You're gonna lose subscribers - Better Help is a BS scam and people know it! No UA-camrs with ANY dignity have accepted a sponsorship from them in almost 2 years... just sayin'.
I'm just so mad at them. Why did they choose there of all places? Why didn't they move to Florida or Mississippi anywhere warm enough to make off the grid living much easier?!! Why didn't the aunt and son just leave the mom out there?
It could legitimately be called child abuse to take an underaged kid into this situation, and why the rest of the family didn't stop that from happening is beyond me. Probably they. just didn't realize that the mom was seriously going to stay out there in the mountains. But she also had no right to take that child out there without telling the truth to his father. If she'd survived, she could have been prosecuted for that.
I was once a 14 year old boy. I can easily picture the women talking about living off grid and the boy himself being the one happily encouraging them to do so, over and over until they decided to venture out into the wilderness. They might have been talked into it by him, and went because he told them he would "handle things" that came up he was a man!. The women might have decided to go thinking they didn't want to disappoint him. They also had crosses around their necks. They might have trusted God and angels being there for them and make the decisions no matter what. They also probably thought their car would get them out of trouble, too. Then they got sick and quickly lost all their strength. You can be fine when you go to sleep and sick as a dog when you wake up. They then might have just gave up all hope because they knew they'd never make it through the harsh winter.
There's a reason indigenous people and people living sustainably in rural areass of Arica, South America etc virtually *never* do so in isolated couples or small family groups. Its because it is brutally hard work, even on the most productive land. Humans need cooperative, multi-family communities to make it long term.
And the knowledge of how to deal with the harsh conditions, and proper equipment needed. These people seemed to have no real knowledge of all the supplies they would need. Looking at what they brought, seemed like just the most basic stuff you'd take if you were camping normally in the summer for a week. I believe they would've gotten more supplies or tried to leave when winter set in, but they were trapped after the forest service towed their vehicle. Still can't believe they did that! If that's normal protocol they need to make changes so they're not leaving folks trapped to die in the mountains wtf!
Even the Indigenous people, the Ute tribe, migrated to lower elevations in the winter rather than staying in the high San Juans and other mountainous areas. And even with their thousands of years of survival experience, they often faced starvation if the game was poor or they didn't have enough forage stored for a particularly hard winter.
They really had no idea. None of the stuff they had was anything I'd waste time packing into the mountains. They apparently had no knives, no guns, no axe or other tools, no real outdoor clothing, especially winter outdoor clothing and gear, no skis or snowshoes, and no way to signal for help in an emergency. A fishing pole was the only food-gathering tool they had, and there are damn few fish in the creeks and lakes up there in the high country, especially in the winter. And they had no tools to break through the ice to reach what fish there might have been. They had no way to hunt for larger game, and there is precious little forage in the mountains even in the summer.@@krisfinley6706
@@PipsqwakIt's a similar story with the Pueblo and other Indigenous peoples in the desert southwest. Even their 'permanent' settlements were regularly abandoned for the season or for years to decades depending on flood and drought conditions. A huge part of sustainable subsistence living is knowing when to fold em and relocate.
@@johnqpublic2718And I am also more than free to bring this up to a creator I have watched for years in hopes of warning him and others. If he continues, I am dipping, but I would like to give a creator I watch a chance to fix this situation. And you can just as easily not respond to my posts if you don't like my content.
I live in a big bell tent for 3,5 years now, with solar energy, wood stove & petroleum stove, running water just next to my tent and a new bell tent every 18 months (they deteriorate) and all the comforts just next door. Even then it is a challenge in winter! I live in Europe, with a very moderate climate, so no snow storms, extreme cold and long freezing periods. I absolute love my lifestyle, but what that family did was absolute insane and so ill prepared it could only be a death sentence. So sad for the adults, but for the boy...they abused and hurt an innocent boy to death. Thats criminal.
I lived with a wood / coal stove as my only heat source in a bunker with no shower and no toilet for 6 years. Wood is the most expensive heat source there is when you consider all the work involved, and I say that even after accounting for the fact that I got all my wood for free. So when I bought this house in 2011, with a kitchen, bathroom, and gas heat, I felt like a king. I know I could survive living off-grid, but I wouldn't do it willingly.
I've never seen a campsite that was so ill-prepared. They didn't have a camp stove or anything. That one little tiny tent for all of them? No food or anything? What were they thinking? What a miserable way to go. That poor kid.
@AS-qg1xu exactly. I highly doubt this was something they wanted to be doing. They ended up there without any necessary supplies because they didn't have enough money. They're not alone. Have you seen LA, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco? Tent cities for miles. And your tent neighbors aren't exactly the most safe ppl.
@Janellabelle That's not even remotely correct because they quit their jobs. They lived in a very nice apartment building with a heated pool and we're paid up for the next year...Rebecca WANTED to do this. They were offered a place of their own "off the grid" with an RV and declined.
@@docholliday6thank you. That person is in the comments section ranting about section 8 and clearly didn’t even watch the video and knows nothing about the case. I replied to another one of her comments but I’m glad you gave some solid facts. I knew they quit their jobs willingly and had an opportunity to live on private land with a camper. I didn’t know they were paid up for the next year - overall nothing points to this being poverty driven.
And not even camping very well. The stuff they had with them was packed like teenagers would pack to go to a sleepover or something. Totally useless for survival.
It seems like they'd never even camped before, ever. There's some basic camping rules they missed, let alone more advanced things. Just absolute insanity.
Exactly. Especially in this area, you need a LOT to survive off the land. I've been homesteading in the area for multiple years now and with all my hard work I'm nowhere close to being self sufficient. And I have a house. That can't be blown over in our crazy winds here, though it's sure been tested.
The only saw I noticed on site was a hacksaw near the lean-to. I cannot imagine the amount of energy needed to cut all that wood for the structure with a hacksaw. If that is the case an assumption can be made that the 14 year old did the work and it appears he was the first to pass on.
They had toilet paper, and top ramen, lol😂 Not trying to make light of this tragedy, its just comical how all they seemed to have in their "homestead" was a tent, a crappy blanket, canned food/top ramen, and toilet paper. This was so preventable.😢
@@sanniwartinen3595 Absolutely! They were clearly not prepared to move off grid. Dumb mistake that unfortunately cost them their lives and that of their son/nephew. The adult women should’ve known better than to be so reckless.
@@elonever.2.071 I saw that too! They were using a saw for metal to cut wood. Must've taken forever to cut that. They obviously had zero knowledge about a lot of things besides outdoor survival skills. Just the fact that they left their car in the parking lot far away, had no weapons, no cell phones, like, what the hell were these people thinking? Looks like they watched too many episodes of Grizzly Adams, and if a bear showed up, they'd probably try to pet it.
bad timing for this, I mean no disrespect to those that passed but I've said for years that tents are body bags for city folk , maybe I been up a holler to long but I'm fine with that
These people can't get through a city park but because of social media think they can live "with nature" off grid. No survival skills, never been in nature. They get a rude awakening about the cruelty of Mother Nature.
I can see the appeal of living off-grid - but in a building or houseboat, with solar panels and/or wind turbine, and a reliable source of food and clean water. But life as a permanent camping vacation? This family's inadequate supplies and equipment, and the chaos of their campsite, screams 'mental illness' to me.
Obviously these people didn't have any idea of what they were getting themselves into. Just the fact that they hadn't even constructed a latrine tells me that they were woefully unprepared to survive for any amount of time
We go camping a lot and that lean-to is exactly the type of thing my kids would build. I can picture the 14 year old building that to have his own space and privacy and keep himself occupied, all full of gung ho to begin with. Only to have something go terribly wrong. So sad.
@@culturebreath369 I know! Why didn't the aunt and son just leave the crazy mom?!? Maybe they thought she would die? Why did the women continue to stay out there once the boy was dead?!!??
The snow could have been 4 feet deep. How long would you last hiking miles and miles on foot, on a deserted mountain? They were dead either way@@WhitneyDahlin
Mental disorder is devastating in isolation. That poor child - 14 years old. Child abuse. I have a 14 year old son. This is grievous and inspires pure, incandescent rage in my soul. No one knew they were planning to do this? That they were not capable or equipped mentally, physically or emotionally?? It’s obvious just looking at the photos of the adult women they were nowhere near fit enough or had any idea what it would entail to survive like this. They don’t even appear to be weekend warriors hiking as a pastime or even RV glamping. Yet, they expected to survive the winter in a tent in remote wilderness without adequate supplies??? They just disappeared without ANYONE knowing or checking on them or calling a welfare check in dead of winter? How could they possibly think they could survive this way?
They got sick. There are many bacterial infections that will cause "hypovolimic shock." In a 6 hour time span, you will lose all the water from your body. It's super fast. You must have fluid in your body. If you don't, your heart can't pump, your kidneys can't function, your blood pressure goes down to the 40 range, and you die. It would explain mummified bodies. It would be very unusual for this to be food born illness. It comes from water, or an unknown virus, which is not bacteria. I almost died from it. Living in San Jose, California. Not camping, or living off grid. I just got sick one evening. Vomiting at first, but by 2am I was crawling to the bathroom for the 6th time, with clear water coming out of my butt. I was being mummified while alive. I crawled to the phone and got to emergency room. They stuffed 3 IV bags into me in 5 hours. My blood volume was was gone. I had very little pressure for my organs to function. They thought it was virus? Arsenic poisoning does exactly this. Anyway, it was never determined. There are areas in the Tahoe area off of Highway 50 where you can't use the water in winter. Not even to brush your teeth. You can't use the water.
They left civilization due to misinformation over a virus, only to die by another one. Poetic justice. Except that poor, poor boy. Absolutely wicked what those witches did to him. Edit: I just read the second half of your post. I'm so sorry you went through that and glad you're ok now. Sounds absolutely terrifying!
I don't feel the need to see any justice in this tragic death. They made the mistake of drinking water from a possible vector source. Or they ate an animal that had been poisoned with arsenic. I am so very sorry this happened. It is quick. Not super painful. By the fifth hour, you are half dead. It is that fast. So, you all need to remember stuff and keep it in your survival cap, even if you are home in a city. ❤️
Had the same thing happen to me in a hotel travelling. I was on the floor and accepted death. It was brutal but pain eventually becomes normal so it's almost euphoric. I managed to get out a phone call and got to the hospital
The fact feces was found around the place is an indication they were very ill. The fact only a small tent was there looks like they didnt mean to stay the winter. Its so sad - especially the 14yr old. 😢
If it's accurate that the boy died first and was moved out of the tent, I could also imagine the women committing themselves to exile. If they did plan to return at any point, how do you go back to your waiting family after that? How do you get back in your car, drive to your waiting loved ones, and tell them their beloved 14 year old son/brother/sibling/nephew/friend died in the woods and he's either left out there, or in the boot of the car? If it were me, I don't know if I could do that. So if he did die first, their plans (if they had any) might have drastically changed.
You are spot on I think. But I also think they could have been worried about criminal charges. I’m not sure if any would or could have been brought, but since he was a child, I wonder if a child neglect resulting in death charge would have been brought against the mother if the mother and her sister had went back to civilization.
Yeah, it sounds like a situation that started off bad enough and spiraled quickly. Whatever delusions drove them to do this, we'll never really know but if they planned to leave before winter, can you imagine the enormity of discovering their way out was gone? Camping in the most temperate weather/area would still have been a challenge with their lack of supplies. They probably crawled to make it back to that car and get out. They more than likely knew they were dead as soon as they turned around to go back to the campsite. Brutal.
You're thinking to deep about this, if they were able to just pack up and leave they never would've waited for the kid to die in the first place. Also these people are mentally ill and didn't think twice about dragging this kid into their horrible situation, I doubt they'd suddenly be overly worried with what others would think of them
I bet they thought they could hunt and grow their food and make a nice shelter. Then they realized it was hard. They didn’t clean their water and they got sick. No car with chronic diarrhea equals dehydration, add hypothermia and dead.
Dont let situations like this occur with children ppl. If someone is being sketchy, as these women were, and there is a child involved, report it to someone. Even if a child is with their parent it doesnt make it ok for them to disappear. Especially if their parent is the kind to think the world is ending to the extent they should flee the grid. All the ppl who witnessed the decline of these women, and just let then wander off with that boy smh.
