pills every day, AG1 is super easy to use every day. Just add water to the powder, mix it up, and you're ready to go. AG1 is designed to be used straight out of the packet or container but one of my favorite things to do is mix a bit of peppermint with mine. When you give it a try, be sure to let me know some of the unique ways in the comments that you mix up AG1. I'd love to hear some of your favorite recipes. If you're ready to support both your performance and your immune system, click the first link in the description and give AG1 a try. For signing up using my link, you'll get a year's supply of vitamin D3K2 and five travel packs for free with your first purchase. Thanks to AG1 for sponsoring today's video. Caitlin Markham was described as being highly energetic, bubbly, and maybe even a bit weird, but not in a bad way. Oftentimes when cases like this pop up, families tend to tell the exact same story, saying that their loved ones lit up the room, loved everyone, and so on and so forth, but in Caitlin's case, that really does appear to have been true. She was a very quirky young woman who wasn't afraid to be herself. Caitlin lived alongside her family and fiance in Fairfield, Ohio. Fairfield is a rather popular city just 25 miles away from Cincinnati. With a population of around 42,000 people, it's certainly not a small town, but it's not a very big town either. It's largely made up of suburbs and young families, and it seems to be a great place to be. I've seen mixed reports when it comes to how safe Fairfield may be. Some sources claim that it's incredibly dangerous and that crime rates are remarkably high, though other reports say that crime isn't really any higher here than anywhere else in the country. I'm not sure what to make of this, but if you want my personal opinion, it seems like a great place to be. There's a heck of a lot to do in Fairfield. There are heaps of attractions for young families to visit, more parks than I could count, in tons of great restaurants to see. The only real trouble with Fairfield is that it's a fairly lengthy drive to get anywhere, with the average work commute being up to 88% higher than in other parts of the state. Caitlin had been attending college as an art student, and this seems to have been the perfect career path for her. We don't know for sure just how long she'd been dating her fiance, John Carter, but the two appeared to have been together for quite a while. I can't tell if they met at college or if they may have been together much longer than that, but whatever the case may be, the two were inseparable, and it was clear that they were deeply in love with one another. Caitlin had been living in a small condo in Fairfield, and her fiance would often stay over with her. She didn't plan to live here very long, though, as Caitlin and John had plans to move to Colorado in the fall of 2011. But unfortunately, these plans would never be carried out. That's not because the two suddenly decided not to leave Fairfield. Rather, it's because Caitlin would become caught up in a haunting crime that she wouldn't survive. It was August 13th, 2011. It was a day like any other for Caitlin and John. The two had been spending most of the evening at Caitlin's condo in Fairfield. Caitlin had been busy with schoolwork, trying to get everything filed away before she missed her deadlines. On this particular evening, a friend of the couple had been hanging out at the apartment with them.  Both Caitlin and John decided to stay whole, and the friend left sometime around 10.45 that night, saying goodbye to the two for what would unknowingly be the last time. As the friend left the hole, he noticed that Caitlin wasn't acting like her usual self, while she was normally smiling from ear to ear and making jokes and generally being a pleasant person to be around. This evening was much different. The friend mentioned that Caitlin seemed reserved, distant even. He said that she stayed on the couch the entire time he had been there, and this appears to have been for several hours. The entire time she never really moved or got up at all, she just sat there working on her laptop. When the friend left that evening, he recalled that Caitlin and John were the only two people left in the condo. John decided to leave the condo soon after, heading out around 11 p.m. He headed off to a party in Hamilton, then went home sometime around 2 a.m. and remained there for the rest of the night. He woke up around 2.30 p.m. the following day, then made it to work at Papa John's around 5 p.m., leaving just two hours later around 7. While this was a fairly normal schedule for John, there was one big problem. His soon to be wife was nowhere to be found and he couldn't get in touch with her. John claims that he hadn't been able to get in touch with Caitlin since he left her condo the evening before. He called 911 shortly after arriving for his shift at Papa John's, telling the dispatcher everything that he knew. He explained that he didn't want to report her missing so soon, but he was getting worried after he hadn't been able to find her. Just hours later, Caitlin would fail to show up for her job at David's Bridal and this is when investigators knew something was very wrong. They collected all the information that they could from John, but considering he'd been asleep for most of the day, he really wasn't much help. Several friends and family members were also interviewed, but no one had any idea where Caitlin could have gone. But one thing was for sure, wherever she had gone, she hadn't gone willingly because she left behind her purse, keys and her dog. Mysteriously, her cell phone was missing, but it appears to have been turned off. Police say that volunteers began searching for Caitlin almost immediately. Her family printed out missing person flyers in record time and began handing them out all throughout the Fairfield area and other nearby towns. As far as police could tell, no one had seen Caitlin since the evening of August 13th, meaning John, her fiance, was the last person to see her alive. After coming to this conclusion, John was called in for a polygraph test and the results were interesting. Police got to work right away, trying to track down Caitlin and one of the first people they brought in for questioning was John Carter, Caitlin's fiance. After determining that John was the last person to see Caitlin alive, they certainly had a few questions to ask him. Unfortunately, John didn't have many answers. They asked John all the obvious questions. Where did you last see her? What was she wearing? Did anything seem wrong? John was seemingly answering everything honestly, but then the questions got a bit more specific. Detectives asked John if he knew anything about Caitlin's disappearance. John claimed he didn't, but the polygraph operator claimed that was a lie. When they asked if he was involved in her disappearance, he said he wasn't. That was also a lie. Police soon noticed that John also had several scratch marks on the side of his neck. When he was questioned about where these had come from, he claimed they were from a razor, but investigators didn't believe scratches like this would come from any razor. When police spoke with a friend of John's, the friend said that he didn't notice the scratches until the day after Caitlin had vanished. Over the coming weeks and months, John was asked to speak with police on at least three occasions, with them using a polygraph during each of these sessions. Now, while these machines aren't exactly reliable, they can certainly provide investigators with some good information, and that's definitely what they did in this case. Police say that in all three sessions, John was caught telling lies about where he was the night that Caitlin disappeared. While they couldn't prove it just yet, investigators knew something was up and they were determined to prove it, but that was a lot easier said than done. That's when investigators uncovered two key witnesses that would help blow the case wide open, as it would turn out two teenagers who were just 15 years old at the time of the crime had been walking by John's home on the evening of Caitlin's disappearance. The two teens had snuck out of their homes that night, planning to attend a party that was taking place a few miles away. As they waited outside for another friend to pick them up, they noticed two cars drive up to John's mother's house. One of the cars was a red Ford Focus, and the other was a dark colored sedan with a male driver. The man in the Ford Focus pulled into the driveway, then opened the home's garage. He rummaged around inside for a few minutes before getting back into his car. It's unclear if he removed anything from the garage or if he just looked around and left. Police were later able to confirm that John had a red Ford Focus registered in his name, and they presumed he had been the driver that evening. The man in the other vehicle wasn't immediately identified. The teens say that when the men arrived, they were coming from the direction of Caitlin's house. When they left, they headed back in that same direction. Mind you, all of this took place just after 2 a.m. But according to John's statements with police, he had been in bed by this point after having been at a party. Things only got worse for John from here. When police spoke with one of Caitlin's friends in the days after her disappearance, the friend had a pretty interesting encounter with John that she was itching to share with detectives. At this point, Caitlin had been missing for just over 48 hours, as far as I can tell. But the friend explained that when she spoke with John about Caitlin's disappearance, she noticed he kept speaking about her in the past tense. Now, for any investigator, this is always a massive red flag. If this isn't an obvious sign of guilt or some sort of concealed knowledge of a crime, then nothing is. To top this off, when police asked for more details about John and his relationship with Caitlin, the friend explained that John had always seemed incredibly possessive of Caitlin. Well, it's only natural for someone to have a healthy amount of jealousy when it comes to their partner or spouse. The friend says that John's jealousy was to the point of being aggressive. She says that Caitlin would often complain about how insecure John was, and that he would get very upset if she even talked to someone of the opposite gender. This all grew very concerning for detectives, when the friend finally revealed that Caitlin had been considering breaking off their engagement. Caitlin had confided in her friend that she was incredibly unhappy with John's lifestyle and she couldn't support his decisions anymore. He supposedly