On November 12, 2011, 24year-old model Annie Fox walked into a nondescript photo studio in Burbank for a private casting call and disappeared without a trace.

4 days later, police opened a rented unit in a warehouse in Van NY and found only a single tall cardboard box labeled fragile.

Inside, under dozens of layers of bubble wrap, was Annie’s body.

She had been packed professionally like an expensive cargo with a plastic breathing tube inserted into her mouth while she was still alive.

On November 12, 2011, the morning in West Hollywood was cool and clear.

At 9:00 sharp, 24year-old Annie Fox locked the door to her rented apartment, holding only her keys and a thin leather portfolio folder.

She was wearing what agents call classic modeling attire.

Tight black jeans, a simple white t-shirt that emphasized her figure, and no unnecessary jewelry.

She looked like hundreds of other girls who’d come to Los Angeles looking for their chance.

But this morning, Annie was sure that this chance had finally knocked on her door.

The night before, she had received an email marked urgent.

The subject line read, “Casting for the fall winter campaign of a new streetear brand.

” The text was concise, professional, and did not raise any suspicions.

The location was clearly indicated, a studio complex in the Burbank Industrial Area on Victory Boulevard.

For those working in the industry, this address looked quite familiar.

The neighborhood was filled with former warehouses converted into movie sets, recording studios, and rental houses.

Annie didn’t give anyone details about the client, only briefly mentioning to a neighbor that she had an important meeting that could bring her a major contract.

At 9:00 45 minutes, traffic cameras first detected her movement.

Annie’s silver Toyota Corolla exited the 170 freeway in the direction of North Hollywood.

The car was moving in the general traffic.

The driver did not exceed the speed limit and did not make any sharp maneuvers.

It was an ordinary Saturday morning commute.

At 10:00 and 5 minutes, a grainy image from a security camera mounted on the facade of an auto parts warehouse captured Annie’s car slowly pulling into a small parking lot in front of a one-story building with a sign that read Burbank Daylight Studios.

The video, which detectives will later analyze in detail, shows her every action.

Annie parks the car, turns off the engine, but doesn’t get out right away.

She lowers the sun visor and fixes her hair in the mirror for a few seconds.

This simple, mundane gesture will later become one of the most painful moments for her family.

As they review the case file, she takes the folder, gets out of the car, presses the lock button on her key fob, and walks confidently to door number three.

She does not look back, does not hesitate.

As she approaches the entrance, Annie presses the doorbell button.

A moment later, the door opens from the inside.

Someone was waiting for her and let her in without delay.

The girl disappears into the dark passage and the heavy metal door slams shut behind her.

This was the last shot of Annie Fox being seen alive.

Anxiety began to build gradually.

At 14 hours and 30 minutes, her boyfriend, who worked as a barista at a coffee shop in Santa Monica, tried to call her.

They had made plans to have lunch together after her audition, but Annie hadn’t shown up.

her phone, which she almost never let go of, was out of range.

At first, he thought the shoot had run late or the studio had a bad signal, which was a common occurrence in the old concrete hangers.

But when the 16th hour passed, and then the 18th, the silence of the phone turned into cold fear.

At 8:00 in the evening, Annie’s parents in Ohio received a call from their daughter’s boyfriend.

They knew Annie was responsible and never disappeared without warning.

That evening, the fox’s phone line kept ringing off the hook, but no one picked up on the other end.

On the morning of November 13th, without waiting for any news, Annie’s boyfriend filed a missing person’s report with the Burbank police.

Since the girl was an adult, the officer on duty initially took it as a standard situation, perhaps a quarrel or a spontaneous trip.

But the presence of a specific address from the email forced the patrol to go check it out.

The officers arrived on Victoria Boulevard around 10:00 in the morning.

The silver Toyota was parked in the exact same spot where the cameras had recorded it 24 hours earlier.

The car was covered with a layer of morning dew, indicating that it had not moved all night.

The patrol policemen shown their flashlights inside the car.

On the passenger seat was Annie’s favorite cardigan, neatly folded and a bottle of water that had been taken only a few sips.

Her purse, wallet, and phone were missing from the car.

It looked as if she had stepped out for 5 minutes and planned to return immediately.

The officers tried to reach studio number three, but there was no answer.

After receiving permission for an emergency entry due to a threat to life, the police broke the lock.

When the door opened, they were greeted not by a crime scene, but by a sterile emptiness.

It was a large room with a white cycllorama, a curved wall for shadowless photography.

Inside, there was perfect, almost dead silence.

There were no photographers, no lighting equipment, and no racks of clothes that usually fill such places during casting.

There was only one lone chair in the middle of the huge room.

While examining the room, detectives found a cheap plastic lens cap in the corner on the floor that clearly did not belong to a professional photographer and a crumpled receipt from a local coffee shop dated the previous morning.

The check did not belong to Annie.

These were the only traces of human presence in this concrete box.

The owner of the building, who was called to the scene, was shocked.

He told investigators that the studio had been booked for November 12th by a man who called himself Allan Smith.

The rent was paid in cash without signing any long-term contracts.

The contact number left in the booking log turned out to be a prepaid disposable phone number which was already disconnected from the network at the time of the check.

The police were faced with a difficult puzzle.

Annie had entered through the front door and surveillance cameras from neighboring buildings confirmed that she had not gone back out.

Inside the studio, there were no signs of a struggle, blood, or dragging, but an inspection of the back of the room revealed a technical exit.

