In October of 2016, 24year-old Mia Griffith got off a bus on the side of the road near the Ozark National Forest and disappeared into the trees.

A large-scale search yielded no results.

The girl disappeared without a trace.

But two years later, on a foggy night on Highway 21, a truck driver spotted a figure on the road that resembled a living skeleton.

Mia had returned.

She was alive, but she couldn’t say a word.

And when the doctors in the intensive care unit tried to open her mouth, they were horrified by what they saw.

You will find out who silenced her forever and what terrible secret the old seller was hiding right now.

October of 2016 in Arkansas was surprisingly cold and wet.

The Ozark forests, which usually blaze with crimson and golden hues at this time, looked gloomy that year.

Thick morning fogs covered the valleys and moisture soaked the ground.

It was in this weather that 24year-old Mia Griffith decided to escape the hustle and bustle of the city.

She was working as a barista at a popular coffee shop in Fagetville and had been complaining to her friends about chronic fatigue in recent months.

She needed some quiet.

On October 4th, Mia bought a ticket for the morning Jefferson Lines bus.

The bus station’s ticket office kept an electronic record of the transaction.

8 hours and 15 minutes in the morning, one passenger, cash payment.

She didn’t have her own car, so the logistics of her trip were planned with risky simplicity.

Her goal was the famous Whitaker Point Rock outcropping, also known as Hawkville Craig, one of the most scenic spots in the state.

But to get there without a car, she needed to get off in the middle of the highway, far from the official stops.

The bus driver, a 50-year-old man with more than 20 years of experience, later testified to sheriff’s detectives.

He said he remembered the passenger well.

According to him, there were only three people in the cabin and Mia was sitting by the window with her headphones on.

She was dressed in a warm olive jacket, black leggings, and chunky hiking boots.

She was the only passenger that morning who asked for a stop at a place that was completely unsuitable for disembarkcation.

According to the driver’s interrogation report, the bus pulled over on the side of Highway 21 at exactly 8:00 50 minutes in the morning.

It was a dead-end section of the road where the old asphalt intersected with the beginning of the cave mountain dirt road.

The terrain here looked wild.

Tall pine trees lined the road and the nearest housing was several miles away.

On the way out, Mia paused for a moment on the steps.

The driver remembered this brief dialogue very clearly.

The girl asked, “Will you be passing here on your way back at 8:15?” The driver nodded in the affirmative and added that this was the last flight for the day.

“I’ll be here,” she replied, adjusted the straps of her small backpack, and stepped onto the wet gravel.

“It was the last time she was seen alive.

Mia’s plan looked ambitious.

From the highway to the start of the hiking trail, she had to walk about six miles on the steeply climbing cave mountain gravel road.

Then it was a hike to the cliff, a short rest, and a return trip back to the highway to catch the evening bus.

She didn’t book accommodation or leave anyone a detailed itinerary.

Mia was used to relying on herself and considered the Ozarks a safe place.

The day passed.

The sun began to set behind the mountains, and the forest quickly plunged into twilight.

At 18 hours and 15 minutes, the same bus on its way back to Fagatville began to slow down near the turnoff to Cave Mountain.

The driver turned on his hazard lights and pulled over.

He expected to see a girl in an olive jacket, but the roadside was empty.

The driver waited for three minutes.

He even honked his horn, hoping that the passenger was just delayed.

The sound of the horn echoed off the forest wall and fell silent.

No one got out.

Deciding that the girl had changed her plans or found a passing car, the driver drove on.

The alarm began only the next morning.

At 7:30, the coffee shop manager called Mia’s parents to say that she hadn’t come in for her shift.

This was not like her.

Her parents, knowing about her trip to the mountains, immediately went to the police.

A missing person’s report was filed the same day.

The search operation started 24 hours after Mia got off the bus.

The scale was impressive.

Volunteers, US Forest Service rangers, and officers.

They began combing every meter of the route along the gravel road.

The key to the search was the work of the canine service.

The search dogs received a sample of the scent from Mia’s clothes.

The dog confidently picked up the trail at the same spot on the side of Highway 21 and pulled the handler up Cave Mountain Road.

The trail was clear.

The group followed the dog for about 2 m.

The road made a sharp turn at this point, skirting a deep ravine near an old, dried up creek bed that flows into the Buffalo River.

It was here that the dog’s behavior changed dramatically.

The dog started circling, whining, and poking his nose into the gravel, but he couldn’t find the trail.

