On April 12th, 2016, at 14 hours and 30 minutes, while repairing a pipeline accident in the basement of an old apartment complex in Phoenix, workers stumbled upon a bricked up room.

After breaking the old lock on the heavy steel door, they froze in horror.

On a dirty mattress in the pitch darkness sat a critically exhausted woman with a shaved head.

It was 26-year-old Esther Smith who had disappeared without a trace a year and a half ago with her 27-year-old friend Margaret Martin in the mountains 40 m away.

When the paramedics tried to provide her with first aid, they discovered a gruesome detail.

Esther had had all of her teeth surgically removed perfectly straight.

The woman did not react to the light of the lanterns or voices.

She looked into the void and kept repeating a single number in a monotonous whisper.

314.

Her friend Margaret Martin was not in the basement.

How exactly the girls got from the hot desert to the dungeon and whose hands turned a healthy person into a living shadow was the beginning of one of the most horrific investigations in the state’s history.

On October 25th, 2014, the weather in Arizona remained unrelentingly hot.

The thermometer in Phoenix was at 95° F.

26-year-old Esther Smith and her 27-year-old friend Margaret Martin decided to escape the city’s stifling heat for the weekend.

Their destination was the Superstition Mountains, a rugged, arid mountain range located about 50 mi east of the city.

This place was famous for its dangerous labyrinths of sharp rocks, deep canyons, and dense thicket of saguarro cacti.

The roots here required stamina, but both girls had sufficient experience in hiking.

A few days before the trip, Esther bought a new olivecoled twoerson tent, two sleeping bags designed for low temperatures, and a portable water filtration system.

Bank statements confirmed a transaction of $340.

Margaret updated her first aid kit and bought freeze-dried food for 3 days.

The chronology of their disappearance began with a surveillance video from a roadside cafe located on Route 88.

At 13 hours and 15 minutes, a silver Ford SUV belonging to Esther pulled into the gravel parking lot of the establishment.

The girls went inside at 13 hours and 17 minutes.

According to the testimony of the waitress Sarah Jenkins, who served their table that day, the friends were in a good mood.

According to the witness, they ordered two servings of iced tea and turkey sandwiches, laid out a paper topographic map of the area on the table, and actively discussed the route.

Jenkins clearly remembers that the girls plan to reach Weaver’s Needle Rock, a famous geological formation that rises 1,000 ft above the desert.

The 11mm round trip required an overnight stay in the open air.

At 14 hours and 5 minutes, Esther paid in cash.

At 14 hours and 8 minutes, the outside camera lens captured their Ford pulling onto the highway and turning southeast toward the mountains.

It was the last time Esther Smith and Margaret Martin were seen alive.

On Monday, October 27th at 8:00 in the morning, Esther did not show up for a meeting at her architectural firm.

Her colleagues assumed that she was delayed by traffic on the highway.

However, at 19:00, she did not arrive for a family dinner at her parents’ house.

Esther’s older brother, Thomas Smith, made 14 calls to her cell phone number.

All of them were automatically forwarded to voicemail.

Margaret Martin was also unable to be reached.

Her phone was out of range.

At 21:00 45 minutes, Thomas Smith personally arrived at the Phoenix Central Police Station and filed an official report of the disappearance of the two people.

Detectives immediately requested the girl’s cell phone billing.

Telecommunications company records showed that both devices last logged onto the network on Saturday at 14 hours and 43 minutes, connecting to a cell tower located 5 miles from the entrance to the national park.

The signals then disappeared simultaneously.

The next morning, October 28th, at 6:00 15 minutes, a National Park Service patrol discovered Esther’s vehicle.

The silver SUV was parked at the far end of a dirt parking lot near the beginning of the Peralta Trail, one of the main routes in the mountain range.

The car was locked and the keys were missing from the interior.

The officer on duty, shining his flashlight through the tinted glass, spotted several empty 16 plastic water bottles, an open tube of sunscreen, and a crumpled cash receipt from the same roadside cafe in the back seat.

No signs of a struggle, broken glass or blood were found inside or outside the car.

The car was perfectly level, as if the owners had just gone for a walk and planned to return on Sunday.

At 8:00 in the morning of the same day, one of the largest search and rescue operations in the history of the county began.

60 police officers, four canine teams with specially trained dogs, and more than 80 volunteers from local organizations were involved in the search.

Pilots of two helicopters equipped with thermal imagers made 54 flights.

They scanned the mountains at night, hoping to see the warmth of human bodies against the chilled rocks.

They spotted dozens of coyotes, cougars, and wild boores, but not a single human figure.

