The Darkest Places: Unsolved Mysteries, True Crimes, and Harrowing Disasters in the Wild

409 Pages·2019·7.64 MB·English

THE DARKEST PLACES
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THE DARKEST PLACES
U N S O LV E D M Y S T E R I E S ,
T R U E C R I M E S , A N D
H A R R O W I N G D I S A S T E R S
I N T H E W I L D
T H E E D I T O R S O F O U T S I D E M A G A Z I N E
g u i l f o r d ,
c o n n e c t i c u t
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An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefeld Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright © 2019 by Outside Magazine
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C O N T E N T S
INTRODUCTION by Chris Keyes v i i
M YST E R I E S
LONG GONE by Bryan Di Salvatore and Deirdre McNamer 2
T H E B O O M TOW N , T H E G R I N G O, T H E G I R L , A N D HE R MURDE R by Tony D’Souza 2 2
L AST VOYAG E O F T H E CÚL IN by David Van 4 4
I N A H O U S E BY T H E R I V E R by Megan Michelson 57
W H Y N OA H W E N T TO T H E WO O DS by Mark Sunden 7 1
D E A D O F N I G H T by Ned Zeman 9 6
B LO O D I N T H E SA N D by Mathew Power 1 1 6
U P O N COV E M O U N TA I N by Earl Swift 1 27
W H AT K I L L E D T H E B E A R L A DY ? by Brandon Sned 1 4 4
A S H OT I N T H E N I G H T by Caroline Alexander 1 5 4
ST R A N G E P H E N O M E N A
FOOT. LOOSE . by Christopher Solomon 1 6 4
T H E K I L L E R I N T H E P O O L by Tim Zimmerman 1 7 7
CO N S U M E D by Grayson Schafer 1 9 6
T H E VA N I S H I N G by Bob Friel 2 1 4
C ATC H M E I F YO U C A N by Dean King 2 2 5
C L I F F H A N G E R by Peter Frick-Wright 241
N U T J O B by Peter Vigneron 2 5 8
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W I L D CRIM E S
MR. BLAND’S EV IL PLOT TO CONTROL THE WORLD by Miles Harvey 2 6 8
F I R E STA R T E R as told to McKenzie Funk 2 8 3
L AST R E S O R T by Mike Kesler 2 93
T H E B A L L A D O F CO LTO N H A R R I S - M O O R E by Bob Friel 3 07
ST E A M E D by Eric Hansen 3 24
T H E D E V I L O N PA R A D I S E R OA D by Bruce Barcot 3 35
TA K E T H E M O N E Y A N D R U N by Gordy Megroz 352
H O R N SWO G G L E D by Paul Kvinta 3 6 5
T H E T H R O U G H - H I K I N G CO N M A N by Brendan Borel 3 8 4
CO N T R I B U TO R S 393
VI T H E D A R K E S T P L A C E S
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
C H R I S K E Y E S
When you’re dealing with a tale of intrigue and suspicion in
which nothing wants to be what it seems, the best place to start
is at the beginning, before everything about the Mystery of the
Feet got complicated.
o begins Christopher Solomon’s “Foot. Loose.,” a true-
Scrime masterpiece and one of the strangest tales we’ve
ever published in Outside. In 2010, the magazine’s longtime
contributing editor proposed investigating a frightening case
that was unfolding a few hours north of his home in Seattle.
Seven detached human feet had washed ashore over the span
of ffteen months in the coastal waters surrounding Vancou-
ver, British Columbia. Authorities had no idea whether these
macabre discoveries were evidence of an active serial killer or
just a strange coincidence. We were just as bafed—though we
were clear about one thing. Missing feet? Seven of them? We
needed to assign this immediately.
Solomon’s eventual story, which begins on page 164, is a wild
ride. It’s also a prime example of the kind of can’t-look-away
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events and peculiar crimes Outside has spent forty-one years chronicling. Deci-
sions on whom or what to cover in our magazine are generally informed by
our original mission statement: to inspire active participation in the world out-
side. So I’ll acknowledge up front that this sunny, positive outlook appears to
be in direct confict with an anthology comprised of grisly crimes, horrifying
mysteries, and terrifying, unexplained phenomena. On the surface, at least, the
only thing the subjects of these stories—murder, violence, disappearances, and
general mayhem—should inspire is an extreme compulsion to stay inside. Go
deeper, however, and you’ll discover that these pieces reveal hidden truths about
the natural world and ponder the yin-and-yang realities of exploration in the
wild. We champion the idea that time spent in nature is one of the most efective
antidotes for the stress and anxiety that afict our plugged-in, tech-inundated
era. But we also recognize that terrible things sometimes happen in the same
places that promise refuge, and to ignore that fact—to not examine it closely or
wrestle with its implications—is to ignore the essence of nature itself. Besides,
who doesn’t love a scary story told around the campfre?