Both parents were 100% culpable in their son's tragic, agonising, and totally preventable death. It takes two people to create another human being, a woman and a man. If you are one of two people who brought a child into this world, your most important duty is to keep that miniature human being happy, healthy and ALIVE, at the very least, to the age of 18. This poor little boy was failed by both his mother and his father. At least his mother had mental illness as some small measure of an excuse. Why was his Dad playing such a small role in his life? Boys especially really need a loving father's love, support and guidance when they reach their teens.
@@glamdolly30 pure speculation, but the family courts are most often very slanted towards mothers. I wouldnt be surprised if that father was denied access, even with the mother being ill. I got lucky, and my ex didnt put up a fight. Otherwise my kids wouldve been trapped with their abuser. Also a possibility that he was just a piece of shit, or mental himself. Gotta ask what kinda guy gets involved with such a mentally ill female.
Honest question, in a circumstance like this what good would that do? I doubt a child would be removed from a parent because someone reported that they were planning to live off grid. Especially if they were only planning on being out there for a couple months and then returning for the winter. It sounds like this case was a combination of a lot of factors that came together tragically but it’s hard to place sole blame on any one thing or person.
@@jotun.616 WOAH - Easy there! Lots of speculation in your post - we simply do not know details of the parental history here. As I'm sure you're aware, it is statistically, many times more likely than the father was abusive to her/his offspring, than vice versa. The fact that she, not he, had custody, supports that theory. I'm of the view that both parents should take equal responsibility for the children they conceive together. If that were the case here, the mother could not have taken the reckless, unilateral decisions she did, which directly led to the death of their teen son. Again, we're in the dark about this family. I would however 100% condemn the decision to tow away a car parked in a remote area without cellphone service, particularly with Winter approaching. As @TheMissingEnigma said, removing that vehicle amounted to a death sentence for three people. I sincerely hope lessons are learned.
Seriously! Now it’s just activists pretending to be journalists. And they always put their own opinions and seem to cover and lie or “bend” the truth or purposely leave things out. It’s sad. Especially for big issues we have 😢 sad
He’s certainly a breath of fresh air from the click bait douch bags of UA-cam who sensationalize everything. Channels like his are what makes UA-cam great
How can anyone believe you can live in a tent in winter climate without experience and proper gear? Doing something like this in a remote place would be tough even with the proper preparation and gear, living like this even in summer with this little stuff would be risky. It must have been a real nightmare.
My understanding is Rebecca had developed paranoia and conspiracy ideas . She was the dominant one and wanted to go off grid. She believed watching UA-cam videos about survival would sustain them. Very ignorant and ill prepared.
Because the adults here were severely insane and stupid (both).... Flee the grid is one thing... Live like a severely mentally ill (as in profound chronic and acute delusional psychosis not something like depression anxiety or PTSD) homeless person in the public park land. What these people did is not homesteading.. It was not living off grid. It was living like an insane homeless person. Living off grid means coming in with an RV, travel trailer or other living structure... Alternative would be to come in during warm season and complete build on a home before winter. A home does not mean a tent unless it's a tent complete with wood stove and long term construction, like a yert dwelling basically.....
There seems to have been some mental illness in the mix. And I have even seen YT comments where the person thinks that if they know a few plant names, watch survival videos and made a stick lean-to once, that means they can “live off the land.” In the pandemic and unemployed, they may have come to legitimately try to live off grid, or thinking they could make “I built an off-grid shelter” videos themselves and get money that way.
I forgot about that family. My mom lives in Colorado Springs and I live just north of Santa Fe, NM. While I have gone camping off and on for most of my life, and I have recently been watching bushcrafting videos, I know that as a 57 year old woman with diabetes that it's not something I could do, especially during the winter time. You're right that they were ill prepared for their new life, and it's a sad tragedy for their loved ones. Thanks for giving us the information.
This is bugging me. I'm thinking they didn't even make it to winter. Mountains can easily be in the 20's at night in the summer. The placement of everything seemed like they hadn't been fighting deep snow/drifts. The clothing certainly seemed more cold summer than winter. It wasn't even great for that. Not sure how the tent stayed up. I'm a little confused that animals didn't scatter them. I REALLY THINK the authorities need to run plates on all towed vehicles and follow up with families. It could have been stolen or indicated lost hikers.
the tent wouldn't have made it through the winter without someone knocking the snow off it. so they probably made it through most of winter, the last heavy snow at least, which could be as late as May in the area.
If someone was alive was alive deeper into the winter, that might explain the lack of animals, especially if the area smelled bad from whatever disease they had
I live in Colorado. I have been to Gunnison and have a family member who attended Western University. Gunnison is known for ridiculously cold winters and getting snow fall that is absolutely absurd. But the summers are lovely as it sits in valley at a lower elevation than the mountains that surround it. It's unfortunate about this family and horribly sad. I've felt how cold it is up there and seen the snow. It's no joke.
My bf almost got snowed into a canyon in Colorado. He was about seven miles from his car when the weather started to turn. He said that by the time he got back to his car, there was a foot of snow on the ground, and when he woke up the next day at his moms house, it was about eight feet deep. And the place he hiked into was REMOTE… he said he was barely able to find the main road and drive back to the highway.
My family and me camped at the Gild Creek Campground in early 2000. There was snow still on the ground in june bears gad marked all the trees around the campsite we picked. I told my 7 year old that Snipes scratched the trees and they were afraid if humans. It was her last camping trip. Her name is Misty Vail btw. My husband loved the Colorado mountains. Even the campground is extreme and remote. It is not unheard of in Colorado to see snowfall in July in the mountains.
This seems more like mental illness, stoked by the right wing conspiracy nonsense around the COVID pandemic. There seems to have been an attempt to try “off grid” living, but was woefully inadequate.
This is the first video of yours that I've watched. I'm impressed. You speak clearly and are empathetic to the people in the story. Thank you for telling their story so kindly. As sad as this story is, watching your video about it was a delight. Keep up the good work.
Why didn't the Forest Service report the abandoned car to the police? An abandoned car in a remote area like that that's sat for 2 months should have had them concerned about a possible missing person. Hmmm 🤔
Paranoia is an underrated and very dangerous mental disorder. Anyone feeling this way should seek help and I say that with kindness. Living with paranoia is not a healthy or happy way to live. It can destroy your life and in this case lead to death. So sad.
Exactly. Dr Grande speculated that especially one of the sisters displayed symptoms common to conditions like schizoid personality disorder. Seems the other sister really just went along with her, like a folie a deux type situation
Ya im so paranoid I almost never leave the house, I have no friends or social life. Almost all my money goes towards ammo and freeze dried food which I bury underground. Idk im probally being unreasonable but time will tell.
They tow hundreds of cars every year. People leave their cars all the time. You can't blame this on the forest service for towing a car after two months. Even if they hadn't towed the vehicle, it would have been buried under feet of snow.
Once you take the mental illnesses/paranoias of the adults into account, its understable that no preventive measures where taken for the case they needed to leave (phones, car, check-ins, etc) because the adults clearly didn't want to be found. The paranoia wouldn't allow them to. Its heartbreaking to see a child died because of that.
I live on a very popular lake. Last year a family from Chicago were vacationing and rented a pontoon boat. They left the dock and hadnt been out for five minutes when one of the older male passengers decided to jump off the boat and into a lake that is 150 ft deep. They recovered his body the next morning. His family said he didnt know how to swim. He thought the water looked safe. People do dumb things and you sometimes just have to scratch your head.
@@caseyj779 No its not. there is a demographic in society where learning how to swim isnt in their curriculum. There were no able swimmers on the boat.
@@harrycarrey5124 Okay then why were they out in a boat with nobody that can swim? That in and of itself makes no sense. Also boats are required to have life jackets for everyone on board. I know this because I have a boat that I have went out on the water in several states with. It still is very strange to me. Also what demographic is it that we are not teaching how to swim? I would really like to know why we are failing children in that way. Knowing how to swim is very important. It can flood anywhere and even the best swimmers can lose their lives. If someone doesn’t know how to swim at all they will for sure parish if it were to flood. Are our ymcas no longer offering swim classes for kids?
I hate ads that show water in the mountains and say something like 'pure as a mountain stream.' They're anything but. I got seriously ill once in Colorado after drinking from a stream while on a hike. Luckily I was staying in a town and could get to medical care. I can't imagine what these folks were going through out there with no way out. So terrible.
It's way better than stagnant water, but a lot of people think that means it's clean when it isn't. The way I had it told to me by a survivalist type was that you shouldn't be afraid to drink it unsterilized if it's an emergency, not because it's safe, but because dehydration will kill you quicker than giardia and most other diseases will begin to show symptoms. Unless help comes, which it likely will, it will almost certainly just delay the inevitable. It's a hell of a thing
I was told by a guy that lived in colorado that the locals know not to drink the water off the mountain because it was poisonous. ( not from there, I grew up in MI and the rivers here don't come with that warning) I did google it before I posted. I'll copy and paste what it says. " Copper, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, zinc, and lead all occur naturally in the rock of Colorado's mountains; and mining and mineral processing can expose large quantities of them to erosion and runoff, resulting in potential contamination of nearby surface waters." I didn't catch if they were locals or maybe the water purifiers weren't able to handle all of it or not working properly.
Water-borne GI illnesses were a leading cause of death historically, before you could get UV fluids and antibiotics. It used to kill a decent percent of all humans.
Yeah, I live up in the Rockies and them picking Gunnison just really blows my mind precisely because it is known to be very snowy, very low temperatures, and harsh. I have to think they're original plan was to get something started and then leave, but they drank contaminated water and were suddenly too weak to do very much. What really surprises me though, is that the Park Service towed the car without trying to make sure that no one was still camping in the area? I don't want to assume they didn't look, but do we know if they did? Just wondering about what efforts were made on their part to find the owner of the car via VIN or license plate? Anyway, great video and thanks for making it!
Is it possible that even though the roads were plowed there was enough snow in the area that it could have prevented them from hiking down to the car? November seems a little early in the season, but I know in Arizona a lot of camping areas in the high mountains are closed for winter on November 1st because occasionally heavy snows will fall that early.
@@maxwellschneiter Our first winter in the Rockies we got 20 in (50.8 cm) before Halloween, so, yes, most definitely. And I believe Gunnison in particular is very cold & snowy during the winter, which really starts late Sep and goes to sometimes beginning of June, lol
What do you think about there being no animal predation on the corpses? I would think the bones would be scattered and the tent/campsite disturbed, there’s so many little bits and pieces in this story that just don’t add up.
Well, I may, or may not share their distrust of the powers that be, but this was just crazy. It's takes training, experience, and a lot of good gear to survive long term in the wild, especially during winter. You need proper clothing, a good quality cold weather tent, and a good source of food for everyone present. That tent looked like cheap crap that came from Walmart. They make great insulated tents that are made for wood burning furnaces and extreme temperatures. You also need good sleeping bags that are rated for the temperatures your going to be in. Also being a gardener myself, it's not just as simple as digging a hole, throwing in seeds, and a few days later you got delicious veggies. You've got to have proper soil, you've got to take care of the seedlings once they start growing with water and fertilizer and so much more. Theirs no guarantee that vegetables would even grow in that area. This is a tragedy that was completely avoidable and just sad.
@@user-xg3uy6hq9g The truck had been there for a while by the time it was towed. What alarms me is that the park service didn't report it to the police or that the police didn't look into it further. However... had I needed the car, but realized it was towed, I would have probably moved the camp site to the road so I could get help. This assumes that they were still in good health at the time it was towed AND they realized it was towed. (What did the journals state, if anything?)
