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On June 12th, 2015, three friends went hiking on the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

They disappeared without a trace.

A month later, one of them was found on the side of the road, exhausted with a shaved head and a shocking story to tell.

But what really happened to the other girls and why only one of them was found, you will learn in this story.

Enjoy.

Some names and details in this story have been changed for anonymity and confidentiality.

Not all photographs are from the actual scene.

On June 12th, 2015, the sun was at its zenith on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, burning the colors on the rocks to a dazzling white.

This place, known as the North Rim, is very different from the popular and crowded South Rim.

It is dominated by silence, isolation, [music] and wildlife that does not forgive mistakes, even for experienced travelers.

It was here at the Ranger registration point that three 18-year-old girls approached that morning.

They looked full of enthusiasm, ready for a great adventure that was to be the final chord of their school life before adult paths took them in different directions.

In the log book of that day, there was an entry about a group of three people planning a route in the Powell Plateau area, a remote and difficult section of the park.

The leader of the group, judging by who negotiated with the ranger and filled out the paperwork, was Irma Tucker.

In the case files, she is described as the brain of the company Pragmatic.

Focused, always resultoriented, Irma had received a prestigious scholarship to a university on the east coast and was [music] preparing to move in a few months.

For her, this hike was not just a walk, but a sporting challenge that she had planned to the smallest detail, studying topographic maps and calculating water reserves.

Next to her stood Regina Williams, the complete opposite of Irma, a bright, charismatic, artistic person who was going to study art in California.

Her friends called her the soul of the company.

For Regina, the harsh cliffs of the canyon were just a backdrop for beautiful photos and a place to laugh out loud without worrying about others.

She was the emotional link that smoothed out the corners in the communication between the demanding Irma and the third member of the group.

The third girl’s name was Lisa Owen.

In police reports and classmates memoirs, she appears as a shadow.

Quiet, compliant, always seemingly calm.

Lisa almost never argued and agreed with any decision Irma made.

She was the only one of the three who did not plan to leave.

Lisa was staying in her hometown while her friends were preparing for a big future in the big cities.

That morning, she stood a little behind while Irma clarified the details of the route with the officer on duty.

According to the plan, the girls had left their rented SUV in a remote parking lot near Swamp Point, one of the park’s most difficult to access [music] viewpoints, accessed by a ruted forest road.

The car would be found there later, dusty, locked, silently waiting for its passengers, who were due back in 5 days.

The last confirmed contact with the group took place on the same day, June 12th.

On the North Bass Trail, they were met by a group of hikers on their way up.

According to witnesses, the girls were in good spirits, moving confidently, and did not look exhausted.

They briefly greeted each other, exchanged some pleasantries about the weather, and continued their descent deep into the hot stone [music] maze.

After that meeting, they were never seen again.

On June 17th, 2015, their permit to stay in the back country expired.

According [music] to protocol, they were supposed to report to the ranger station to complete the route.

However, by the evening, none of them showed up phone calls from their parents, which began to arrive later that night, went unanswered.

There was no mobile phone service in that part of the canyon.

The next morning, [music] when the SUV was still parked in the Swamp Point parking lot, covered in a layer of red dust, it became clear that something was wrong.

The search operation began on June 18 at 6:00 in the morning.

It was one of the largest actions of that season.

The National Park Service deployed two helicopters for aerial surveillance, [music] as well as several ground teams that descended difficult routes into the plateau area.

Temperatures in the shade reached 40° C, making every hour critical.

The searchers checked the main water sources in the Muav Saddle [music] and Chinumo Creek area, the only places where the hikers could replenish their fluids.

Dog handlers working in the area tried to pick up the trail of the vehicle, but dry, hot winds and rocky ground made the dog’s work impossible.

The groups combed the area for kilometer after kilometer, looking into every crevice under every boulder, checking old landslides and dangerous cornises.

