October 22nd, 2017, about 11:00 in the morning.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, a remote forest area near Lamar Valley located 2 miles from the nearest hiking trail.

A group of rangers deviates from the route and comes across an abandoned wooden hunting shelter.

The door of the building is rigidly propped up by a heavy pine log from the outside.

After breaking the lock and disturbing the eerie silence of the forest, the patrolman smell the pungent odor of medical alcohol and ammonia.

In the center of the dark room, they find 24year-old Jennifer Smith.

The girl is tightly tied to a rusty iron bed with thick leather straps.

Her body is convulsing uncontrollably from a critical dose of unknown chemicals and medical drips are connected to her veins.

She does not respond to the light of tactical flashlights, but her dry lips whisper only one word incessantly.

Conductor.

How did an attempt to escape from grief turn into a toxic labyrinth? And who is the manipulator hiding in the shadows of the digital world, turning other people’s despair into material for his sadistic experiments? The fall of 2017.

The city of Seattle, Washington.

For 24year-old Jennifer Smith, this period has become the darkest stage in her life.

Only 30 days ago, she stood in the city cemetery burying her mother after her long and exhausting battle with serious cancer.

Records from medical records and testimonies from relatives confirm that for the past 6 months, the family has been living in a state of constant psychological exhaustion.

Trying to cope with the overwhelming grief and total emptiness, Jennifer and her twin sister Jessica planned a trip to Yellowstone National Park.

It was a special place, a vast area of more than 2 million acres where their family used to spend every summer before the disease destroyed their lives forever.

The route was more than 750 mi long.

They rented a small guest house on the western edge of the park in advance and made a detailed plan for their 7-day stay.

However, on October 9th, exactly one day before the scheduled departure, the emotional tension reached its critical limit.

Jessica had a serious nervous breakdown.

According to an official statement she later gave to Seattle Police Department detectives that evening she simply sat down on the floor in her living room, began to choke on a panic attack and categorically refused to leave.

According to Jessica, she suddenly realized that she could not stay in a place where every inch of the ground would remind her of her mother.

Jennifer, overcome with despair and deep alienation, made an impulsive decision to set out on her own.

She sought complete isolation to be alone with her thoughts.

For the long journey, she borrowed her father’s heavy dark blue Ford Explorer SUV.

It was a reliable vehicle, weighing more than 4,000 lb, perfectly suited for the difficult mountain roads of Wyoming.

On October 10th, at 5:30 in the morning, Jennifer threw the minimum essentials into the trunk.

One warm sleeping bag, a few changeable t-shirts, a windbreaker, and 5 gallons of drinking water in large plastic bottles.

She left Seattle before sunrise.

Investigators, who later reconstructed the chronology of those events step by step, were unpleasantly surprised by one detail.

According to her bank account statements, the girl was traveling on the interstate highway without stopping at all.

The case file clearly states that not a single transaction was recorded on her credit cards during the entire 16-hour trip.

0 for coffee at roadside cafes.

No receipts from the motel on the side of the road.

No electronic payments for fuel at major gas stations.

Jennifer ate only cold sandwiches that she had taken from home in advance and apparently filled up the car exclusively with cash as if subconsciously trying not to leave any digital traces.

At 2:00 45 minutes in the afternoon, a traffic surveillance camera on a toll road in Idaho took a single picture of her car.

A forensic examination of the photo confirmed that it was indeed Jennifer driving.

She was alone in the car and her face was completely hidden behind large dark sunglasses.

On October 11th, the weather conditions in the national park area deteriorated sharply.

The air temperature plummeted to 35° F and the sky was covered with dense gray clouds that foretold cold rain.

It was on this day at 6:00 15 minutes in the evening that Jennifer Smith’s cell phone registered for the last time on the cellular network.

After this brief connection, the device turned off either because the battery was completely discharged or it was turned off by force.

An eerie absolute information silence ensued.

When the phone remained out of reach for the next 24 hours and all calls were automatically transferred to voicemail without exception, the father and sister raised the alarm.

On October 12th at 8:00 in the morning, they filed an official missing person’s report with the local sheriff’s office.

Given the girl’s remote final destination, Washington law enforcement immediately contacted the National Park Service in Wyoming.