The ground search area was divided into sectors of two square miles each.

Volunteers lined up in chains 20 ft apart and began to methodically comb the dry, rocky ground.

At 11 hours and 30 minutes, the search dogs picked up a trail from the driver’s door of the SUV.

The animals confidently led the team of handlers along the main Peralta trail, deepening into the canyon to the north.

However, after 2 and 1/2 miles on a large plateau covered with solid volcanic rock, the trail suddenly broke off.

The dogs began to circle in one place, losing their scent.

The detectives carefully examined the area.

The ground was too hard to leave clear prints of hiking boots.

Within a radius of several hundred feet of the spot where the dogs lost the scent, they found no clues.

Not a single piece of food wrapping paper, not a single lost item, not a single scrap of fabric from a tent.

Police checked more than 30 abandoned gold mines and natural crevices within a 10-mi radius, fearing the girls might have fallen off a cliff in the dark.

The rescuers descended on ropes to a depth of 200 ft, but found only old garbage.

Days turned into weeks.

The search operation lasted 21 days in a row.

The police worked out theories about a wild animal attack, an accident on a steep slope, or an attack by robbers.

But none of the theories had any material evidence.

There were no heavy backpacks left at the scene of the wild animal attack or fall, and not a single drop of blood was found to indicate a criminal nature of the disappearance in the area.

On November 20, 2014, officials from the sheriff’s department held a press conference.

In front of dozens of television cameras, the police spokesman announced that the active phase of the search operation had ended.

The area had been combed up and down and resources had been exhausted.

Esther Smith and Margaret Martin were officially transferred to the status of missing persons under unexplained circumstances.

Their names were added to the National Register and the case was transferred to the archive of unsolved crimes.

The parents returned to their empty homes and the Superstition Mountains continued to keep their eerie, unshakable silence.

The police and hundreds of volunteers searched for answers among the hot stones and dry dust, not even realizing that their efforts had been in vain from the start.

They were desperately trying to find traces of those who had allegedly gotten lost in the endless desert, while the real evil had long since returned to the city, carefully and silently locking the heavy steel doors behind them.

On April 12th, 2016, the city of Phoenix was in the early spring heat, but the deep basement of the Camelback Towers apartment complex were always filled with damp, piercing cold.

This massive concrete building was constructed over 50 years ago and was long overdue for a major overhaul of its utilities.

At 13 hours 45 minutes, the city’s emergency service received an urgent call from the head of the management company.

Residents of the first floor complained of a sharp drop in water pressure and a specific sickening rotting smell that suddenly began to rise from the ventilation shafts.

According to the official log book, a threeperson repair team arrived at the site at 14 hours and 15 minutes.

The team’s chief engineer, Mark Jenkins, would later testify to detectives that the extent of the accident was much more serious than they could have imagined.

An old cold water main pipe that ran through the deepest, long abandoned sector of the dungeon had burst.

This level had not been used by residents or staff for more than 20 years, turning into a gloomy maze of dusty corridors, rusted pipes, and blank concrete walls.

The water was rapidly flooding the floor, reaching a level of 5 in, and continuing to arrive by the minute.

The workers, wearing high rubber boots, slowly moved deeper into the dark, flooded corridor, lighting their way with powerful industrial lights.

At 14 hours and 40 minutes, they reached the dead end where, according to the old architectural drawings of the building, the main shutff valve was supposed to be located.

However, instead of the expected technical unit, their flashlights snatched out of the pitch blackness a massive brick work that was definitely not on any official plan.

The water was flowing out from under it in a stormy, muddy stream.

Jenkins, realizing the criticality of the situation, ordered the workers to immediately dismantle part of the wall with heavy sledgehammers.

A few minutes later, the old brick gave way, crashing into the water and revealing a narrow, dark passage.

What was hiding behind the false wall made the grown men freeze in their tracks.

They saw a hidden al cove at the very end of which was a heavy steel door without any identification marks or handles.

On it hung a massive padlock covered with a thick layer of grease.

Water oozed out from under the door mixed with a dark thick liquid that had an overpowering chemical odor strikingly similar to concentrated medical antiseptic and old chlorine solution.

Realizing that the valve might be there, the workers used hydraulic metal shears to cut the lock.

At 14 hours and 52 minutes, the heavy steel door creaked open with an eerie squeak.

The beam of Mark Jenkins flashlight slid slowly across the damp walls covered with soundproofing foam and stopped in the very center of a room no more than a 100 square ft in size.

In the far corner, on a dirty mattress soaked with water and unknown liquids, sat a human figure.