[music] Rescuers reports indicated that the terrain was extremely rugged with many blind [music] spots that could not be properly inspected, even from the air.

On June 21st, the fourth day of the active search, the first and only report of a discovery was received.

One of the ground [music] teams, which was inspecting the area of a dried up riverbed near Shinumo Creek, noticed a bright object among the gray stones.

It was a cap.

Her parents later recognized [music] it as the hat belonged to Regina Williams.

The cap was lying there as if it [music] had been dropped or blown away by the wind, but there were no other traces around it.

No backpacks, no shoe marks, no signs of a campsite.

The discovery only increased the anxiety because it showed that the group had [music] reached this depth, but their further journey was dissolving into emptiness.

Days passed and [music] the canyon continued to remain silent.

The search team’s resources were running out and the hope of finding the girls alive was melting away with each passing hour under the scorching Arizona sun.

The rangers checked version after version from wild animal attacks to dehydration and disorientation.

However, the absence of bodies and equipment made the situation abnormal.

Usually, even if tourists [music] die, searchers find their last campsites or abandoned belongings.

Here, however, there was only one clue to the vast territory of the wild desert.

Two weeks after the start, the operation was officially transferred to the passive phase.

In the final report, investigators and search team leaders came to a disappointing conclusion.

Most likely, the group went off the route, trying to shorten the path or find water and fell into the Colorado River.

The powerful current, which was especially strong that season due to snow melt, could have carried the bodies many miles downstream or dragged them under massive underwater rocks where they could not be found.

The girls parents refused to believe that their children had simply disappeared without a trace, but the official version remained unchanged.

The case of the three friends who went on their farewell trip and never returned became another tragic page in the history of the Grand Canyon.

The SUV was taken away from the parking lot.

The search helicopters returned to their bases and silence fell over the Powell Plateau again, broken only by the wind and the sound of the distant river.

No one then could have guessed that this silence was deceptive and that the story that everyone thought was a complete tragedy was actually just beginning and that the truth [music] was not hidden in the waters of Colorado but much closer than anyone dared to look.

On July 14th, 2015, 32 days into the hike, the usual midsummer heat rained on Forest Road 67, also known as North Rim Parkway.

It’s a long isolated strip of asphalt surrounded by dense coniferous forest where cars don’t pass very often.

Around 2:00 in the afternoon, a truck driver transporting timber to Utah noticed strange movement on the side of the road.

In his testimony, he later said that at first he thought the object was a wounded deer or a large dog trying to crawl out of a ditch.

But when he slowed down and got closer, he realized he was wrong.

It was a human being.

The figure was moving on four limbs, slowly moving its arms across the hot gravel.

Its clothes had turned into dirty rags that barely covered its body.

The driver stopped the truck, grabbed a bottle of water, and rushed to its aid.

When he turned the unknown woman on her back, he could hardly contain his scream.

She was a young woman, but her condition shocked even the experienced paramedics who arrived 40 minutes later.

She had lost critical body weight.

Her ribs and collar bones were protruding so much that the skin seemed stretched over the bones like parchment paper.

But the worst part was her face.

Her head was completely shaved down to the skin and covered with horrific sunburns, blisters, and deep scratches that had already begun to fester.

She was immediately rushed to St.

George Hospital in Utah.

The patients condition was so severe that doctors spent the first day struggling to stabilize her vital signs.

Severe dehydration, exhaustion, and a scalp infection threatened her life.

Only 24 hours later, when Lisa was able to utter her first coherent words, where detectives allowed into her room, what she told them made law enforcement officials shudder and immediately launched a hunt for what the press would later call the canyon maniac.

According to the
interrogation report, Lisa Owen testified that the nightmare began on the third day of their hike.

The group was in the area of Shinumo Creek when a man appeared on the trail.

He looked like an experienced hiker or geologist.

He had equipment, worn out clothes, and a confident demeanor.

The stranger introduced himself as a digger, a seeker of old mines or rare minerals.