The rangers immediately received an operational tip on a dark blue SUV.

Patrol crews began a methodical check of all official parking lots, campgrounds, and recreation areas in the vast territory of Yellowstone.

The search lasted more than 8 hours in a row, but the situation immediately took on an ominous tone.

The father’s heavy ford was not registered at any of the park’s official checkpoints.

It was neither near the crowded tourist centers nor on the sides of the main asphalt roads.

The girl and her large car seemed to have simply vanished into the cold mountain air, leaving no physical trace.

The case looked like a typical disappearance of a tourist who might have lost his way.

until late in the evening.

A police technician received a detailed report from a cell phone operator.

The last signal from Jennifer’s phone had bounced off a remote communication tower located 10 miles before the western entrance to the park.

However, the coordinates did not point to the main paved highway.

The signal came from an area of an old long closed logging road that led to a remote impassible part of the forest where ordinary tourists never enter voluntarily.

Someone or something made her take a sharp turn from the safe route into the absolute darkness of the thicket.

October 22nd, 2017.

10:00 45 minutes in the morning.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

The territory of more than 2 million acres was preparing for a long winter isolation.

The northeastern sector near the Lamar Valley had been officially closed to tourists for more than a week due to the sharp deterioration in weather conditions.

According to National Park Service Dispatch radio logs, a group of three experienced rangers, senior patrolman David Brooks and his two partners were conducting a routine walkover.

They had to check the condition of the infrastructure after a powerful storm that had been battering the area for the past 48 hours.

The temperature was barely above 38° F.

The icy winds brought down dozens of old trees whose massive trunks completely blocked the main route.

At 12:00 15 minutes in the afternoon, the team leader transmitted a message on a secure communication channel about a forced change of course.

The rangers deviated from the safe zone and went 2 and 1/2 miles deep into the dense forest.

The dense crowns of centuries old pine trees almost completely blocked access to sunlight, creating the illusion of constant twilight.

The eerie silence of the forest was broken only by the dull crunch of dry branches under the tactical boots of the patrolman.

At 13 hours 42 minutes, Brooks suddenly stopped.

Through the dense canopy of conifers, he could see the dark outline of a building that should not have been there.

After checking the topographic map, the patrol officers identified the object.

It was the so-called Miller hunting shelter, a primitive wooden cabin about 20 by 30 ft.

According to the official archives of the forest department, this building had been off the balance sheet and completely abandoned since the late 80s of the last century.

However, the external condition of the hut immediately aroused suspicion and made the rangers put their hands on their holsters.

All three small windows of the building were tightly boarded up with thick, fresh boards, but the single front door was the most alarming.

From the outside, it was rigidly propped up by a massive pine log weighing at least 250 lbs.

This design left no doubt.

It was created solely to prevent any exit from the inside.

Realizing that someone could be trapped inside, the patrol officers sprang into action.

Together, they rolled a heavy tree aside and used a metal crowbar to break the massive rusty lock.

The door creaked open, releasing a wave of stale, stagnant air.

According to Brooks’s written testimony, the first thing that hit the operatives noses was a pungent chemical odor that had absolutely nothing to do with the forest environment.

The rangers turned on their powerful tactical flashlights and cautiously crossed the threshold of the unknown.

In the very center of the dark room, where the rays of bright white light instantly crossed, there was a massive iron bed.

Its legs were tightly bolted to the rotten floor with metal bolts.

A person was lying on the bare mattress.

It was 24year-old Jennifer Smith, who had been missing for the past 12 days.

The girl was rigidly and ruthlessly restrained.

Her thin wrists and ankles were held tightly by thick leather straps tightened with steel buckles.

The tension was so great that the skin around the restraints was covered with deep black and blue bruises and bloody abrasions which were a direct indication of long and desperate attempts to break free.

Her clothes were dirty, crumpled, and torn in places.

Jennifer’s physical condition was critical.

According to the initial medical assessment conducted by patrol officers on the scene, her emaciated body was continuously shaking with violent muscle cramps.

Her pale skin was completely covered in sticky, cold sweat, and her breathing remained extremely shallow and intermittent.

Brooks immediately tried to test her pupilary response by shining a narrow beam of the flashlight directly into her eyes, but there was no neurological response.