had an addiction problem and would also look at adult content online, something that Caitlin wasn't comfortable with. Worse yet, John would repeatedly pressure her into doing things in the bedroom that she just wasn't interested in and she was tired of satisfying his strange fantasies. Now, if you recall, I mentioned that the couple had plans to move to Colorado in a few months. Well, it seems that John was the main one who was wanting to move to Colorado and Caitlin doesn't appear to have been completely on board with this plan. John mentioned in an interview that he never wanted Caitlin to feel forced to move, which is a pretty strange choice of words, if you ask me. My own opinion, this proves that John probably knew he was being a bit pushy about things, but others may disagree. Having been an inconsiderate jerk in the past, I've gotten pretty good at spotting people like this and John ticks all the boxes in my book. In the end, the two repeatedly delayed their plans to move and this seems to further the idea that Caitlin simply didn't want to go, but haven't been able to confirm whether or not this is entirely true. It's just what the evidence and witness statements seem to allude to. After several more months had passed, police had still found no leads in the search for Caitlin. They reached one dead end after another. While they certainly had enough evidence to suggest that John was involved, they didn't have enough info to prove it or even charge him with anything. But that's when things took a dramatic turn, one that no one hoped for and certainly not one that anyone expected. It was the spring of 2013. The flowers were in full bloom and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. But for the Markham family, perfect was far from what they had been feeling. It had been nearly two years since their daughter had gone missing and they'd spent every moment they had searching for her desperate for answers. A couple had been visiting Cedar Grove, Indiana, wandering through the woods in search of scrap metal or other valuables that may have been dropped or left behind. Little did they know that their hobby would soon lead to a massive breakthrough in the investigation for Caitlin's whereabouts. As they were scavenging through the area with their metal detectors, they came across a strange looking rock unlike anything they had seen before. But they soon realized this was no rock. This was a human jaw bone. Police were called to the scene of the crime immediately. A team of researchers cordoned off the area and began an investigation into the remains. Before long, the discovery was tied to the disappearance of Caitlin. And investigators were forced to make the call to Caitlin's parents that every parent and family member dreads in a situation like this. In this particular case, all this did was reopen the family's wounds as officers didn't really have any good information to share with the family. There was no silver lining because they had no leads, no proof and virtually no evidence. When the coroner examined the bones, things only got worse. The bones had been left in the weather for so long there was no way to tell what had happened to the victim or who had put them there. There wasn't any way to tell how Caitlin had lost her life but there was one particular detail that was fairly strange. Now, I don't know the specifics of how the coroner determined this but the investigator had reason to believe that Caitlin hadn't been buried in these woods for all this time. According to a more thorough examination, Caitlin had been buried for a while, then dug up and then moved to a new location where this original location may have been no one knows for sure. However, some speculate that it may have simply been an alternate location within the same patch of woods but that's just a guess. The only thing to mention about the state of the remains is that there was evidence to suggest that Caitlin had been wounded on her wrist around the time that she lost her life. But the coroner couldn't be certain about this. The coroner noted three to four wounds on her wrist but it was never determined what may have caused these wounds. Though the reports that I found online suggest that they may have been caused by some sort of blade but even that isn't known for certain. But here's the real kicker. No sooner than these remains were uncovered, the case went cold yet again. By 2015, Caitlin's father had urged the police to continue with the investigation and the local police after much pushback finally agreed. They brought in new investigators to take a fresh look at the case. While they admit that they did have a suspect, they still didn't have enough evidence to pursue anyone legally. A few suspects were questioned but everyone was set free without charges. It would be another eight years until police would make any more progress in the case. But finally, in March of 2023, an arrest was made. By March of 2023, police announced that they had detained yet another suspect in Caitlin's disappearance. By this time, they felt confident that they could secure a conviction. I'm sure most of you expected this outcome by now but their new found suspect was none other than John Carter, Caitlin's fiance. See, when the coroner was examining Caitlin's remains, investigators uncovered that Caitlin had been wrapped in a sheet of plastic as well as a garden weed barrier. We know the black fabric that you put down when setting up a flower bed to avoid like weeds popping up everywhere. Well, as luck would have it, police were able to secure a search warrant for John's mother's shed. Inside the shed, they found a gardening fabric that was an exact match to the fabric that had been found around Caitlin's remains. Police also found a list of other items that they believe were connected to the crime but this list has never been made public in the hope of protecting the integrity of the investigation. During their search, police also uncovered several other key pieces of evidence and inconsistencies in John's alibi, as well as discrepancies in the stories that he told officers about the night that Caitlin vanished. Cell phone records from both John and Caitlin showed that both of their cell phones returned off around midnight on August 13th, the evening that Caitlin vanished. John claimed he had been at a party at this time but police felt it was a bit suspicious that both of their phones had been shut off at the exact same moment that evening. If this weren't strange enough, John claimed that he hadn't texted Caitlin at all the evening that she disappeared. However, phone records prove that this was a lie. He sent dozens of messages to her leading up to around 11.36 PM.  When police requested to look at John's phone, the texts between himself and Caitlin from that specific evening were mysteriously missing. Every other text they had shared was still there, but this specific block of text messages from that night had vanished. Police wanted to check Caitlin's phone as well but it was never located. It was believed to have been left inside of her car on the night of her disappearance but this was never confirmed and all these years later, her phone has still never been found. When asked about these text messages, John initially claimed he didn't text Caitlin that evening at all. But when investigators revealed that they had phone records that proved otherwise, he said he deleted the messages by accident. Then he claimed he deleted them to make room for new texts as he was getting flooded with texts from friends on the day that Caitlin was reported missing. This man just couldn't keep his story straight. But all of this leads up to one final revelation that took place after the search warrant was issued for John's mother's home. Inside, they found a notebook, a diary of sorts, I guess you could say that included a few notes from John. The notebook was filled with various ramblings and unimportant writings but one page in particular caught the attention of investigators. Researchers say that the entry appears to have been a conversation between John and what they call a demon of sorts. The note reads as follows. Deep down, I love her.  But I love her.   Yes, you can. No. Yes. How do you talk me into all these things? I'm just that good. But you're bad. I know. How do I kill you? You can't. You're right. About what? Nothing. This was followed by a single sentence that read, I slit your wrists with the key to your heart. I don't know about you but that final sentence sounds like a confession if I've ever heard one, especially considering the wounds that were found on Caitlin's wrists. Needless to say, the future is not looking great for John Carter. John was arrested and held on one million dollars bail. Somehow he was able to make this payment and he's currently a free man. His trial is set to take place next year in 2024 and investigators have every reason to believe he will be found guilty. John has never made any comments about what this note could mean.  Does he really believe he was speaking with a demon? We just don't know at the moment. However, all of this will be answered at trial but as it stands, the case is still technically unsolved but don't imagine it will stay that way for long. The year is 1975. For the Foreman family, life was moving along perfectly. They had two wonderful kids. They were young and deeply in love and everything was looking up. But on Mrs. Foreman's 25th birthday, tragedy would strike. As her five-year-old son Jason was playing outside in the woods near their home, he disappeared. The family and nearby neighbors searched for the boy for hours, days, weeks and eventually years. They found no clues or evidence that would explain his sudden disappearance. The missing boy wouldn't be found until seven years later when investigators met with a neighbor who made a truly disgusting confession to a crime of devastating proportions. The Foreman family had been living in South Kingstown, Rhode Island for a number of years. One of the great things about South Kingstown and one of the things that keeps people coming back is the beautiful beaches. The town is home to more than 10 miles of undisturbed beaches, as well as several large parks and recreation areas for small families like the Foremans. If this weren't enough, crime also isn't a particularly big deal in South Kingstown and it never really has been. Sure, there are a few areas where things can get a bit shady, but that's true for just about every city in America. Overall, South Kingstown is just a wonderful place to be, a city rich in history and filled with things to keep young minds occupied while parents go on about their daily lives. For the Foreman family, it doesn't appear like they could have been any happier in their own little slice of heaven. The family lived in the Peacedale area on High Street. A quick look on Google Maps Street View shows that this street is still to this day, just stunning. The Foremans lived on top of a hill right next to the local fire station. And from what I can tell, their home used to back up to a patch of dense woods, but it appears as though most of these wooded areas have since been cut down to make way for new housing, but I can't tell that for certain as we don't know what their specific address was. The family consisted of Joyce Foreman, John Foreman and their three kids, Raven, Jason and Jason's older brother, whose name I wasn't able to determine. The family members all got along well with one another and there were several other kids who lived in the nearby local area, making it the perfect place to raise a growing family. Jason and his older brother would often hang out with some of these other kids and this was the case on May 18th of 1975. May 18th was Joyce's 25th birthday. She'd been hanging out at home that day with Jason and his brother heading out to play for the afternoon. Joyce says that she could hear the kids playing behind the home in the woods all throughout the afternoon and she last remembers hearing the boys laughing and playing sometime around 3.30 p.m. But soon after that, things got quiet. Joyce didn't think anything of this at the time, but when Jason's brother returned home later that afternoon, Jason was nowhere to be found.  