A massive fire door led to a narrow alleyway cluttered with garbage cans that stretched along the back facades of industrial buildings.

There were no surveillance cameras in this alley.

Investigators quickly put together a preliminary version that looked frighteningly elaborate.

The casting was a complete fiction, a set created for only one audience member.

Annie Fox was lured into a trap using professional vocabulary and the promise of a job.

She was kept inside just as long as it took for darkness to fall or for transportation to be prepared.

Her car was left in a prominent place in front of the facade as a distraction, a decoy that created the illusion of her presence while the girl herself was likely taken away through the blind spot of the backyard in a van or truck.

While her family was calling her cell phone and patrol officers were inspecting her car, Annie was already far away from Victory Boulevard.

The case instantly became a critical one, but none of the detectives at the time even realized how far this investigation would go beyond the concept of a simple kidnapping.

On November 16th, 2011, the fourth day after Annie Fox disappeared, the investigation actually stopped.

The hopes of finding the girl alive were melting away with every hour that passed in silence.

Investigations at a photography studio on Victor Boulevard in Burbank hit a dead end.

The premises were sterile, treated with strong chemicals that destroyed any biological traces, and the tenant used a fake driver’s license that was untraceable.

It seemed that the trail had broken off completely, leaving the police with only an empty room and an abandoned car in the parking lot.

That afternoon, however, the LAPD’s tech department got its first major breakthrough in cellular data analysis.

Although Annie’s phone had been turned off almost immediately after she entered the studio, a sophisticated check of all the devices in that quadrant revealed what was called a ghost signal.

This was a short-term registration of another phone in the network, a cheap disposable device that was activated for only 1 hour on the day of the abduction.

The billing showed that this device was moving in parallel with the kidnapper’s likely route while the victim’s main phone was already silent.

Triangulation of the signal indicated that the John Doe’s phone stopped for exactly 20 minutes in the Vanise industrial area about 15 mi from the studio before the signal disappeared forever.

The coordinates led the team of detectives to Sepulva Boulevard.

It’s a long, dusty street lined with budget car dealerships, parts warehouses, and repair shops where life goes on day and night.

In the center of the defined search area was a large storage complex called Iron Gate Self Storage.

It was a massive concrete structure that resembled a windowless fortress with hundreds of garage bays that were rented out around the clock, but had minimal physical security, relying only on cameras and combination locks.

The investigation team arrived at the office of the complex at 14 hours and 15 minutes.

The manager on duty that day provided access to the archive of CCTV footage and the customer registration log at the request of the police.

A review of the recordings for November 12th confirmed the technicians assumptions.

At precisely 11:30 in the morning, an hour and a half after Annie entered the Burbank studio, a white Ford Ecoine van pulled into the warehouse.

The vehicle had no side windows and looked like a typical work vehicle, allowing it to blend into the traffic of Los Angeles.

The driver, a strongly built man whose face was hidden by a lowpulled cap and wide sunglasses, paid cash for the lease of Bay 404, located on the ground floor.

He paid a month’s rent in advance and gave the name Mark Trent on the application form, another fake alias that led nowhere.

Grainy footage from the complex’s internal surveillance camera showed a van slowly pulling up close to the metal shutters of the desired unit.

Two men got out of the vehicle.

They didn’t take out a bunch of things as usual tenants do when they move.

They unloaded only one item from the back.

It was a large, tall cardboard box that looked surprisingly heavy for its size.

The men used a loading trolley to carefully wheel it inside the concrete box.

The entire unloading process took less than 7 minutes.

After that, they lowered the roller shutter, hung their own padlock, and immediately left the area without looking back.

Their actions were clear, fast, and devoid of any hesitation, indicating a pre-arranged plan.

At exactly 16:00, the police received an urgent search warrant for unit 404.

A special team of forensic scientists and detectives gathered at a gray metal door in the long corridor of the warehouse.

The lock had to be cut with a hydraulic bolt cutter.

When the metal gave way and the roller shutter was lifted up with a roar, the stale, stagnant air of the enclosed space hit the noses of those present.

The characteristic smell of decomposition was not yet present.

The room remained cool and dry, which only slowed down the natural processes.

The unit was completely empty.

Bare gray walls, a clean concrete floor, no garbage or forgotten belongings of the previous owners.

A lone cardboard box stood in the middle of the room like an ominous monument.

It was a standard U-Haul moving container, a grand wardrobe box model, a large wardrobe box designed to transport clothes on hangers about 1 m and 20 cm high.

The box looked brand new.

The cardboard was not damaged or crumpled.

All the joints and flaps were carefully in several layers taped with a wide brown tape that sealed the contents.

One short word was scrolled on the side in black permanent marker.

Fragile.

A forensic scientist in a hazmat suit carefully cut through the layers of tape with a utility knife and opened the top flaps of the box.

There were no hangers or clothes inside.

The entire interior was tightly filled with transparent bubble wrap.

When the upper layers of the packaging material were removed, the detective saw a horrifying picture that silenced even experienced officers.

Inside the box, in an upright position, sitting on all fours with her knees pulled up to her chest, was the body of a person.

It was Annie Fox.

She had not been carelessly thrown inside, as is often the case in cases of murder cover-ups.

She was professionally packed.

Her body was tightly wrapped in dozens of layers of bubble wrap and clear stretch film, just as expensive sculptures or fragile equipment are packed before long distance transportation.

There were so many layers that the silhouette was barely recognizable under the plastic cocoon.