Her pupils were dilated so much that the iris was almost completely invisible, just solid black chasms.

Her body temperature seemed threateningly high, and her weak pulse exceeded 150 beats per minute.

The girl was teetering on the very thin line between life and death.

She did not react at all to the loud voices of the police, ignored touch and the blinding light of the flashlights.

Her consciousness was in a state of deep artificial trance.

The interview report shows that Jennifer did not call for help, scream, or cry.

Instead, her dried, cracked lips moved slightly, incessantly, releasing the same eerie sound into the cold air of the hut.

It was a dry, broken whisper that resembled the rhythmic mantra of a madman.

She monotonously repeated only one word.

Guide.

Guide.

Guide.

Realizing that it was a matter of seconds, the patrol officers immediately activated an emergency satellite beacon for urgent evacuation.

It seemed that the day’s long nightmare was over and the girl was finally rescued.

But as Brooks leaned closer to the metal headboard to cut the tight straps on her right wrist with a tactical knife, the beam of his flashlight slid higher up the victim’s arm.

In the dim light, the officer saw a detail that caused cold sweat to break out on his forehead.

A thin transparent medical tube stretched out from under the dirty sleeve of her windbreaker, its steel needle deeply inserted under her skin, and the line itself led somewhere in the pitch black corner of the room, continuing to inject an unknown toxic liquid drop by drop directly into her veins.

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Now, let’s get back to the events on the edge of the national park.

The evacuation of Jennifer Smith from the locked forest cabin turned into an extremely difficult rescue operation.

Due to the dense, centuries old forest and the lack of suitable landing sites, the medical helicopter was unable to land near Miller’s hunting shelter.

The rangers had to carry the girl on a rigid tactical stretcher through the forest for two miles to the nearest open clearing.

During this time, paramedics continuously supported her breathing with an oxygen mask as her blood oxygen level rapidly dropped to 80%.

At 5:00 45 minutes in the evening, the rescue flight traveled more than 50 m by air and landed on the roof of the central hospital in Bosezeman.

Jennifer, who was in a deep toxic coma, was immediately taken to the intensive care unit.

The resuscitation team on duty worked for more than 3 hours, desperately trying to stabilize her heart rate, which was jumping from 40 to 160 beats per minute.

Due to her severe dehydration, doctors had difficulty finding an intact vein, but eventually took 10 tubes of blood for emergency laboratory testing.

When the first official results of the toxicology analysis came back at 9:00 in the evening, the head doctor of the department was shocked by the numbers on the monitor.

A nearly lethal concentration of the synthetic dialomide lysurgic acid known as LSD was found in the 24year-old’s body.

However, it was not just a pure classical drug.

The examination clearly showed that the substance was a complex artisal mixture that included powerful veterinary tranquilizers used to immobilize large animals.

The concentration of the toxins found undoubtedly indicated one thing.

The perpetrator was not just keeping the girl locked up as a prisoner.

He was purposefully, methodically, and continuously destroying her psyche with chemicals, maintaining a state of artificial paralyzing psychosis for all 12 days.

Meanwhile, in Miller’s hunting hideout, illuminated by powerful autonomous spotlights, a special team of Federal Bureau of Investigation forensic scientists began their work.

They studied the crime scene millimeter by millimeter, and their findings confirmed the theory of the Boseman doctors.

According to the inspection report, no biological traces of sexual violence or physical evidence of torture were found in the old hut.

Instead, the specialists carefully documented and seized 70 empty glass vials without any factory markings, which were stacked in a medical container next to an iron bed.

Nearby stood three metal racks equipped with a system of drips with precise dispensers that allowed for automatic administration of drugs.

This system was powered by several powerful car batteries hidden under the bed.

But the detectives were most impressed by the walls of the abandoned building.

All four wooden surfaces were densely scribbled with a black marker.

These were perfectly even fractal patterns.

complex geometric matrices and multi-story chemical formulas with clear calculations of dosages for each pound of the victim’s body weight.

The analysts finally realized that they were standing in a real underground laboratory created exclusively for experiments on forced mind alteration.

But while the experts in protective suits were packing up the gruesome evidence, the chief investigator faced a spatial paradox.