The family all worked together to try to find Jason and bring him home, but it was as though he vanished into thin air. His mother knew he couldn't have gotten very far and all of the neighbors in the area soon joined in to help search for him, but still there was no sign of him. We don't know where Jason's older brother may have been during the time that Jason disappeared, but it seems safe to assume that he likely just wandered off with the other children to play elsewhere. Jason's brother hadn't seen him since earlier that afternoon and with no signs of him by nightfall, the family decided it was time to call in the help of the police. We don't know too much about the search efforts that were conducted for Jason officially, at least not the ones that involved the police. We know that officers took witness statements in search for Jason far and wide, but most of the specifics of this search have been lost to time or they were never publicly mentioned in the first place. When searching newspapers from that time period, I wasn't able to find a single mention of Jason until 1982 and that's when things began to take a pretty disturbing turn. By this point, the foremen's had been tirelessly searching for their missing son for more than seven years, but in all this time, not a single shred of evidence was ever found by investigators, but all of that changed on April 15th. The foremen's had several neighbors who lived in close proximity to them. Their houses were all very close as is the case in many suburban neighborhoods. This meant that whatever happened at your neighbor's house, you probably knew about it. This was true when news began to spread about a disturbance involving a 14-year-old paper boy named Dale Sherman. Dale had been delivering papers one day when Michael would men see, notice the boy and ask him to come inside for a bit. Michael lived directly across the street from the foremen's, but at the time it doesn't appear as though anyone witnessed Michael talking with the team. Before their conversation was over, Michael had lured the boy into his home with the promise of giving him alcohol. Dale spoke with the New York Times in March of 2011 and recalled the day that he'd been at Michael's home, saying that Michael made good on his promise to give him alcohol, but that wasn't all he gave him. Dale recalls that soon after drinking the alcohol, he began to get incredibly tired, so much so that he could barely keep his eyes open. While all of this was going on, Michael suddenly stood up and grabbed a nearby bandana, wrapping it around Dale's neck and attempting to take his life. Somehow in the chaos of all this, Dale managed to fight Michael off and escape his grasp. Dale hightailed it out of there and immediately ran home to tell his father. His father didn't take this report lightly, and rather than call the police, he approached Michael one-on-one. Dale's father walked over to Michael's home, knocked on the door, then promptly punched him in the face. As Dale's father was heading back home, he saw the police at a nearby residence and he flagged them down and reported what had happened to his son. Police spoke with the two briefly, then asked that everyone come down to the police station so that they could take an official statement and try to get to the bottom of things. And this is where the case took another much darker turn. When police were speaking with Michael, they began to suspect that he may have had a few more secrets than he was leading them to believe. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly what happened when they questioned him about his assault against Dale. But that's because they began to suspect that Michael may have been holding on to a secret much more disturbing than the one they'd actually been interrogating him about. During their conversations with Michael, at least one of the officers began to wonder if Michael may have had some information about Jason Foreman, the boy who at this point had vanished more than seven years ago. They didn't want to ask Michael outright for fear that he might clam up and conceal the truth. So, gradually, they began to steer the interrogation in a different direction, tossing in questions about Jason Foreman just here and there. But in a shocking twist, Michael actually opened up about what he knew regarding Jason Foreman's disappearance. Before long, he spilled everything he had known about the boy and even told officers that he knew exactly what happened to Jason and where he was today. We don't know what specifically led to Michael's confession, but while being interrogated about his involvement in the crimes against Dale, Michael came clean and admitted that he had seen Jason on the day that he vanished back in May of 1975. Not only this, but he'd been in direct contact with the boy just minutes before he disappeared. The details of how all of this played out have never been revealed publicly. Even all these years later, police have kept certain aspects of the crime private in order to save the family from any more heartache. All we know for sure is that much like in the case of Dale, Michael had spoken with Jason and managed to lure him into his house. We don't know how Michael convinced Jason to follow him home, but whatever lies he made up, the boy believed them. This is probably a good time to explain that Michael Woodmency was just 16 years old at the time that all of this unfolded. He was still a kid himself, but Michael wasn't your typical teen by any means. Michael had seemingly been battling dark fantasies for a long time, but on May 18th of 1975, these fantasies would finally be unleashed. Once Michael had taken Jason to his home, he attacked the young boy. The only aspect of the crime that we know for certain is that at some point in the afternoon, Michael grabbed a knife from his kitchen and ambushed young Jason. Why he did this remains a mystery, but in the end, Jason lost his life. We don't know what he may have done or said to Jason before this crime took place, but we have a pretty hefty suspicion about what took place afterward. See, there's a reason why police never located the remains of Jason. Usually when a person goes missing, if they're not found alive, their remains are found a while later. But that wasn't true in Jason's case. He had simply vanished entirely, never to be seen again. But as police were speaking with Michael about the crime during his interrogation, he made a pretty bizarre statement. After confessing to the crime, he immediately got nervous and mentioned a journal or a diary or some sort of notebook that he kept in his room. He explained to officers that if they searched his home, they would find the book.  But as far as we can tell, it wasn't. When officers found the book, their jaws hit the floor. This journal didn't just include the ramblings of a teen or a young adult, it included detailed accounts of what had happened to Jason all those years ago. Now, naturally, the exact contents of this book have never been made public. In fact, police haven't released a single word from this journal after all this time. The only reason we know what was inside is because Jason's sister spoke with officers about the journal and they shared many of the contents with her and she openly revealed what Michael had done to her brother all those years ago. And I promise it's nothing you would have ever expected. Jason's sister Raven is now obviously an adult and she's spoken with various news outlets in recent years about the contents of Michael's home and what investigators found during their interrogation. Raven says that while police didn't reveal anything about this journal publicly, they did share several key details with her and explained the contents of the journal, though they seem to have refused to show it to her directly. Raven spoke about the contents of the journal and explained that the journal didn't just contain a detailed account of what happened to her brother, but it had become, well, a recipe book of sorts. She says that the journal described in detail what Michael had done to Jason after claiming his life and to keep it simple and very clear, Michael ate Jason. His motive for doing this has never been clear, but after Jason had been dealt with accordingly, Michael couldn't just ditch Jason's bones in a landfill or toss them in a creek somewhere. No, that would be too weird and twisted. So what better way to hide a body from the police than to clean each of the bones and then encase them in shellac and display them on your dresser? Now, you've probably heard the phrase, the truth is stranger than fiction. Well, that's certainly true here. While Michael insisted that the contents of this journal were fiction, Raven says that the police have an overwhelming amount of evidence that proves that the accounts written inside this journal were entirely real. Now, some reports claim that Jason's bones were displayed on Michael's dresser as if they were trophies, though other reports claim that the bones had been shellacked and kept inside of a box. I don't know which of these reports is more accurate, but needless to say, investigators had all the evidence they