It did not lead to the forest or to the ravine.

The scent simply stopped in the middle of the road.

The forensic team studied the surface for hours, but the gravel was silent.

There were no signs of breaking, a struggle, or drops of blood.

Mia’s phone last connected to the tower at 9:00 15 minutes in the morning.

After that, the signal disappeared.

Mia Griffith never made it to Whitaker Point.

She simply disappeared into thin air halfway to her goal, leaving detectives with a case file that quickly moved to the archive marked unsolved.

The forest again plunged into silence, hiding the only witness to what happened on the second mile of the road.

On October 12, 2018, at 2:00 40 minutes in the morning, a heavy Peterbuilt truck loaded with lumber was slowly moving along the southern section of Highway 21.

At the wheel was 50-year-old Ted Vance, an experienced driver who knew the highway by heart.

The road ran through deep forests near the Boxley Valley, an area where cell phone service disappeared for tens of miles, and the only source of light was the headlights of cars.

The fog was abnormally thick that night.

Vance later noted in his report to the police that visibility was no more than 10 m.

The milky veil was rolling down from the mountains, turning the road into a narrow tunnel.

The driver was about to slow down before a dangerous blind curve when his headlights caught a pale, motionless spot on the right shoulder.

At first, Ted thought it was a deer blinded by the light, a common occurrence in the Ozarks.

He instinctively slammed on the brakes.

The multi-tonon truck shuddered, tires screeching on the wet asphalt.

But as the truck got closer, the spot took on a clear outline.

It was not an animal.

It was a person.

The truck’s dash cam recorded this eerie moment, which was later analyzed by dozens of experts.

The grainy footage shows the truck stopping just a few meters from the object.

A figure stands barefoot on the icy wet asphalt.

She does not try to run away, does not shield her face from the bright light, and does not make any movements.

It stands with its arms down along its body as if waiting to be struck.

Vance jumped out of the cab holding a powerful flashlight in his hand.

He expected to see one of the local homeless or a lost tourist.

But what he saw in the beam of light made him numb.

Later, he admitted to the sheriff that his first reaction was to get back in the cab and lock the door.

In front of him stood a young woman dressed in a strange construction that resembled a rough burlap or tarpollen roughly tied with a rope around her waist.

Her feet were covered with black dirt and deep soores, indicating that she had been walking in the forest for a long time without shoes.

The skin on her arms and face was so pale that it appeared translucent, covering her bones like parchment.

The woman looked like a living skeleton.

As Ted ran closer, he could barely hold back his gag reflex.

The stranger gave off a heavy, sickening odor, a mixture of damp earth, rot, and pungent ammonia.

It was the smell of a person who had been kept in unsanitary conditions for months.

Her hair was tangled in one continuous dirty mess with branches and leaves stuck in it.

But the most terrifying thing was her face.

She was looking directly into the light of the lantern with wide eyes.

There was no fear, no hope, no plea for help in that look, only absolute dead emptiness.

“Do you need help? Can you hear me?” Vance shouted, not daring to touch her.

The woman did not answer.

She didn’t nod, cry, or try to speak.

She just took a slow, tentative step toward him.

The silence of the night forest was broken by a strange sound, a sharp whistling inhalation through the nose, similar to the wheezing of a broken accordion fur.

The driver, composing himself, took off his warm jacket and gently threw it over her shoulders.

She did not react, allowing him to do so.

Vance sat her down on the footboard of the truck and ran into the cab to call 911.

As they waited for help, the woman sat motionless, wrapping her arms around herself and staring at a single point on the asphalt.

The patrol car arrived at the scene at 3:00 15 minutes in the morning.

The officer who got out of the car could not understand who he was dealing with at first.

The woman did not have any documents on her.

However, when the officer illuminated her face and entered her description into the missing person’s database, the system produced a match that seemed incredible to him.

The features matched, although exhaustion had changed them almost beyond recognition.

A scar above the eyebrow, a mole on the neck, everything pointed to the same person.

The officer realized that he was looking at Mia Griffith, the girl who disappeared 2 years ago.

She came back from the dead.

She was alive, but she was silent as if she had forgotten how to use her voice.

At 4:00 in the morning, an ambulance was already racing to Harrison Regional Medical Center with sirens blaring.

The patients condition was assessed as critical.

On the way, the doctors tried to stabilize her temperature and put in an intravenous drip as the veins in her arms were swollen from dehydration.