It was a woman, but she looked like a living skeleton, eerily covered in pale, translucent skin.

Her head was perfectly shaved.

She sat with her thin arms around her knees and looked straight ahead with an unblinking, completely empty gaze.

She did not react in any way to the bright light of the lanterns or to the sound of the metal door or to the screams of the shocked workers.

At 15 hours 0 minutes, Jenkins dialed the emergency number 911 with trembling hands.

Patrol crews and an ambulance arrived at the building 8 minutes later.

As the paramedics descended into the basement and cautiously approached the unidentified woman, they tried to establish verbal contact with her and check her pupils for reaction.

The light of a powerful medical flashlight did not trigger any reflexes.

Senior paramedic Sarah Owens, gently supporting the patients head, tried to open her mouth to check her airway for obstructions.

What she saw made the experienced medic recoil and turn pale.

There was not a single tooth in the woman’s mouth.

Every single one of them had been surgically removed, and the gums looked professionally sutured and completely healed.

It was not the work of a sadistic amateur with rusty pliers in a dirty basement.

It was a methodical, sterile, and ruthless surgical operation performed by a specialist.

The woman’s thin wrists clearly showed deep, old scars from tight shackles, and on the bend of her left elbow were dozens of small marks from regular intravenous injections.

The woman was alive.

Her thread-like pulse was palpable, but her consciousness was somewhere infinitely far away from this room.

The homicide detectives who rushed to the scene quickly made a preliminary identification using fingerprints from a mobile scanner.

The result of the search in the state database left the investigators speechless.

The program produced a 100% match.

The woman with a shaved head and no teeth found in a concrete trap in the heart of Phoenix was Esther Smith.

the same girl who disappeared without a trace a year and a half ago with her best friend in the mountains a few dozen miles away.

As the paramedics carefully transferred Esther to a stretcher to be carried to the surface of the ambulance, one of the experienced detectives leaned over to her.

He desperately hoped to hear at least one conscious word that would shed light on this horror.

Esther did not blink, did not cry, and showed absolutely no sign of understanding that she had finally been rescued.

Her chapped, dry lips moved only slightly.

The detective held his breath and listened to this faint sound.

In a dehydrated, cracked whisper monotonously, like a mechanical clock, she repeated only one single number.

314 314 314 The forensic experts began a full and thorough examination of the secret room.

They used ultraviolet lamps, collected liquid samples in test tubes, and looked for any biological traces.

The police turned over every square inch of the dirty mattress, dismantled the remains of wooden pallets, and checked the massive ventilation grill under the very ceiling.

This room was a horrific cell, specially designed to break a person down psychologically and physically.

But the worst thing was not what the forensic experts found, but what they did not find there.

There was no sign of the second girl in that damp concrete bag.

Margaret Martin was not in the basement, and the only person in the world who could know what had happened to her continued to stare blankly into the darkness, counting incessantly to 314.

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Now, let’s get back to Phoenix.

Esther Smith was rushed to Valley Hope Medical Center in Phoenix.

Given her critical psychological condition and status as a key witness, the woman was placed in a closed psychiatric ward with the highest possible level of security.

Access to her room was guarded by two armed police officers 24 hours a day.

According to the official records of the chief psychiatrist, Esther was in a state of deep dissociative fugue.

She did not respond to her own name, was completely unresponsive to visual stimuli, and categorically refused to eat.

Her mind had completely blocked out reality in order to survive the inhuman torture.

In this absolute darkness, only one signal pulsated, a quiet, barely perceptible whisper that did not stop day or night.

The woman repeated monotonously.

314.

314.

While the doctors were desperately fighting for Esther’s sanity, the investigation team launched a large-scale operation in the dungeons of Camelback Towers.

Expert technicians in special protective suits combed the room inch by inch using specific chemicals and powerful ultraviolet light sources.

They maniacally searched for fingerprints on the heavy metal doors, microfibers of clothing on the concrete walls, any genetic material on the damp floor.

The result was stunning in its emptiness.

The room was absolutely sterile.

The walls, the dirty mattress, the steel hinges of the door had been thoroughly treated with powerful industrial antiseptics.

The perpetrator was undoubtedly working in a protective suit, methodically destroying the slightest biological presence.

This was not a random amateur, but a cold-blooded person with a deep understanding of forensic procedures.

The homicide detectives found themselves facing an impenetrable wall.

An attempt to track the invisible criminal through financial flows also failed miserably.

The detectives officially seized the documentation of the management company of the residential complex.

