That’s why he did n’t kill her immediately; he took her to the basement of his country house, which he converted into a workshop.

There, using his monstrous collection of teeth unearthed from the graves of soldiers and early settlers, he carried out a series of barbaric operations.

He tried to fix his smile by inserting a dead bone into his living gums, guided only by the logic of symmetry and historical accuracy that he understood.

For five months he kept her in the dark, chained up, fed through a tube, and admired his work while she slowly went mad from pain and terror.

As detectives led Blake, handcuffed, out of the office, she paused in front of the display case containing their findings.

His gaze slid over the old medals and bones.

One of the agents asked him where the rest of Fred Miller’s body was, hoping for a confession.

Blake slowly turned his head, looked the detective straight in the eyes and in a low voice, with a totally nonchalant tone, uttered a phrase that made the hairs on the backs of the special forces veterans stand on end.

I’m not destroying history, detective, I ‘m preserving it.

It is now part of eternity and you can’t change anything.

Arthur Blake’s trial began on February 6, 2017 in the Newton County District Court and instantly became the main topic of all Arcansas media.

The atmosphere in the room was electrifying.

When the accused entered the courtroom, the family members of the deceased Fred Miller and the journalists present remained expectant, trying to see at least a shadow of remorse on the face of the Osarks monster.

However, Blake seemed completely calm, even distant, as if the events around him did not concern him.

The defense team chose a predictable, but risky, strategy.

They tried to convince the jury that their client was completely insane.

The visiting psychiatrists painted a portrait of a man whose mind was destroyed by a severe form of obsessive- compulsive disorder and a manic obsession with historical integrity.

They argued that Blake was not in control of his actions when he killed and tortured, obeying a morbid impulse to fix the world.

However, the state attorney, David Anderson, methodically demolished this line of defense.

He presented the court with evidence of a cold and cynical calculation.

Blake wasn’t crazy when he placed the victim’s backpack to lead police down a false lead.

He acted deliberately when he provided his team for the search and personally led the volunteers to the locations where he hid the evidence.

On March 15, 2017, after four hours of deliberation, the jury announced its verdict: “Guilty on all counts.

” The judge sentenced Arthur Blake to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

For Mayis, this verdict was just the beginning of a long and painful journey back to life.

Her physical rehabilitation lasted more than 18 months.

The most difficult stage was a series of unique maxillofacial surgeries at the clinic in Little Rock.

Surgeons had to literally remove the fossilized teeth of the dead man from her gums, teeth that had grown into living tissue over five months.

Afterward, Mary underwent a complex bone grafting procedure.

Doctors transplanted bone fragments from her own hip to restore the destroyed structure of her jaw and installed state-of-the-art titanium implants.

But while the bones fused, her spirit remained crippled.

Mary gave up photography for good.

She sold all her cameras and lenses, explaining to her mother that she could never look through the viewfinder again.

into the woods, knowing someone might be watching her from behind the trees.

She changed her last name and moved to a small coastal town, far from the mountains and caves, where she took a job in the city archives.

The end of this story came on April 14, 2018, the second anniversary of the tragedy.

Mary came to Arkansas one last time to visit Fred Miller’s grave in the Jasper cemetery.

The day was overcast with low clouds clinging to the treetops.

Mary’s mother, eager to capture the moment of saying goodbye to the past, asked her daughter to stand by the headstone and try to smile.

Mary did as she was asked.

The muscles in her face, reshaped by surgeons’ scalpels, tensed.

Her lips stretched, revealing perfectly straight, dazzlingly white artificial teeth.

But in the photo that remains in the family album, this smile looks terribly unnatural.

It is not an expression of joy or peace, but a strained, mechanical grimace of pain that has changed Her face forever etched in memory.

The Osark Mountains stand behind her, majestic, beautiful, and indifferent.

They still hold within their depths hundreds of undiscovered caves and forgotten treasures, for which some are willing to kill and others to die, leaving their secrets buried deep in the red clay.

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