The girl’s face was completely hidden under a layer of film, but detectives noticed one detail that gave them chills and instantly changed the classification of the crime.

Through numerous layers of polyethylene, a short transparent plastic tube was inserted into the victim’s mouth, the end of which came out to the top flap of the box.

This meant only one thing.

Annie was still alive at the time she was packed, wrapped in plastic, and taped up.

The tube was intended for air access.

She was not prepared for burial, but for long-term storage or transportation as live cargo.

The expert on the spot pronounced her dead and completely rigger mortise.

Annie was still wearing the same clothes she had worn to the casting call, black jeans and a white t-shirt.

Around her, foam filled bags were carefully placed in the hollows of the box to keep her body from swaying and hitting the walls as she moved.

This was not a murder in the heat of the moment or the result of sudden aggression.

It was a cold-blooded logistical operation that went wrong for unknown reasons.

The cargo was left in the storage room temporarily, but no one ever came back to pick it up, condemning the girl to a slow and horrible death in the darkness of concrete box number 404.

On November 17th, 2011, at exactly 8:00 in the morning, an unnatural, oppressive silence reigned in section room 4 of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Normally, the autopsy procedure begins with the removal of clothing and external examination of the body.

But this time, the pathologists faced an unprecedented task.

In front of them on a cold metal table lay not just a body but a tightly packed object that resembled a giant cocoon.

The procedure was called the unpacking protocol and was recorded on video camera from the first to the last second because every layer of film, every piece of tape was now considered critical material evidence.

The experts worked slowly using surgical scissors to avoid damaging the contents.

Layer by layer, they removed the shell, numbering each step for the record.

The outer layer consisted of black industrial stretch film, a dense, opaque material commonly used in logistics warehouses to secure goods on pallets.

This was done so that the contents of the box could not be identified visually.

Underneath was the middle layer, a thick, bubbly, large caliber film designed to protect particularly fragile items from impact during transportation.

It was wound in several turns, creating a cushioning pillow.

The inner layer consisted of another level of stretch film, but this time transparent, which rigidly fixed the limbs, preventing the body from changing position.

When the last layer of polyethylene was cut off and carefully set aside, the experts were presented with Annie Fox.

She looked like an eerie frozen in time replica of herself from that morning of November 12th.

Her clothes, tight black jeans, and a simple white t-shirt were perfectly clean.

There were no tears, blood stains, dirt, or signs of struggle on the fabric.

Even the makeup on her face was only slightly rubbed off from contact with the film.

It seemed that she had simply fallen asleep, but the position in which she was captured said otherwise.

Her arms were pressed tightly to her torso, and her legs were pulled up to her chest in a fetal position, which made it possible to place an adult woman in a box a little over a meter high.

Annie’s wrists and ankles were bound with black plastic construction ties.

However, it was here that forensic scientists noticed a detail that led them to reconsider the profile of the perpetrator.

Under each hard plastic noose, someone had carefully placed pieces of soft fabric or foam rubber.

This was done deliberately with surgical precision.

The conclusion of the investigation was unambiguous and frightening.

The kidnappers tried not to leave a single bruise, scratch, or mark on her skin.

They took care of the victim’s presentation, treating her as an expensive, exclusive cargo that could not be damaged.

A preliminary examination of the body ruled out most of the standard causes of death.

Experts did not find any head injuries, stab wounds, strangulation marks, or gunshot holes.

There were also no signs of sexual assault.

The body was intact.

Toxicology screening provided the answer.

A rapid test, which was later confirmed by extensive laboratory analysis, revealed critically high concentrations of ketamine in Annie’s blood.

This is a powerful dissociative anesthetic often used in veterinary medicine for large animals or as a means of immobilization.

During a detailed examination of the neck in the area of the jugular vein, the pathologist found a single neat injection mark.

The injection was made professionally in one precise movement that minimized the injury to the vessel.

The final conclusion on the mechanism of death was the most tragic part of the report.

The pathologist determined the cause of death as positional asphixxia on the background of deep medication sedation.

Annie was alive when she was wrapped in plastic.

The short plastic tube found in her mouth was meant to allow air to pass through the sealed layers of the packaging.

However, during transportation or loading of the box into the warehouse compartment, the container was probably tilted.

The girl’s body, completely relaxed under the influence of the drug, shifted slightly inside its cocoon.

The tube was squeezed or rested against the wall of the box, blocking the free flow of oxygen.

Due to her constrained posture, knees pressed to her chest, and ketamine-induced respiratory depression, she was unable to take a deep breath.

The oxygen content in the confined space dropped.

The carbon dioxide level increased and Annie just quietly faded away in her sleep, unable to move or call for help.

An analysis of the post-mortem examination revealed the approximate time of death.

According to the examination, Annie’s heart stopped on November 13th or 14th.

This meant that she had been alive in that box in the warehouse for at least 24 hours.

At the same time that her phone was giving off mysterious ghost signals in the Vanise area, she was lying in the darkness of the concrete box, slowly losing air.

Meanwhile, forensic scientists continued to work with the physical evidence recovered from the crime scene.

An examination of the box itself and a trash container near the warehouse yielded several critical clues.

The barcode on the cardboard was only partially preserved.

It had been torn off in an attempt to conceal the origin of the container, but the surviving numbers were enough to identify the batch of goods and narrow the search for stores.

However, the most important find was waiting on the inside of the tape.