needed to secure a conviction. But this is where the case takes yet another turn, and again, it's not a good one. See, when investigators were pursuing the case, they were running all of the details by the Foreman family. While officers wanted to secure a conviction of first degree murder, they were concerned about the impact that the trial would have on the Foreman family. Needless to say, the Foreman family had already been the hell in back to make them sit through a trial and hear each of the gruesome details of their son's final moments. May have just pushed them over the edge. To get past this, police offered Jason's father a way to sidestep this process. Rather than pursue a conviction of first degree murder, they would pursue second degree murder. This would still secure Michael Woodmancy a 40-year conviction, but it would keep the family from having to hear all of the details inside the journal and also keep them from having to see their son's remains on display when they were used as evidence in the trial. Jason's father agreed to this plea deal and Michael was sent to prison for 40 years instead of getting a life sentence. But once again, the case takes yet another turn. And this may be the darkest twist yet. The backlash from this case was serious. The entire community of South Kingstown was enraged by what Michael had done. And to say that he had a target on his back would be an understatement. When Michael was sent to prison, he had to be sent to an out-of-state facility in Massachusetts for his own protection. But considering he was prosecuted under Rhode Island law, that meant that all of Rhode Island's rules and regulations regarding prisoners were still applicable in Michael's case. One of these being the so-called good time law. This law allows prisoners of various convictions to receive lighter sentences for good behavior. In general, the law will allow a prisoner to have 10 days removed from his sentence for every 30 days of good behavior. Essentially lessening some sentences by up to 33%. Now, there's definitely some ifs ands and buts regarding this law, but this is very generally speaking what the law provides for these prisoners. As you might expect, Michael exploited this law to the best of his ability. It was only required to serve 28 years of a 40-year sentence. When news of this came out publicly and locals found out that Michael would be heading back to Rhode Island in 2011, they were furious. So much so that several locals admitted purchasing weapons in anticipation of Michael's return. But these weapons weren't to be used for protection. Many locals spoke out against Michael and directly confessed that if he ever stepped foot back in their community, they'd kill it. And they meant one of these people was Jason's own father who was sworn on multiple occasions that he has every intention of killing Michael Woodmancy if he's ever able to find it. Jason's father feels a certain amount of guilt for accepting the plea bargain that was offered by investigators all those years ago. He says that had he known about the good time law, he would have never agreed to that deal. Now he fears that if Michael is released into society again, he may claim the life of someone else's child. And Jason's father says he feels solely responsible for that possibility. Thankfully, Michael wasn't released, at least not fully. While Michael was released from prison, he agreed to be sent to a mental health facility for the remainder of his life. Michael is in his sixties now, as far as I can tell, and he knew how dangerous it would be if he went back to the Rhode Island community. There were riots and protests all throughout the state filled with people who wanted to see Michael six feet under. When he learned of this news, he knew he didn't stand a chance at having a proper life ever again. And he's now residing at the Eleanor Slater Hospital in Cranston, Rhode Island, where he'll likely remain for the rest of his days. Jason's father, John, says that he'll search high and low to find Michael and ensure that he doesn't hurt anyone ever again. And John's family say that they have every reason to believe that he will follow up on this promise. We don't know if John is satisfied with Michael being released into a mental health facility or if he still plans on following up on these claims, but one thing is for sure, however things may play out, Michael would men say will never be a free man ever again, at least not for long, so long as John Foreman's around. It was February 4th, 2007. 13 year old Paris Bennett was at home with his four year old sister Ella in Abilene, Texas. Their mother had hired a babysitter to watch over the two for the evening, but at some point during her stay, Paris had convinced the babysitter to step out of the house for a while. About an hour and a half later, Paris entered his sister's bedroom to do the unthinkable and his sister lost her life. Around 15 minutes later, Paris called the police and concocted a story, claiming his sister had turned into a pumpkin-headed demon and that he had claimed her life out of fear and self-defense. But when investigators arrived at the scene of the crime minutes later, it became clear what had taken place here. Paris was obviously arrested, but the stories he told investigators were chilling to say the least and his true motive was completely unexpected. Paris and Ella Bennett were for the most part ordinary kids. They grew up with their mother in Abilene, Texas in the early 2000s. Their mother, Charity, was a single mom who did the best she could for her kids. Her children had two different fathers, but they were raised as part of the same household, with Charity presumably having full custody of them both. One interesting thing to note about Charity is that her mother, Kyla, was actually believed to have conspired against her husband and attempted to take his life, her husband naturally being Charity's father. While her mother was never found guilty, in the eyes of the public, she certainly was. Many people believe that there was more than enough evidence to prove that she was at fault, but regardless, she was found not guilty on all counts. Even Charity believes her own mother was guilty, but no one has ever been able to prove it. When Charity was a young girl, she claims her mother rarely gave her any sort of attention. For Charity, it was more or less like she didn't even exist in the eyes of her mom. Some sources say rather strangely that Charity made a conscious decision as a young girl to become addicted to drugs in an attempt to get her mother's attention and finally received some form of maternal love. But even this didn't work.  Now, I find it rather hard to believe that someone would purposefully become addicted to drugs, but that's what all of the sources claim, so it does appear to be true. And if this is true, it really shows just how far Charity was willing to go to feel some sort of love. Needless to say, Charity had a very hard time growing up. The unfortunate truth is, in many cases, it doesn't matter how much we try to improve the lives of our children compared to how we ourselves were raised, we're all bound to make the same mistakes and end up falling into the same path as our parents at some point or another. The important part is just that we fix these mistakes along the way. But as difficult as this may be to digest, Paris, Charity's son, claims that Charity was no exception to this rule. See, when Paris was a young boy, he was described as incredibly likeable and charismatic. He'd make friends with just about anyone, but as the years passed by, his behaviors began to change. He was tested at one point and found to have an IQ of 141, which is pretty impressive. His future looked incredibly bright, but then his sister was born and everything changed in the blink of an eye. Paris claims that after his sister's birth, his mother couldn't have cared less about it. He was used to being the center of his mother's attention, but all of that went out the window rather unexpectedly. Paris believes that his mother was so caught up in his sister's life and her former drug addiction that she completely ignored him. Now, to be unbiased here, I've got to say this may have been true. I have no idea. I wasn't there. Paris's claims may have been 100% accurate. But what I will say is that I find that hard to believe after taking into account the various statements and interviews that Charity has released since the impending crime took place. But in his own eyes, Paris felt so betrayed by his mother that he took every opportunity to make her life difficult. This all reached a boiling point sometime in 2006, just a year prior to the crime that would bring an entire community to their needs.  From the scarce details that are available, it seems Paris took off after his mother while wielding a knife, but she somehow managed to escape the situation. Paris was then put into a mental health facility so that he could get the help that he needed. He was released later on, but it doesn't seem like he ever learned his lesson. This would all bring us to February of 2007, the year that everything changed for the Bennett family, and their lives would never be the same again. Sources vary, claiming what specific date this crime unfolded. Some say that it took place on February 4th, while others claim that it took place on February 5th. Charity had been working at the local Buffalo Wild Wings that evening, working late into the evening well past midnight. Knowing that she would be out for most of the night, she hired a babysitter to watch over her kids for the evening. The evening was like any other, with the kids minding their own business and playing well into the night. But at around 10 p.m. that evening, Paris, now 13 years old, approached the babysitter and convinced her that he'd spoken with his mother and she gave the babysitter permission to go home, presumably because two kids had already gone to bed for the evening. The babysitter believed Paris and decided to leave, with Paris and his younger sister Ella now being left home alone. While it's safe to assume that the babysitter most likely believed the kids would simply go to bed, Paris had other plans. In the days after this disturbing crime was revealed, his mother says that she actually uncovered that he'd secretly been watching adult videos on their home computer that night. But these weren't the typical videos that teenagers would dig up without their parents' supervision. These videos were unusually aggressive and violent and shockingly so. Charity says that she uncovered hours of content that he had watched, each video becoming more violent and more disturbing than the last. Now, I