The paramedic tried to establish verbal contact to assess the extent of the brain injury.

“Mia, if you can hear me, try to say your name or just nod,” he repeated.

Mia looked at the doctor with clear but frightened eyes.

She understood him.

She tensed up and the thin veins in her neck bulged.

She was clearly trying to say something.

Her chest rose to inhale, but when she tried to open her mouth, something unnatural happened.

Her lips would not open.

Her lower jaw tensed, but her mouth remained tightly closed, as if some invisible force or physical obstacle kept it locked from the inside.

Only the same eerie whistle escaped from his nose again.

At 4:00 in the morning, the emergency room of the North Arkansas Regional Medical Center was at maximum capacity.

The resuscitation team on duty immediately announced a code red.

Mia Griffith’s condition was critical.

Deep hypothermia.

Her body temperature barely reached 35° and her dehydration level was so critical that her skin lost its elasticity and resembled dry parchment.

The nurses tried in vain to find veins in his arms to inject warm saline solution.

The vessels were asleep and did not allow the needle to pass through.

The surgeon on duty had to make an emergency decision to install a central venus catheter through the subclavian artery.

The intensive care unit was filled with a persistent smell of alcohol, iodine, and wet dirt, which still emanated from the patients clothes and hair despite the fact that they tried to wash her.

The life support monitors made an alarming irregular sound recording brady cardia.

Mia was conscious.

Her eyes wide open and bloodshot darted frantically around the room registering every movement of the doctors.

But her body remained motionless as if paralyzed by fear.

The main problem arose 10 minutes later when the anesthesiologist on duty, Dr.

Henry Foster, entered the room.

His task was to assess the patients airway as the patients whistling breathing indicated a serious obstruction.

Foster leaned down to Mia’s face, turned on his headlamp, and asked in a calm, professional tone, “Miss, I need to examine your throat.

Please open your mouth as wide as possible.

” The patients reaction was immediate and terrifying.

Mia tensed her entire body.

The muscles in her neck swelled up, turning into stiff ropes, and the veins in her temples strained from the incredible effort.

A sharp piercing whistle escaped her nose like the sound of air escaping under pressure, but her lower jaw did not move a millimeter.

It remained deadly fixed.

At first, the team assumed the worst, tetanus, or severe tismas of the masticatory muscles, which could be caused by a head injury or neuro infection.

It was a dangerous condition that threatened to cause complete respiratory failure.

Without wasting any time, Dr.

Foster took a metal spatula and tried to mechanically open the lips to insert the mouthpiece.

He expected to feel the resistance of the spasmotic muscles, but what the metal encountered made him abruptly stop the procedure and recoil from the table.

In the preliminary medical report, which was later attached to the criminal case as exhibit number 47, this moment is described in dry but frightening language.

During an attempt to open the oral cavity instrumentally, pathological fusion of soft tissues was found.

The mucous membranes of the inner cheeks and gums show signs of deep scar deformity and have actually fused together into a single conglomerate.

The patients lips are deformed.

The corners of the mouth are tightened with coarse kloid scars, making articulation impossible.

Foster, pale and shocked, immediately canled the intubation attempt and ordered the patient to be taken to the computed tomography room.

It was necessary to understand what was happening inside her skull.

The images that appeared on the radiologist’s screens 20 minutes later showed a picture that explained the nature of her silence better than any words.

It was not a disease.

It was the engineering of torture.

Judging by the nature of the deformation of her bones and soft tissues, Mia’s mouth had been forcibly fixed in a closed position for several months.

Experts analyzing the images concluded that a special device was used, probably a modified design based on a medical dilator or a homemade reverse action gag.

This mechanism did not expand the jaws, but rather squeeze them with a terrifying force while pressing the tongue against the upper pallet.

Due to the constant uninterrupted pressure and deliberate small cuts on the tongue and the inner surface of the pallet, the body started the regeneration process.

But nature played a cruel joke with the victim.

The tissues, deprived of movement, tightly pressed together and constantly injured, began to heal as a single unit.

Massive adhesion occurred.

Mia’s tongue partially grew to the upper pallet and her cheeks fused with her gums, forming a solid wall of fibrous tissue.

She was physically unable to speak.

She could not even scream.

Her mouth had become an anatomical trap sealed by her own body.

The CT scans also showed a small hole in the area of the missing preolar on the left.

It was through this hole that a thin tube was inserted to feed her nutrient mixtures.