It turned out that the remote basement sector was rented more than 2 years ago.

The rent was paid regularly and without delay, but it was technically impossible to trace the final source.

All payments were routed through complex encrypted transit accounts and dummy online wallets registered to fake names.

The servers were located thousands of miles away outside the United States.

Cyber police spent hundreds of hours unraveling these intricate digital nodes, but the trail was finally lost in the anonymous global network.

The criminal was a perfect elusive ghost in both the physical and digital worlds.

The only thin thread that connected reality to this nightmare was the mysterious number that Esther kept repeating, 314.

The detectives created a special analytical team whose sole task was to solve this short code.

They methodically checked the license plates of all cars registered in the district.

postal codes, addresses of houses along the route to the Superstition Mountains.

They were looking for coincidences among the dates.

Perhaps the 14th of March had some sacred significance for the kidnapper.

They analyzed police badge numbers, personal codes of medical records, and lot combinations on rented warehouses.

The police system produced thousands of different results, but none of them intersected with the biographies of Esther Smith or the missing Margaret Martin.

The true significance of this number remained an absolute secret for the entire investigation department.

Grueling weeks of intense work passed.

Police departments spent enormous resources and brought in the best specialists.

But the case of the kidnapping in the Arizona mountains began to turn into a dead end again.

The detectives realized the terrible truth.

Esther was alive, but completely unreachable for dialogue, and her friend Margaret was still in the hands of a ruthless, methodical monster.

Hope for rescue was melting away with every hour that passed.

Investigators who turned the entire city upside down had no idea that the solution to this terrible mystery was just around the corner.

Breathing the same disinfected air just a few concrete walls away from the broken girl’s room.

Endless months passed.

It was late November of 2016.

More than half a year had passed since the gruesome discovery in the flooded basement.

But the investigation on which the Phoenix Police Department had thrown all available resources had once again begun to stall hopelessly.

The case has not moved an inch.

No new clues or witnesses, no understanding of the whereabouts of the missing Margaret Martin.

Time was ruthlessly working against the investigation.

Esther Smith remained the only living clue.

She remained in the heavily guarded psychiatric ward of Valley Hope Medical Center.

Her 400q ft room had no sharp corners.

Her medical records were full of heavy diagnosis, the main one being a deep disassociative fugue.

The young woman’s psyche, saving the remnants of her mind from the horror she had experienced, built an impenetrable concrete wall around her memories.

A team of leading clinical psychologists worked with her for 4 hours every day.

Progress was incredibly slow.

Each new step forward was accompanied by severe panic attacks and weeks of regression.

Esther’s older brother, Thomas, practically moved into the hospital.

According to entries in the visitors log, he was on duty in the hallway for 16 hours a day, waiting for the moment when his sister would finally be able to recognize him.

In October, the clinic’s chief psychiatrist suggested a risky step to the detectives, the use of clinical hypnotherapy.

It was perhaps the only chance to bypass the patients rigid conscious blocks.

The sessions were carefully audio recorded for analysis by forensic experts.

During the first 10 attempts, the woman remained silent or started whispering her constant number monotonously again, looking at the ceiling.

But at the 11th session, when the specialist managed to put her into a deep trance, frightening fragments of her imprisonment began to emerge from the darkness of her subconscious.

According to the transcripts of the audio recordings, Esther could not recall any visual images of the room at all.

Instead, her memory captured sharp sensory details.

The woman tearfully recounted the pungent smell of medical antiseptic that was constantly in the air.

She described in detail the rhythmic sound of the drip that measured the liquid around the clock, drop by drop.

The most eerie discovery was the description of the voice.

Esther clearly recalled a soothing female voice.

This woman never screamed.

On the contrary, she spent hours humming monotonous religious psalms and Christian hymns.

The victim’s stories featured a blurry white uniform that moved silently in the dark.

At the 19th session, the detectives received information that made their blood run cold.

The psychiatrist asked Esther very carefully about her missing friend.

The woman, in a trance, began to breathe heavily, and large tears rolled down her cheeks.

Her broken sentences made it clear that Margaret Martin had been trapped with her for a long time.

They slept on the same mattress and held hands.

But then, as Esther said, a woman in white came.

The kidnapper said that the girl’s suffering was over and took Margaret into the light.

After that night, Esther never heard her friend’s voice again.

Investigators desperately tried to get a description of the kidnapper’s appearance.

A psychiatrist asked Esther to describe the face of the woman who had surgically removed all her teeth with perfect precision.

But the psychological block proved insurmountable.

The victim remembered only the blinding light of a medical flashlight and a tight surgical mask.