@@user-xg3uy6hq9g Killing someone via shitty planning is still negligent homicde, especially if you are the guardian and the person is a minor. They could have left a note, told people where they were, had emergency communications, practiced in less harsh climates before going full moron, ect ect. Anyone getting their survival advice off tv, movies, or books without actually practicing it IRL before being in a survival situation is very, very dumb. Sadly youtube and tv have convinced dumb people it's easy because they saw it all happen in a 15 minute video. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligent_homicide
This whole situation is not passing the smell test..something went terrible wrong....they obviously new at some point they couldn't handle the situation..if ur starving and get to the point were u know ur die..why not try to walk out..or leave a note..a journal..follow the rd u drove in back to wherever..either all 3 of them were the stupidest ppl to ever go camping..or they purposely ended their lives..hows there no note...no single fires...im gonna say they planned it..or atleast one of them planned to commit suicide...or maybe they were just very uneducated stupid ppl...maybe Bigfoot would not let them leave..either way its a interesting mystery ❤
Thanks for another well-researced video! If paranoia played a role in their decision to live off-grid, I can imagine them leaving their phones behind intentionally. That could also explain why they hid the details of their plan, even from family members. This is such a sad, cautionary story. I appreciate you taking a respectful look at it.
Apparently the half sister knew what their plans were, and even offered a piece of her own land with a camp trailer on it, to them, but Becky didn’t feel it was isolated enough. So, the half sister knew. She should have reported it just because of them taking the boy with them. So many “should haves”…
You would think that if the forest service seen a abandoned car sitting in the same place for 2 months they would find it suspicious and would alert the authorities. I would have had concerns about the situation
@@Dullahan161 I'm more referring to laws, ordinances, petty businesses and predatory towing companies. I know a guy who got his truck towed because he backed into a parking spot to unload stuff and left his pickup like that over night.
You would think, but people dump stuff in the wilderness all the time, and most park staff are overburdened and underpaid. I sure wish if someone saw my car sitting somewhere for that long that they'd call at least a few rangers to go poke around the vicinity, maybe yell into the trees that they're towing the vehicle to see if anyone came out.
Sick with giardia, a lack of real calories and no experience with cold weather camping, they may have been dead by the early fall when temperatures first dropped. People who have never cold weather camped do not understand how cold it gets and how you cannot escape the cold. The car battery would have been dead by the time it was towed anyway, it would not have helped.
@@AS-qg1xu The inside of a car will reach the same temperature as the outside within an hour unless you have a heat source. There is no insulation, and they're known to be a death trap in cold temps. You are better off crawling under a pile of leaves.
I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, however the lack of education and basic bushcraft skills in these women is frightening. It was as if they had never even camped before in their lives. The biggest issue was not notifying a friend are family to where they were located. Also, I can’t get past the fact that they didn’t trust the government and wanted to “off grid”, so they set up camp on GOVERNMENT land? The most devastating part of this case is the loss of the innocent child. This was child abuse and neglect. He trusted the adults in his life to care for him and keep him safe. Instead he froze and starved to death. The final days of his life were probably horrifying. Then his Mother and his Aunt drug his body out of the tent and left him outside alone. ALONE.
I thought the same thing and wondered if anyone else caught that. She became paranoid regarding the government yet ultimately decided to squat on federal land, only a stone’s throw away from a federally maintained campground where government employees are bound to show up sooner or later. People who truly want to escape society and know what they’re doing would not choose such a location. Tragic that it cost this boy his life.
30:00 No a little boy is dead. A child is dead. The mother deserves all of the blame as does the aunt. They lied to his father, dragged him out there and when he died out there due to THEIR irresponsible and neglectful choices, they dumped him outside the tent like trash. @#$- them. If they were in that bad of an emergency situation they should have set a tree or a power line on fire to bring rescuers to their location. No I think it is important to not let irresponsible and neglectful parents off the hook when their child dies due to their actions. It would have been completely different if this had only been adults in this situation. But it wasn't.
I second that. If we cant blame them then who else. Their negligence killed a 14 year old child in a most brutal way! Then they just dragged him a cpl feet from the tent and kept acting like nut bags. That was a very bad thing of them to do! Maybe you have to be a parent to feel the outrage with their dumb @$$ decisions and this young man speaking hasn't had children yet.
Dr Grande has a good video on this. Yes the child was a victim of delusional, perhaps psychotic, thinking, the true innocent in this scenario. As to the placement of his body, the women were probably dying themselves at this time, I guess that they had not the strength and perhaps cognition left to do much of anything and removing him from the tent was as much as they could do. Hopefully the child is finally at peace.
There’s been a few cases of unprepared hikers dying. First was that family in Northern California that died because of heat stroke. We just had one young woman die here is Southern California- she got the bright idea to hike during a bad storm that brought a few ft. Of snow to our local mountains, so rescue had to wait for 4 days until conditions were clear. They found her over a week later frozen. It’s sad but I hope people learn to bring enough water, don’t go on too hot days or during inclement weather conditions, or in this case to live off grid and not tell anyone where you are.
It is so sad that one sick person caused three lives. Even a life of a poor boy. What hell he had to experience before he died. Very ill, weak, malnourished, with heavy diarrhea... none of that made those two adults look out for a help? :-( Even the auntie did think initially that there is something wrong with her sister. Yet, she decided to follow her instead of stopping her and save the boy. He was failed by both. Sadly, this is not a first case where a few people died after being mentally brainwashed by a mentally unwell individual. The poor boy!!!
If I wanted to live off grid, I would buy I decent camper van with a solar generator to produce power and renewable energy. A tent is insanity. You need to be able to call for help or leave a note explaining you will be back. Sad that she didn't prepare. Especially for the 14 year old.
I wonder what he does for his career? He’s so articulate.,I often try to figure out what he does. He’s super intelligent. I would love to know more about him. Such a great channel!
I am impressed, as always, to see the amount of effort and thought that you put into researching your videos. I also appreciate your non-sensational, dignified and respectful approach to telling these stories. An excellent presentation as always.
Flee the grid is one thing... Live like a severely mentally ill (as in profound chronic and acute delusional psychosis not something like depression anxiety or PTSD) homeless person in the public park land. What these people did is not homesteading.. It was not living off grid. It was living like an insane homeless person. Living off grid means coming in with an RV, travel trailer or other living structure... Alternative would be to come in during warm season and complete build on a home before winter. A home does not mean a tent unless it's a tent complete with wood stove and long term construction, like a yert dwelling basically..... Any sane person buys the land and sets it up .
@@TruthistrashMost of the insane homeless people in my town at least live close to the shelters. Except for one lady. She lived in a small thicket behind a Kroger. I guess she was fine for years, people knew her, but she was harmless and allowed to stay. They found her frozen to death last year. She was right by help.
Wow! From what the campsite looked like, these people werent even prepared for a weekend camping trip, let alone self sustaining "off grid" living.. WTF were they thinking? I find it odd that animals didnt eat these bodies, didnt seem to even touch them.. What a sad situation.😢
I'm so impressed with guy. It seems he's so balanced. Great intentions with making the video, as to educate, inform and guide people about these realities. Also open-minded and unjudgemental. Nice! I live off grid and self sufficient and there's just so many different levels to it. besides different skill sets and equipment, extensive knowledge of flora and fauna, you also need to understand the spesific environment. Proper dwellings are important also.
These people literally crapped themselves to death -expiring from the effects of diarrhea induced dehydration and malnutrition. Giardia was likely passed back and forth by touching contaminated items as it is highly likely person hygiene in such a setting had become lax. Seen too many people decide to live “off grid” with no research about the place they are moving to, or any other basic preparedness end up sick, tired and worn out living a life they put no preparation into. Truth is modern life is the only hedge against natural selection for a lot of people.
Natural selection is the kinda the reason we have modern society if u think about it, we evolved to live in larger tribes with everyone working together.
Better help was called out years ago for not hiring actual therapists or doing background check on their employees. That lead to their employees telling people to delete their irl subscription and homophobic, racist, and sexist hate being directed to patients who specifically requested therapists who were sensitive to these topics. We've known for years they are a scam and they do not deserve a second chance after disappearing for a few years until they felt like enough time had passed for them to slip back in unnoticed. They are a horrifically scummy company to promote.
And there's no evidence of this whatsoever people just make stuff up. Like you litterally can't be homophobic that's not a thing at all you people are afraid and offended by reality.
I made the mistake of going to Better Help as it was the only therapy I could afford (others hung up on me when I even asked for a reference to someone I could afford). Better Help gave me absolute nonsense life advice and inspirational quotes from google with Buddhist images that were downright blaming me for what I'd been through, told me the person 'helping' me was downright dodgy or underqualified at least, then years later the company got called out and it all made sense.
Thank you for making this video. I live in CO and saw a vague article about this in the news and was perplexed why there was not more coverage for it and always wondered what had happened. There was also 2 women who recently went missing in CO natl forests over the summer. Think that is also largely unsolved.
My mom works with the stepmom of the teenager...the family was unaware that they were going off like that. The women were unstable and known for disappearing for extended amounts of time which is why nothing was reported.
I enjoy that you show yourself in your videos for the most part because it lets me know you are not just another Robot Generated site and you are very good and leave no stone unturned . Thank You 🎯
So they arrived in August when that area is stunningly beautiful and may have decided, lets live here. They had lived in Colorado Springs not too far away but the springs gets a lot less snow than the mountains do. So they decided to try out living there in August. The Forest Service kindly let the car stay there either hoping someone would come back for it or having tried to contact the registered owner but got no response of course. Also no missing persons report was filed so at that point it just looks like an abandoned car. They probably did check the trails nearby but found no evidence of hikers in distress. So no reason to look any further. The camp they made was at 10,000 feet of altitude which requires 2-3 liters of water per day per person. That's a lot of water to carry to and fro and filter especially at that altitude. They may have gotten impatient and drank some of the water right out of the creek or stream exposing them to infection. Then there's altitude sickness. Added to dragging yourself out of your tent to go to the bathroom due to stomach sickness and you have a real exhaustion situation, even if you do have enough food, which they didn't. Ironically they were surrounded by pine trees whose bark can be boiled to make a medicinal tea that could have helped them get over the stomach sickness, as long as they didn't continue to drink the unfiltered water. Seems like all 3 were sick at the same time so all were at reduced capacity and just slowly slipped away. Very sad.
This is the first time watching your channel and I really enjoyed it, and especially the end of it the way you’re telling people to be aware of what you watch on, UA-cam, that a lot of these things are edited and omitted. You’re doing a great job.
I have viewed all your episodes, and am continually amazed and appreciative of your journalistic approach. This story is not only sad, but should be a cautionary tale for those considering similar lifestyle choices. Thank you for your well thought approach to this, and all your segments. I am a fan for life!
Insane that the forest service would tow a vehicle without even trying to see if people were camping nearby. They should be charged with negligence or something, because no one who lives in Colorado would underestimate Rocky Mountain winters enough to think that a tent like that would keep them alive through the winter. I can't even fathom the despair they must have felt when the boy died. That huge clump of hair was really freaky though. It practically looked like a whole scalp!
Severe hair loss can be caused by malnutrition and a lot of weight loss. They didn't say who it belonged to. Possibly the boy's hair if they tried to drag him out of the tent by the hair.
Bruh it was a 16 year old Hyundai and it probably looked like a piece of shit lol of course they towed it. Thousands of cars are abandoned every day, they can't go combing every square inch of surrounding area to look for the owner. These 2 women were clearly insane and just plain stupid, so they definitely thought they could live in a tent like that
Very sad case. I can attest to the fact that videos on UA-cam do not show you all the hardships. That was a very good point that I never considered with my own channel. I'm still new in the bushcraft/camping/hiking scene on UA-cam and have not been into for all that long (4 or 5 years). As I learned I made the mistake of thinking things would be easier than they actually are. In the cold weather I especially had some bad nights. I've since learned more, but still could not even imagine trying to survive a winter in those conditions.
As an indigenous Australian I learned how to live off the land from my elders whose knowledge came from their elders in an unbroken line that spans over 60 thousand years and it amazes me that people think they can gain the same knowledge after watching a few UA-cam videos
many people fail to appreciate how indigenous populations literally evolved along with their lands. for example, the genome of Inuits shows specific mutations to aid survival in the bitter cold of the North, that rarely show up in non-Inuits
I feel like there's a huge misconception around "off-grid" living in that it has come to mean "no contact with the rest of the world whatsoever," which made everything much worse in this situation. Everyone who heard about their plans must have subconsciously accepted that "off-grid" meant "contact-free," when that is absolutely not baked into the definition of the term. I also don't feel any surprise whatsoever that the family was from Colorado Springs :( I grew up there and I feel like the amount of fringe movements, political extremists, and genuine cults is a little higher in that city than in other places I've spent any appreciable amount of time in. It can be like a mental wellness desert out there.