This was the only way to keep her alive, turning her existence into an endless cycle of pain and silence.

When Dr.

Foster returned to the residence room and hung the photos on the light panel, explaining the situation to his colleagues, the room fell dead silent.

Doctors who had seen victims of accidents, fires, and shootings could not look away from the screen.

The scar tissue in the picture looked like a verdict.

It became clear to everyone what happened to this woman was not the result of wandering in the woods or an accident.

It was the work of a man who wanted to create a perfect mute doll.

At precisely 8:00 in the morning, a squad car with a Newton County Sheriff’s Office license plate pulled up to the main entrance of Harrison Regional Medical Center.

Out of the vehicle stepped Detective Bill Gale, a tired-l looking man who had been in charge of the Mia Griffith case since the first day she disappeared.

Two years ago, he personally led the search teams in the woods.

And it was he who was forced to inform the girl’s parents that the active phase of the search was over.

For him, this morning was the moment he had been waiting for for hundreds of nights, reviewing old reports.

In the intensive care corridor, the detective was met by the head of the department.

The conversation was short and purely professional, but its content changed the entire plan of investigation.

The doctor immediately warned the law enforcement officer that a standard interrogation was impossible.

He explained that the victim’s mouth was actually sealed with scar tissue and verbal contact was excluded.

She can hear everything.

Her cognitive function seemed to be preserved, but she is physically unable to utter a single word.

Gail entered room 407.

The room was silent, broken only by the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor and the patients heavy, whistling breathing.

Mia was lying motionless.

Her arms were free of medical restraints, but lay lifeless on the white sheet like someone else’s.

Muscle atrophy was so severe that even the simplest movement required titanic effort.

The detective sat down on a chair next to the bed.

He didn’t take out his recorder.

Instead, he pulled out his office tablet from his bag and set the graphic editor to fingerpainting mode.

The screen lit up with a soft white light.

Gail held the device up to her hand.

“Mia,” he said quietly, trying to sound as calm as possible.

There are guards here.

I know this is hard for you and we’re going to take it slow, but I need you to try to show us where it happened.

The woman slowly turned her gaze to the screen.

She raised her trembling hand.

Her index finger touched the glass, leaving a digital black line.

Her first strokes were chaotic, uncertain, and her hand kept slipping.

Gail waited patiently, holding the tablet at a comfortable angle.

A minute later, a recognizable outline appeared on the screen.

A sharp curved rock outcropping.

It was Whitaker Point, the place she’d been headed to that fateful morning.

Gail nodded, confirming that he understood the image.

Did they take you from there or near there? Mia blinked slowly, affirmatively.

Then she erased the drawing and traced a long wavy line with her finger to represent a road.

Next to it, she drew a rough rectangle with two circles at the bottom.

A car.

She clicked on it several times, making it clear that this was where her path had been interrupted.

“They took you away in a car,” the detective clarified.

She blinked again.

Gail pulled out a detailed topographic map of Newton County from a folder and unfolded it on the feeding table.

Mia stared at the intertwining lines.

Her eyes narrowed, focusing on familiar landmarks.

Her finger slid across the map, skirting the dense woodlands and moved toward Highway 74.

She drew a line across the bridge over the Buffalo River and stopped at an area where state forest bordered private farmland.

It was about 15 miles from where she was allegedly abducted.

The finger hovered on a point near an old gravel road that was marked as a dead end on the map.

In this sector, only a few scattered buildings were marked, spaced far apart.

Mia tapped her finger on this point.

Then she returned to her tablet.

On the blank screen, she drew a large square.

Then she began to shade it black, doing so with such intensity that her felanges turned white.

Above the black shaded square, she drew a simple outline, a triangle of a roof, the silhouette of a barn or garage.

She looked at the detective.

Her gaze was piercing.

She pointed to the black square under the house and then slowly brought her hand up to her face and ran her finger over her neck and closed mouth.

This gesture was more eloquent than any words.

Gail felt a chill run down her spine.

She was being held underground in a basement or bunker hidden under an ordinary outuilding on private property where no one could hear her screams.

At 9:00, the detective came out of the room into the corridor.

His face was stony.

He immediately dialed the county sheriff’s office.

She pointed to a section off a road the locals call Old Quarry Road.

Gail reported into the phone, ignoring the nurse’s glances.

The map shows an old farm there.

We need a search warrant for the grounds and all outbuildings in that square.

And get in touch with the surveyors.