The monster’s face remained a continuous blur.

However, even these painful fragments of memory dramatically changed the entire course of the investigation.

The profile of the alleged perpetrator was completely rewritten.

The homicide detectives knew for certain that their enemy was a woman.

a woman who had free access to prescription drugs and surgical instruments.

She had perfect skills in installing catheters and performing dental procedures without fatal consequences.

This meant that the criminal definitely had a higher medical education and extensive clinical experience.

The investigation team sent inquiries to the state’s licensing boards.

They were looking for female doctors and nurses.

The problem turned out to be enormous.

The list of licensed female health care professionals in Arizona alone included tens of thousands of names.

Filtering through them seemed like a task that would take years.

Investigators were drowning in paper reports searching for the monster across the country.

None of them even suspected that fate was already preparing a terrible surprise for them.

After all, while the police were turning over databases, the fateful meeting that was to destroy everything in a flash was already inevitably approaching.

Quietly walking down perfectly clean corridors very close by.

On December 20, 2016, the investigation, which had hopelessly reached a dead end and was preparing to be transferred to the archive of unsolved cases, suddenly received a powerful impetus, a push that no one in the investigation team could have calculated or foreseen.

No advanced analytical program and no brilliant forensic scientist can predict the blind chance that sometimes thwarts the most elaborate plans of maniacs with lightning speed.

The weather in Phoenix that morning was atypically gloomy for the desert climate with thermometers dropping to 55° F.

In the closed wing of the Valley Hope Medical Center, the intense daily routine continued.

Esther Smith’s physical condition remained extremely unstable.

After 18 long months of almost absolute immobility in a dank underground concrete bunker, her muscles had critically atrophied.

The young woman barely weighed 85 lb.

She was using a special wheelchair to get around and needed grueling daily intensive physiootherapy sessions that took place in a specially equipped rehabilitation room on the second floor of the clinic.

In accordance with strict security protocols, the key witness was transported along a clearly defined route.

She was transported exclusively through underground service corridors and isolated freight elevators to which no unauthorized civilian personnel had access.

However, on Tuesday at 10:30 in the morning, there was a technical hiccup.

The main elevator of the closed block suddenly broke down due to a short circuit.

The head of the police guard shift decided to change the route so as not to disrupt the patients important medical schedule.

At 11:00 and 20 minutes, the orderly on duty rolled the trolley with Esther through the general administrative wing of the hospital.

She was closely escorted by two armed plainclo detectives.

The distance they had to cover across the open area was no more than 250 ft.

It was supposed to take less than 2 minutes, but those few seconds changed the course of history forever.

The long corridor of the administrative wing was spotlessly clean and brightly lit by cold fluorescent lights.

At 11:00 24 minutes, a woman in a snow white medical uniform stepped out of the heavy door of the breakroom.

According to the time sheets seized later, this employee had just returned to work after a long monthsl long official family leave.

It was her first shift in a very long time.

The woman was holding a plastic folder with medical records and moving towards the escort team with a measured calm step.

The distance between the wheelchair and the nurse was rapidly shrinking against the background of the soft hum of hospital lights.

50 ft.

30 ft.

10 ft.

Esther, who usually spent her time with her head down, looking at her own lap, suddenly looked up sharply.

It was purely accidental, a reflexive movement to the loud thud of footsteps on the lenolium.

Their eyes crossed for only one brief fatal moment.

But it was enough.

Esther’s brain, which for months had been desperately hiding the terrible memories behind a high wall of dissociative fugue, reacted instantly.

It unmistakably recognized something that could not be erased by any medication.

The familiar cut of the eyes, the specific tilt of the head, the same height and physique of the woman who kept coming to them in the dark.

The massive psychological block that the team of psychiatrists had been working on unsuccessfully for the past months shattered into small pieces with a deafening crash.

Esther’s reaction was so frightening and sudden that the burly orderly instinctively recoiled from the handles of the trolley.

The exhausted woman let out an incredibly loud, guttural animal scream, which mixed concentrated absolute horror and unbearable phantom pain.

This sound echoed throughout the wing.

She began to beat furiously in uncontrollable hysteria.

Violently tore off the thick blanket and tried to crawl into the farthest corner of the wheelchair as if trying to fall through the seat away from this place.

Her breath was caught in a spasm and her eyes widened to unnatural proportions.

Shaking her entire emaciated body, Esther raised her thin, scarred hand and pointed directly at the nurse, who was frozen in the middle of the corridor with an extended finger.

The police officers reacted with lightning speed.