My parents have a vegetable garden and I have learned that there’s a time and place when to plant vegetables. Some vegetables don’t mind a late frost, others a late frost would kill them. Carrots can stay in the ground after a frost, but I know from experience that it’s a pain in the neck to get them out of the frozen ground in one piece. Rebecca no doubt overestimated how easy it would be and possibly in her paranoia, didn’t believe that the place was going to be as harsh as it was during the Winter, or, as you suggested, the plan was never to stay for the Winter and when they discovered the car gone they became stranded.
I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to establish a vegetable patch in virgin bushland. The ground would probably be rock hard and filled with roots and the soil would be incredible impoverished. If you could dig up a bit of dirt and bung some seeds in, you might get something to grow, but it wouldn't be abundant, healthy and heavily cropping plants. I guess that, since the police don't appear to have found any attempted garden, that it was an idea that was abandoned as soon as they put spade to soil and found it impossible to dig.
@@carolyns99 very true, we helped spread manure, bone meal and blood meal in new vegetable patches to help the soil be more nutritious and remove rocks and clumps up grass; and this was from fields that had either been pasture or garden patches when my dad was young. One garden area had been a garden almost consistently for over forty years, fifty plus years now, and we were still finding and removing rocks from it. And we had the help of machines to till the ground and not doing it by hand. Gardening is hard work. I would have to double check with my dad, but I believe that he plowed the new plot in the fall the year before so there wasn’t as much grass, and I don’t think he expected much from the new plots either.
Not only that, but most vegetables don't grow in high-altitude Colorado. The ground can be frozen in the mountains for 9 months a year, nights can be frosty even in the summer, the soil is mostly mineral and not organic, and even if you got something to grow, animals would promptly eat it. @@carolyns99
@@carolyns99 It's *very* hard work. An old friend of mine lives semi-off grid in Northern Ontario, and every summer he grows a gorgeous garden around his cabin. But it's not enough for him to live off of; it's more a money saving suppliment, and something he loves to do. And it's a *LOT* of work. The first season he started it, he had to dig up all the land he wanted to use, then bring in extra topsoil and manure, because the area he'd cleared just wasn't the kind of soil that veggies would grow well in. Then came figuring out the best timing and placement for every different crop, and the neverending challenge of keeping the local wildlife from eating his food before he can! It needs constant weeding, watering, and other care. There's been a lot of trial and error. He's also learned a lot from the local tribal elders (of which he just became one!) about traditional ways to keep hungry insects away, and bigger pests, too. But for all the drawbacks, he loves his garden, just like he loves his cabin in the woods and his peaceful life out there.
@@thing_under_the_stairs I certainly get that. I have a corner block which is mostly garden and large amount of that is vegie plots. I have a fenced block, a good climate, good soil and access to heaps of free seaweed to keep it fed - but it's hard work nevertheless. Despite not being in tip top physical health, I keep at it because I love fresh vegies and I want to be able to supplement the dry foods I have stored away should the world go insane (again). But there is no way I could keep us (just hubby and me) fed much above starvation level (if at all) if all we had was the garden to live off. With an established, sheltered, garden and years of experience I still have plenty of failures. It's great that more people are realising the need to start a garden but I fear some UA-cam videos give a very unrealistic idea to beginners. In this case, sadly, it may well have contributed to a tragedy.
Wow, I heard about this case but I never realized the bodycam and pictures of the site with the bodies had been released to the public. Even now after watching the video I googled around and still can't find this footage.
Once I heard that there was ample evidence of canned food and Ramen noodles, my heart sank. Canned food weighs a lot, so there is a limit as to how much can be comfortably packed anywhere. Ramen noodles are great for carbs but have the nutritional value of heavily salted styrofoam. With that kind of diet, and clearly no knowledge about things like filtering water, hunting/fishing skills, even the know-how to just dig a basic, uhm, pit for waste....land just a flimsy nylon tent for shelter.... they just didn't stand a chance. RIP.
I live in Colorado (close to the Springs where they were from), and the weather here is no joke. The dry air can mummify things within days. I live in a home in the country and my neighbors have been stuck in their homes for weeks at a time. This area is not for the faint of heart. Our coldest temp this year was in the negative teens as the HIGH. The wind alone will destroy everything that's not very securly cemented into the ground.
This doesn't look like a bug out camp, even if they weren't well versed in survival even one book on survival would have had enough knowledge to make a proper latrine and shelter, and look at the tree branches not burned for warmth, so I think that they may have been poisoned, but beaver fever would do it along with the cold but I think that it was madness that killed them.
Remember the solo hiker found in pieces with a hamock over all his unpacked stuff? I didnt get a good or bad vibe from the scene pics. This one however i got a bad vibe as soon as i saw first body...its just ominous /dark.All i know is that they suffered it was a bad death
I live off grid. No electricity or water on property. H2O collection is a year long priority along with heating, gardening and farming. They were camping. Totally unprepared. So sad, especially for the child. Fear drive them.
Me and my girlfriend went camping in the great smokies last December, in just a cheap tent, for 4-5 days. We were on a very organized campsite with other people around, and we brought our heaviest clothes and blankets. While it was an amazing time, the nights were miserable. I can’t imagine staying out longer, and I was at such a safe campground and everything with my girlfriend who knows a good amount about this sort of thing. The idea of doing something like this family did is wild. Doing what I did was hard enough, as someone with only a little experience. And the idea of taking a 14 year old? No, forget it. This is an incredibly sad story of people that clearly needed help in some form.
Worst thing about this case is that a kid with his whole life ahead of him got it taken away by a couple of irresponsible and delusional adults abusing their authority. Though I will note, it seems rather callous of the Forest Service to just tow a car that had been there in a remote area for a while. That should be ringing alarm bells that something is in need of investigation, not just be seen as an opportunity to engage in arbitrary and unthinking rules enforcement.
As someone who grew up nearby (and know the coroner and most of the law enforcement officers mentioned personally) its wild to see something this close to home on this channel. That said, I'd honestly be surprised if they were still around in November when the car was towed. Freezing overnight temperatures are common in September and October in that area. Sadly, they are not the first, nor will they be the last, to die in the Gunnison Country because they weren't prepared.
I can guarantee you they had no intention to go back to their car or bring cellphones. Rebeca thought the government was after her and didn’t want to be found. She was stupid and didn’t know what she was doing and got her child killed.
@@eventhorizon7234 The fact that they did not have cellphones with them at the camp. They didn’t just go missing for no reason. And her family said she was paranoid.
Eating canned soup and ravioli at a camp site a few miles from town isn’t off the grid living. That’s dangerous, obviously. The fact that the authorities towed the vehicle without contacting the family or launching a search is nothing short of negligence. The initial investigators didn’t seem to give any thought to scene preservation. He just tromps through the whole scene for no reason. The whole situation was just terrible. Poor kid.
I’d assume the child died during winter and wasn’t bothered because of little animal activity, and the sisters died inside their tent, which probably helped deter any scavengers.
Don't forget to check out BetterHelp! Follow this link betterhelp.com/enigma for 10% off your first month.
Taking a Better help sponsorship is embarrassing
Why? Who cares? If it allows this channel to produce content we can enjoy, does it matter? Easy to be a critic eh...@@camerontolley8597
I love the music you have in your videos
You're gonna lose subscribers - Better Help is a BS scam and people know it!
No UA-camrs with ANY dignity have accepted a sponsorship from them in almost 2 years... just sayin'.
@@LittleBlueOwl318theyre supposedly reformed. Im sure theyve done theirbdue diligence with sponsors. Consider the channel youre watching.
Extremely tragic that the 14 year old was dragged into this.
I'm just so mad at them. Why did they choose there of all places? Why didn't they move to Florida or Mississippi anywhere warm enough to make off the grid living much easier?!! Why didn't the aunt and son just leave the mom out there?
It could legitimately be called child abuse to take an underaged kid into this situation, and why the rest of the family didn't stop that from happening is beyond me. Probably they. just didn't realize that the mom was seriously going to stay out there in the mountains. But she also had no right to take that child out there without telling the truth to his father. If she'd survived, she could have been prosecuted for that.
@jimmyjaime43 lol
@jimmyjaime43they literally starved him to death dummy
I was once a 14 year old boy. I can easily picture the women talking about living off grid and the boy himself being the one happily encouraging them to do so, over and over until they decided to venture out into the wilderness. They might have been talked into it by him, and went because he told them he would "handle things" that came up he was a man!. The women might have decided to go thinking they didn't want to disappoint him. They also had crosses around their necks. They might have trusted God and angels being there for them and make the decisions no matter what. They also probably thought their car would get them out of trouble, too. Then they got sick and quickly lost all their strength. You can be fine when you go to sleep and sick as a dog when you wake up. They then might have just gave up all hope because they knew they'd never make it through the harsh winter.
There's a reason indigenous people and people living sustainably in rural areass of Arica, South America etc virtually *never* do so in isolated couples or small family groups. Its because it is brutally hard work, even on the most productive land. Humans need cooperative, multi-family communities to make it long term.
And the knowledge of how to deal with the harsh conditions, and proper equipment needed. These people seemed to have no real knowledge of all the supplies they would need. Looking at what they brought, seemed like just the most basic stuff you'd take if you were camping normally in the summer for a week. I believe they would've gotten more supplies or tried to leave when winter set in, but they were trapped after the forest service towed their vehicle. Still can't believe they did that! If that's normal protocol they need to make changes so they're not leaving folks trapped to die in the mountains wtf!
Even the Indigenous people, the Ute tribe, migrated to lower elevations in the winter rather than staying in the high San Juans and other mountainous areas. And even with their thousands of years of survival experience, they often faced starvation if the game was poor or they didn't have enough forage stored for a particularly hard winter.
They really had no idea. None of the stuff they had was anything I'd waste time packing into the mountains. They apparently had no knives, no guns, no axe or other tools, no real outdoor clothing, especially winter outdoor clothing and gear, no skis or snowshoes, and no way to signal for help in an emergency. A fishing pole was the only food-gathering tool they had, and there are damn few fish in the creeks and lakes up there in the high country, especially in the winter. And they had no tools to break through the ice to reach what fish there might have been. They had no way to hunt for larger game, and there is precious little forage in the mountains even in the summer.@@krisfinley6706
It's why so many people died early in life in "the good times".
@@PipsqwakIt's a similar story with the Pueblo and other Indigenous peoples in the desert southwest. Even their 'permanent' settlements were regularly abandoned for the season or for years to decades depending on flood and drought conditions. A huge part of sustainable subsistence living is knowing when to fold em and relocate.
Please stop doing ads for Better Help. They have scammed and hurt their users and steal their data.
You're more than welcome to not watch the channel's content. Do that.
Agree 100%. Always saddens me when UA-camrs I like advertise services like that.
I am sure he will stop. Lot of backlash. Nick is class A
@@johnqpublic2718And I am also more than free to bring this up to a creator I have watched for years in hopes of warning him and others. If he continues, I am dipping, but I would like to give a creator I watch a chance to fix this situation.
And you can just as easily not respond to my posts if you don't like my content.
@@fathorse8ikr? It's spreading like the plague all over again. Creators need to vet who they promote to their viewers better.
I live in a big bell tent for 3,5 years now, with solar energy, wood stove & petroleum stove, running water just next to my tent and a new bell tent every 18 months (they deteriorate) and all the comforts just next door. Even then it is a challenge in winter! I live in Europe, with a very moderate climate, so no snow storms, extreme cold and long freezing periods. I absolute love my lifestyle, but what that family did was absolute insane and so ill prepared it could only be a death sentence. So sad for the adults, but for the boy...they abused and hurt an innocent boy to death. Thats criminal.
What is a bell tent?
@@jturtle5318 A dome tent.
I lived with a wood / coal stove as my only heat source in a bunker with no shower and no toilet for 6 years. Wood is the most expensive heat source there is when you consider all the work involved, and I say that even after accounting for the fact that I got all my wood for free. So when I bought this house in 2011, with a kitchen, bathroom, and gas heat, I felt like a king. I know I could survive living off-grid, but I wouldn't do it willingly.