The experts found a partial fingerprint on the adhesive tape that was used to seal the layer of bubble wrap around the victim’s feet.

Unfortunately, it had been left in a latex glove, making it unsuitable for identification by the fingerprint.

database.

But underneath the print itself, as if trapped, was one short, dark, stiff hair.

It did not belong to Annie.

The hair had probably fallen from the packer’s beard or hand while he was working and stuck to the tape the moment before he pressed it with his finger.

It was biological material suitable for DNA profiling.

The discovery was immediately sent to the laboratory for priority testing, which could give the investigation the name of the person who turned a living person into a parcel.

On November 17th and 18th, 2011, the investigation into the murder of Annie Fox moved from the cool sectional halls of the morg to the dusty offices of the crime lab.

Despite the fact that the girl’s body had already told its terrible story, investigators still did not have the name of the person who had turned a living person into a parcel.

The key to the solution was not in the biological traces, but in the package itself, in the ordinary cardboard that became Annie’s coffin.

The trace experts focused all their attention on a partially torn barcode that remained on the side of the box of the U-Haul brand.

The perpetrators tried to destroy the marking, but did so carelessly.

Using digital image restoration and spectral analysis, the technicians managed to reconstruct the serial number of the production batch.

It turned out that this was not a simple box that can be purchased at every gas station.

It was a grand wardrobe box, a specialized container with a built-in metal bar for transporting clothes on hangers.

Such a product is more expensive than its standard counterparts and is not available at all points of sale.

An official request to the chain’s regional distributor showed that the batch with the identified serial number had been shipped to only three stores in the San Fernando Valley.

This significantly narrowed the search.

The detectives split into teams and began methodically checking the transaction records of the identified outlets for the period from November 10th to November 12th, the days before the theft.

The work was monotonous but critical.

They were looking for a specific set of products that would match what they found on the victim’s body.

At the Valley Home and Garden Store in North Hollywood, an electronic accounting system produced a match that took the investigator’s breath away.

The database contained a check punched on November 11, 2011 at 19 hours 42 minutes, exactly 1 day before Annie disappeared.

The purchase amount was $84.

50 in cash.

But the most important thing was the list of items.

It was not a shopping list for moving.

It was an estimate for creating a human cocoon.

The receipt listed one large grand wardrobe box, two rolls of industrial bubble wrap, each 15 m long, two rolls of packing stretch film, a 100 pack of black plastic construction ties exactly the same as the ones used to tie Annie’s hands and feet, three rolls of brown packing tape, and one heavyduty utility knife.

The set matched the physical evidence found in unit 404 perfectly.

Having obtained the time of the transaction, the detectives asked the store manager to provide the surveillance footage.

What they saw on the monitor screen was striking in its routine.

A camera installed above cash register number four captured a man who did not look like a murderer or a maniac at all.

He was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple gray t-shirt, worn work jeans, and a baseball cap with the logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He looked like a typical contractor, stage hand, or delivery man, simply purchasing supplies for his next order.

The video shows him standing calmly in line, chewing gum, and even exchanging a few jokes with the cashier while he scanned the barcode on a roll of bubble wrap.

His demeanor was relaxed.

He didn’t look back, didn’t try to hide his face from the cameras, and didn’t show any signs of nervousness.

For him, buying the materials that would later be used to wrap a live woman was a routine activity, a normal part of his workday.

This cynical calmness frightened the detectives more than any overt aggression.

The investigators followed his path further.

An outdoor camera in the store’s parking lot captured the unknown man rolling a shopping cart to a black 2005 Ford Econoline pickup truck.

He slowly loaded the box and film into the back and got behind the wheel.

The car’s license plate was partially covered with dirt, but the automatic license plate recognition system was able to restore the combination of characters and offered several options.

The owner check quickly led the police to a specific person whose profile perfectly matched the description of the suspect.

The owner of the pickup truck was 34year-old Marcus Reed.

His registered address was in Burbank, California, just 2 miles from the photography studio on Victor Boulevard, where Annie was last seen.

A check of his tax returns revealed that Reed worked as an independent contractor in the film industry, specializing in props and logistics.

In professional circles, he was known as an assistant propmaster, someone who could retrieve, transport, and pack anything.

His criminal record was light.

a few fines for petty theft and one arrest for drunken driving.

He did not look like a killer.

He was a fixer, a person hired to do dirty but technical work without asking too many questions.

The police set up roundthe-clock covert surveillance of his small one-story house in Burbank.

A black pickup truck captured on the store’s cameras was parked in the driveway.

The night before the planned raid, detectives conducted a covert inspection of the trash cans placed outside Reed’s home for morning pickup.

What they found among the household garbage was the final nail in the coffin.

In a black plastic bag were cardboard sleeves from used rolls of bubble wrap of the same industrial design as the check.

Nearby, they found scraps of black plastic ties identical to those on the victim’s body.

But the most important piece of evidence was a crumpled piece of brown packing tape.

On its sticky side, forensic experts found one long blonde hair.

Preliminary visual analysis confirmed that this hair belonged to a blonde woman, presumably Annie Fox.

The circle was closed.

Marcus Reed didn’t just buy the materials, he used them, and the evidence was right outside his door.

The police realized that there was no time to lose.

Reed could be dangerous, or more importantly, he could know the whereabouts of other participants in this criminal scheme.

The operation’s leadership decided to engage a special forces team to conduct a dawn raid to take the suspect by surprise and prevent him from destroying digital evidence or warning his accompllices.