In a three-mile radius around the lab, the ground remained soft after recent storms.

Yet, forensic scientists found no car tire prints.

There was no way Jennifer could have come here on foot with her belongings.

If she was the victim of a planned kidnapping, where did her father’s heavy dark blue SUV weighing over 4,000 lb disappear to? And most importantly, who exactly lured her into this perfect toxic trap? Gemini’s answer.

October 24, 2017.

The headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Cyber Division in Seattle.

As the doctors in the intensive care unit at Bosezeman Hospital fought desperately for Jennifer Smith’s fading life, the investigation into this gruesome case moved from the cold Wyoming woods to the boundless and dark digital dimension.

The main key to understanding exactly how the girl ended up in the forest laboratory has been lying on her desk in her home all along.

It was her personal silver laptop.

The device left in the room where the smell of her perfume still lingered became the main and only silent witness to how Jennifer’s mind was gradually being drawn into a deadly trap.

The process of cracking the multi-level passwords and encryption took the technicians more than 48 hours of continuous work.

When the analysts finally managed to gain full access to the hard drive and recover the deleted browser history, they saw a picture of a deep psychological fall.

According to the Cyber Police report, the girl had hardly slept in the 3 weeks following her mother’s death.

Her digital activity was mostly between 2 and 5 in the morning.

The analysts found that Jennifer had become a regular participant in several closed anonymous forums in the shadow segment of the network, specially created for people going through an acute, uncontrollable stage of bereiement.

There were no professional psychologists or moderators on these platforms to ensure the safety of the participants.

It was a real digital abyss filled with despair.

It was there, among thousands of messages from griefstricken people that Jennifer was contacted by a user whose real nickname and network address were securely hidden behind a complex system of multi-stage forwarding.

He called himself the conductor.

Investigators printed out more than 400 pages of their private correspondence to reconstruct the chronology of the manipulation step by step.

The profile of the conductor that emerged from these dry lines of text was frightening in its absolute coldblooded calculation.

He did not sympathize with her in the classical sense, but acted like a highly professional puppeteer.

The conductor methodically day after day isolated Jennifer from the real world.

In one of the recovered messages, he convinced her that her sister and father would never be able to understand the depth of her pain because they allegedly refused to face the truth.

He persistently instilled in the griefstricken girl the idea that traditional medicine, classical psychotherapy, and anti-depressants are just a pathetic deception and an attempt by society to suppress true emotions.

The conductor skillfully hit the most painful points of her psyche, offering what she wanted most in the world, instant and final relief from unbearable mental suffering.

The manipulator offered her an alternative, which he himself pretentiously called a revolutionary radical acceptance session.

In his long text messages, he described it as a unique secret practice that could permanently erase traumatic memories and completely reboot the mind.

To conduct this session, he demanded absolute secrecy and complete unquestioning trust.

Investigators found a key message sent on October 8th at 25 hours and 15 minutes.

In it, the guide sent the girl a set of exact coordinates that led to a dead-end exit from the highway exactly 10 miles before the official western entrance to the national park.

Now, the detectives could understand Jennifer’s strange behavior during her long journey.

The guide gave her strict instructions.

She had to drive without stopping, not use bank cards, and not communicate with anyone along the way in order, in his words, to maintain purity of intent.

The last and most important requirement before the session was a complete rejection of material attachments.

He convinced her that any connection with the world and a vehicle were heavy anchors of her past life that were pulling her down.

The girl came to the specified point completely voluntarily and being in a deep psychological trance gave him the keys to her father’s heavy SUV.

It seemed that the FBI’s cyber unit had gathered enough evidence to understand the overall picture of the crime.

But when a senior analyst began to dig deeper into the source code of the last attached explorer message, he discovered a carefully hidden script.

The attacker had used a sophisticated spyware program that had secretly scanned Jennifer’s hard drive and extracted digital copies of her insurance documents a week before their deal.

He knew exactly the make, year, and total weight of her car long before he offered her a rescue.

The criminal had never planned to heal her broken soul.

He had been coldly assessing the value of her metal on the black market from the very beginning.

However, the real paralyzing horror was waiting for the operatives ahead.

In the hidden data array of this script, the detectives came across an encrypted directory containing 16 other women’s names.