Almost forgot, I've experienced winters where it got down to -20C here in eastern Germany.
There are parts of Europe with snow storms and such,
Are you in the Mediterranean?
I've never seen a campsite that was so ill-prepared. They didn't have a camp stove or anything. That one little tiny tent for all of them? No food or anything? What were they thinking? What a miserable way to go. That poor kid.
They had lost their jobs and were probably poor.
They were probably thinking they didn't have any money and the line for Section 8 housing can be over 2 and a half years long.
@AS-qg1xu exactly. I highly doubt this was something they wanted to be doing. They ended up there without any necessary supplies because they didn't have enough money. They're not alone. Have you seen LA, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco? Tent cities for miles. And your tent neighbors aren't exactly the most safe ppl.
@Janellabelle That's not even remotely correct because they quit their jobs. They lived in a very nice apartment building with a heated pool and we're paid up for the next year...Rebecca WANTED to do this. They were offered a place of their own "off the grid" with an RV and declined.
@@docholliday6thank you. That person is in the comments section ranting about section 8 and clearly didn’t even watch the video and knows nothing about the case. I replied to another one of her comments but I’m glad you gave some solid facts. I knew they quit their jobs willingly and had an opportunity to live on private land with a camper. I didn’t know they were paid up for the next year - overall nothing points to this being poverty driven.
Their mistake was thinking they were living off grid. All they were doing is camping off the grid.
And not even camping very well. The stuff they had with them was packed like teenagers would pack to go to a sleepover or something. Totally useless for survival.
It seems like they'd never even camped before, ever. There's some basic camping rules they missed, let alone more advanced things. Just absolute insanity.
They were in a worse position than the average homeless person. There is a reason homeless people live in cities and not mountains!
Exactly. Especially in this area, you need a LOT to survive off the land. I've been homesteading in the area for multiple years now and with all my hard work I'm nowhere close to being self sufficient. And I have a house. That can't be blown over in our crazy winds here, though it's sure been tested.
Exactly, they should have bought their own land and did it in stages. It’s just dumb to go to national forest land and plop a tent down.
How can you expect to survive off grid if you don't have any kind of permanent structure to use for shelter? This was an "accident" waiting to happen.
The only saw I noticed on site was a hacksaw near the lean-to. I cannot imagine the amount of energy needed to cut all that wood for the structure with a hacksaw. If that is the case an assumption can be made that the 14 year old did the work and it appears he was the first to pass on.
They had toilet paper, and top ramen, lol😂
Not trying to make light of this tragedy, its just comical how all they seemed to have in their "homestead" was a tent, a crappy blanket, canned food/top ramen, and toilet paper. This was so preventable.😢
@@sanniwartinen3595 Absolutely! They were clearly not prepared to move off grid. Dumb mistake that unfortunately cost them their lives and that of their son/nephew. The adult women should’ve known better than to be so reckless.
@@elonever.2.071 I saw that too! They were using a saw for metal to cut wood. Must've taken forever to cut that. They obviously had zero knowledge about a lot of things besides outdoor survival skills. Just the fact that they left their car in the parking lot far away, had no weapons, no cell phones, like, what the hell were these people thinking? Looks like they watched too many episodes of Grizzly Adams, and if a bear showed up, they'd probably try to pet it.
bad timing for this, I mean no disrespect to those that passed but I've said for years that tents are body bags for city folk , maybe I been up a holler to long but I'm fine with that
Can’t fathom taking a child into a situation like that.
These people can't get through a city park but because of social media think they can live "with nature" off grid. No survival skills, never been in nature. They get a rude awakening about the cruelty of Mother Nature.
Common sense is rare
They probably thought they where saving the child from the evil society
@@KittyKat-vb1ndit seems common sense isn't so common after all.
I can see the appeal of living off-grid - but in a building or houseboat, with solar panels and/or wind turbine, and a reliable source of food and clean water. But life as a permanent camping vacation? This family's inadequate supplies and equipment, and the chaos of their campsite, screams 'mental illness' to me.
Yes it wasn't very bright. And the fact they dragged a kid with them. That really angers me.
Yeah, screams neglect and mental illness by the parents. Poor kid was just a victim of their parents
Yes depression and paranoia
Obviously these people didn't have any idea of what they were getting themselves into. Just the fact that they hadn't even constructed a latrine tells me that they were woefully unprepared to survive for any amount of time
She had fallen for right wing conspiracy theories and probably already had mental health issues
We go camping a lot and that lean-to is exactly the type of thing my kids would build. I can picture the 14 year old building that to have his own space and privacy and keep himself occupied, all full of gung ho to begin with. Only to have something go terribly wrong. So sad.
This was a sad one. I feel for the kid big time. What a horrible way to go.
Right!? 😮 The poor kid.
@@culturebreath369 I know! Why didn't the aunt and son just leave the crazy mom?!? Maybe they thought she would die? Why did the women continue to stay out there once the boy was dead?!!??
no car long walk@@WhitneyDahlin
Too weak and sick by the time the boy died, and possibly too cold and the snow too deep for them too walk anywhere.@@markgelk
The snow could have been 4 feet deep. How long would you last hiking miles and miles on foot, on a deserted mountain? They were dead either way@@WhitneyDahlin
Mental disorder is devastating in isolation. That poor child - 14 years old. Child abuse. I have a 14 year old son. This is grievous and inspires pure, incandescent rage in my soul. No one knew they were planning to do this? That they were not capable or equipped mentally, physically or emotionally?? It’s obvious just looking at the photos of the adult women they were nowhere near fit enough or had any idea what it would entail to survive like this. They don’t even appear to be weekend warriors hiking as a pastime or even RV glamping. Yet, they expected to survive the winter in a tent in remote wilderness without adequate supplies??? They just disappeared without ANYONE knowing or checking on them or calling a welfare check in dead of winter? How could they possibly think they could survive this way?
On top of that, in one of the coldest spots in the country in winter.
I know! My thoughts exactly …
Entitlement and the attitude of "It couldn't possibly happen to me". Everyone's the hero of their own story after all until they're not.
Perhaps they did realize they could die and went ahead with it.
And choosing a cold location with horrible winters.
They got sick. There are many bacterial infections that will cause "hypovolimic shock." In a 6 hour time span, you will lose all the water from your body. It's super fast. You must have fluid in your body. If you don't, your heart can't pump, your kidneys can't function, your blood pressure goes down to the 40 range, and you die. It would explain mummified bodies. It would be very unusual for this to be food born illness. It comes from water, or an unknown virus, which is not bacteria. I almost died from it. Living in San Jose, California. Not camping, or living off grid. I just got sick one evening. Vomiting at first, but by 2am I was crawling to the bathroom for the 6th time, with clear water coming out of my butt. I was being mummified while alive. I crawled to the phone and got to emergency room. They stuffed 3 IV bags into me in 5 hours. My blood volume was was gone. I had very little pressure for my organs to function. They thought it was virus? Arsenic poisoning does exactly this. Anyway, it was never determined. There are areas in the Tahoe area off of Highway 50 where you can't use the water in winter. Not even to brush your teeth. You can't use the water.
They left civilization due to misinformation over a virus, only to die by another one. Poetic justice. Except that poor, poor boy. Absolutely wicked what those witches did to him.
Edit: I just read the second half of your post. I'm so sorry you went through that and glad you're ok now. Sounds absolutely terrifying!
@@Youser999They we’re more ignorant than wicked.
@@Youser999 Where's the justice? You're talking out of your ass.
I don't feel the need to see any justice in this tragic death. They made the mistake of drinking water from a possible vector source. Or they ate an animal that had been poisoned with arsenic. I am so very sorry this happened. It is quick. Not super painful. By the fifth hour, you are half dead. It is that fast. So, you all need to remember stuff and keep it in your survival cap, even if you are home in a city. ❤️
Had the same thing happen to me in a hotel travelling. I was on the floor and accepted death. It was brutal but pain eventually becomes normal so it's almost euphoric.
I managed to get out a phone call and got to the hospital
The fact feces was found around the place is an indication they were very ill. The fact only a small tent was there looks like they didnt mean to stay the winter. Its so sad - especially the 14yr old. 😢
I think they got that beaver fever, of they were starving they would have finished the food, I think they got too sick.
@@OligosFew shitting yourself to death alone in the woods, not on my bucket list guys, I think I'll leave the off the grid stuff for other people
no it isnt. grow up.
@@keastymatthew2407
Psychopath at least they show empathy
@@kofi-kun6420 😆😆
If it's accurate that the boy died first and was moved out of the tent, I could also imagine the women committing themselves to exile. If they did plan to return at any point, how do you go back to your waiting family after that? How do you get back in your car, drive to your waiting loved ones, and tell them their beloved 14 year old son/brother/sibling/nephew/friend died in the woods and he's either left out there, or in the boot of the car?
If it were me, I don't know if I could do that. So if he did die first, their plans (if they had any) might have drastically changed.
You are spot on I think. But I also think they could have been worried about criminal charges. I’m not sure if any would or could have been brought, but since he was a child, I wonder if a child neglect resulting in death charge would have been brought against the mother if the mother and her sister had went back to civilization.
Yeah, it sounds like a situation that started off bad enough and spiraled quickly. Whatever delusions drove them to do this, we'll never really know but if they planned to leave before winter, can you imagine the enormity of discovering their way out was gone? Camping in the most temperate weather/area would still have been a challenge with their lack of supplies. They probably crawled to make it back to that car and get out. They more than likely knew they were dead as soon as they turned around to go back to the campsite. Brutal.
Agreed. If my son died, I would want to die too. So sad.
It's so cruel that their car was towed away.
You're thinking to deep about this, if they were able to just pack up and leave they never would've waited for the kid to die in the first place. Also these people are mentally ill and didn't think twice about dragging this kid into their horrible situation, I doubt they'd suddenly be overly worried with what others would think of them
I bet they thought they could hunt and grow their food and make a nice shelter. Then they realized it was hard. They didn’t clean their water and they got sick. No car with chronic diarrhea equals dehydration, add hypothermia and dead.
Dont let situations like this occur with children ppl. If someone is being sketchy, as these women were, and there is a child involved, report it to someone. Even if a child is with their parent it doesnt make it ok for them to disappear. Especially if their parent is the kind to think the world is ending to the extent they should flee the grid. All the ppl who witnessed the decline of these women, and just let then wander off with that boy smh.
Both parents were 100% culpable in their son's tragic, agonising, and totally preventable death. It takes two people to create another human being, a woman and a man.
If you are one of two people who brought a child into this world, your most important duty is to keep that miniature human being happy, healthy and ALIVE, at the very least, to the age of 18. This poor little boy was failed by both his mother and his father.
At least his mother had mental illness as some small measure of an excuse. Why was his Dad playing such a small role in his life? Boys especially really need a loving father's love, support and guidance when they reach their teens.
@@glamdolly30 pure speculation, but the family courts are most often very slanted towards mothers. I wouldnt be surprised if that father was denied access, even with the mother being ill. I got lucky, and my ex didnt put up a fight. Otherwise my kids wouldve been trapped with their abuser. Also a possibility that he was just a piece of shit, or mental himself. Gotta ask what kinda guy gets involved with such a mentally ill female.
Honest question, in a circumstance like this what good would that do? I doubt a child would be removed from a parent because someone reported that they were planning to live off grid. Especially if they were only planning on being out there for a couple months and then returning for the winter. It sounds like this case was a combination of a lot of factors that came together tragically but it’s hard to place sole blame on any one thing or person.
@@jotun.616 WOAH - Easy there! Lots of speculation in your post - we simply do not know details of the parental history here.
As I'm sure you're aware, it is statistically, many times more likely than the father was abusive to her/his offspring, than vice versa. The fact that she, not he, had custody, supports that theory.
I'm of the view that both parents should take equal responsibility for the children they conceive together. If that were the case here, the mother could not have taken the reckless, unilateral decisions she did, which directly led to the death of their teen son.