certainly won't go into the specifics of what Paris was watching, but what I will say is that it became glaringly obvious that Paris had some serious issues. While these videos were of an adult nature and were freely viewable online, we have no idea if some of these acts were even consensual or not. All we know is that they were far beyond anything a young teenager should be exposed to and they would have been shocking even to most adults. But here's the incredibly scary and heartbreaking part. After watching these videos, Paris got a few ideas. Minutes later, he decided to enter his sister's bedroom while she was still asleep. Now, due to his sister's age and the truly heinous extent of these crimes, I'm not really going to go any further than this. The information of what unfolded is widely available online, so feel free to look it up if you're curious, but it's not something I'm comfortable getting into and I don't think YouTube would be too happy with me either if I went any further. But all I will say is that Paris entered his sister's room with a knife and a particularly chilling imagination. What he did to his sister was unlike anything that anyone should ever have to endure. We don't know just how long Paris was in Ella's room, but Charity, their mother, described Paris's actions as slow, methodical, not frenzied, and not an uncontrollable rage. Charity believes her son wanted to inflict as much pain as possible on his sister, all the while getting some sort of sick gratification for doing so. From the information I've been able to gather, my best guess would be that the crime began and ended in a period of about 30 to 45 minutes. After the crime was completed, Paris, believe it or not, called 911 and openly admitted to his crime, showing no remorse for his sister whatsoever. Once he explained what he had done, the 911 operator proceeded to walk Paris through the steps of performing CPR, hoping to keep his sister alive until paramedics could arrive. In the call, Paris agreed to carry out CPR, but in reality, he made zero attempts to save his sister's life. As he could be heard counting impressions in the phone call, he would later admit he wasn't administering aid at all. Instead, he was just walking around the house counting, faking the entire thing. When police arrived at the scene just minutes later, they arrested Paris after just minutes of questioning. It became very clear to investigators, this was no accident.  But if you thought this was disturbing enough, things are only going to get worse because when Paris was in custody, he rather quickly opened up about the crime, more specifically, he revealed his motive and no one saw this coming. Now, I can't seem to determine just how long Paris was in police custody, but my guess would be a few weeks to a few months, but most of this info has been lost to time. But while speaking with investigators and his own mother, Paris decided to open up about his crimes. But before he did so, he tried to weasel his way out of the situation. He claimed that he was delusional and believed his sister was some sort of pumpkin-headed demon that he thought was going to attack it. He wasn't going to willingly let this happen, so he claimed that he attacked the demon in self-defense. But as you might expect, this story quickly unraveled and investigators knew that he was lying. In the end, Paris decided to confess to everything that he had done and as it would turn out, Paris wasn't ashamed of what he had done either. In fact, he was pleased with himself. When he confessed to the crime, he admitted that he had taken his sister's life for one main reason, because he wanted to hurt his mother as much as he possibly could. He knew how much his mother loved his sister and what better way to get back at her than to remove his sister from the family. The crime appears to have been revenge against his mother for not paying enough attention to him, very similar to the pain and anger that Charity herself felt regarding her own mother all those years ago. While Charity had turned to addiction to counteract her pain, Paris had taken things much further and simply wanted his mother to feel the same pain that he had felt while being ignored. Now again, I can't confirm whether Charity was truly an absent mother or not. It's entirely possible she was, but it's also entirely possible that Paris was simply jealous of his sister and wanted all of the attention for himself. There's just no way to know this for sure, but one thing is certain. The statements that Paris gave regarding the evening of the crime don't completely add up. When Charity was first speaking with her son behind bars, it seemed as though he wasn't quite ready to admit to the crime just yet, but the more she questioned him, the more information he revealed until he finally opened up and truly confessed to everything that took place that evening.  According to Charity, he professed this with a sense of pride. When she pressed him about the disturbing videos that he'd been watching in the lead-up to the crime, he also confessed to this and said that he'd been watching the videos because they made him angry, helping him to conjure up the courage to carry out the crime. See, he claimed he committed the crime as a way to get back at his mother, but investigators have reason to believe that this isn't entirely true. Instead, they believe there's a chance the crime may have been more sexually motivated than anything else. As they were collecting evidence from the scene of the crime, they noted that they were able to collect large amounts of bodily fluids from the scene of the crime. Now, I'm really trying hard to keep this video as respectful as possible, so I'll let you make your own conclusions about what these fluids were, but there's a reason that these fluids led police to believe the crime may have been sexually motivated. This would certainly seem to make sense considering the videos that Paris had been watching just moments before the crime had unfolded. It's possible he had some sort of sadistic fantasies that he wanted to carry out and his sister was simply a victim of circumstance, but it's also entirely possible he planned the crime for weeks, maybe even months, and simply took advantage of Ella because in his eyes, why not? After all, by doing so, he would get what he wanted in more ways than one. He'd act out his twisted fantasies but also get his sister out of the picture so his mother's attention would solely be on him. Unfortunately, this seems to be the most plausible answer here. According to Paris, he didn't plan on stopping at just ending his sister's life though. He planned on taking the life of his mother too but just never got the opportunity. According to charity, her son told her that the reason he spared her life was because he learned that it was a lot harder to claim someone's life than he initially thought. She went on to say that her son also claims to have spared her life because if he took her life, she would only have suffered for five or 10 minutes. But if he kept her alive, she would suffer for the rest of her life. After being sent to trial, Paris was obviously convicted and sent to a juvenile detention center. He was given a sentence of 40 years with the possibility of parole after 20 years. He'll be eligible for parole in 2027 but it's pretty much certain that he will not be granted parole. According to charity, her son has shown no improvement since he's been in prison and she claims that he's even begun a relationship with the woman on the outside and has been plotting crimes with her from behind bars. Charity has begun to fear for her life, believing that her son may end up having her taken out while he's still behind bars. She also believes with every fiber for her being that when he's ultimately released sometime around 2047, he'll come for her. But what's even worse is that after all this time, Paris is still actively carrying out crimes against his mother. According to charity, on multiple occasions when she's gone to visit her son, he's assaulted her. In one instance, she claims that she was left unsupervised with him in the visitor's room in the jail. At one point during their conversation, he slammed the table into her, pinning her against a concrete wall. He held the table against her, preventing her from breathing. She was in shock and paralyzed with fear, believing she was about to lose her life but then he let go. But no sooner than she caught her breath, he did it again. He later told his mother, by the way, I enjoy watching your pain. Charity ended up writing a book about her life, particularly involving the crimes carried out by her son, titled At How Now Butterfly? A Memoir of Murder, Survival and Transformation. In her book, she describes the years of abuse that she'd been subjected to by her son, even while he's behind bars. Charity, after all these years, has finally admitted that she's been forced to come to terms with the fact that she can still love her son but she can't love the monster that he's become. She knows that whenever he's released from prison, she's going to have to move away and do her best to disappear. She spent her more recent years wondering if her brief relapse in 2006 may have been what led Paris to become the monster that he is today. See, she was an addict for years before Paris was born but once she found out she was pregnant, she got clean. She remained clean for the first 12 years of his life but had a short relapse less than a year before the crime took place. But truthfully, there's no sense in Charity blaming herself for the crimes of her son. If the stories that she shared over the years are true, she really did do her best to raise Paris well but being a single mom with two kids just isn't easy and there's only so much time in a day. Charity says that in the years since the crime, she's been able to forgive her son.  I can't help it. That may not matter in the long run. What may matter is I can't, not at this point, give up on it. I love my first born with as much intensity as I did the day I found out I was pregnant with him. Charity says that she associates her daughter Ella with butterflies, hence the name of her book. She says that a butterfly painting was the last thing Ella ever gave to her before she lost her life. What's even more heartwarming and also heartbreaking about this is that one of Charity's friends actually found a butterfly brooch in Charity's backyard on her first day returning home after the crime. It doesn't seem like Charity knows how this brooch got there and it's more or less like it appeared out of thin air. Charity has continued to carry on Ella's legacy founding the ELLA Foundation, which stands for empathy, love, lessons and action. The nonprofit helps people who are affected by violence, mental illness and the criminal justice system.  