On October 14, 2017, twin sisters Mary and Sandra Wilson left their car in a parking lot near the Superstition Mountains and disappeared without a trace among the hot rocks.

3 weeks of searching yielded no results.

There was no hope of finding them alive until in the middle of the night on Highway 88, a truck driver saw a figure staggering in the headlights.

It was one of the sisters.

She looked like a ghost, emaciated, wearing dirty rags, and her hands were a bloody mess, as if she had been picking at rocks with her bare palms.

What she told the police shocked the entire state.

An unknown person had forced them to flip a coin to decide which of the two sisters should die.

It seemed like a story of an incredible rescue.

But why did the experienced detective looking at her wounds feel that something was wrong with this story? The Superstition Mountains, which rise to the east of Phoenix, Arizona, have always had a dark reputation.

For centuries, local legends have told of cursed gold, evil spirits, and travelers who have entered these crimson canyons and never returned.

However, on October [music] 14, 2017, no mystical warnings could stop two young women who wanted to conquer one of the most famous peaks in the region.

At 6:00 in the morning, a white jeep compass slowly pulled into the gravel parking lot of Lost Dutchman State Park.

The morning sun was just beginning to golden the tops of the saguarro cacti and the air still retained the coolness of the night.

Although the forecast promised a sweltering heat by noon.

Two girls got out of the car looking like two peas in a pod.

They were 24year-old twin sisters Mary and Sandra Wilson.

Outwardly it was almost impossible to distinguish them.

The same height, identical hair color, similar facial features.

However, those who knew them intimately claimed that they were complete opposites inside.

Mary Wilson was the epitome of success and discipline.

At the age of 24, she was already running a promising startup in Phoenix, was the pride of her family, and always had a clear plan for her life.

Sandra, on the other hand, seemed to be her shadow, chaotic and unpredictable.

She took temporary jobs, changed apartments frequently, and according to her friends, had serious financial debts that were constantly growing.

Despite this gap in social status and lifestyle, [music] the sisters tried to keep in touch.

This hike was supposed to be a moment of unity, an attempt to restore sisterly closeness away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Investigators later established the chronology of their morning to the minute.

At 7:00 15 minutes, both girls cell phones connected for the last time to a cell tower near Apache Junction.

It was the last digital trace they left in the civilized world.

The sisters set out on the Siphon Dro Trail, a trail considered one of the most difficult in the park.

It’s not just a walk in the desert.

It’s a grueling climb where the trail often gets lost among smooth, windpolished rocks.

And the final stretch requires almost mountaineering skills to climb up to the Flat Iron Plateau.

There were few witnesses who saw the girls at the beginning of the route.

An elderly couple of hikers later told police that they saw two similar girls in sportsware who were having a lively discussion at the foot of the canyon.

According to them, the conversation did not look like a quarrel, but there was some tension.

However, in documentary investigations, the words of witnesses are often subjective, and the true content of that conversation remained forever between the sisters.

The day passed.

The sun rose to the zenith, heating the stones to [music] dangerous temperatures.

The thermometer reached 35° C that day.

In such conditions, dehydration occurs rapidly, [music] and orientation on the terrain becomes difficult due to the haze of hot air.

As the sun began to sink below [music] the horizon, painting the desert in disturbing red tones, Mary did not get in touch.

It was completely unlike her.

She always warned her parents about her plans and never disappeared without warning.

Around 900 p.m., when the silence of the phones became unbearable, the family raised the alarm.

The sister’s father, sensing something was a miss, immediately called the Pel County Sheriff’s Office.

Rangers arrived at the parking lot of Lost Dutchman Park at night.

The white Jeep Compass was parked where it had been left in the morning.

Inside, everything looked ordinary.

There was a change of clothes, a bottle of water, and a road map on the back seat.

The car was locked, and there were no signs of a break-in or struggle.

It seemed that the girls had simply vanished into thin air.

A large-scale search operation began at dawn the next day.

It was one of [music] the largest search missions in the county’s history in recent years.

Dozens of volunteers lined up in chains, combing every meter at the foot of the mountains.

Canine teams with sniffer dogs checked crevices and caves, trying to catch any scent.

Helicopters equipped with thermal imagers circled over the superstition massif incessantly, hoping to spot the thermal signatures of human bodies among the cold rocks.

However, the terrain played [music] against the rescuers.

The Siphon Dro Canyon is a maze of sheer walls, deep creasses, and dense thorny chaparel bushes.

The dogs quickly lost track on the hot stones, [music] which do not hold odors.

The traces of the girls, which were found at the initial stage, led confidently up to the [music] iron, the flat iron rock formation.

But on the plateau, about 2 miles from the parking lot, the trail suddenly broke off.

There were no signs of a fall from the cliff, no scattered belongings, no signs of struggle or the presence of wild animals.