I need ground penetrating radar.

She drew this underground.

There’s a void under some kind of structure.

Gail hung up the phone and looked at the ward door.

Now he had the coordinates of the hell and he was going to open it.

The procedure for obtaining a warrant usually took time, but with this testimony, the judge would sign the papers immediately.

The operation went into action.

At exactly 10:00, 45 minutes in the morning, a convoy of three patrol cars and an armored SWAT van turned off the highway onto a gravel road known as Old Quarry Road.

The operation was conducted in complete silence with no sirens or flashing lights to alert the suspect.

The team leader had a search warrant signed by a district judge just an hour earlier.

The object of law enforcement interest was a farm owned by Cain Thompson, a 45-year-old laborer who lived as a hermit.

In the police database, his record looks surprisingly clean for such a case.

several administrative fines for disturbing the peace at night and a long-standing record for disorderly conduct in a bar.

None of his neighbors, whose homes were miles away, could say anything specific about him except that he was strange and didn’t like visitors.

The capture team set up a perimeter.

The farm looked abandoned.

Tall, dry grass, a rusty tractor that had grown into the ground, and a main house with peeling paint.

The assault team kicked in the door, but it was empty inside.

There was half-drunk coffee on the table and a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink.

Thompson was not in the house.

The situation was changed by a service dog named Bruno.

The dog ignored the living quarters and dragged the handler across the backyard to an old wooden shed that seemed to be holding on by its own two feet.

The door of the structure was locked from the outside with a heavy metal chain that had to be cut with hydraulic shears.

Inside the shed, there was semi darkness.

The space was crammed with junk up to the ceiling, old car tires, rusty tools, boxes with unknown contents and piles of rags.

The dog started barking, scratching its paws on the dirt floor in the far corner under a massive workbench.

When the operatives pulled aside heavy bags of cement and old tires, they saw the outline of a square wooden bed.

It was expertly disguised by dirt and dust.

Detective Gail ordered it to be lifted.

The bed was unexpectedly heavy.

When it was turned over, the reason for the weight became clear.

The inside was padded with a thick layer of industrial felt and rubber for maximum air tightness and soundproofing.

A heavy, stale air came out of the hole in the floor.

It was an odor that made even experienced forensic scientists cover their faces with respirators.

A choking mixture of dampness, human feces, mold, and rotten food.

It did not smell like a home.

It smelled like a grave.

The detectives climbed down a rickety wooden ladder.

The beams of tactical flashlights snatched from the darkness a room that looked more like a hole than a room.

The ceiling was so low, only 1 and 1/2 mters, that an adult could only be bent over.

The walls of this concrete sack were covered with dirty mattresses, old blankets, and thousands of cardboard egg trays.

It was a primitive but effective soundproofing.

No screams could make their way to the surface.

In the corner on the damp floor was a rotten sleeping bag covered in mold and a plastic bucket used as a toilet.

But the most terrifying discovery recorded by the forensic camera was the so-called wall of tools.

A collection of homemade gags was neatly hung on nails driven into the mattresses.

These were not sexual toys or medical instruments.

They were pain engineering.

Pieces of hard rubber cut from old car treads were wrapped in black electrical tape.

Leather straps with metal buckles cut from old bags.

Wooden bars turned into the shape of a human jaw.

Nearby on a makeshift shelf, there were rows of plastic water bottles and a large jar of cheap protein powder.

Next to them were silicone tubes of various diameters and large syringes, usually used in veterinary medicine or cooking.

Standing in the middle of this hell, Detective Gail finally understood the mechanics of the crime.

Thompson was not performing complex surgical procedures as the doctors had initially assumed.

The reality was simpler and more brutal.

He simply fixed the victim’s mouth with one of these rubber gags, tightening the straps at the back of the head, and did not allow the device to be removed for weeks, perhaps months.

Feeding was forced through a tube that was pushed from the side through the gap between the teeth.

Constant inhuman pressure on the soft tissues, small wounds from dirty rubber, lack of blood circulation and movement.

All this led to terrible consequences.

The girl’s body trying to heal the constantly torn wounds under compression simply bricked up her mouth, fusing the mucous membranes into a single scar.

This place was not a prison.

It was a place of absolute dehumanization.

There was no criminal genius planning a complex scheme.

There was only a satist who methodically day after day turned a living person into a silent doll, depriving him not only of his freedom, but also of his right to speak.