On November 19, 2011, at 5:00 in the morning, the silence of the Burbank residential area was broken by the sound of a door being kicked in.

A team of LAPD SWAT officers surrounded the small, well-kept one-story house where Marcus Reed lived.

The neighbors, awakened by loud commands and the light of tactical flashlights, could only watch through the blinds as armed officers burst in.

The assault was lightning fast, leaving the suspect no chance to resist or destroy evidence.

Reed was detained in his bed.

According to the report of the capture team commander, he looked confused, sleepy, and disoriented.

Not at all like a person capable of cold-blooded murder.

He did not resist, only mechanically obeyed orders to lie on the floor and put his hands behind his head.

While the suspect was being taken to the patrol car, the investigators began to search the premises.

In the bedroom, in the top drawer of the bedside table, the detectives found a white mail envelope.

Inside was cash, exactly $5,000 in $100 bills.

Next to the money was a scrap of paper with the address of a warehouse in Vanise written on it in a quick handwriting.

But the main evidence was waiting for the investigators in the garage.

Among the tools and construction debris, the detectives found remnants of packaging materials, cardboard sleeves from industrial film, and scraps of black plastic ties.

The markings and the manufacturer’s brand matched those found in unit 404 and on Annie Fox’s body.

There was no doubt that this was the garage where the tools used to turn a living girl into an immovable object were stored.

Marcus Reed’s interrogation began a few hours later at LAPD headquarters.

The interrogation room was standard.

Gray walls, metal table, mirrored glass.

The detectives decided to proceed in a straightforward manner.

They presented the detainee with photos from the store’s surveillance cameras, copies of the receipts for the boxes, and pictures of his pickup truck entering the warehouse.

Reed, realizing the weight of the evidence, chose a strategy that his lawyers call halftruths.

According to the interrogation report, he admitted that he had bought the materials, rented a storage unit, and placed the box there.

However, his version of events was supposed to justify him in the most serious crime.

Reed insisted that he works in the film industry as a prop specialist and often receives non-standard orders.

According to him, he was paid to confidentially transport expensive props for a private shoot.

He claimed that the box contained a hyperrealistic custom-made silicone adult doll.

The client allegedly demanded complete anonymity and protection of the product from damage.

Reed tried to convince the detectives that he had simply packed the expensive item to avoid damaging it during transportation and left it in the warehouse until requested, not even knowing that there was a live person inside.

This legend sounded almost convincing given his professional background, but the detectives were ready for a twist.

The investigator silently took out a photo from the folder taken during the autopsy.

It showed a close-up of Annie Fox’s face tightly wrapped in layers of film with a short plastic tube sticking out of her mouth.

The detective placed the picture in front of Reed and asked one simple question.

Marcus, if this is a silicone doll, why does it have a breathing tube? The room fell silent.

Reed looked at the photo and his confidence crumbled before his eyes.

He realized that his version of ignorance was disproven by one logical fact.

The tube was proof that he knew the object in the box needed oxygen.

This meant he knew it was a living thing.

Realizing that he was facing charges of aggravated premeditated murder, Reed broke down.

He asked for a plea bargain and agreed to tell the truth in exchange for his cooperation being taken into account by the court.

His confession revealed to the detectives a gruesome picture of what he called logistics.

Reed said that he was hired solely as a transporter and packer.

He did not know the girl’s name, was not interested in her biography, and did not even perceive her as a person.

In his testimony, he used the words object and cargo.

According to him, he arrived at the studio in Burbank using the back technical entrance to avoid the cameras.

When he went inside, Annie was already unconscious.

The casting director who had hired Reed had given her an injection of a sedative before he arrived.

She was sitting in a chair with her head bowed and looked like she was sound asleep.

Reed acted quickly and professionally, using his skills with fragile props.

He personally inserted the tube into the victim’s mouth, making sure the air was passing freely.

Then he began to wrap it with tape right in the chair.

He explained to the investigators that he was fixing the joints in a bent position not to cause pain, but to avoid dislocations during the transfer.

He placed soft pads under each plastic tie because he had clear instructions.

The goods should not have any damage, bruises, or signs of violence.

He was proud of his work.

The cargo was perfectly protected and ready for transportation.

The initial plan was simple and clear.

Reed was to load the box into his van and immediately drive it to the private sector of Vanise airport.

There, a private flight was waiting to take the package out of the state.

It was supposed to be a quick transfer with no unnecessary stops.

However, when the box was already in the van and Reed left the studio, the system malfunctioned.

He received a call from the customer informing him of the problem.

The plane’s departure was delayed for 24 or even 36 hours due to technical issues.

Reed received a new order.

Hold the cargo in a safe place until the next command.

It was at this point that a fatal mistake was made that cost Annie her life.

Reed admitted that he did not want to take the box with the body to his home in Burbank because his wife was there and he was afraid she might suspect something.

So he decided to stop by the nearest storage facility he came across, Irongate Self Storage.

He rented a unit, brought the box there, and left it there.

Reed claimed that before he left, he made hidden holes in the cardboard and checked to see if the tube was pinched.

He expected that the effect of the ketamine injected by the organizer would last for several more hours and then the girl would wake up in the dark but would be securely tied up and not go anywhere until the time of departure.

He was not a doctor and did not take into account physiological factors.

In a concrete box without ventilation, in an upright position with her knees pressed to her chest under the influence of powerful sedatives, the girl’s diaphragm simply could not cope with the pressure of the layers of film.