Again, we're in the dark about this family. I would however 100% condemn the decision to tow away a car parked in a remote area without cellphone service, particularly with Winter approaching. As @TheMissingEnigma said, removing that vehicle amounted to a death sentence for three people. I sincerely hope lessons are learned.
Looks like they were trying to make a somelike hobbithouse?
I really appreciate your old school vibe and how you take us way beyond the headlines.
This is how real media used to be.
Seriously! Now it’s just activists pretending to be journalists. And they always put their own opinions and seem to cover and lie or “bend” the truth or purposely leave things out. It’s sad. Especially for big issues we have 😢 sad
He reminds me of an extra on a cowboy movie from the 1950's
@@sicooper4230oh absolutely! He's just got such an inviting and warm vibe
He’s certainly a breath of fresh air from the click bait douch bags of UA-cam who sensationalize everything. Channels like his are what makes UA-cam great
@@AS-qg1xu I didn't realize that. What did he leave out?
Feel sorry for the boy ,, bless him
How can anyone believe you can live in a tent in winter climate without experience and proper gear? Doing something like this in a remote place would be tough even with the proper preparation and gear, living like this even in summer with this little stuff would be risky. It must have been a real nightmare.
which make me wonder had they planned to leave before the snow?
My understanding is Rebecca had developed paranoia and conspiracy ideas .
She was the dominant one and wanted to go off grid. She believed watching UA-cam videos about survival would sustain them.
Very ignorant and ill prepared.
Because the adults here were severely insane and stupid (both).... Flee the grid is one thing... Live like a severely mentally ill (as in profound chronic and acute delusional psychosis not something like depression anxiety or PTSD) homeless person in the public park land. What these people did is not homesteading.. It was not living off grid. It was living like an insane homeless person. Living off grid means coming in with an RV, travel trailer or other living structure... Alternative would be to come in during warm season and complete build on a home before winter. A home does not mean a tent unless it's a tent complete with wood stove and long term construction, like a yert dwelling basically.....
Anti Vax nutnobs
There seems to have been some mental illness in the mix. And I have even seen YT comments where the person thinks that if they know a few plant names, watch survival videos and made a stick lean-to once, that means they can “live off the land.”
In the pandemic and unemployed, they may have come to legitimately try to live off grid, or thinking they could make “I built an off-grid shelter” videos themselves and get money that way.
I forgot about that family. My mom lives in Colorado Springs and I live just north of Santa Fe, NM. While I have gone camping off and on for most of my life, and I have recently been watching bushcrafting videos, I know that as a 57 year old woman with diabetes that it's not something I could do, especially during the winter time. You're right that they were ill prepared for their new life, and it's a sad tragedy for their loved ones. Thanks for giving us the information.
This is bugging me. I'm thinking they didn't even make it to winter. Mountains can easily be in the 20's at night in the summer. The placement of everything seemed like they hadn't been fighting deep snow/drifts. The clothing certainly seemed more cold summer than winter. It wasn't even great for that. Not sure how the tent stayed up. I'm a little confused that animals didn't scatter them. I REALLY THINK the authorities need to run plates on all towed vehicles and follow up with families. It could have been stolen or indicated lost hikers.
the tent wouldn't have made it through the winter without someone knocking the snow off it. so they probably made it through most of winter, the last heavy snow at least, which could be as late as May in the area.
If someone was alive was alive deeper into the winter, that might explain the lack of animals, especially if the area smelled bad from whatever disease they had
they were so thin when they died and in their photos they were overweight. i truly wonder how long it would take to become that thin.
I live in Colorado. I have been to Gunnison and have a family member who attended Western University. Gunnison is known for ridiculously cold winters and getting snow fall that is absolutely absurd. But the summers are lovely as it sits in valley at a lower elevation than the mountains that surround it. It's unfortunate about this family and horribly sad. I've felt how cold it is up there and seen the snow. It's no joke.
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve lived in co my entire life and Gunnison can be a brutal place to stay at during winter.
They were relying on a Hyundai to get out with the snow?? They should have hiked out.
My bf almost got snowed into a canyon in Colorado. He was about seven miles from his car when the weather started to turn. He said that by the time he got back to his car, there was a foot of snow on the ground, and when he woke up the next day at his moms house, it was about eight feet deep. And the place he hiked into was REMOTE… he said he was barely able to find the main road and drive back to the highway.
My grandson's name is Gunnison! It is a beautiful area!
My family and me camped at the Gild Creek Campground in early 2000. There was snow still on the ground in june bears gad marked all the trees around the campsite we picked. I told my 7 year old that Snipes scratched the trees and they were afraid if humans. It was her last camping trip. Her name is Misty Vail btw. My husband loved the Colorado mountains.
Even the campground is extreme and remote. It is not unheard of in Colorado to see snowfall in July in the mountains.
This is not living "off grid" - this is dying out in the open
What a pointless tragedy
This seems more like mental illness, stoked by the right wing conspiracy nonsense around the COVID pandemic. There seems to have been an attempt to try “off grid” living, but was woefully inadequate.
The mom had become paranoid and fallen for extreme right conspiracies.
She needed mental health help
@@organicmagic8822you’re right if they hadn’t stolen the 2020 election this never would have happened
This is the first video of yours that I've watched. I'm impressed. You speak clearly and are empathetic to the people in the story. Thank you for telling their story so kindly. As sad as this story is, watching your video about it was a delight. Keep up the good work.
Why didn't the Forest Service report the abandoned car to the police? An abandoned car in a remote area like that that's sat for 2 months should have had them concerned about a possible missing person. Hmmm 🤔
Maybe they did? They weren’t reported as missing & they didn’t have phones.
I'll bet they knew who's car it was and had it removed without telling the people, leaving them to perish in the cold. Typical authority's.
@@cosmicdebris42What a ridiculous thing to say. What possible evidence could you have for this? Think before you speak.
touch a nerve? Heed the Baa?@@cowboydan507
@@cowboydan507its not beyond the realm of possibility. authorities have been shown to do much worse.
Paranoia is an underrated and very dangerous mental disorder. Anyone feeling this way should seek help and I say that with kindness. Living with paranoia is not a healthy or happy way to live. It can destroy your life and in this case lead to death. So sad.
Exactly. Dr Grande speculated that especially one of the sisters displayed symptoms common to conditions like schizoid personality disorder. Seems the other sister really just went along with her, like a folie a deux type situation
Ya im so paranoid I almost never leave the house, I have no friends or social life. Almost all my money goes towards ammo and freeze dried food which I bury underground. Idk im probally being unreasonable but time will tell.
@@cascadianrangers728 being self-aware is the first step, hopefully you have a shelter and you're not in the woods in a tent in the winter in Colorado
No one with paranoia is going to seek help. Loved ones have to intervene
I'm 39. Looking back it's plagued me my whole life. I'm working on it now but wish it hadn't taken so long.
Towing the car without even considering that someone could be out there injured or missing? that seems very negligent.
Ever met pigs?
Agreed
Yeah, seems like a pretty huge oversight.. whole story is ridiculous tbh.. what a waste
They tow hundreds of cars every year. People leave their cars all the time. You can't blame this on the forest service for towing a car after two months. Even if they hadn't towed the vehicle, it would have been buried under feet of snow.
Yes, it’s all the government’s fault…
Once you take the mental illnesses/paranoias of the adults into account, its understable that no preventive measures where taken for the case they needed to leave (phones, car, check-ins, etc) because the adults clearly didn't want to be found. The paranoia wouldn't allow them to.
Its heartbreaking to see a child died because of that.
I live on a very popular lake. Last year a family from Chicago were vacationing and rented a pontoon boat. They left the dock and hadnt been out for five minutes when one of the older male passengers decided to jump off the boat and into a lake that is 150 ft deep. They recovered his body the next morning. His family said he didnt know how to swim. He thought the water looked safe. People do dumb things and you sometimes just have to scratch your head.
How can water look safe if you can't swim?
No family members that knew he couldn’t swim jumped in to save him? That is weird.
@@caseyj779 No its not. there is a demographic in society where learning how to swim isnt in their curriculum. There were no able swimmers on the boat.
@@harrycarrey5124 Okay then why were they out in a boat with nobody that can swim? That in and of itself makes no sense. Also boats are required to have life jackets for everyone on board. I know this because I have a boat that I have went out on the water in several states with. It still is very strange to me. Also what demographic is it that we are not teaching how to swim? I would really like to know why we are failing children in that way. Knowing how to swim is very important. It can flood anywhere and even the best swimmers can lose their lives. If someone doesn’t know how to swim at all they will for sure parish if it were to flood. Are our ymcas no longer offering swim classes for kids?
As a kid, I never really learned how to swim well and almost drowned once. I still never thought any water "looked safe" tho.
I hate ads that show water in the mountains and say something like 'pure as a mountain stream.' They're anything but. I got seriously ill once in Colorado after drinking from a stream while on a hike. Luckily I was staying in a town and could get to medical care. I can't imagine what these folks were going through out there with no way out. So terrible.
It's way better than stagnant water, but a lot of people think that means it's clean when it isn't. The way I had it told to me by a survivalist type was that you shouldn't be afraid to drink it unsterilized if it's an emergency, not because it's safe, but because dehydration will kill you quicker than giardia and most other diseases will begin to show symptoms. Unless help comes, which it likely will, it will almost certainly just delay the inevitable. It's a hell of a thing
Damned (maybe) if you do, but definitely damned if you don't.
@@saudade7842
I was told by a guy that lived in colorado that the locals know not to drink the water off the mountain because it was poisonous. ( not from there, I grew up in MI and the rivers here don't come with that warning) I did google it before I posted. I'll copy and paste what it says. " Copper, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, zinc, and lead all occur naturally in the rock of Colorado's mountains; and mining and mineral processing can expose large quantities of them to erosion and runoff, resulting in potential contamination of nearby surface waters."
I didn't catch if they were locals or maybe the water purifiers weren't able to handle all of it or not working properly.
Water-borne GI illnesses were a leading cause of death historically, before you could get UV fluids and antibiotics. It used to kill a decent percent of all humans.
Yeah, I live up in the Rockies and them picking Gunnison just really blows my mind precisely because it is known to be very snowy, very low temperatures, and harsh. I have to think they're original plan was to get something started and then leave, but they drank contaminated water and were suddenly too weak to do very much. What really surprises me though, is that the Park Service towed the car without trying to make sure that no one was still camping in the area? I don't want to assume they didn't look, but do we know if they did? Just wondering about what efforts were made on their part to find the owner of the car via VIN or license plate? Anyway, great video and thanks for making it!
Is it possible that even though the roads were plowed there was enough snow in the area that it could have prevented them from hiking down to the car? November seems a little early in the season, but I know in Arizona a lot of camping areas in the high mountains are closed for winter on November 1st because occasionally heavy snows will fall that early.
@@maxwellschneiter Our first winter in the Rockies we got 20 in (50.8 cm) before Halloween, so, yes, most definitely. And I believe Gunnison in particular is very cold & snowy during the winter, which really starts late Sep and goes to sometimes beginning of June, lol
Pretty sure it's just a case of two women being stupid and getting a child caught up in their idiocy.
I think any of us who have ever lived in the Colorado mountains immediately said WTF at the location of their campsite.
What do you think about there being no animal predation on the corpses? I would think the bones would be scattered and the tent/campsite disturbed, there’s so many little bits and pieces in this story that just don’t add up.
Well, I may, or may not share their distrust of the powers that be, but this was just crazy. It's takes training, experience, and a lot of good gear to survive long term in the wild, especially during winter. You need proper clothing, a good quality cold weather tent, and a good source of food for everyone present. That tent looked like cheap crap that came from Walmart. They make great insulated tents that are made for wood burning furnaces and extreme temperatures. You also need good sleeping bags that are rated for the temperatures your going to be in. Also being a gardener myself, it's not just as simple as digging a hole, throwing in seeds, and a few days later you got delicious veggies. You've got to have proper soil, you've got to take care of the seedlings once they start growing with water and fertilizer and so much more. Theirs no guarantee that vegetables would even grow in that area. This is a tragedy that was completely avoidable and just sad.
Either way low intelligence or paranoid schizophrenic.
She was a nutcase. They never stood a chance.