October 27th, 2017, Quantico, Virginia.

In the closed office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Behavioral Analysis Division, the nation’s best specialists began to form a psychological profile of the person behind the torture of Jennifer Smith.

The investigative teams working at the scene in Wyoming provided the analysts with hundreds of photographs of the walls scrolled with formulas and detailed descriptions of the chemical compounds found in the victim’s blood.

After the first few hours of analysis, it became clear that the law enforcement system was faced with a completely new, extremely sophisticated type of antagonist.

He was not a serial killer in the classical sense, driven by primitive sexual motives, nor was he a fanatical leader of a religious sect.

A leading group of psychiatrists compiled a profile of the subject that looked like a portrait of a highly intelligent radical.

According to the experts, the attacker was a man between the ages of 40 and 50 who possessed a deep almost academic knowledge of pharmarmacology, neurobiology, and unconventional psychedelic therapy.

The complexity of the chemical mixtures found in the droppers indicated that he had access to laboratory equipment or possessed the skills of a professional chemist.

Analysts emphasized that the man sincerely and this was his madness believed that he was not torturing but saving broken people.

His method carefully documented in the inscriptions on the walls of Miller’s hut was to apply the concept of ego dissolution by using massive doses of lysurgic acid dethylamide in combination with complete physical restraint of the victim.

He sought to artificially induce a state of so-called chemical death.

According to the theory he outlined in his digital messages, only through the complete destruction of the personality and the experience of elucory dying could a person be cleansed of the pain of loss and be born again.

For him, Jennifer Smith was not a woman, but just a biological canvas on which he conducted his radical experiment to rewire human consciousness.

A psychological analysis of the correspondence on the forums showed that the attacker had an extraordinary level of empathy, which he used as a weapon.

He was not just looking for random passers by, but methodically selected the most involved, those who had experienced the death of loved ones and were in a state of acute despair.

He knew what real grief sounds like, and he used this knowledge to become the victim’s only source of hope.

An examination of his digital footprint confirmed that he spent weeks establishing a trusting relationship before arranging a face-to-face meeting in a deserted place on the edge of a national park.

Investigators paid special attention to the pragmatic aspect of his activities.

The profile indicated that the antagonist was extremely organized and calculating.

The missing cars of his clients, as well as the dark blue Ford Explorer SUV of Jennifer’s father, were of purely utilitarian importance to him.

Heavy vehicles weighing several,000 were his currency.

Selling these vehicles at shadowy auto salvage yards or through frontmen allowed him to fully fund the purchase of expensive chemical precursors, sterile medical supplies, and standalone equipment for his underground laboratories.

It was a closed system where the grief of some people became fuel for torturing others.

Detectives began checking the archives of medical universities and pharmaceutical companies, looking for professionals whose careers had been cut short by ethical violations or illegal research.

They were looking for someone who would be patient enough to sit next to the victim for 12 days straight, recording every convulsion and every whisper in their journals.

The psychiatrists warned the conductor would not stop because for him the success of the experiment was more important than human life.

He considered himself the messiah of the new age who had discovered the code to the human mind through chemical terror.

On October 30th, 2017, the investigation reached a new level.

One of the field agents who was reinspecting the area around Miller’s cabin discovered a camouflaged cache under a layer of pine needles 500 yd from the building.

There was a small plastic container containing a tattered child’s diary that did not belong to Jennifer.

When the experts opened the first page, they saw a list written in the same perfect calligraphic handwriting as the formulas on the walls.

It was a list of dates covering the last 10 years.

Next to each date was a short description, the color of the victim’s eyes, and the engine size of the car she had driven.

The last number on the list was circled in red, indicating that Jennifer’s SUV was only the 19th on his long, bloody list of patients.

Exactly one month had passed since the gruesome discovery at Miller’s abandoned hunting lodge.

The investigation, which had threatened to reach a dead end after exhausting all digital traces on Jennifer Smith’s computer, suddenly received a powerful impetus from a completely different direction.

On November 22nd, 2017, at about 6:005 in the morning, the Wyoming State Highway Patrol together with a special task force conducted a large-scale raid.