Detective Gail came to the surface, gasping for fresh air.

Now they had all the evidence, but the designer of this horror was not at the farm.

It was 11:00 in the morning.

As the hazmat team continued to describe the gruesome findings in the underground bunker, a different kind of tension hung over the farm.

The head of the operation, a state police captain, received an urgent report from an officer who had been inspecting the yard.

An old Ford pickup truck belonging to Cain Thompson was parked behind the house, hidden under a tarp.

Its hood was cold to the touch.

This meant only one thing.

The suspect had not left the area by vehicle.

He was on foot and was probably somewhere within a few miles in the dense, impenetrable woods that surrounded the farm on three sides.

The Arkansas State Police immediately announced an interception plan codeen named Ring.

The situation was complicated by the landscape.

Newton County is famous for its rocky slopes, deep ravines, and numerous sinkholes.

It was an ideal area for a person who wanted to disappear.

One could hide here for weeks with a minimal supply of water and knowledge of the area.

A helicopter equipped with a thermal imaging system and a special canine unit were involved in the search.

Blood hounds, dogs with a unique sense of smell that can work on a cold trail that is more than a day old, became the main hope of the investigation.

They were allowed to sniff Thompson’s dirty shirt found in the house.

At 14 hours and 15 minutes, the senior dog handler gave a hand signal.

The dog confidently picked up the trail near the backyard of the farm where the grass turned into shrubbery.

The dog pulled the leash toward the Little Buffalo River, moving along a narrow animal trail.

A group of special forces armed with automatic rifles followed the dog handler in complete silence.

Every step was deliberate.

They expected traps, booby traps, or armed resistance.

The fugitive, who had created a torture chamber under his own barn, could do anything to avoid returning to civilization.

But the forest was quiet.

Too quiet for a manhunt.

The key moment came at 16 hours and 40 minutes.

The sun began to slant toward the west and long shadows from the trees made visual searching difficult.

The drone operator who was working with the ground team noticed a faint thermal anomaly on the monitor screen.

It was located in a deep canyon about 3 mi from the farm.

The camera captured a narrow, almost invisible entrance to a limestone cave hidden by a dense wild blackberry bush.

The heat signature inside was still.

No one was moving, although the roar of the helicopter hovering over the forest should have made anyone panic and run away.

This passivity alerted the commander of the capture team.

“The object does not respond to sound stimuli.

An ambush or suicide attempt is possible,” he said over the radio.

“The special forces unit surrounded the perimeter of the cave in a semicircle, taking up positions behind boulders and tree trunks.

” The special forces commander turned on his megaphone.

His voice amplified by electronics rang throughout the gorge, bouncing off the stone walls.

Cain Thompson, this is the Arkansas State Police.

You are surrounded.

Come out with your hands up.

There was no response, no sound, no movement from the darkness of the cave.

Even the birds were silent.

After a second warning, the commander ordered an assault with the use of special equipment.

The soldiers threw a stun grenade in front of the entrance.

There was a deafening explosion and a blinding light flashed designed to disorient the enemy.

The assault team rushed in with tactical flashlights, their beams cutting through the gloom of the dungeon.

What they saw did not fit the profile of a dangerous criminal ready for a shootout.

This site finally confirmed the sick motive behind everything he had done.

Cain Thompson was sitting in the very depths of the cave, leaning his back against the wet, cold stone.

He was dirty, and his clothes were torn on the thorny bushes.

He was not carrying any firearms.

He was not holding anything that could threaten the police.

When the riot police burst in, shouting, “Police, get down on the ground.

Put your hands on your head.

” Thompson did only one thing that impressed even veterans of the service.

He did not raise his hands.

His face was frozen with an expression of unbearable, almost physical pain.

He clamped his hands over his ears with all his might until his knuckles were white, trying to block out the screams and the echo of the grenade explosion.

He closed his eyes tightly and began to rock back and forth rhythmically, muttering something unintelligible.

He was not hiding from the law.

He was hiding from sound.

His arrest went off without a single shot being fired.

Officers forcibly removed his hands from his head to handcuff him.

Thompson did not physically resist.

He only moaned as the click of the metal bracelets echoed through the cave.

A cursory search of his jacket pocket revealed only an old pen knife which he did not even try to pull out.

He was brought out into the light where he continued to squint and try to pull his head into his shoulders as if the very existence of the outside world was causing him suffering.

The hunt was over, but the true nature of the darkness that lived in this man’s head was only beginning to be revealed.