I have magic beans and grew a beanstalk, im off to live in the clouds ⛅️ ✨️
I don’t understand how they thought they could just live off grid with no source of food and a little tent? This case saddens me!
I think there was some mental illness involved.
They brought vegetable seeds. So sad.
This kid was starved to death. This was not just an 'accident', this was a CRIME.
and supose they were just setting up camp and had their car towed?
@@user-xg3uy6hq9g
The truck had been there for a while by the time it was towed. What alarms me is that the park service didn't report it to the police or that the police didn't look into it further.
However... had I needed the car, but realized it was towed, I would have probably moved the camp site to the road so I could get help. This assumes that they were still in good health at the time it was towed AND they realized it was towed. (What did the journals state, if anything?)
@@user-xg3uy6hq9g Killing someone via shitty planning is still negligent homicde, especially if you are the guardian and the person is a minor. They could have left a note, told people where they were, had emergency communications, practiced in less harsh climates before going full moron, ect ect. Anyone getting their survival advice off tv, movies, or books without actually practicing it IRL before being in a survival situation is very, very dumb. Sadly youtube and tv have convinced dumb people it's easy because they saw it all happen in a 15 minute video.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligent_homicide
This whole situation is not passing the smell test..something went terrible wrong....they obviously new at some point they couldn't handle the situation..if ur starving and get to the point were u know ur die..why not try to walk out..or leave a note..a journal..follow the rd u drove in back to wherever..either all 3 of them were the stupidest ppl to ever go camping..or they purposely ended their lives..hows there no note...no single fires...im gonna say they planned it..or atleast one of them planned to commit suicide...or maybe they were just very uneducated stupid ppl...maybe Bigfoot would not let them leave..either way its a interesting mystery ❤
Well nobody to face charge's,no wonder someone may run for the hills or off grid
Thanks for another well-researced video!
If paranoia played a role in their decision to live off-grid, I can imagine them leaving their phones behind intentionally. That could also explain why they hid the details of their plan, even from family members.
This is such a sad, cautionary story. I appreciate you taking a respectful look at it.
Apparently the half sister knew what their plans were, and even offered a piece of her own land with a camp trailer on it, to them, but Becky didn’t feel it was isolated enough. So, the half sister knew. She should have reported it just because of them taking the boy with them. So many “should haves”…
You would think that if the forest service seen a abandoned car sitting in the same place for 2 months they would find it suspicious and would alert the authorities. I would have had concerns about the situation
I'm not surprised in tow-happy America. And not surprised they just shrugged and never gave it another thought.
@@scockery"tow happy America" sounds like someone's past due on their car payment
@@Dullahan161 I'm more referring to laws, ordinances, petty businesses and predatory towing companies. I know a guy who got his truck towed because he backed into a parking spot to unload stuff and left his pickup like that over night.
You would think, but people dump stuff in the wilderness all the time, and most park staff are overburdened and underpaid. I sure wish if someone saw my car sitting somewhere for that long that they'd call at least a few rangers to go poke around the vicinity, maybe yell into the trees that they're towing the vehicle to see if anyone came out.
🤣@@Dullahan161
What an incredibly sad video. I wish there was an emergency phone at least near the car area to call for help. RIP to all three people.
Sick with giardia, a lack of real calories and no experience with cold weather camping, they may have been dead by the early fall when temperatures first dropped. People who have never cold weather camped do not understand how cold it gets and how you cannot escape the cold.
The car battery would have been dead by the time it was towed anyway, it would not have helped.
But the car could have proved shelter, even it's battery was dead.
@@AS-qg1xu The inside of a car will reach the same temperature as the outside within an hour unless you have a heat source. There is no insulation, and they're known to be a death trap in cold temps. You are better off crawling under a pile of leaves.
@@jaybirdtapsnracks3460 thank you. I didn't know this.
I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, however the lack of education and basic bushcraft skills in these women is frightening. It was as if they had never even camped before in their lives. The biggest issue was not notifying a friend are family to where they were located. Also, I can’t get past the fact that they didn’t trust the government and wanted to “off grid”, so they set up camp on GOVERNMENT land?
The most devastating part of this case is the loss of the innocent child. This was child abuse and neglect. He trusted the adults in his life to care for him and keep him safe. Instead he froze and starved to death. The final days of his life were probably horrifying. Then his Mother and his Aunt drug his body out of the tent and left him outside alone. ALONE.
Bingo!
I also find it extremely sad that his body was left like that, outside of the tent. Not even any evidence of a ceremonial effort.
Do you remember 2020-2022? It was a gubbbamantSh1t storm.
I thought the same thing and wondered if anyone else caught that. She became paranoid regarding the government yet ultimately decided to squat on federal land, only a stone’s throw away from a federally maintained campground where government employees are bound to show up sooner or later. People who truly want to escape society and know what they’re doing would not choose such a location. Tragic that it cost this boy his life.
30:00 No a little boy is dead. A child is dead. The mother deserves all of the blame as does the aunt. They lied to his father, dragged him out there and when he died out there due to THEIR irresponsible and neglectful choices, they dumped him outside the tent like trash. @#$- them. If they were in that bad of an emergency situation they should have set a tree or a power line on fire to bring rescuers to their location. No I think it is important to not let irresponsible and neglectful parents off the hook when their child dies due to their actions. It would have been completely different if this had only been adults in this situation. But it wasn't.
I second that. If we cant blame them then who else. Their negligence killed a 14 year old child in a most brutal way! Then they just dragged him a cpl feet from the tent and kept acting like nut bags. That was a very bad thing of them to do! Maybe you have to be a parent to feel the outrage with their dumb @$$ decisions and this young man speaking hasn't had children yet.
Dr Grande has a good video on this. Yes the child was a victim of delusional, perhaps psychotic, thinking, the true innocent in this scenario.
As to the placement of his body, the women were probably dying themselves at this time, I guess that they had not the strength and perhaps cognition left to do much of anything and removing him from the tent was as much as they could do. Hopefully the child is finally at peace.
I Agree with you. That it wasn't done on purpose. It's a sad story
I agree.
I agree.
There’s been a few cases of unprepared hikers dying. First was that family in Northern California that died because of heat stroke. We just had one young woman die here is Southern California- she got the bright idea to hike during a bad storm that brought a few ft. Of snow to our local mountains, so rescue had to wait for 4 days until conditions were clear. They found her over a week later frozen. It’s sad but I hope people learn to bring enough water, don’t go on too hot days or during inclement weather conditions, or in this case to live off grid and not tell anyone where you are.
Well written and well delivered sir. I have been waiting for comprehensive coverage of this strange and haunting story.
It is so sad that one sick person caused three lives. Even a life of a poor boy. What hell he had to experience before he died. Very ill, weak, malnourished, with heavy diarrhea... none of that made those two adults look out for a help? :-( Even the auntie did think initially that there is something wrong with her sister. Yet, she decided to follow her instead of stopping her and save the boy. He was failed by both. Sadly, this is not a first case where a few people died after being mentally brainwashed by a mentally unwell individual. The poor boy!!!
If I wanted to live off grid, I would buy I decent camper van with a solar generator to produce power and renewable energy. A tent is insanity. You need to be able to call for help or leave a note explaining you will be back. Sad that she didn't prepare. Especially for the 14 year old.
👍
What an amazing amount of evidence you put into every story it is like a detective level of research. Well done
I wonder what he does for his career? He’s so articulate.,I often try to figure out what he does. He’s super intelligent. I would love to know more about him. Such a great channel!
It’s always a good time to watch The Missing Enigma. Keep up the great work man, take care and have a great weekend!
I am impressed, as always, to see the amount of effort and thought that you put into researching your videos. I also appreciate your non-sensational, dignified and respectful approach to telling these stories. An excellent presentation as always.
Well done. This is one of my favorite channels.
They sold all their possessions and couldnt buy better equipment and more food? Like wtf?
And they barrowed $500 From their father for supplies.. 🤷
Plus they stole stuff from relatives. The adults were absolute numbskulls.
Flee the grid is one thing... Live like a severely mentally ill (as in profound chronic and acute delusional psychosis not something like depression anxiety or PTSD) homeless person in the public park land. What these people did is not homesteading.. It was not living off grid. It was living like an insane homeless person. Living off grid means coming in with an RV, travel trailer or other living structure... Alternative would be to come in during warm season and complete build on a home before winter. A home does not mean a tent unless it's a tent complete with wood stove and long term construction, like a yert dwelling basically..... Any sane person buys the land and sets it up .
@@TruthistrashMost of the insane homeless people in my town at least live close to the shelters. Except for one lady. She lived in a small thicket behind a Kroger. I guess she was fine for years, people knew her, but she was harmless and allowed to stay. They found her frozen to death last year. She was right by help.
@@rosesweetcharlotte she probably had little she wanted to live for
Wow! From what the campsite looked like, these people werent even prepared for a weekend camping trip, let alone self sustaining "off grid" living..
WTF were they thinking?
I find it odd that animals didnt eat these bodies, didnt seem to even touch them.. What a sad situation.😢
This reminded me of the Chris McCandless case with the lack of communication and no good exit strategy Sad!
9:53 is it just me or is the cops’ silence making it significantly more eerie?
Poor dude had to investigate such a sad site. I wouldn't be saying much either. It does make the video more eery
He was taking a record. Theres probably alot he was thinking.
I'm so impressed with guy. It seems he's so balanced. Great intentions with making the video, as to educate, inform and guide people about these realities. Also open-minded and unjudgemental. Nice! I live off grid and self sufficient and there's just so many different levels to it. besides different skill sets and equipment, extensive knowledge of flora and fauna, you also need to understand the spesific environment. Proper dwellings are important also.
These people literally crapped themselves to death -expiring from the effects of diarrhea induced dehydration and malnutrition. Giardia was likely passed back and forth by touching contaminated items as it is highly likely person hygiene in such a setting had become lax. Seen too many people decide to live “off grid” with no research about the place they are moving to, or any other basic preparedness end up sick, tired and worn out living a life they put no preparation into. Truth is modern life is the only hedge against natural selection for a lot of people.
😶 your last sentence reminds me of ‘industrial society and its future’
Natural selection is the kinda the reason we have modern society if u think about it, we evolved to live in larger tribes with everyone working together.
Better help was called out years ago for not hiring actual therapists or doing background check on their employees. That lead to their employees telling people to delete their irl subscription and homophobic, racist, and sexist hate being directed to patients who specifically requested therapists who were sensitive to these topics. We've known for years they are a scam and they do not deserve a second chance after disappearing for a few years until they felt like enough time had passed for them to slip back in unnoticed. They are a horrifically scummy company to promote.
It's gotten to the point where UA-cam channels - even the big ones - are losing subscribers when they stump for Better Help. Idk why they still do it.
I doubt they don't know. They want to get paid and they think their subscriber count can take the hit
Nah
And there's no evidence of this whatsoever people just make stuff up. Like you litterally can't be homophobic that's not a thing at all you people are afraid and offended by reality.
I made the mistake of going to Better Help as it was the only therapy I could afford (others hung up on me when I even asked for a reference to someone I could afford).
Better Help gave me absolute nonsense life advice and inspirational quotes from google with Buddhist images that were downright blaming me for what I'd been through, told me the person 'helping' me was downright dodgy or underqualified at least, then years later the company got called out and it all made sense.
Thank you for making this video. I live in CO and saw a vague article about this in the news and was perplexed why there was not more coverage for it and always wondered what had happened. There was also 2 women who recently went missing in CO natl forests over the summer. Think that is also largely unsolved.
Wish all of you a healthy and productive weekend!
Thank you for showing the crime scene video. This is better than the other vids found on this. This is so tragic. It breaks my heart.
My mom works with the stepmom of the teenager...the family was unaware that they were going off like that. The women were unstable and known for disappearing for extended amounts of time which is why nothing was reported.
I enjoy that you show yourself in your videos for the most part because it lets me know you are not just another Robot Generated site and you are very good and leave no stone unturned . Thank You 🎯
So they arrived in August when that area is stunningly beautiful and may have decided, lets live here. They had lived in Colorado Springs not too far away but the springs gets a lot less snow than the mountains do. So they decided to try out living there in August. The Forest Service kindly let the car stay there either hoping someone would come back for it or having tried to contact the registered owner but got no response of course. Also no missing persons report was filed so at that point it just looks like an abandoned car. They probably did check the trails nearby but found no evidence of hikers in distress. So no reason to look any further.