Reed closed the roller shutter, put the lock on it, and drove home, believing that he was simply leaving the goods in storage.

He did not plan to kill, but his indifference and unprofessionalism became the instrument of death.

When detectives asked who hired him and who injected him, Reed gave a name.

It was not an anonymous voice on the phone.

It was a person he knew personally from his work on the set of a movie in Los Angeles.

The organizer of the exclusive casting and the one who administered the lethal dose of the drug was Derek Halt, a well-known fashion photographer and scout in the city who had an impeccable reputation in the fashion world.

The detectives understood Marcus Reed was only the executive, the hands of this operation.

Derek Hol was the link to the real money and customers.

Derek Hol was a figure that everyone in Los Angeles knew who had at least some connection to the fashion industry, but about whom no one could say anything specific.

The 42-year-old photographer who specialized in shooting for glossy cataloges and finding new faces had a reputation as an eccentric but brilliant professional.

His studio was located in downtown’s trendy arts district, a converted industrial loft with high ceilings and panoramic windows.

It was a place where hundreds of young girls dreamed of going, believing that this was where the path to the covers of world magazines began.

None of them realized that Holt’s real income came not from photographs, but from what happened after the shutter clicked.

On November 19, 2011, at 14:00, while Marcus Reed was giving his first confused testimony in the interrogation room, a group of Los Angeles police detectives had already surrounded the building in downtown.

The leadership of the operation decided to abandon a high-profile assault with SWAT teams.

Hol was an intellectual, had access to complex digital systems, and any delay could give him time to destroy servers or encrypt data.

Therefore, the detectives chose the tactic of quiet capture.

Two plain operatives holding a large box with a courier service logo rang the doorbell of the loft.

When Derek Hol opened the door, he didn’t even have time to ask about the contents of the package.

The arrest was instantaneous.

The photographer, dressed in an expensive bathrobe, behaved extremely arrogantly.

He did not physically resist, but loudly demanded a lawyer, threatened the officers with lawsuits for disrupting the filming process, and promised that tomorrow they would all lose their jobs.

He was confident in his immunity, believing that the police had come for some trifle or tax audit.

But his confidence began to fade when a team of cyber security experts and forensic scientists entered the premises with a full search warrant.

The loft looked like a typical apartment of a wealthy bohemian.

Expensive appliances, rare vinyl records, huge black and white prints of models on the brick walls.

But the detectives were not looking for art.

They were looking for the instruments of death.

The first discovery was a hidden safe built into the wall behind one of the photographs.

When the technicians opened it, they found not only wads of cash tied with bank ribbons, but also several glass vials with a clear liquid inside.

The labels indicated that it was veterinary ketamine, probably imported illegally from Mexico.

Nearby was a set of sterile disposable syringes.

This was the first direct material link to the results of the toxicology examination of Annie’s body.

The next piece of evidence was found in a massive oak desk.

In the bottom drawer, among old contracts and hard drives, there were several cell phones and driver’s licenses.

Among them, the detective saw a familiar face, a driver’s license in the name of Annie Fox and her pink Blackberry smartphone.

Hol didn’t destroy these items as he promised the contractor Reed.

He kept them for himself, either as a kind of insurance or as a perverse trophy, a memory of the goods that passed through his hands.

At the same time, the cyber department seized his MacBook Pro laptop, which was in sleep mode.

After activating the screen, a folder with the cynical name November shipment remained open on the desktop.

Derek Holt’s interrogation became a psychological duel.

Unlike Reed’s frightened loader, Hol showed signs of sociopathy.

He was cold, calculating, and devoid of empathy.

However, when the investigator laid on the table a photograph of the found ketamine vials and Annie’s pink phone, the photographer realized that the game was up.

His lawyer, having assessed the weight of the evidence, told his client that the state of California has a death penalty for aggravated murder, and the only chance to avoid the green mile is to cooperate fully with the investigation.

Hol began to talk.

His testimony revealed a scheme that had existed for years, right under the police’s noses.

He admitted that he was working as a scout not for modeling agencies, but for the elite shadow market of human trafficking.

His clients were wealthy foreigners, mostly from the Middle East and Asia, who were looking for specific types of women for their private closed collections.

Holt’s method was impeccable.

He found girls who had just arrived in Los Angeles, had few connections, and were desperate for a career.

He held real professional photooots, took high-quality pictures, and then sent this portfolio to potential buyers as a kind of menu.

Annie Fox was chosen by one of the clients solely on the basis of the photographs.

The price of the deal, which Hol announced, was $250,000.

The main condition of the customer was the so-called logistics of silence.

The girl had to be delivered in a state of deep medication sleep to avoid any resistance or screaming during transportation by private plane.

She was to wake up aboard a yacht in international waters where United States law did not apply.

Hol coolly described the events in a studio in Burbank.

He admitted that he was the one who administered the ketamine dose to Annie when she was distracted by signing a fake contract.

He was not a doctor and calculated the amount of the drug by eye based on the girl’s approximate weight.

According to him, everything was going according to plan until a technical problem arose at Vanise airport.

The client’s private jet was unable to take off due to a hydraulic failure.

The flight was postponed.

It was then that Hol made a fatal mistake motivated by complete indifference to human life.

He ordered Reed to hide the cargo and wait for further instructions.

He didn’t think about ventilation, the position in the box, or how long the drug would last.