The detectives instantly realized that they were witnessing not just another medical attack, but a direct visual identification.

One of the policemen completely covered the trolley with Esther with his body.

The other one quickly attacked the woman in the white uniform.

He pushed her face hard against the cool wall, roughly breaking her arms behind her back.

A plastic folder with documents fell to the floor with a crash, scattering papers.

Witnesses to this dramatic incident later noted in official reports one extremely strange psychological detail.

The detainee offered absolutely no physical resistance.

There was not a single drop of fear of exposure or anger on her face.

She just looked sincerely confused and often blinked her eyes like a completely normal person who does not understand why she was suddenly attacked by police in the middle of the day.

While an orderly was urgently evacuating Esther back to the isolated ward, the detectives harshly read the detainee her rights, putting steel handcuffs on her.

The police finally had the suspect in their hands.

But her calm gaze and sincere lack of understanding of the situation made experienced investigators feel a cold shiver of doubt.

They looked at this ordinary, neat woman, and did not even realize what kind of methodical monster they had just pushed to the wall, and what inhuman secrets had been hidden for years behind this mask of boundless compassion.

The flywheel of the investigation, which had been hopelessly rusting in a dead end for months, suddenly began to turn at a frantic, uncontrollable speed.

The woman who had just been pushed hard against the cool wall in the administrative corridor was Elena.

She was a 42-year-old senior charge nurse at Valley Hope Medical Center.

Homicide detectives immediately confiscated her personal locker in the locker room, sealed her work computer, and requested her complete personnel file from the human resources department.

According to the seized documents, she was an employee with an absolutely impeccable professional reputation.

She had the highest qualifications in paliotative care, had worked exclusively with terminally ill patients for many years, and regularly received written letters of appreciation from her superiors for her work.

During the initial interviews, her colleagues described her as a quiet, deeply religious woman who never had conflicts and voluntarily took the hardest night shifts.

She had no criminal record, no fines, and no suspicious contacts.

However, experienced investigators were most interested in the chronological gap.

How did it happen that the main suspect worked in the same building where the main witness had been held for months and had never been seen by police guards? The answer was found in her time sheets.

According to them, Elena was on a long officially registered family leave.

She submitted a corresponding application in early April 2016.

The start date of her official absence from the workplace coincided with the day of the accident on the main pipeline in the Camelback Towers apartment complex to within 24 hours.

All this time, while Esther was undergoing grueling rehabilitation, her tormentor was legitimately absent from the clinic, making their meeting physically impossible until that fateful Tuesday.

With the full name in hand, the police analytical department launched an all-out database search, desperately looking for any overlap between Elena, Esther Smith, and the missing Margaret Martin.

Computer algorithms combed through financial transactions, residential addresses, and phone bills.

There were no matches.

Then one of the senior detectives decided to change tactics and pull up the old medical archives of the clinic itself.

For 2014, the same year the girls disappeared without a trace in the Superstition Mountains.

At 18 hours and 45 minutes, the archive system produced a result that made the entire investigation team freeze in front of their monitors.

The disperate pieces of the puzzle came together with eerie mathematical precision.

In September of 2014, exactly one month before the friend’s tragic hike in the desert, an elderly woman with terminal cancer was admitted to the paliotative care wing of the same hospital.

Official documents confirmed that it was Margaret Martin’s own grandmother.

According to the medical logs of daily care, the head nurse who was officially assigned to this patient and spent most of her time with her in her last days was Elena.

But the detectives were really shocked by another seemingly insignificant fact.

The number of the ward where the missing girl’s relative was dying.

The number was embossed on a blue plastic plate near the door, which Elena had seen every day for several weeks.

It was room number 314.

The code that had driven the police department’s best analysts crazy for months, and that Esther had whispered incessantly like a broken machine had finally been cracked.

It was not a random set of numbers, a bank safe deposit box code, or a geographic coordinate.

It was an indelible marker of the very place where the monster in the snow white uniform first chose its victims.

The very place where Margaret, griefstricken by the slow loss of a loved one, cried in the empty hospital corridors, not even realizing that cold, seemingly infinitely compassionate eyes were watching her closely.

Analyzing these indisputable facts, the detectives realized another extremely critical detail.

The chronology of events in the eerie basement of Camelback Towers suddenly took on a completely different, even more sinister meaning.

Previously, investigators worked with the version that the criminal left the flooded room in a hurry due to a sudden pipe burst, simply leaving Esther to die in the water.

But now, clearly understanding the profile of an experienced medical professional, prone to perfect planning, they saw the true picture of that night.