Days of searching turned into weeks.

The [music] hope of finding the sisters alive melted away with each passing hour under the scorching Arizona sun.

Volunteers found old bottles, hats lost by other hikers, but nothing that belonged to Mary or Sandra.

Investigators interviewed everyone who had been in the park that day, reviewed hours of surveillance footage from nearby gas stations and roads, and analyzed phone billing to the last second of their activity.

All in vain.

Versions multiplied like circles on water.

Could they have gotten lost and wandered off the trail into one of the many side canyons where they were not visible from the air? Had they been victims of an accident, falling into one of the deep, inaccessible gorges? Or, as the locals began to whisper, was there something else going on here? After all, the disappearance of two adults without a single trace is extremely rare, even in such wild places.

The police also checked the criminal version given Sandra’s debts, but there was no direct evidence of any malicious action.

The girl’s parents appeared on television pleading for help and posted postcards with the twins smiling faces across the state, but the desert remained silent.

The Superstition Mountains were keeping their new secret well.

The active search operation was officially suspended after 2 weeks due to the lack of new leads.

Although volunteers continued to hit the trails on weekends, the case began to become a dead end.

No one had any idea that this was just the beginning of a horrific story and that the silence of the mountains was just the calm before the storm that would change everything about what happened on that fateful October morning.

Exactly 3 weeks have passed since the fateful day when the Wilson sisters last got in touch.

For the family and the local community, this time has seemed like an eternity.

The active phase of the search officially ended.

Volunteer groups gradually thinned out and photos of the missing girls on information boards began to fade under the merciless Arizona sun.

The hope of finding the sisters alive became elucery, and even the most optimistic investigators privately leaned toward the version of a tragic, fatal accident.

The desert rarely brings back those who have disappeared for so long.

However, the story took an unexpected and gruesome turn on the night of November 4th.

State Route 88, also known as the Apache Trail, turns into a dark and desolate corridor at night, winding between rocks and cacti.

Around 2 in the morning, an experienced trucker on a nighttime flight to Phoenix saw a strange shape in his headlights.

At first, he thought it was a wild animal or a play of light, which often happens to tired eyes.

But when the headlights picked up the silhouette more clearly, the man realized that a person was walking along the roadside, barely shifting his feet.

The driver slammed on the brakes.

The multi-tonon truck stopped, kicking up a cloud of smoke.

The man jumped out of the cab holding a flashlight and ran toward the figure.

What he saw was forever engraved in his memory, as he later told journalists on several occasions.

A young woman was standing in front of him.

Her condition was terrible.

Her clothes had turned into dirty, tattered rags that hung in shreds, exposing her emaciated body.

Her skin was covered with a layer of dust and severe sunburn, and her lips were chapped to the point of bleeding from dehydration.

But the greatest horror gripped the driver when the girl slowly raised her arms as if trying to protect herself from the bright light of the flashlight.

He involuntarily recoiled.

Her palms were a continuous bloody mess.

It was a horrible mixture of dirt, deep cuts, and dried brown crust covering her skin from her fingertips to her wrists.

It looked as if she had spent hours, perhaps days, with her bare hands tearing apart sharp stones or digging through hard, rocky ground.

Her nails were torn off or broken at the root.

In addition to the mutilated hands, there were other marks on the girl’s body that indicated that this was no ordinary wandering in the desert.

Her thin wrists [music] showed distinct dark stripes, the characteristic bruises and abrasions [music] that remain after being tied up tightly.

Another crimson inflamed mark was visible on her neck from the rope that encircled her throat.

In a barely audible horse voice, she said her name, Mary Wilson.

The news instantly spread across the state.

The media dubbed her the girl who came back from hell.

The victim was immediately taken to Mountain Vista Medical Center.

The emergency room was working in a high pressure mode.

The doctors who examined the patient were shocked by the nature of her injuries.

They paid special attention to her hands.

The surgeons had to spend hours treating the wounds, washing the dirt out of the deep [music] cuts to save the tissue from necrosis and preserve the sensitivity of the fingers.

The medical report stated that [music] the extent of the damage to her palms indicated the desperate mechanical and prolonged actions that the girl performed, ignoring the unbearable pain.

While doctors were fighting for her health, the hospital was surrounded by police cordons.

Journalists with cameras and microphones [music] were already on duty outside the windows trying to get at least some commentary or footage.

Everyone was worried about one main question that had been in the air since she appeared on the highway.

Where was Sandra? Mary was the only one who had returned.

Her sister was not there.

The first communication with the investigators took place as soon as the doctors gave permission.

The detectives tried to act as cautiously as possible.

realizing the victim’s severe psychological state when the detective in charge of the case quietly asked, “Mary, where is your sister now? What happened to Sandra?” The room [music] fell dead silent.

The girl did not say a word.

She slowly looked down at her bandaged, immobile hands lying on top of the blanket.