Cain Thompson’s interrogation at the Newton County Sheriff’s Office began an hour after his arrest and lasted over 12 hours.

However, Detective Bill Gail, who conducted this grueling session, later characterized it in his report as talking to a concrete wall.

Thompson did not behave like a typical suspect caught in the act.

He didn’t cry, plead with investigators, try to bargain for a reduced sentence, or show any signs of remorse.

He was completely pathologically detached.

The only request he made to the state lawyer at the very beginning was not about defense or conditions of detention.

He asked to turn off the air conditioning in the interrogation room.

According to him, the low-frequency humming of the fan prevented him from thinking and caused physical discomfort.

This request was oddly consistent with his behavior in the cave when he had covered his ears to block out the noise.

When Detective Gail began to lay out the photographs taken by the forensic team in the bunker on a metal table, Thompson did not even move.

In front of him were pictures of wall fixtures, a collection of homemade rubber gags, a dirty mattress, and a calendar with a forced feeding schedule.

It was evidence of pure horror, but the suspect looked through it, fixing his eyes on one point on the wall.

According to the interrogation protocol, the dialogue was short and dry.

“Is this your property?” Gail asked, pointing to a photo of the seller entrance.

I don’t know what other people dug up there, Cain answered indifferently, not even changing his posture.

Other people built a soundproof bunker under your barn, brought electricity from your panel there, and you didn’t notice it for 2 years,” the detective pressed.

“I don’t go to sheds.

They’re full of junk.

Maybe it’s squatters or homeless people.

” Thompson shrugged as calmly, as if it were a window broken by a neighbor’s ball, not a kidnapping.

He denied everything.

He claimed that he had never seen Mia Griffith.

When he was shown a photo of her before she was kidnapped, a smiling girl in the mountains and a photo from the intensive care unit where she resembled an emaciated mummy, he just grimaced in disgust and turned away, throwing in a short sentence.

I don’t know this woman.

Take it away.

The defense strategy was clear.

complete denial and an attempt to shift the blame to hypothetical third parties who could have secretly entered the remote farm.

Thompson played the role of a simple uncle who became a victim of circumstances and police brutality.

But the forensic evidence spoke louder than his silence.

While the interrogation was going on, the first results of the examinations began to come from the state laboratory in Little Rock.

Experts found Cain Thompson’s DNA on the inside of the duct tape that had been wrapped around one of the rubber gags.

This meant that he had touched the adhesive side before he made the torture device.

His clear fingerprints were found on the empty plastic bottles from the bunker.

But the most compelling evidence that destroyed the squatter’s theory was an ordinary cash receipt found during a search in the glove compartment of his pickup truck among a pile of old receipts.

A receipt from a pharmacy in Harrison dated August 2017 confirmed a purchase that could not be explained in everyday life.

The list of goods included a bulk shipment of high calorie ental nutrition, a special liquid formula for people who cannot chew.

The same brand whose empty bottles were lying around in the basement.

The receipt also contained packages of sterile gauze wipes and a large bottle of chlorhexidine antiseptic.

When Detective Gail read the shopping list aloud, Thompson showed emotion for the first time in 12 hours.

“It’s for my dog,” he grumbled in a small voice.

“He had dental problems and couldn’t eat solid food.

” “Count veterinary records show that your dog died and was cremated 5 years ago,” Gail said, placing a copy of the vet report on the table.

“But you had a woman in the basement that you fed through a tube.

The final blow for the defense was a lineup.

Since Mia Griffith was in a serious condition and could not be present in person, the procedure was carried out right in the hospital room with the help of photographs.

The detective showed her a tablet with six photos of men of similar appearance and age.

Mia did not hesitate for a second.

As soon as her eyes fell on the photo number three, her reaction was immediate and fierce.

She slammed her finger down on the picture of Cain Thompson with as much force as her weak muscles would allow and made a throaty sound full of hatred.

Medical monitors instantly recorded a spike in her heart rate to 140 beats per minute.

It was fear mixed with recognition of the executioner.

Even when the investigator returned to the interrogation room and told Thompson that the victim had unequivocally recognized him, the suspect remained unmoved.

She thought she saw me,” he said quietly, looking down at the table.

People often make mistakes when they’re scared.

He never admitted it.

Not a single word of remorse, not a single explanation of his motives.

Not a single story about why he chose her until the very end of the investigation.