Alina did not run away in a panic at all.

She was well aware of the emergency condition of the pipes and the inevitability of flooding.

She managed to cooly, methodically gather medical equipment and move the living Margaret Martin to a [clears throat] new pre-prepared safe place just before the dirty water began to flood the basement sector on mass.

She left Esther in complete darkness like scrap material, calmly locked the heavy steel door with a new padlock, and simply went on her long official vacation.

A heavy, almost physically tangible silence fell over the large meeting room of the police department.

Dozens of investigators stared in silence at a fresh photograph of the detained nurse, who at that very moment was sitting quietly in an isolated interrogation room on the first floor, her hands neatly folded in her lap.

Margaret Martin did not die on rocky trails in the mountains of Arizona.

She did not drown in a concrete dungeon in Phoenix.

Right this second, the 27year-old was somewhere out there off the police radar, completely at the mercy of a woman who had turned her best friend’s life into a living torture in cold blood.

The clock on the wall of the police station inexurably counted down the seconds.

The detectives understood only one thing.

To find the missing girl alive, they would have to descend into the darkest, most perverted labyrinth of this perfect nurse’s mind.

And not a single officer in that room was fully prepared for the terrible philosophy she would soon reveal to them.

On December 20th, 2016, at 14 hours and 15 minutes, the red video camera light turned on in interrogation room 3 of the Phoenix Police Department, marking the beginning of one of the most gruesome interviews in the history of Arizona forensics.

Behind the thick glass of Gazelle’s mirror stood six experienced homicide detectives and the department’s full-time criminal psychologist.

They all stared breathlessly at the woman sitting on the other side of the glass.

Elena, a 42-year-old head registered nurse, sat in a hard metal chair with her back perfectly straight and tense.

Her slender hands, shackled by massive steel cuffs, lay calmly and motionless on the scratched surface of the table.

Her pale face showed no shadow of remorse, no panic, no animal fear of an inevitable life sentence.

On the contrary, her features radiated a frightening, almost holy peace.

The mask of an ordinary, inconspicuous medical worker fell off, finally shattering into pieces.

In the dim cold light of the interrogation room, the stunned investigators were confronted by a deeply religious visionary with a pronounced and absolute psychological syndrome of the angel of mercy.

According to the official transcripts of the hours long audio recording of the interrogation, Elena categorically refused to admit that she was a serial killer, sadist, or crazy maniac.

Her voice sounded soft, even and incredibly convincing, as if she were patiently lecturing children.

She sincerely, with all her being, believed that earthly life is just endless agony, and that the human body is a dirty dish, a flawed reservoir filled to the brim with sin and suffering.

The lead investigator asked her carefully, choosing his words about her true motives.

Elena’s answer made the police shudder in horror.

The woman told them about September 2014.

She recalled in detail how she watched Margaret Martin in the snow white corridors of the paliotative care unit.

Elena saw the young girl sobbing helplessly for hours at the door of room number 314, watching her own grandmother’s painful fading away.

It was at that turning point that she had a divine insight.

She decided that this sensitive girl and her closest friend Esther were too pure for this rotten world.

They were chosen by her personally for early merciful release from worldly pain.

The detectives tried to find out the exact mechanics of the abduction because the Superstition Mountains were extremely dangerous territory.

Oena, smiling gently, described in detail her calculated actions.

She admitted that she had carefully tracked the girls from Phoenix, keeping a/4 mile distance and following their Ford in her old sedan.

She knew their tourist route in advance.

On the night of October 26th, when the desert temperature dropped to 45° Fahrenheit and the friends pitched their tent on a rocky plateau off the Peralta Trail, miles from civilization, Elena crept silently up to their camp.

Using her impeccable medical skills and access to prescription drugs, she first administered inhaled tranquilizers in the form of an aerosol and then subtly injected the girls with muscle relaxants.

They fell deeply asleep by their extinguished fire, only to wake up in a humid underworld, completely isolated from sunlight.

The darkest moment of the interrogation was the question about teeth.

The psychologist used a hidden microphone in the interrogator’s ear to ask why she had subjected Esther to such a barbaric surgical execution.

At that moment, Oena’s blue eyes suddenly filled with absolutely sincere tears.

She leaned slightly against the metal table and began to explain her dark philosophy in a voice trembling with deep emotion.

Teeth, in her opinion, were the most disgusting part of the human body.

They were created by nature solely to tear someone else’s flesh, to cause physical pain, and are an instrument of lies and filth, hiding behind false smiles.

Oena told us with bitter tears how much she loved her defenseless patients.