For him, Annie was already a sold product for which he had received an advance.

Her life as a person did not interest him.

Experts who hacked into the secure correspondence on his computer found evidence of this.

They found traces of a transfer of funds to an offshore account and a dialogue with the client’s intermediary.

The last message, dated November 15th, when Annie was already dead in the box in the warehouse, sounded dry and categorical.

The delay is unacceptable.

Cancel the deal.

Return the advance.

Hol admitted that after receiving this message, he simply wrote off Annie.

He didn’t call Reed to check on her or release her because he already knew the deal was off and she was a dangerous witness.

He planned to order Reed to take the box to the Mojave Desert and burn it later when things calmed down.

But the police found the warehouse earlier.

The detectives had a perpetrator and an organizer.

But the main question remained, who was the invisible client who had financed the murder and disappeared into the digital network, leaving behind only the canceled order? The period from November 20 to November 25, 2011 was a time of the highest tension and at the same time the deepest disappointment for the LAPD investigative team.

Two men were in pre-trial detention.

the perpetrator who had packed a live person in a cardboard box and the organizer who had injected a lethal dose of anesthetic.

It would seem that the case was solved, the evidence base was collected, and the motives were established.

However, the detectives realized that they were only tools.

The real architect of this crime, the one who ordered Annie Fox as a catalog item and financed her abduction, was still in the shadows.

Derek Holt, trying to bargain for his life in exchange for a reduced sentence, demonstrated his full cooperation.

During hours of interrogation, he told everything he knew about his client.

But after the first protocols, it became clear that he knew critically little.

Hol had never seen the client’s face, never heard his voice, and did not even know his real name.

All communication took place through a secure messenger called BlackBerry Messenger, which in 2011 was considered the gold standard of privacy.

This system used unique pins instead of phone numbers and messages were sent through servers that encrypted data at a level that was not easily hackable.

In Holt’s contact list, the customer appeared under the laconic pseudonym Mr.

V.

Their correspondence was dry, business-like, and concerned only the parameters of the product and logistics.

The last message from this contact was received on the day the operation failed, after which the device on the other end was deactivated.

Police cyber experts tried to trace the digital trail, but came up empty.

The account had been deleted and the physical device presumably destroyed.

Mr.

V turned into a digital ghost that disappeared from the network as silently as it had appeared.

Investigators tried to go another way financially.

Money always leaves a trail and the $50,000 advance Holt received was supposed to lead to a source of funding.

An official request to the financial crimes department yielded results, but it turned out to be a dead end.

The funds were transferred to Hol’s offshore account from a bank located in Cyprus.

The sender was a one-day company registered in the Panama Islands.

The legal department of the prosecutor’s office explained to the detectives that this was a classic moneyaundering scheme and concealment of the ultimate beneficiary.

The Panameanian company was run by so-called nominee directors, fictitious persons who signed the documents of hundreds of similar companies for a small fee.

to pierce this corporate veil and find out who was really behind the account.

It took months or even years of international court inquiries, which offshore jurisdictions often do not respond to at all.

The chain of transactions was broken where the US warrants lost their force.

The last hope of the investigation was the airplane.

If the client was preparing a private jet to take the victim away, that plane would have to leave a physical trail at the airport.

The detectives went to Vanise Airport, one of the busiest business aviation airports in the world, known for its discretion.

An analysis of the flight plans for November 12th confirmed Halt and Reed’s claims.

A Gulfream G450 business jet was indeed waiting on the runway that day.

It was a luxury aircraft capable of transcontinental flights.

Its tail number was registered to a holding company in Delaware, another classic P.

O.

box created for anonymous asset ownership.

The route indicated in the flight plan looks strange and suspicious.

The plane was supposed to take off from Vanise make a technical refueling stop in Banger Main.

In fact, the last point in the United States before crossing the ocean.

The final point of the route was international waters of the Atlantic.

This could have meant landing on a private island not under the jurisdiction of any country or meeting a super yacht equipped with a helipad.

Such a flight plan showed that the customer had carefully prepared to ensure that the cargo could never be found.

Through the registers of the Federal Aviation Administration, the detectives managed to identify the pilot who was supposed to fly the flight.

He was found in Florida where he was vacationing after another contract.

During the interrogation, the pilot seemed genuinely surprised by the police’s interest in the canceled flight.

According to him, he had been hired through a broker to perform a specific, but in his opinion, legal task, transporting a VIP passenger with special medical needs.

The broker warned the pilot that the passenger had undergone a complicated operation and would be on board under general anesthesia accompanied by a personal doctor.

This legend perfectly explained why the passenger could be loaded on board in an unconscious state and did not arouse any suspicion among the crew.

The pilot claimed that he did not know about any kidnapping.

When the flight was suddenly cancelled due to a change in the patients condition, he simply received a hefty penalty stipulated in the contract and flew back empty.

His testimony was checked on a polygraph and he passed the test.

The pilot was just another blind link in the chain.

At the end of November, a closed door meeting was held in the district prosecutor’s office.

The investigative team laid out all the materials they had collected on the table.

chat transcripts, bank statements from offshore accounts, data on the plane, and the pilot’s testimony.

The conclusion was disappointing.

They had the perpetrators.

They had evidence of the crime, but the thread leading to the customer had been cut professionally and irrevocably.

The lawyers explained the bitter truth to the detectives.

Without a direct connection, without a name, with only an account number in the Panameanian Islands and the testimony of a pilot who had not seen anything, it was legally impossible to get to Mr.