You've probably heard someone mention the phrase the perfect crime, usually referring to a crime in which the criminal leaves behind no evidence or any clues that bring investigators closer to solving the case. Detectives often spend years investigating these cases all to no avail. Well, that's true in the case of Ray Rivera. Ray was a man who had a lot going for him, a beautiful wife, a brand new home, a great job lined up in friends and family that loved him deeply. But if all of this is true, what prompted him to jump off of a 14 story hotel on a warm summer evening in 2006? Strangers still, what should be made of the strange series of notes that he left behind? And an elusive thief who repeatedly tried to steal Ray's computer. Well, that's the thing. Ray's family believe he didn't jump off that hotel roof that day. And if key pieces of evidence are to be believed, they may be right. Ray didn't jump, he was pushed. Before we jump into today's story, I wanted to let you know about Pia, an amazing VPN service that you can use on any smartphone and also the sponsor of today's video. If you're an active internet user and since you're watching this video, you are, then you need to know one thing. Everything you do on the internet can be seen by someone else, whether you realize it or not. Using the internet without Pia is like having Facebook post your diary.  Pia, short for private internet access, uses a virtual private network or a VPN to hide your IP address from would be hackers, scammers and other elusive people. 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Pia is the world's most transparent VPN provider, hiding your IP address and encrypting your internet connection, all while giving you access to heaps of content that may otherwise have been hidden from you. Join Pia by using my link below to get 83% off your subscription. That's just $2.03 per month. Better yet, Pia is even throwing in an additional four months of protection absolutely free if you sign up using my custom link. Just go to piavpn.com slash true crime stories to get 83% off your subscription. Then get four additional months completely free. Thanks to Pia for sponsoring today's video. Ray Rivera was born on June 10th, 1973. By 2006, Ray was doing quite well for himself. He'd become a writer and a videographer while living in Baltimore, Maryland. According to a few reports I found online, Ray was a big fan of movies and film, being particularly fond of Stanley Kubrick's work. Some accounts claim that Ray was an aspiring script writer and storyteller, but his work never really took off. He spent a lot of his time writing and journaling potential plots and stories, but nothing ever really went anywhere. I wasn't able to find any samples of Ray's scripts or any of his storytelling work, but Ray did have a job as a writer for the rebound report, a financial newsletter of which Ray was one of the lead editors. While Ray loved his job at first, things just weren't working out the way he had planned. Ray and his wife, Allison, had moved from Los Angeles to Baltimore so that Ray could accept the job and they could begin their new lives together, having just recently become married. The job seemed like an excellent opportunity, but it wasn't panning out. While Ray certainly was a great writer, it doesn't seem like finance was really his true passion. He did his job to the best of his ability, but many of the stocks that he would write about didn't follow the trends that he expected him to, calling his credibility into question and naturally leading Ray to become quite self-conscious about his predictions and his overall value to the company. This job had been given to Ray by one of his close friends, Porter Stansbury. Porter and Ray went way back and Porter felt that Ray would be the perfect fit for the role of editor. While Ray appreciated the job tremendously, he couldn't shake the feeling that his efforts would be better spent elsewhere. So after around two years of working for the rebound report, Ray left his position in late 2005, instead becoming a freelance writer for the Agora Corporation, a company that was still in some way operated by Porter Stansbury. Allison, Ray's wife, says that the two had spoken several times about moving back to Los Angeles so that Ray could pursue his true passion of screenwriting. While the two had talked about this multiple times, they'd never made any concrete plans of returning to their hometown. Though it was becoming increasingly clear that Ray simply wasn't happy with their new life in Baltimore. When he wasn't writing or editing financial articles, Ray could be found coaching the local water polo team at Johns Hopkins University. Ray had a love for aquatics and he'd even worked at a high school in Burbank, California as an aquatics coach for teenagers. His students loved him with his former high school students were calling him quite fondly with one of the assistant coaches saying that the kids truly valued his input because Ray was a man that by all means knew what he was talking about when it came to aquatics. But all of this seemingly went out the window when without warning, Ray disappeared one night in 2006, never to be seen alive again. Ray Rivera was last seen on May 16th, 2006. He'd been at home while his wife was away on a business trip to Virginia. While she was gone, a work colleague of hers was staying over at the house with Rivera. This colleague, Claudia, was good friends with Allison and the two spent a lot of time together. Claudia says that she'd spent the day at the house with Ray, but Ray had been preoccupied with one of his assignments. So she didn't see him much at all that day as he'd been locked away in his office busy with work. At some point around 4 p.m. Claudia says that she heard Ray's phone ring. He answered the phone, but only replied, oh shoot, before taking off out the back door of the home as if he was late for something. No sooner than he left, he came running back inside then took off again just a few seconds later, leaving the lights on in his office as well as leaving his computer running. When Claudia told Allison about Ray's strange behavior, she tried to call Ray multiple times but he never answered his phone. Allison later admitted that she assumed that Ray had just gone out to drink with friends, but there was no indication that this had actually happened. It wasn't until the following day that Allison began to fear that something had gone terribly wrong. The next day, Allison returned home from her business trip and Ray was still nowhere to be found. Reports indicate that Allison spent the entirety of that day searching for Ray, but there was no trace of him. Once Ray had been gone for about 24 hours, Allison decided it was time to report him missing. When Ray left the family home, he'd been driving Allison's car and about six days later, her car was found parked in the Mount Vernon area, abandoned. There was nothing of interest in the car, nothing seemed off and there doesn't appear to have been any indication that anything suspicious had taken place. The only problem was that Ray was nowhere to be found and there was no indication of where he may have gone. But the following day, police would reach a breakthrough in the case when they uncovered a crime scene that was, well, bizarre. On May 24th, 2006, police were called to the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore after a passerby had uncovered a crime scene. The Belvedere Hotel is a major historic attraction for residents in the United States. Originally built in 1903, the building has a very rich history, housing historic icons such as Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson and King Edward VIII, just to name a few. When police were called to the hotel, Ray been missing for just over a week. When employees led investigators to the scene of the crime, they couldn't believe their eyes. Ray Rivera was found lying on the ground inside an abandoned office room in the hotel that hadn't been used in the number of years. His remains were very badly decomposed, meaning he'd been here for quite some time. Police believe he had likely ended up here on the same day that he disappeared or within a day or so after. When detectives surveyed the crime scene, they noticed one particular clue that seemingly solved the case after just minutes of arriving. A large hole in the ceiling and roof suggested that Ray had jumped from the top roof down to the lower roof, plunging 14 stories to his demise. And as it would turn out, the Belvedere Hotel is no stranger to people claiming their own lives. With the various sources claiming that people have claimed their own lives to this hotel countless times in the past, though a specific number has never been determined. The hotel has a history of strange occurrences that have taken place on its grounds. And Ray Rivera's unexpected demise only added to this list. But there was only one problem. The state of Ray's remains did not at all suggest that he had taken his own life. Worse yet, when detectives started using math and calculating the location of Ray's body, things just didn't add up. If you take a look at this photo of the hotel, you'll see that the building is designed with two distinct roof lines. There's the obvious roof at the very top of the building, but notice the alcove that's right in the center of the building. This alcove has a second, much lower roof, and this is where the hole in the roof was found. The reason I bring this up is because police initially believed that Ray took his own life by jumping from the upper roof down onto the lower roof, with this lower roof giving way under his weight, sending him into the office building below. But this just doesn't add up mathematically. There was a considerable distance between where Ray would have jumped on the top roof and where he would have ended up on the bottom roof. According to experts, Ray fell about 177 feet and would have taken him about 3.3 seconds to impact that lower roof. When he impacted the lower roof, he was about 43 feet from the outer walls of the building, and this is where this theory begins to fall apart. For Ray to have ended up 43 feet across the roof, he would have needed to have been traveling at a speed of about 10 miles per hour and leapt off of the roof like he was Buzz Lightyear or something. But the catch is Ray only had a span of just over 15 feet on the upper roof, not nearly enough room to reach a full sprint speed of 10 miles per hour. To make matters worse, Ray wasn't even wearing shoes when he plunged through the