He stuck to the absurd version that he was the victim of a conspiracy or a terrible mistake and that someone planted the girl in his basement while he was sleeping.

His silence was as tight as the walls of the bunker he had built.

The trial of Cain Thompson began in early March 2019 in the Newton County Courthouse located in the town of Jasper.

This case, which has already been dubbed the stolen silence case in the press, has attracted national media attention.

Dozens of TV station vans parked around the square, but the hearings themselves were held behind tightly closed doors.

At the request of Griffith’s family, and given the victim’s severe psychological condition, the judge decided to hold the hearing in camera.

Thompson chose a tactic that forensic psychologists later called aggressive alienation.

Throughout the trial, the defendant sat on the bench with his head down and his palms tightly over his ears.

Every time the prosecutor raised his voice, citing evidence of guilt, Cain would wse and rock in his chair as if physically affected by the volume of human speech.

He flatly refused to testify in his own defense, not saying a word to his lawyer or the jury.

The trial was quick.

It didn’t take long for the state prosecution to build an ironclad case.

The jury needed less than 4 hours of deliberation to reach a unanimous verdict.

The evidence was overwhelming.

Traces of Thompson’s DNA on the inside of the gag’s duct tape, receipts for specialized ental nutrition, and CCTV footage from hardware stores where he bought soundproofing materials.

When the court clerk read out the verdict of guilty on all charges, kidnapping, torture, and infliction of grievous bodily harm, the room was silent.

The judge read out the verdict.

Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole plus 100 years on top.

This was done to ensure that Cain Thompson would never leave the prison walls.

The convict’s reaction amazed the audience.

He showed no anger or fear.

He only grimaced painfully as if from a sharp toothache when he heard the judge’s gavvel strike.

While Thompson was being transferred to the Varnner unit maximum security prison, known for its harsh conditions, another much more difficult struggle began for Mia Griffith.

In May of 2019, she was taken to an oral and maxilloacial surgery clinic in Little Rock.

A medical consultation developed a plan for the operation which the chief surgeon called reconstruction of the ruins.

The surgeons had to literally reform the internal architecture of the patients oral cavity.

The operation lasted more than 9 hours.

The doctors dissected the massive scar tissue millimeter by millimeter which had fused the cheeks to the gums and the tongue to the upper pallet.

It was a jewelry work.

The scalpel blade passed in dangerous proximity to the facial nerves and large vessels.

The risk of permanently paralyzing the lower part of the face or depriving Mia of the ability to swallow was critical.

The period of post-operative rehabilitation was painful and exhausting.

Mia had to relearn basic things.

Opening her mouth, moving her jaw, chewing soft food.

But the most difficult challenge was getting her voice back.

Her vocal cords had partially atrophied from 2 years of absolute silence and her lingial and diaphragm muscles had forgotten how to synchronized to form sounds.

Autumn of 2019, 6 months after the surgery, a speech therapist’s office in a rehabilitation center.

Outside the window, you can see an old park where the leaves on the trees have turned the same crimson gold color as the forest was the day she disappeared 3 years ago.

Mia is sitting in a chair in front of a large mirror.

She looks different.

There are thin, barely visible scars on her cheeks.

Her features have become harder, and there is a steely hardness in her eyes that was not there before.

The speech therapist, a middle-aged woman with a soft voice, turns on the metronome.

“Take your time, Mia,” the doctor says, putting his hand on her shoulder.

“Take a deep breath through your diaphragm.

Feel the vibration in your chest.

Don’t strain your neck.

Just one word, your name.

” Mia closes her eyes.

She takes in a lungful of air.

Her fingers grip the armrests of the chair so hard her knuckles turn white.

She slowly opens her mouth.

The lips that have been glued together by pain for so long now move freely.

She exhales, pushing air through the spasmotic ligaments.

The sound comes out of her throat with difficulty.

It is horsearo crackling like the rustling of gravel on metal or the creaking of an old door, but it is a human voice.

me.

Uh,” she says, stretching the syllables.

The speech therapist smiles cautiously and nods affirmatively, not stopping the metronome.

Mia opens her eyes, and looks at her reflection.

A lone tear rolls down her cheek along the line of her scar.

She takes another deep breath, straightens her back, and says more confidently, looking straight into her own eyes.

I, Mia.

The forest took 2 years of her life.

Cain Thompson tried to turn her into a dumb thing.

But in this office, with the metronome beating, the silence that seemed to last forever finally broke forever.