V.

The customer remained completely protected.

He lost money, the advance to Halt, and the payment for the plane’s lease.

But he retained the most important thing, his anonymity and freedom.

For him, it was just a bad business deal, a financial loss he could afford.

The investigation was forced to admit defeat in this part of the case.

They had caught the spiders, the perpetrators who did the dirty work, but the one who wo the web and pulled the strings from a safe distance remained unreachable.

Annie Fox became a victim of a system where human life has a price and a wealthy buyer can order a live woman as easily as they order a rare work of art.

and go unpunished even if the goods are damaged during the delivery process.

The case against the client remained open but effectively dead.

In May of 2013, the Los Angeles County Superior Court located in the massive building of the Clara Short Ridge Folks Criminal Justice Center began hearing the case, which the press had already dubbed the live parcel trial.

The courtroom packed with reporters, relatives of the victim, and the curious, had a heavy, electrifying atmosphere.

In the dock sat the two men who had worked together to turn the life of 24year-old Annie Fox into a commodity, photographer Derek Hol and logistics specialist Marcus Reed.

The trial lasted several weeks, but the key battles revolved around the degree of guilt of each of the participants.

The evidence collected by LAPD detectives was so solid that the defense did not even try to deny the facts of the kidnapping and death.

Instead, the lawyers chose the tactic of mutual accusations, trying to shift the main burden of responsibility to the accomplice.

Marcus Reed’s defense built its line on the image of a victim of circumstances.

The lawyer portrayed his client as a simple worker, a person with a low level of education who was cynically used by a manipulative and wealthy employer.

In his speech, the defense lawyer insisted that Reed did not intend to kill the girl.

He argued that Marcus was only following clear instructions to safely pack and temporarily store the cargo and was misled about the victim’s medical condition.

According to the defense, Annie’s death was a tragic accident, the result of a misunderstanding of physiological processes, not malice.

The district attorney shattered this strategy with one spectacular gesture.

He walked over to the physical evidence table and held up a large photograph of the cardboard box found in unit 44.

The word fragile was clearly visible on the side written in Reed’s hand.

The prosecutor then showed the jury a receipt from a hardware store where a separate line item was for a package of plastic ties.

Turning to read, the prosecutor uttered a phrase that was included in all the court reports that day.

You didn’t just do the work.

You went to the store, bought the materials, packed up a living woman with your own hands like an old TV set, taped her up, and left her to die in the dark, and then went home to sleep.

This is not negligence.

This is deliberate dehumanization.

Derek Holt’s defense was more sophisticated, but no less cynical.

His lawyers tried to use legal technicalities to avoid first-degree murder charges.

They acknowledged that they had organized the kidnapping and the drug administration, but insisted that Reed’s actions were the direct cause of death.

According to their logic, Holt’s plan provided for safe transportation, and the death occurred solely due to the gross negligence of the contractor, who had placed the box incorrectly and failed to provide ventilation.

Hol tried to make himself look like a businessman in the eyes of the jury whose operation was disrupted by the incompetence of his staff.

The prosecutor’s office responded by applying the doctrine of felony murder.

Under California law, if a victim dies during the commission of another felony, in this case, kidnapping and human trafficking, all conspirators are liable for firstdegree murder, regardless of who pulled the trigger or taped the gun.

In addition, the prosecution presented recovered correspondence from Halt, where he ordered the deal to be cancelled after the plane was delayed, effectively signing Annie’s death warrant with his inaction.

The jury’s verdict was announced in late May.

After less than 4 hours of deliberations, the jury foreman handed the judge a sheet with the decision.

Silence reigned in the room, broken only by the squeaking of reporters pens.

Derek Hol was found guilty on all charges, including first-degree murder, kidnapping for ransom or reward, and human trafficking.

The judge reading out the verdict called his actions an absolute manifestation of evil where human life was reduced to the level of a catalog item.

Hol was sentenced to life in state prison without the possibility of parole.

This meant that he would leave the prison only in a coffin.

Marcus Reed received a slightly milder but still harsh sentence.

He was found guilty of seconddegree murder and complicity in kidnapping.

The court took into account his cooperation with the investigation which helped to expose the organizer but could not ignore the brutality of the packaging process itself.

Reed was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

As the baiffs led the convicts out of the courtroom, Annie Fox’s parents sat motionless.

They held hands, staring at the backs of those who had taken their only daughter away from them.

Justice seemed to have been done.

The criminals were punished.

The case was closed, and society was protected.

But as they walked out of the Chile courthouse and onto the sundrenched streets of Los Angeles, their faces did not express triumph or relief.

Annie’s father paused on the steps and looked up at the skyscrapers of downtown where thousands of people sat in offices going about their business.

He knew what the verdict was silent about, but what the detectives clearly understood.

The chain was not completely broken.

Somewhere in the big world, across the ocean, or aboard a luxury yacht, there was still a person who had set the mechanism in motion.

Mr.

V.

The faceless customer who was willing to pay a quarter of a million dollars for a living toy remained at large.

He lost nothing but money, which was probably nothing to him.

He still had his freedom, his offshore accounts, and his desires.

And the scariest part was the realization that right now, while the Fox family is mourning their loss, this unknown man could be looking through a new portfolio, choosing the next girl whose fate will depend on a well-timed message and the reliability of the packing tape.

For Annie, it’s over.

But for the one who ordered her, the hunt has never stopped.