The law enforcement officers targeted a large illegal auto salvage yard located in an abandoned industrial area on the southern outskirts of Cheyenne, which was almost 300 m from the Yellowstone National Park.

The morning was frosty with temperatures dropping to 20° F.

A piercing icy wind blew between the rusted hangers, carrying the acrid smell of burnt metal, old motor oil, and melted rubber across the area.

The eerie silence of the industrial wasteland was shattered by the sound of police sirens.

The tactical team immediately blocked all possible escape routes, cutting off any chance of escape for the illegal business workers.

During a thorough search of the territory among dozens of mangled and saw cars, a heavy metal body of dark blue color caught the attention of a senior criminalist.

The factory identification numbers on the steel frame and the panel under the windshield had been deeply and professionally cut away with an angle grinder.

It seemed that the car had become a completely nameless piece of scrap metal.

However, the criminals fatally underestimated modern forensic methods.

Experts deployed a portable laboratory right on the spot and used the deep acid etching method.

The process was extremely tedious and took more than 4 hours of continuous work.

Layer by layer, the aggressive chemical mixture ate away at the damaged metal surface until the altered crystal lattice of the steel began to speak.

Ghostly, barely visible outlines of the original numbers and letters appeared on the panel.

A check with the Unified National Database yielded a 100% match.

There was no longer any doubt.

It was the same Ford Explorer that had belonged to Jennifer’s father and weighed more than 4,000 pounds.

The owner of the shady business, 52-year-old Marcus Wayne, was immediately arrested.

He was interrogated in a windowless room at the Cheyenne Central Police Department for nine long hours.

According to the official interrogation report, Wayne sat extremely pale, constantly nervously wiping cold sweat from his forehead and categorically denying any involvement in the kidnappings or torture.

He swore to the investigators that he was exclusively engaged in buying stolen metal.

According to the suspect, he personally purchased this dark blue SUV in early October for $4,500 in small cash bills.

The seller was a man known exclusively by the nickname doctor in the local criminal underworld.

The description provided by the frightened Wayne perfectly and to the smallest detail confirmed the psychological profile of the maniac which had been previously compiled by analysts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The witness described the doctor on audio as an extremely thin white man in his mid4s whose behavior stood in stark contrast to the usual carnage contingent.

According to Wayne’s testimony, the doctor apparently suffered from a severe form of obsessive compulsive disorder.

He always wore thick medical gloves made of blue nitral, never touched any surfaces with his bare hands, and constantly avoided any direct eye contact with the interlocutor.

His clean clothes emitted a sharp, unpleasantly sterile odor of hospital antiseptic and bleach.

However, what the owner of the showdown remembered most was the voice of this strange man.

The doctor never raised his voice.

He spoke very quietly, measuredly with a frightening hypnotic tone, which according to the witness sent uncontrollable shivers down his spine every time.

Driven to a standstill by threats of a life sentence for complicity in holding a person hostage, Wayne finally broke down.

He made a full-fledged deal with the investigators and wrote a disposable cell phone number on a piece of paper with trembling hands.

This was the number the mysterious doctor used to get in touch with to make his car sales deals.

It was the very thin digital thread that the cyber analysts had been waiting for so long and desperately.

The operatives immediately requested an urgent federal warrant to trace the billing of this cell phone number for the last 6 months.

The attacker was extremely cautious.

He would turn on the device for only a few minutes to make a short call and then immediately remove the battery.

But even these short communication sessions were enough for modern triangulation systems.

Cell towers recorded several dozen connections at different times.

By overlaying these geographic coordinates on an electronic map of Wyoming, the detectives obtained a coverage area that narrowed to one remote private sector with each new mathematical calculation.

This isolated area was located exactly 35 miles east of the official boundaries of the national park.

It was a remote, rugged, forested area with no paved roads at all, and the closest neighbors lived several miles apart.

After obtaining special court authorization to use a military surveillance satellite, the agents took a detailed thermal image of the identified forest square.

On the big screens of the monitors at the headquarters, a completely unremarkable old wooden one-story house, deeply hidden among the tall pines, was displayed.

But when the technicians set up the infrared scanners to search for underground temperature anomalies, the experienced investigators were instantly taken aback by what they saw.

