She had marked this spot on topographic maps at home [music] while planning the route.

It was the perfect grave, a deep creasse hidden by shrubbery where tourists don’t look.

After dumping the bodies into the darkness, she was sure that without precise coordinates, it would be impossible to find them, even from a helicopter.

Lisa spent the [music] rest of the 28 days in a rigorous simulation mode.

She found a small hidden grotto in a wooded part of the plateau about a mile from the murder site.

There, she set up camp and began her transformation.

She strictly rationed her food, eating just enough to not die, but to reach a state of critical exhaustion.

On a schedule, she took out razor blades and methodically shaved off her hair, inflicting controlled cuts to create the image of a martyr.

She prepared for her theatrical [music] appearance on the road, rehearsing the story of the maniac while her skin burned in the sun.

At the end of the interrogation, when the detective asked about her true motive, Lisa looked at him with surprise as [music] if he did not understand the obvious.

She showed no remorse or anger.

Her words sounded like a distorted declaration of love.

I didn’t kill them for the sake of hate.

I did it so that we wouldn’t be separated.

Now they won’t go to college.

They won’t find new [music] friends.

And they won’t forget me.

On this plateau, the three of us will stay together forever, and no one will be able to separate [music] us.

The Powell Plateau body search operation began early in the morning with thick fog still clinging to the tops of the Ponderosa Pines.

A convoy of three police SUVs and a crime lab van moved slowly along the rutdded dirt road, kicking up clouds of red dust.

In the second vehicle, a man was in the back seat.

Lisa Owen was sitting in the back seat behind the bars of a partition wall.

She was dressed in a [music] prison robe and her hands were shackled in handcuffs fastened to her belt.

According to the detectives who accompanied her that day, she was remarkably calm, even distant.

She didn’t look like a criminal being taken to the scene of a brutal murder.

She looked more like a guide who knew the route better than anyone else [music] and was just waiting for the right moment to show the way.

When the cars stopped in a small clearing surrounded by shrubbery, Lisa was led out.

The air was cold, [music] but the sun had already begun to warm the stones.

The girl did not hesitate.

She took a few steps forward and confidently pointed toward the dense thicket of mansin growing on the edge of a limestone ledge.

To the inexperienced eye, this place was no different from thousands of other bushes on the plateau.

But as the rangers cut a path through the stiff, thorny branches, they discovered a dark, narrow fissure in the ground.

A tectonic fisher that even those who had been patrolling the area for years had not realized existed.

It was the same grave that Lisa had chosen from topographic maps long before she set foot in Arizona.

The rift went vertically downward, disappearing into the darkness.

A group of technical climbers began to deploy their equipment.

They set up tripods, secured safety ropes to nearby trees, and began preparing for the descent.

According to preliminary estimates, the depth of the failure was at least 40 m.

Lisa watched these preparations in silence, standing near the car under the protection of two officers.

According to the report, there was neither fear nor pity in her eyes, only a strange frozen concentration.

The first climber started the descent at 11:00 20 minutes.

The radio communication in the crack was intermittent due to the rock shielding, so all commands were transmitted in short phrases.

After 15 minutes of tense waiting, a voice distorted by static came over the radio.

We have visual contact.

Deep down on a wide stone ledge that protruded from the wall like a natural shelf, there were human remains.

Time and nature had done their work.

The bodies of Irma Tucker and Regina Williams were completely skeletonized.

They lay unnaturally close to each other, intertwined with the remains of clothing and equipment, as if in a last eternal embrace.

Next to them, partially covered with stone dust and small debris, were their hiking backpacks, bright spots of nylon that had not faded even in the darkness of the dungeon.

These were the very things that Lisa had thrown down after her friends that fateful night to erase all traces of their existence on the surface.

The process of lifting the bodies lasted several hours.

It was a painstaking and morally difficult job.

Each fragment had to be recorded, described, and carefully placed in special containers so as not to damage the fragile evidence.

Silence reigned on the surface, broken only by the creaking of the winches and the commands of the operation’s leader.

As the first body bag was lifted to the edge of the creasse, the wind on the plateau suddenly picked up, blowing dry leaves.

The detective standing next to Lisa watched her reaction closely.

Most criminals at such moments break down, turn away, or start crying.

But Lisa Owen looked directly at the black bags.

She didn’t look away as forensic scientists packed up the remains of her best friends.

Not a single muscle in her face flinched.

For her, this was not a crime scene or a tragedy.

In her warped reality, it was a place of reunion, the point where she fulfilled her promise [music] to stop time.

She did not see bones, but the moment of eternity that she herself had created.

When the operation was completed and the area was fenced off with yellow tape, Liza was put back in the patrol car.

The sun was already sinking into the west, [music] flooding the canyon with a blood red light that was so fitting for the ending of this story.

Before the door closed, the detective who had been working the case all these years leaned in.

In his report, he would later write that he tried to see even a shadow of remorse, even a drop of understanding of the horror of what she had done.

He asked her if she realized that she had taken away their lives, their future, everything.

Lisa looked at him with her empty, calm gaze, which showed absolute confidence in her own rightness.

Her answer, recorded verbatim in the protocol, became the epitap for the whole case.

she said quietly but [music] clearly.

You do not understand.

I did not take anything.

I saved our friendship.

They didn’t go anywhere.

They didn’t leave me.

They didn’t grow up and forget.

They stayed with me.

Now we will always be here, the three of us, as we promised.

The car door slammed shut, cutting it off from the sound of the wind.

The convoy moved back, [music] leaving the Powell Plateau in its eternal, majestic silence.

The bodies of the girls finally returned to their families to find peace in the earth, not in a dark crack.

But the story of a friendship that turned into a cage and a love that became a death sentence will forever remain a part of this harsh landscape.

The Cleveland Woods and the Grand Canyon Rocks have seen many tragedies, but this one was special because the evil here was not the face of a monster with a knife, but the face of a quiet friend [music] who was just too afraid to be alone.

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