roof. He was wearing flip-flops. This jump would have been difficult even for a professional runner who was wearing proper running shoes. But Ray wasn't a runner, nor was he wearing proper shoes. There is no logical way that Ray could have made this jump. The only other explanation would be if Ray was actually inside of the building, giving him more room to get a running start than jump out of an upper floor window. But the problem with this theory is that the upper floors have been converted into condos, which for all the obvious reasons would have been locked. And there's never been a report of any of the upper windows being left open or broken at any time. But this brings us to the autopsy report, which is shocking to say the least. Up to this point, police had been running with the theory that Ray had claimed his own life by jumping off the upper roof of the building, even though they couldn't explain how he could have done such a thing. But the coroner had a different idea. I was able to track down the official autopsy report from this case, and the medical examiner documented dozens of wounds and fractures that were all over Ray's body. When looking at the conclusion of the report, the coroner admits that Ray's injuries do appear to be consistent with him falling from a multi-story building. The only hitch in this plan is that the coroner labeled the cause of Ray's passing as undetermined. Others have taken a look at the autopsy report and claimed that Ray's injuries appeared to be much more consistent with being hit by a car than anything else. But I'm certainly not an expert in this field, so I can't really comment one way or the other. The only thing I can say that I personally found odd is if someone fell 14 stories, then plunged through a roof and landed on the floor beneath it, I would tend to think that that person would have almost certainly broken their spine. But the coroner's report doesn't document even one vertebrae that was broken. Now again, I'm certainly not an expert in this field, but I find that incredibly strange and almost impossible to believe. The most important thing here is that the coroner couldn't confirm one way or the other how Ray lost his life, but could only conclude that his injuries could have possibly been from the fall or from something else. And it's this idea of something else that's led to many different theories, some of which point to the idea that Ray may have been pushed. One of the strangest details from this case that I just can't seem to figure out is that even though Ray's believed to have jumped from the upper roof, both of his flip-flops were found on the lower roof. The only indication of damage to them is that one of them had the toe strap popped loose, but this can happen to anyone at any time. It's not uncommon. But even stranger is that his cell phone was found on the lower roof as well, and it was also completely undamaged and fully functional. So if Ray had been 14 stories up, how were his flip-flops and phone in such perfect condition untouched on this lower roof level? Now, one thing I'd like to make clear is that there are also rumors that claim the hole in the roof of the building simply wasn't large enough for Ray's body to have fit through, but this just isn't true. The hole, though it seems small in the photos, was more than large enough for an adult male to fall through. I'm not sure where this rumor began, but I do wanna put that to rest before it spreads any further. Ray's wife, Alison, weighed in on the situation and mentioned that in the days leading up to his disappearance, Ray had been acting very strangely. She mentioned that he seemed extremely paranoid, and she believes she knows when all of this began happening. She mentioned a time just a few weeks prior to the disappearance when Ray had been speaking with the man in a local park. Alison says that Ray never revealed what the two spoke about, nor did he mention who the man was. But after their conversation was over, Ray was walking away and had a very worried look on his face. Immediately after this conversation, Ray grew so paranoid that his entire demeanor changed. Ray was widely known for being a happy-go-lucky man, but all of a sudden, he'd become quite reserved, quiet, and fearful. Immediately after this, Ray believed their home was burgled twice over the span of just a few days. Their home was fitted with a top-of-the-line security system, and twice, the alarm went off in the middle of the night. When the couple got up to see what was going on, the security system never picked up anyone on any of the cameras or sensors, so they had no idea why the alarm had gone off. But this is where things get really weird. After Ray disappeared and police were searching through his home and office, they came across a note that had been kept in plastic and taped to the front of Ray's computer. The note had been typed on a computer and printed out in very tiny font, leading some of the words and letters to be blurry, but the best I can tell, the note reads as follows. Brothers and sisters, right now around the world, violences are erupting. What an awesome sight. The next line is a bit too blurry to read, but it continues a moment later saying, quote, that was a well-played game. Congratulations to all who participated. I hope you enjoyed it. It was a time to wake up, so here I am. I'd like to welcome those who accept that our invitations for membership during the game. We couldn't have done it without you. I took on this endeavor to find the truth. After this, most of this letter is too blurry to read, but he mentions something known as the council, then begins referencing people in his personal life, as well as actors, directors and film writers, such as Stanley Kubrick. He then writes out a very long list of names, seemingly of people he knows, and ends this list by mentioning his friend, Porter Stansberry, saying he didn't do it himself, but he never mentioned what it is referring to. Now, this note is obviously very bizarre and largely doesn't seem to make any sense, but a Reddit user picked up on the fact that Ray was referring to something called The Game. The Reddit user mentioned a movie called The Game, and in one scene, one of the lead characters jumps off of an upper-level roof and crashes through the ceiling of a lower-level roof, a very bizarre coincidence considering what happened to Ray. But the problem with this theory is that the FBI has taken a look at the letter and found no merit in these claims, and one other expert claimed the same thing, believing that this note has nothing to do with Ray's disappearance and ultimate demise. In fact, Ray's own family seemed to believe that this note is unrelated to his disappearance, as they claim that he kept journals full of ramblings like this, saying that none of these notes ever made any sense. The note has since been referred to as a stream of consciousness, and that it may have never had any real purpose for underlying meaning. Why Ray wrote so many of these strange notes remains unknown, and what game he was referring to remains unknown as well. Interestingly, all of these notes were found to have likely originated on Ray's computer. When police were researching Ray's case, detectives took his computer in as evidence so that they could take a closer look at his files. After they'd concluded their research, the computer was eligible to be picked up exclusively by his wife, but in the days that it took her to pick up the computer, police noted that one person had called multiple times day after day doing their best to pick up Ray's computer, even though they weren't permitted to do so. Police had never revealed who this person was. In fact, we don't know if they even know who it was. But Alison, Ray's wife, says that no one else should ever have any sort of interest in Ray's computer, and she has no idea who would have wanted to do such a thing. As far as we know, nothing important or relevant to the case was ever found on his computer, so this seems incredibly odd. The only other theory in this case is that Ray was somehow associated with the elusive group known as the Freemasons, a secret organization that has existed for hundreds of years and are rumored to have been involved in all sorts of dark and secretive plans throughout history. Ray was fascinated by the Freemasons and had picked up various books on the subject and had even recently purchased a book titled Freemasons for Dummies in the weeks leading up to his demise. He even visited a Masonic lodge and requested to join the group, but we don't know if anything ever came of this. In the end, no one knows for sure what happened to Ray Rivera. His family remains hopeful that they will find answers one day and they're adamant that he wouldn't have done this to himself. There's a prevailing theory that Ray must have been pushed from the rooftop that day, as he had an intense fear of heights and had recently just purchased a new home with his wife. But the problem is there's no indication of who would have wanted to push him. Worse yet, who could have pushed him hard enough to send him flying a staggering 45 feet across the roof? Even if he had been pushed, he should have landed only a few horizontal feet from his starting position, only a little further than he had jumped, but that just isn't what took place. Policers are still actively investigating this case even after all these years, but they're no closer to solving it today than they were all those years ago. Policers are still operating under the assumption that Ray took his own life, but it seems like even they are beginning to believe that this may be a bit too far-fetched to be true. An innocent victim or a common criminal. These are the two labels that have been given to Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old college student whose life was turned completely upside down after working with Florida police in a sting operation that went horribly, horribly wrong. Rachel had no idea that a simple routine traffic stop would send her life into a tailspin, and before Rachel knew it, she was facing a weekend in jail. But by April of the following year, things had turned sour. Rachel was now facing years of jail time after detectives tried to pin her for a crime that would have essentially ended her life. She was offered a once-in-a-lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. The only catch was she had to work undercover for the police. With nowhere else to turn, Rachel accepted the offer. Not knowing that this job would be her last. Rachel Hoffman was by no means your average young woman. By the time she was 18, Rachel had done all the things most of us only ever dream of doing. Rachel was born in Clearwater, Florida, where she had, best I can tell, a largely ordinary childhood. The only thing that sets Rachel's childhood apart from most is that she had opportunities most of us could never imagine. See, Rachel wasn't a particularly wild kid, but she also wasn't a kid who was willing to settle down. She and her family were always up to something. By the time she was 12 years old, Rachel had already learned ballet, learned to ride horses, and she'd even been a major competitor in a little mermaid contest. Her life never seemed to stop moving forward and having lived in Clearwater, Florida, it's easy to see why. Because Clearwater is a beautiful place to be and it's a city that's filled with attractions in all sorts of things for a small family to do. As the name suggests, there are several beautiful clear beaches, all kinds of museums, cruises, sports events, restaurants, parks, everything. The only real issue with Clearwater is crime. While Clearwater certainly isn't a particularly dangerous place to be, there are definitely pockets of the city that you want to stay clear of. It's certainly not a city where you'd need to fear for your life while walking around at night, but it's absolutely a place where you need to keep your eyes open and maintain a little bit of common sense. For Rachel, she certainly had enough common sense and confidence to go around, but being the free spirited woman she was, well, she wasn't going to let anything keep her from doing what she'd set her mind to doing.  