He told the girls that the main water sources ahead had dried up due to the abnormal heat, but he knew of a hidden underground spring that was not marked on the maps.

Trusting his confident tone and fearing thirst, the girls agreed to follow him.

He led them into a narrow blind gorge where the walls narrowed the space to a few meters.

It was there, in a stone [music] sack that the trap closed.

The man pulled out a gun and forced them to submit.

Lisa said that he took them to a cave, the entrance to which was skillfully disguised by shrubbery and stones.

[music] It was dark and damp inside.

The kidnapper immediately declared that they were sinners who had defiled the canyon with their presence and [music] now had to go through the path of atonement.

He forced them to kneel for hours on sharp stones and pray to unknown gods or forces [music] of nature that he said ruled the place.

The most terrifying episode, Lisa said, happened on the fifth day of their captivity.

The man dragged them out of the cave into the sun, tied them to boulders with ropes so they [music] couldn’t move, and announced the beginning of a purification ritual.

He pulled out a rough, poorly sharpened hunting knife.

Lisa cried as she told detectives how he cut their long hair.

It wasn’t a gentle shave.

The blade scratched their skin, leaving cuts.

Blood flooded their eyes and the maniac shouted that he was depriving them of their vanity.

The pain was unbearable, but the fear of death made them endure.

Then the worst began.

On the 10th day, he entered the cave and silently pointed to Irma.

Lisa recalled how her friend tried to resist, but the captor was stronger.

He dragged her outside.

Liza and Regina left in the dark, heard Irma’s screams, [music] which lasted for several minutes and then abruptly ended, replaced by silence.

He returned alone without any emotion on his face.

3 days later, Regina suffered the same fate.

When he came back after she disappeared, he threw the bloody [music] Panama Regina had been wearing at Lisa’s feet and said coldly, “They are part of the canyon [music] now.

They have accepted it and it has accepted them.

Lisa’s escape, according to her testimony, took place on the 30th day.

That evening, the digger behaved strangely.

He drank a lot of some pungent smelling tincture from a dark bottle, mumbled incoherently, and eventually fell into a deep sleep right at the entrance.

[music] In his intoxication, he made a fatal mistake.

He forgot to lock the padlock on the chain [music] with which he had chained Lisa.

Realizing that this was her only chance, she broke free and ran into the night.

She ran non-stop, her feet bleeding, guided only by the stars and her intuition until 2 days later she reached Forest Road 67, where the driver found her.

Based on Lisa’s detailed description, a police sketch artist created a sketch of the suspect, a man in his 40s or 50s with hard features, tan skin, and a crazy look.

Dozens of rangers and police officers combed the Kaibab forests, checking homeless camps, hermit camps, and old mines.

They were looking for the cave the girl had described with a disguised [music] entrance and traces of human activity.

However, despite all efforts, [music] no object that fully matched the description in Lisa’s terrifying story was found, nor were any traces of the mysterious digger.

Three years have passed since the story of the Canyon Maniac shook the state of Arizona.

But over time, the loud headlines in the newspapers have been replaced by silence and the case itself moved from the desks of investigators to the far shelves of the archive.

By October 2018, the investigation officially became cold.

The Cookanino County police had not been able to find the mysterious cave described by the only surviving victim, nor the mysterious digger, who, according to her, held the three girls captive.

No new traces, no bodies of her
friends, no evidence of the existence of the perpetrator, only the words of a girl who returned from hell.

Over the years, Lisa Owen herself has done everything possible to dissolve into the crowd and erase herself from public space.

She moved to Phoenix, a big hot metropolis where it is easy to get lost among millions of faces.

Lisa got a job at the city archives, an ironic place for someone who tried to bury her own past.

She worked with documents in the basement where there were no windows and no prying eyes, avoided any contact with the press, did not give interviews, and changed her phone number.