Her eyes closed and her body began to shake uncontrollably with small [music] tremors.

It was a reaction of deep shock and trauma.

No sound, no crying, just [music] this terrible trembling and fixation of the eyes on her own mutilated palms.

The investigators realized that [music] they would not be able to get quick answers.

What Mary Wilson had experienced in those 3 weeks in the Superstition Mountains had locked her mind in a state of confusion.

and Sandra’s fate remained a terrible unknown, the keys to which were hidden [music] somewhere in the fractured memory of her surviving sister.

Mary’s return did not put an end to this story, but only opened a new, much darker page in the investigation, turning the disappearance case into a criminal mystery [music] with many unknowns.

The girl, identified as Mary Wilson, [music] spent the next 48 hours after her sudden return in an isolated intensive care unit at Mountain Vista Medical Center.

Her physical condition was consistently serious, but her psychological status was of even greater concern [music] to doctors.

The medical staff recalled that the patient hardly spoke, answering [music] questions with nods or short phrases.

She was terrified of the dark and categorically forbade [music] turning off the lights in the ward, even at night.

Any loud sound in the corridor, the clatter of a medical gurnie or loud footsteps made her shudder and hide under the covers as if she expected an immediate threat.

The doctors continued to work painstakingly on her mangled palms.

The surgeons tried to restore the damaged tissue because the wounds were so deep that in some places they exposed the bones of the fanges.

While the doctors were fighting for her health, the police were patiently waiting for permission to interrogate her.

The detectives realized that every hour of silence was moving them further away from solving the fate of the second sister, Sandra.

But it was impossible to put pressure on the victim in this state.

The first official interrogation took place on November 6th as soon as the doctors gave the green light.

The lead detective in the case, Lance Carter, entered the room.

He brought a recorder, a notebook, and the hope of getting at least some clues.

According to the interrogation report, Mary was sitting on the bed, carefully holding her bandaged white boxing glove-like hands in her lap.

She looked distant, staring at a single point on the wall.

Her voice was quiet, [music] broken with long pauses.

But the story she began to tell was striking in its terrifying clarity.

According to the victim, the tragedy unfolded on the Flat Iron Plateau itself, where she and her sister had reached around noon on that fateful day.

They stopped to rest and [music] take some photos when an unknown man suddenly emerged from behind a pile of rocks.

Mary described him as an ordinary hiker.

Sportsear, backpack, hiking boots.

Nothing suspicious except for one detail.

His face was completely hidden by a synthetic buff stretched to his nose and large mirrored glasses that reflected only the sky.

Everything changed in a second when a gun appeared in his hand.

He didn’t shout.

He didn’t demand money or jewelry, Mary told the investigator, still staring at the wall.

He spoke very quietly and calmly.

He just pointed the muzzle of the gun at a barely visible trail leading down towards wild, non-ouristy canyons and told us to go.

We walked for about an hour.

The heat was unbearable, but he did not allow us to stop.

Then, according to her, they reached a remote area where the trail ended with a fork near a deep rocky gorge.

Here, the kidnapper ordered them to stop.

He stood in front of the girls, shifting his gaze from one sister to the other, hidden by his glasses as if evaluating a product.

At this [music] point, Mary’s story turned into a nightmare scenario.

He said he only wanted one, she whispered so quietly that the detective had to lean closer to the recorder.

He didn’t choose us based on any criteria.

He didn’t care who we were.

He just took an ordinary coin out of his pocket.

The man threw the coin in the air.

It sparkled in the sun and fell into his palm.

He looked at the result and silently pointed the gun at Sandra.

Mary said that the kidnapper forced Sandra to walk with him around the corner of a massive rock while he ordered her to stand still and not move, threatening to kill them both if she made a move.

A minute, maybe two.

And then I heard a scream.

It was my sister’s scream.

A short, sharp, terrified scream that suddenly cut off.

And then there was a sound.

a dull sound of impact [music] as if something heavy had fallen into a deep abyss.

She covered her face with her bandaged hands [music] and her shoulders began to shake again.

Detective Carter paused in the recording, giving her time to compose herself.

Continuing, she added the most terrifying detail.

He came back alone without her.

He came up to me, hid the gun, and said, “You will live.

” Then he tied my hands and took me to some cave or grotto.

Regarding her escape, Mary explained the origin of the horrific wounds on her hands.

According to her, the man chained her to a hook, driven into the rock.

But after a few days, he left and did not return for a long time.

Left alone, exhausted by hunger and fear, she began to desperately [music] shake the old rusty carbine.

She did this for hours, peeling the skin of her palms down [music] to the meat, breaking her nails and ignoring the pain until the mechanism finally gave way.

Once free, she ran through the desert at random until [music] she came upon a highway.

She claimed she did not know who the man was and had never seen him before.