Deep underground, right beneath the concrete foundation of the hut, a powerful, unnatural heat source was being detected, covering an area of more than 2,000 square ft.

This hidden area was powered by powerful standalone generators and was equipped with a massive industrial ventilation system that continuously expelled warm air streams outside.

It became absolutely clear.

They had found not just a temporary hideout for the criminal.

An armed tactical group was standing on the very threshold of his main base.

And at that moment, none of them had any idea what terrible secrets were hidden behind the thick concrete walls of this bunker.

December 5th, 2017, 4:00 in the morning.

an isolated 10acre wooded area that has been officially registered in the county land records as the Ebony Retreat.

The mountain air temperature plummeted to 15° F.

Three dozen Federal Special Forces soldiers dressed in winter tactical gear silently took up positions around the perimeter of the old two-story wooden house.

Thanks to the data from military-style thermal imagers, the operatives knew for sure that the main target was inside and he was awake.

At 4:00 35 minutes, the tactical group commander gave the order to start the assault.

The operation was lightning fast, leaving the criminal no time to react.

A heavy steel ram knocked the massive oak door off its hinges.

Stun grenades broke the deafening silence of the night forest with blinding flashes, after which the special forces simultaneously burst inside through all the windows of the first floor, breaking the glass and blocking any escape routes.

According to the operational report, the suspect did not even try to resist.

He was sitting motionless in the spacious living room, dressed in a perfectly clean, ironed white medical coat and calmly drinking hot coffee.

His name was Elias Crawford.

He was a 52-year-old former eminent neuroscientist whose brilliant academic career was destroyed forever in 2010.

At that time, the Federal Medical Commission permanently revoked his license for conducting a series of unauthorized, openly cruel clinical experiments using powerful hallucinogens on patients.

When the SWAT team harshly wrestled him to the floor and tightened the thick plastic ties around his wrists, Crawford showed no fear.

According to one of the officers in the assault team, the arrestee did not look like a cornered criminal, but rather like an irritated professor whose crucial research work had been rudely interrupted.

While one part of the group led Crawford outside to an armored van, the other began clearing the underground level where powerful heat radiation had been detected the day before.

The entrance to the bunker was hidden behind a massive false wall in the storoom.

After descending a narrow metal staircase 20 ft underground, the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents found themselves in a completely different dimension.

The 2,000q ft concrete basement had been transformed into a perfectly sterile laboratory.

Modern industrial hoods, climate control systems, rows of centrifuges and electron microscopes.

It was here, in complete isolation from society, that the former scientist synthesized highly purified drugs and tranquilizers.

But the most important evidence was waiting for the investigators on a long steel table in the center of the room.

There were four thick diaries bound in black leather.

They were maniacally detailed protocols of his crimes.

The investigators immediately opened the notebook with the Roman numeral four on the cover.

The pages were written in impeccable calligraphic handwriting and contained minute-by-minute records of Jennifer Smith’s physiological and psychological reactions to the administration of various chemical dosages.

Crawford methodically recorded everything.

Her pulse rate, pupil dilation, the duration of her seizures, and the nature of her hallucinatory delusions.

According to his notes, he did not consider himself a torturer at all.

In his perverse reality, he acted as a messiah.

Jennifer appeared in the text exclusively as patient number four.

In the final entry for the 11th day of the experiment, Crawford noted in a completely dry and unemotional manner that the subject was too weak and simply could not cope with the deep cleansing process.

The analysts began to carefully leaf through the other leather notebooks.

The three previous diaries contained gruesome chronicles of torture on patients one, two, and three.

But when the chief investigator opened the desk drawer and took out the fifth brand new diary, the tension in the room reached a maximum.

The first white page already had today’s date written on it, and below it were the name, age, and car brand of the next victim.

Next to it, on a sterile medical tray, was a freshly filled vial with a clear liquid and a perfectly sharpened scalpel.

Someone was coming to this forest within the next hour and the trap was already open.

May 2019, a federal courtroom in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The security measures during the hearings were unprecedented.

The building was guarded by dozens of armed marshals, and the press was allowed only with special passes.

The trial of the 52-year-old former neuroscientist Elias Crawford lasted more than six grueling months.