We’re not cable news, however. We don’t aim to exploit the tragic sufering of
others for entertainment value and increased circulation. To that end, there are
some basic themes and ingredients we look for before we tell a writer to spend
months following leads into creepy and dangerous territory. Scrutinize the stories
we’ve selected here, a representative sample of some of the scariest pieces we’ve
ever published, and common traits emerge that point to why we took the time to
tell them. Take, for example, “Foot. Loose.,” which is cataloged under the heading
of Strange Phenomena—stories that gamely attempt to explain the unexplainable.
When we gave Solomon the green light, we knew it was unlikely that he’d solve
the mystery. Didn’t matter. It was the setting, the noir backdrop of the Pacifc
Northwest, that gave the story such obvious potential. “It’s very possible that a
macabre killer isn’t on the loose, of course,” Solomon wrote in his original pitch.
“But the certainty of a killer is beside the point, really. This is a mood piece—a
heavily reported mood piece—about a region, its dark history, and its unique rela-
tionship with death.” To which we replied: Go for it.
Similarly, in 2010, when Tim Zimmermann set out to report on the death of
a SeaWorld trainer during a performance with a captive orca, the goal wasn’t to
simply recount the horrifc event itself. The grim details could already be found in
a pile of national news stories covering the tragedy. Instead, Zimmermann wanted
to explore a larger question: Could an orca commit premeditated murder? The
question is too preposterous to really answer, but we knew that grappling with it
would lead Zimmermann to pull on some fascinating threads, including a sober
examination of the questionable ethics involved with training and breeding wild
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sea creatures in captivity. His eventual story, “The Killer in the Pool,” was one of
the most widely read pieces in Outside’s history. It also led to the acclaimed docu-
mentary Blackfsh, and important changes in the way SeaWorld and other marine
parks treat their animals.
Sometimes stories that fall into the Strange Phenomena category ofer no mys-
tery at all, but an overlooked angle or surprising wrinkle serves as the narrative
engine. In 2011, Dean King pitched us on the tale of an eight-year-old boy named
Robert Wood Jr., who went missing in a forest in northern Virginia. By the time
King sent his proposal, Wood had already been found, and it was a diferent ele-
ment in the story that made it worthy of pursuing: Wood was autistic. Unlike
the vast majority of people who get lost, the boy was likely trying to evade being
found, because of a hardwired fear of contact with strangers. As King explained,
that meant the frantic search-and-rescue teams charged with fnding Wood had to
scrap their standard playbook and completely rethink their approach. Their tactics
make “Catch Me If You Can” a fascinating look into the science of search opera-
tions and human behavior.
The common threads you’ll fnd linking the stories in the book’s Wild Crimes
section are quite diferent. These pieces all involve some combination of heinous
acts and dastardly behavior, ingredients that have been driving narratives for eons.
But it’s the writers’ eforts to fgure out what makes the perpetrators tick—what
separates these criminal masterminds from any of us—that often elevates them
beyond mere disaster porn.
In 2007, that kind of quest landed writer McKenzie Funk in prison. Well, as a
visitor. For months, Funk corresponded by phone and through letters with con-
victed ecoterrorist Chelsea Gerlach, a former member of the Earth Liberation
Front who participated in the group’s 1998 arson at Vail Resort in Colorado. Few
Outside readers would ever condone her actions. The fres not only caused $12
million in damage, but they could have killed Vail employees. Still, many of our
readers are environmentalists, and Funk was curious to understand how a young
woman interested in protecting wild places became radicalized to the point that
she was willing to put lives at risk to achieve her goals. What does that evolution
look like? “Firestarter” succeeds in answering that question, in large part because
Funk chose to tell it in Gerlach’s own words.
You’ll fnd a similar approach in the story “Hornswoggled” (page 365), by Paul
Kvinta. For several years we looked for a compelling way to tell a story about big-
game poaching in Africa—emphasis on compelling. Magazines and newspapers,
after all, were already stufed with dry reports citing the grim statistics of charis-
matic megafauna getting slaughtered at the hands of greedy poaching syndicates.
But Kvinta found a way to take us inside one of those syndicates by earning the
I N T R O D U C T I O N Ix
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