She swore fervently that she wept with them, held their cold hands tightly, and sang soothing psalms for hours while she performed her sacred sacrament of purification, methodically extracting their teeth under the influence of strong local anesthetics.

She truly believed that through this physical pain, she was making their souls perfect.

Listening to these crazy confessions, experienced detectives felt the walls of the interrogation room physically shrink around them.

Before them sat an absolute crystalclear monster, perfectly hidden behind a mask of boundless compassion.

However, the most important question still remained unanswered.

Where exactly is Margaret Martin right now? The investigator could not stand it, broke into a shout and sharply hit the tabletop with his palms, demanding to know the address of the detention center.

Elena looked up with dignity.

Her tears dried instantly, and the same blissful, eerie smile blossomed on her face again.

She quietly said that Margaret was now in a safe place where the dead desert finally meets the living oasis.

The investigators behind the glass instantly looked at each other, horrified to realize that this vague metaphor was in fact a very real place name that pointed directly to an old family farm on the edge of the county where armored SWAT vans had to be urgently dispatched in a desperate attempt to beat the inexurable clock.

On December 20th, 2016, at 15 hours and 20 minutes, the phrase about the place where a dead desert meets a living oasis ceased to be a mere metaphor for detectives.

Police department analysts instantly searched land records and discovered an abandoned farm called Desert Oasis Care.

This remote plot of over 40 acres belonged to Alennena’s late parents and was located 35 mi northwest of the Phoenix city limits.

At 16:00 sharp, the special forces tactical teams in full combat gear loaded into armored vans with sirens blaring.

The convoy of vehicles sped down the dusty highway, leaving behind thick clouds of sand.

At 16 hours and 38 minutes, the special forces cut the massive chains on the rusty gate.

The area looked dead, dried grass, and a dilapidated house.

However, the commander’s attention was immediately drawn to a large wooden barn on the edge of the site.

From under its roof came the steady hum of a diesel generator, and light proof shields were installed on the windows.

At 16 hours and 42 minutes, a police battering ram smashed through the fortified door.

Soldiers with assault rifles rushed in, expecting to see a filthy basement for torture.

But what opened their eyes made the veterans freeze.

Inside the old barn was a perfectly sterile, brightly lit intensive care unit.

The walls were covered with white plastic and the temperature was kept at 68° F by a portable air conditioning system.

In the center of this surreal medical bunker was an expensive multifunctional bed.

27year-old Margaret Martin was lying on it.

She was alive.

The girl was in a state of deep medicallyinduced sleep, her chest slowly rising in time with the work of the ventilator.

Drips with nutritional solutions and tranquilizers were connected to her thin arms.

On the screen of the heart monitor, a green line blinked rhythmically, counting the heartbeats.

The paramedics immediately began an emergency evacuation protocol.

At the same time, 30 m away at Phoenix Police Headquarters, detectives officially informed Elena that her barn had been found and the hostage rescued.

The nurse’s reaction was the final most chilling touch in her portrait.

She did not show an ounce of remorse or fear of punishment.

According to the report of a criminal psychologist, the detainees face showed only deep, sincere sadness.

Elena sighed heavily and whispered that the police had made a terrible mistake.

She was crying not because she had been exposed, but because the police had rudely interrupted her sacrament.

In her distorted reality, she was sure that the detectives had just condemned her two favorite patients to further unbearable torment in this cruel world.

As the guards led to the isolation cell, she walked with her head held high, carrying her imaginary cross.

The heavy steel door of the cell slammed shut behind her with a deafening roar, separating this monster from society forever.

At the end of December 2016, Esther Smith was finally able to return home.

Her older brother was by her side, helping her take her first steps after months in a wheelchair.

Margaret Martin regained consciousness in the intensive care unit only 18 days after being rescued from the barn.

Her body needed a long detoxification from horse doses of drugs.

When she opened her eyes for the first time and saw the light, she could not say a word, only cried silently, looking at her parents’ faces.

The large-scale investigation was complete.

The legal system was preparing to hand down the harshest sentence possible under Arizona law.

But the ending of this story cannot be called happy.

Yes, thanks to a chain of accidents, the girls were physically rescued from the clutches of death.

They could breathe fresh air and hug their families again.

However, their freedom was filled with emptiness.

Their minds and trust in people were forever destroyed by that endless darkness.

They will never again be able to enter a hospital in peace or look at a man in a white uniform.

The shadow of the woman who methodically plunged them into absolute hell with a kind word and a mask of boundless compassion will remain with them until the end of time.