To her neighbors and colleagues, she was just a quiet, reserved woman who had survived a terrible tragedy and had the right to be left in peace.

She looked like the perfect victim trying to heal her wounds.

However, the Cookanino County Unsolved Crimes Unit occasionally went back to old files.

It’s a routine procedure.

When new crimes fail to produce leads, detectives look through old cold case files, hoping that a fresh set of eyes or new technology will help them spot what their predecessors missed.

In midocctober 2018, one of the department’s detectives took a box labeled disappearance on North Rome Owen case to work.

His task was to check if any new DNA matches or similar crime patterns had appeared in the databases in other states.

The detective began by rereading the basic protocols.

Lisa’s testimony, search party reports, maps of the area.

Everything seemed logical, albeit terrifying.

The story of a crazed hermit living in a cave and practicing his own religious cults fit in with the mythology of the Grand Canyon where people often go insane from isolation.

However, when he came to the section on medical examinations done in the first days after Lisa’s rescue in July 2015, one detail caught his attention that had somehow gone unappreciated.

It was a detailed report from a toxicologist at St.

George’s Hospital in 2015.

The doctors focused on the patients physical injuries, critical dehydration, thirdderee sunburn, scalp infection, and general exhaustion.

The blood talk screen was a standard procedure, the results of which were simply filed in the case file.

The column for detected substances contained a long list of indicators consistent with starvation and stress.

But at the very bottom, in the notes in small print, the laboratory technician noted the presence [music] of traces of a specific chemical compound.

The detective, who did not have a medical degree, consulted reference books and a forensic pharmarmacologist.

It turned out that the [music] substance found was a metabolite of a powerful synthetic sleeping pill of the latest generation.

It was not just a seditive that you can buy at the supermarket or gas station.

It was a strictly prescription drug prescribed for severe sleep disorders [music] and its circulation is strictly controlled.

Its effect is characterized by the rapid onset of deep sleep and importantly possible antoggrade amnesia, the loss of memory of events that occurred immediately after taking it.

This dry medical fact struck the entire case structure like a hammer to glass.

The detective reopened [music] the transcript of Lisa Owen’s interrogation from the 15th year.

In her testimony, she repeatedly described her life in the cave in great detail.

She claimed that the maniac, whom she called the digger, [music] was a nature fanatic.

He fed them roots, gave them muddy water to drink, and forced them to drink bitter herbal decoctions that he cooked over a fire.

According to her, he called these [music] drinks purification and claimed that they brought them closer to the earth.

The entire profile of the criminal was built on the image of a savage, a hermit who rejected civilization.

There was a glaring contradiction here.

A hermit who lives in a hole, hunts tourists, [music] and brews potions from roots could not physically have access to highquality synthetic pharmarmacology.

He couldn’t have gone to a pharmacy in Flagstaff or St.

George, presented a prescription, [music] and bought a pack of modern pills without being caught on surveillance cameras and attracting attention.

If he was who Lisa described [music] him, they would have found plant alkyoids, dope, mushrooms, or in extreme cases, cheap alcohol in his bloodstream, but not a sophisticated synthetic drug that requires a prescription from a licensed doctor.

The detective read the report again, looking for a mistake.

Could it be the medication Lisa had been given at the hospital? He checked the time of the blood draw.

No.

The sample was taken immediately upon admission before the start of drug therapy.

Traces of the drug [music] had entered her system before she was found on the road.

This meant that during her stay in the cave, where she said there was nothing but stones and skins, someone had given her these pills.

This inconsistency [music] was small, almost imperceptible against the backdrop of the horrific picture of torture, but it was the first crack in Lisa Owen’s perfect cinematic story.

Until that moment, the investigation took her words as absolute truth because no one dared to doubt the victim who had survived such hell.

But the presence of prescription sleeping [music] pills in the blood of a girl allegedly held by a cave fanatic defied logical explanation.

It forced him to look at the whole situation from a completely different angle.

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