The camp they made was at 10,000 feet of altitude which requires 2-3 liters of water per day per person. That's a lot of water to carry to and fro and filter especially at that altitude. They may have gotten impatient and drank some of the water right out of the creek or stream exposing them to infection. Then there's altitude sickness. Added to dragging yourself out of your tent to go to the bathroom due to stomach sickness and you have a real exhaustion situation, even if you do have enough food, which they didn't. Ironically they were surrounded by pine trees whose bark can be boiled to make a medicinal tea that could have helped them get over the stomach sickness, as long as they didn't continue to drink the unfiltered water. Seems like all 3 were sick at the same time so all were at reduced capacity and just slowly slipped away. Very sad.
Thank you for covering this case. Your in-depth research, analysis, and compassion are unparalleled.
This is the first time watching your channel and I really enjoyed it, and especially the end of it the way you’re telling people to be aware of what you watch on, UA-cam, that a lot of these things are edited and omitted. You’re doing a great job.
Thank you--very nice conclusion. It was important to say these things. Very, very sad.
I have viewed all your episodes, and am continually amazed and appreciative of your journalistic approach. This story is not only sad, but should be a cautionary tale for those considering similar lifestyle choices. Thank you for your well thought approach to this, and all your segments. I am a fan for life!
RIP to those 3 lost souls
Insane that the forest service would tow a vehicle without even trying to see if people were camping nearby. They should be charged with negligence or something, because no one who lives in Colorado would underestimate Rocky Mountain winters enough to think that a tent like that would keep them alive through the winter. I can't even fathom the despair they must have felt when the boy died.
That huge clump of hair was really freaky though. It practically looked like a whole scalp!
Severe hair loss can be caused by malnutrition and a lot of weight loss. They didn't say who it belonged to. Possibly the boy's hair if they tried to drag him out of the tent by the hair.
Bruh it was a 16 year old Hyundai and it probably looked like a piece of shit lol of course they towed it. Thousands of cars are abandoned every day, they can't go combing every square inch of surrounding area to look for the owner. These 2 women were clearly insane and just plain stupid, so they definitely thought they could live in a tent like that
@@elonever.2.071oh my gosh, the poor boy.
Thanks for your honest and non-judgemental coverage of this incident. I hope it will help someone in the future.
Very sad case. I can attest to the fact that videos on UA-cam do not show you all the hardships. That was a very good point that I never considered with my own channel. I'm still new in the bushcraft/camping/hiking scene on UA-cam and have not been into for all that long (4 or 5 years). As I learned I made the mistake of thinking things would be easier than they actually are. In the cold weather I especially had some bad nights. I've since learned more, but still could not even imagine trying to survive a winter in those conditions.
As an indigenous Australian I learned how to live off the land from my elders whose knowledge came from their elders in an unbroken line that spans over 60 thousand years and it amazes me that people think they can gain the same knowledge after watching a few UA-cam videos
Do you drink gasoline?
What ??
Experience is necessary, they had little, if any.
many people fail to appreciate how indigenous populations literally evolved along with their lands. for example, the genome of Inuits shows specific mutations to aid survival in the bitter cold of the North, that rarely show up in non-Inuits
It’s a good day when Missing Enigma posts a new video!
Especially when it’s 2am
I just started seeing a therapist and I'm glad I did. They help you put some things in perspective.
I feel like there's a huge misconception around "off-grid" living in that it has come to mean "no contact with the rest of the world whatsoever," which made everything much worse in this situation. Everyone who heard about their plans must have subconsciously accepted that "off-grid" meant "contact-free," when that is absolutely not baked into the definition of the term.
I also don't feel any surprise whatsoever that the family was from Colorado Springs :( I grew up there and I feel like the amount of fringe movements, political extremists, and genuine cults is a little higher in that city than in other places I've spent any appreciable amount of time in. It can be like a mental wellness desert out there.
The best creator on UA-cam is in the house!!
Thank you for your hard work.
My parents have a vegetable garden and I have learned that there’s a time and place when to plant vegetables.
Some vegetables don’t mind a late frost, others a late frost would kill them.
Carrots can stay in the ground after a frost, but I know from experience that it’s a pain in the neck to get them out of the frozen ground in one piece.
Rebecca no doubt overestimated how easy it would be and possibly in her paranoia, didn’t believe that the place was going to be as harsh as it was during the Winter, or, as you suggested, the plan was never to stay for the Winter and when they discovered the car gone they became stranded.
I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to establish a vegetable patch in virgin bushland. The ground would probably be rock hard and filled with roots and the soil would be incredible impoverished. If you could dig up a bit of dirt and bung some seeds in, you might get something to grow, but it wouldn't be abundant, healthy and heavily cropping plants. I guess that, since the police don't appear to have found any attempted garden, that it was an idea that was abandoned as soon as they put spade to soil and found it impossible to dig.
@@carolyns99 very true, we helped spread manure, bone meal and blood meal in new vegetable patches to help the soil be more nutritious and remove rocks and clumps up grass; and this was from fields that had either been pasture or garden patches when my dad was young.
One garden area had been a garden almost consistently for over forty years, fifty plus years now, and we were still finding and removing rocks from it.
And we had the help of machines to till the ground and not doing it by hand.
Gardening is hard work. I would have to double check with my dad, but I believe that he plowed the new plot in the fall the year before so there wasn’t as much grass, and I don’t think he expected much from the new plots either.
Not only that, but most vegetables don't grow in high-altitude Colorado. The ground can be frozen in the mountains for 9 months a year, nights can be frosty even in the summer, the soil is mostly mineral and not organic, and even if you got something to grow, animals would promptly eat it. @@carolyns99
@@carolyns99 It's *very* hard work. An old friend of mine lives semi-off grid in Northern Ontario, and every summer he grows a gorgeous garden around his cabin. But it's not enough for him to live off of; it's more a money saving suppliment, and something he loves to do. And it's a *LOT* of work. The first season he started it, he had to dig up all the land he wanted to use, then bring in extra topsoil and manure, because the area he'd cleared just wasn't the kind of soil that veggies would grow well in. Then came figuring out the best timing and placement for every different crop, and the neverending challenge of keeping the local wildlife from eating his food before he can! It needs constant weeding, watering, and other care. There's been a lot of trial and error. He's also learned a lot from the local tribal elders (of which he just became one!) about traditional ways to keep hungry insects away, and bigger pests, too. But for all the drawbacks, he loves his garden, just like he loves his cabin in the woods and his peaceful life out there.
@@thing_under_the_stairs I certainly get that. I have a corner block which is mostly garden and large amount of that is vegie plots. I have a fenced block, a good climate, good soil and access to heaps of free seaweed to keep it fed - but it's hard work nevertheless.
Despite not being in tip top physical health, I keep at it because I love fresh vegies and I want to be able to supplement the dry foods I have stored away should the world go insane (again). But there is no way I could keep us (just hubby and me) fed much above starvation level (if at all) if all we had was the garden to live off.
With an established, sheltered, garden and years of experience I still have plenty of failures. It's great that more people are realising the need to start a garden but I fear some UA-cam videos give a very unrealistic idea to beginners. In this case, sadly, it may well have contributed to a tragedy.
Wow, I heard about this case but I never realized the bodycam and pictures of the site with the bodies had been released to the public. Even now after watching the video I googled around and still can't find this footage.
Once I heard that there was ample evidence of canned food and Ramen noodles, my heart sank. Canned food weighs a lot, so there is a limit as to how much can be comfortably packed anywhere. Ramen noodles are great for carbs but have the nutritional value of heavily salted styrofoam. With that kind of diet, and clearly no knowledge about things like filtering water, hunting/fishing skills, even the know-how to just dig a basic, uhm, pit for waste....land just a flimsy nylon tent for shelter.... they just didn't stand a chance. RIP.
It's so heartbreakingly sad, especially for the boy. My heart breaks thinking of him.
I live in Colorado (close to the Springs where they were from), and the weather here is no joke. The dry air can mummify things within days. I live in a home in the country and my neighbors have been stuck in their homes for weeks at a time. This area is not for the faint of heart. Our coldest temp this year was in the negative teens as the HIGH. The wind alone will destroy everything that's not very securly cemented into the ground.
Very sad, very sad story.
Well-made clip again. Thanks!
People underestimate the woods and overestimate their ability to survive in the woods
The trouble with malnutrician an hypothermia is you become so tired and listless to the point of immobility.
So sad. We've had a couple of unhoused individuals found deceased locally in stealth camps. No human should have to die alone in such conditions.
I am always blown away by the quality of your information.
This doesn't look like a bug out camp, even if they weren't well versed in survival even one book on survival would have had enough knowledge to make a proper latrine and shelter, and look at the tree branches not burned for warmth, so I think that they may have been poisoned, but beaver fever would do it along with the cold but I think that it was madness that killed them.
Remember the solo hiker found in pieces with a hamock over all his unpacked stuff? I didnt get a good or bad vibe from the scene pics. This one however i got a bad vibe as soon as i saw first body...its just ominous /dark.All i know is that they suffered it was a bad death
I live off grid. No electricity or water on property. H2O collection is a year long priority along with heating, gardening and farming. They were camping. Totally unprepared. So sad, especially for the child. Fear drive them.
Me and my girlfriend went camping in the great smokies last December, in just a cheap tent, for 4-5 days. We were on a very organized campsite with other people around, and we brought our heaviest clothes and blankets. While it was an amazing time, the nights were miserable. I can’t imagine staying out longer, and I was at such a safe campground and everything with my girlfriend who knows a good amount about this sort of thing. The idea of doing something like this family did is wild. Doing what I did was hard enough, as someone with only a little experience. And the idea of taking a 14 year old? No, forget it. This is an incredibly sad story of people that clearly needed help in some form.
A profound analysis of the fact and a pretty chilling account
A 14 yr old my god it’s heartbreaking !
Worst thing about this case is that a kid with his whole life ahead of him got it taken away by a couple of irresponsible and delusional adults abusing their authority. Though I will note, it seems rather callous of the Forest Service to just tow a car that had been there in a remote area for a while. That should be ringing alarm bells that something is in need of investigation, not just be seen as an opportunity to engage in arbitrary and unthinking rules enforcement.
Poor boy. I hope whatever comes next for him was gentle.
i enjoy how much digging and facts you gave us in this video. Esp the body cam. Mad props. I'll be watching more of these vids
As someone who grew up nearby (and know the coroner and most of the law enforcement officers mentioned personally) its wild to see something this close to home on this channel. That said, I'd honestly be surprised if they were still around in November when the car was towed. Freezing overnight temperatures are common in September and October in that area. Sadly, they are not the first, nor will they be the last, to die in the Gunnison Country because they weren't prepared.
I can guarantee you they had no intention to go back to their car or bring cellphones. Rebeca thought the government was after her and didn’t want to be found. She was stupid and didn’t know what she was doing and got her child killed.
Schizophrenia left untreated and unchecked
@@Balrog-tf3bg Absolutely
That’s very sad.
Where does the guarantee come from?
@@eventhorizon7234 The fact that they did not have cellphones with them at the camp. They didn’t just go missing for no reason. And her family said she was paranoid.
Eating canned soup and ravioli at a camp site a few miles from town isn’t off the grid living. That’s dangerous, obviously. The fact that the authorities towed the vehicle without contacting the family or launching a search is nothing short of negligence. The initial investigators didn’t seem to give any thought to scene preservation. He just tromps through the whole scene for no reason. The whole situation was just terrible. Poor kid.
If they had to launch a search for every towed vehicles...the sky would be filled with helicopters 24/7
Love what you do. The reporting is top notch. I could listen to you for hours.
I learned of your channel from Lore lodge and just love it i listen while im at work - you do a incredible job !
As a decidedly ignorant outdoorsman, how do bodies have time to mummify with no animal activity?
I’d assume the child died during winter and wasn’t bothered because of little animal activity, and the sisters died inside their tent, which probably helped deter any scavengers.