By this point, her resume had grown to include being a flute player, a piano player, a skydiver, a Grand Canyon hiker and so much more. Rachel just didn't know when to quit. After graduating high school, Rachel continued on with her academics and joined Florida State University. She was here from the time she was 18 until she was 23 and after graduating from Florida State, she planned to continue her education by moving to Arizona to pursue a culinary degree. By February of 2007, Rachel was continuing on her path to greatness, but that's when everything came crashing down around her, what should have been a simple traffic stop and an ordinary speeding ticket turned into so much more. Before Rachel even knew what was going on, her life had changed forever. It's stories like this that remind us that danger can pop up when we least expect it and when you're injured, your injury could be worth millions. Insurance companies often love to low ball claims, but if you become a client of Morgan and Morgan, they will help to fight to get you what you deserve. All law firms are not the same. Morgan and Morgan is as popular as they are for a reason. 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Thanks to Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring today's video. It was February 27th, 2007. Rachel was in her final days of Florida State University and was already gearing up to transfer to Arizona. But before that could happen, her life changed in the blink of an eye. While Rachel was out driving one day, she got pulled over for speeding. It happens to everyone and it's unlikely that Rachel thought much of it. The officer approached her window and asked for her license and insurance, but that wasn't all. Now, the details of what unfolded next are a bit uncertain, but it seems like the officer knew that something was a little bit off about Rachel. In fact, he could smell it. As soon as he caught a whiff of Rachel's car, he asked her to exit the vehicle. He then asked Rachel's permission to search the car. What he found in the car brought Rachel to her knees. As the officer combed through every square inch of the car, he finally found what he was looking for. He turned to Rachel with a bag that was filled with a certain plant and at this point in history, it was illegal in Florida. Rachel knew that she was in serious, serious trouble. Not only did this crime mean that she may be spending some time in jail, or at the very least, paying a very steep fine, but she also knew that a crime like this could cost her everything, including her getting kicked out of Arizona College before classes had even started. Rachel did everything she could to keep this off of her record, but her best efforts simply weren't enough. After the officer reported the crime, Rachel was forced to enter a rehab program and was told that she would be subjected to periodic testing to ensure that she was free and clear in the future. What's crazy to me is that the state was incredibly serious about these routine tests. Usually the state doesn't care about much of anything at all, but that wasn't true in this scenario. Now, we don't know how long Rachel was required to attend this rehab program, nor how long she was required to take these regular tests, but more than a year later, in March of 2008, we know that she was still going through with these tests. The only problem was, in March, someone close to Rachel lost their life. This meant that Rachel needed to travel all the way to Tallahassee to attend the loved one's funeral, but there was only one issue with this. On the day of the funeral, Rachel was also due to take one of her scheduled tests. She missed this appointment and, as a result, was ordered to spend a weekend in jail in April of 2008. Rachel did her time, got out of jail and went back home. It wasn't really the end of the world for her. No, that would come just two weeks later and this time, Rachel would be doing a lot more than spending a couple days in a cage. This time, she was in deep. Just two weeks after Rachel was released from jail, she was in her apartment, minding her own business, when all of a sudden, there was a powerful knock at the door. She opened the door to see what was going on and that's when she noticed two police officers who stood there to greet her. There was a familiar, skunky odor that poured out of Rachel's apartment and she knew her time was up. The officers reported that there had been odor complaints from one of her neighbors. They then asked if Rachel had been using anything illegal that evening, she had. They then asked if she had anything illegal in her apartment, she did. They asked Rachel's permission to search her apartment and she allowed them to. When they asked her what was going on to cause such an odor, Rachel knew she couldn't hide any longer and she admitted to everything. But what was originally a fairly innocent crime and a somewhat light sentence turned into something much, much more and in record time. That's because this time around, Rachel wasn't just holding on to a few grams of a plant. This time, she'd been caught with much, much more. Now, because of the rules in terms of service on these streaming platforms, I can't specifically discuss what officers found. So we'll just say that under Rachel's couch cushions, officers found some illegal medications that very clearly proved that Rachel was looking to party. Not only that, but she had more than enough to share with her friends. So police began to fear that she may be selling these goods to other people. Needless to say, Rachel was arrested, but she could have never imagined what would unfold next. As she was taken to the local jail, Rachel learned that she faced multiple felony charges. If her previous charges didn't risk ending her college career, these charges certainly would. Rachel was set to be put away for a very, very long time. At the age of just 23 years old, Rachel didn't know what to do. She was nothing more than a college student who was looking to experiment, learn more about herself and who she really was as well as have a good time. But she quickly learned the hard way that this type of a good time is rarely all it's cracked up to be. It was then that Rachel was introduced to Officer Ryan Pender, who offered her a deal that she simply couldn't refuse. All those drug charges, he'd make them go away. All she had to do was work for him. Desperate for any way out of this mess, Rachel agreed. This would turn out to be a mistake that would cost her her life. Rachel's job with Officer Pender was simple. She would work undercover for the local police, helping them to locate and eradicate local smuggling operations. She'd show up to the homes or hotspots of various dealers, make a successful exchange, and report everything back to Officer Pender. The police told her that if she helped to get the weapons and illegal goods off the street, they'd wipe away any trace of her previous arrests. According to her boyfriend, Ben, she was only initially asked to take part in one or two sting operations, but things quickly grew out of control. We don't know the specific number of undercover ops that Rachel went on, but we know that it was far greater than just one or two. But by May of 2008, one of these operations took a dangerous turn that cast the entire state of Florida into a negative light. It was May 7th when Rachel reported to the Tallahassee Police Department for her next mission. She was taken to the office of Officer Pender, who would explain the details of her next assignment. Officer Pender would explain that Rachel was to be given a wire, then given $13,000 in cash. She was instructed to purchase a weapon, 1.5 ounces of one substance, and 1,500 tablets of another. She was to bring her haul straight back to the police so officers could link the crimes to the dealers. This sting operation was incredibly large. A total of three DEA agents, 15 police officers, Officer Pender and Rachel had all been assigned to this investigation. And according to the Tallahassee Democrat, this was the largest sting in the department's history. The operation was scheduled to begin at 7pm, but from the very beginning, things did not go according to plan. At first, Rachel was set to meet up with the men at a predetermined location, but all of a sudden, they changed the meeting spot. A few hours later, they changed it again. Rachel was driving herself to Forest Meadow Park, where she was to meet up with these two men. But on her way there, she got a phone call from one of the men. Yet again, there was a change of plans. And during this one phone call, they changed the meeting twice more. They asked Rachel to meet them at a plant nursery, then switched to Gardner Road, a dead-end street with no hope of an easy exit. Rachel hung up the phone with the dealers and immediately called HQ to speak to Officer Pender. Officer Pender claims that he immediately picked up on what was taking place here, and he told Rachel to abandon the mission, saying that it was unsafe. He says that he doesn't know if Rachel hung up before hearing this command, or if she purposefully ignored his warning. But after this call, Rachel was never heard from again. Police