A team of expensive lawyers hired for the money received from the sale of the victim’s cars on the black market built a line of defense solely on their client’s insanity.

They tried to convince the jury that Crawford suffered from a severe form of paranoid schizophrenia with a pronounced messianic complex and thus should be sent to a closed psychiatric hospital rather than a federal prison.

However, this carefully planned illusion was shattered when the prosecution presented the main physical evidence.

On the judge’s massive oak table lay four black leather diaries taken from an underground sterile bunker.

The entries in them had absolutely nothing to do with the chaotic ramblings of a sick lunatic.

It was 100% cold, pragmatic, and ruthless scientific calculation.

Crawford meticulously recorded the body’s reactions to critical doses of toxins, calculating the volume of the drips to the milligram for each pound of the victim’s body weight.

When the chief prosecutor read dry excerpts from these notebooks, several jurors could not contain their emotions, and one asked for an emergency recess due to a sharp deterioration in his health after hearing what he had heard.

In November of 2019, the judge handed down an unprecedentedly harsh sentence, three consecutive life sentences in a maximum security federal penitentiary in Colorado.

From now on, the maniac was to spend 23 hours a day in a completely deaf 80s square foot single concrete cell.

For 26-year-old Jennifer Smith, this horrific story did not end with a cinematic miracle of healing.

thousands of micrograms of the artisal synthetic diylamide lysurgic acid and horse tranquilizers that were continuously pumped into her veins over 12 days left irreversible destructive changes in her brain chemistry.

Neural connections were critically damaged.

The girl survived physically but lost the most important thing, the ability to fully trust her own eyes and senses.

She suffered from severe post-h hallucinogenic perception disorder.

The doctors frankly admitted that modern medical literature had not yet encountered such precedents of intoxication.

She had to relearn how to walk, formulate complex sentences, and distinguish objective reality from sudden toxic flashbacks when the walls of her hospital room suddenly began to pulse and become covered with fractal patterns from a forest hut.

Jennifer underwent this unbearably long path of complex rehabilitation in a closed specialized clinic in Seattle.

Her father and twin sister Jessica, whose sudden nervous breakdown the day before that fateful trip may have saved her life, were on duty every day, as the maniac had never hunted two people at the same time.

The Smith family closed themselves off from the intrusive press forever, categorically refusing any interviews or participation in television shows.

Their only goal in life was to return Jennifer to relatively normal functioning, as much as was possible after the chemical hell she had experienced.

Yellowstone National Park, with its majestic snowcapped mountains and boiling geothermal geysers, remains the same as it has been for thousands of years.

Wildlife is completely indifferent to human suffering.

However, the unprecedented case of the explorer has forever changed the rigid approaches of the United States law enforcement system.

The National Park Service completely rewrote all internal operational protocols for responding to the disappearance of lone hikers.

Highway police received new instructions on mandatory checks of abandoned vehicles at the entrances to protected areas.

From now on, the search began not with combing forest trails with search dogs, but with the immediate involvement of specialists from the cyber department to analyze the digital trail of the missing person in depth.

This criminal case proved a terrible truth of the modern world.

The most dangerous predators are no longer hiding in dark thicket.

They sit in front of computer monitors in comfortable homes.

carefully read anonymous support forums and offer help to those whose hearts are broken with grief in a quiet, sympathetic tone, methodically turning someone else’s despair into the perfect tool for murder.

It would seem that justice has finally been served and the culprit is safely isolated from society.

Elias Crawford is silently serving his harsh sentence behind a thick steel door with no chance of appeal.

But there is one disturbing detail that still haunts the chief investigator of the Federal Bureau of Investigations criminal division.

During the last official interrogation, when federal agents asked him directly about the exact coordinates of the burial sites of the first three victims from his Black Diaries, the former scientist only smiled coldly.

According to the transcript of the conversation, he leaned into the microphone and quietly said that his perfect formula for chemical mind rebirth had been automatically sent to encrypted shadow servers 1 hour before the storming of the underground bunker.

Cyber police have yet to find a single copy of these deadly files.

But last month, a brand new user appeared on another closed anonymous forum for people in deep depression.

He doesn’t call himself the guide, but he again offers desperate people a free, radical acceptance session.

This time in the deep, impenetrable forests of northern