When the details of this interrogation were partially leaked to the press through anonymous sources, the public was shocked.

The story of the coin toss horrified people even more than the violence itself.

There was something inhuman, cold, and chaotic about it.

The thought that the lives of two young women depended on the accidental fall of a piece of metal made the blood run cold.

This element turned [music] the case from a simple crime into something ominous, and the image of the unknown man in mirrored glasses became the personification of pure evil.

But the police still had many questions because finding the crime scene in the maze of mountains with only these testimonies [music] was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

News of Mary Wilson’s miraculous rescue spread across the United States [music] in a matter of hours, turning a local tragedy into a national sensation.

The story of the coin murder and the girl who managed to escape from the clutches of death instantly became the main topic of all morning talk shows and evening newscasts.

While Mary was still in the sterile silence [music] of her hospital room, a real tent city had already set up at the main entrance of [music] the medical center.

Mobile stations from CNN, Fox News, and dozens of other media giants occupied [music] the entire parking lot, and reporters were broadcasting live, recounting the horrific details leaked by police [music] sources.

Under fierce public and media pressure, the Pel County Sheriff’s Office was forced to act immediately [music] and on a massive scale.

The sheriff announced the launch of the largest search operation in the modern history of the [music] state of Arizona.

Hundreds of police officers, reinforced by tactical SWAT teams and FBI [music] agents, headed into the mountains.

The search area centered around the Weaver’s Needle Rock formation where Mary’s confusing but persistent testimony suggested the mysterious cave where she was being held was supposed to be.

The canyons were filled with men in uniform.

Helicopters scoured the area relentlessly from the air, and ground teams checked every crevice, every grotto, and every abandoned mine.

But the mountains were silent.

Not a single cave with chains or traces of human presence in the sector was found, which police spokespeople explained by the complexity of the terrain [music] and the vast area of the search.

Meanwhile, based on the victim’s [music] testimony, forensic experts drew up and published a sketch of the alleged attacker.

Since his face, according to the girl, was completely covered, the emphasis was placed on his equipment and special signs.

The posters, which covered the entire state in a day, depicted a man of medium height, athletic build, dressed in expensive, khaki tactical clothing.

The main details were the mirrored glasses that hid his eyes and a specific detail that Mary remembered only during the third interrogation, a noticeable, irregularly shaped scar on the back of his left hand.

This sketch actually became a verdict for many local men.

The police, trying to find at least some clue, turned all the trailer parks in the town of Apache Junction upside down.

Detectives stopped and interrogated every lone hiker, every hermit living in the foothills, and anyone else who even slightly matched the description.

Three main suspects were detained, but after exhaustive checks, all of them had an ironclad alibi.

The mysterious mountain maniac remained elusive like a ghost that had vanished into the hot desert air.

Against the backdrop of a fruitless search, Mary Wilson was discharged from the hospital.

Her first public appearance was carefully staged and resembled a scene from a Hollywood drama.

She came out to the press leaning on crutches, although doctors did not record any serious injuries to her legs.

Her hands were tightly bandaged and her eyes were hidden behind large dark glasses.

“I will not stop until we find whoever took my sister,” she said in a shaky but firm voice into dozens of microphones.

Now I have to live for both of us.

The girl’s parents stood next to her, supporting her under their arms.

They looked crushed with grief over the loss of one daughter, but at the same time, they worshiped the other who had returned.

For them, Mary was the embodiment of a true miracle.

This emotional speech had a tremendous effect.

The In Memory of Sandra Charity Fund, created by family friends, raised nearly half a million dollars in donations from caring people around the world in the first week alone.

Mary publicly announced that the money would be used to improve security in national parks and help the families of the missing.

However, as it turned out later from bank statements, at that time all the funds were accumulated in an account to which only she had full access.

[music] In the maelstrom of compassion and admiration, no one noticed certain strange things.

For example, the medical staff was surprised at how abnormally quickly her deep wounds on her palms, which had been described as critical a week earlier, healed, or how coolly and confidently she began to dispose of her missing sister’s property.

2 weeks after her discharge, Mary went to Sandra’s rented apartment in Mesa.

Witnesses recalled that she did not cry or look upset as she went through her loved ones belongings.

She acted methodically and quickly as if she were doing a routine job.

[music] Mary gathered almost all the clothes, personal trinkets, and memorabilia of her failed sister in black garbage bags and simply threw them in the trash.

“Sandra won’t need this anymore,” she explained to her mother, who was trying to keep at least something as a momento.

However, not everyone believed in the perfect picture of the grieving sister.

The lead detective, Lance Carter, who had been working on the case from day one, had a hunch that something was wrong.

He was confused by the inconsistencies in the psychological profile of the perpetrator.

A maniac who organizes a theatrical performance with a coin flip, kills one victim, but leaves another alive to witness it.

This went against the logic of most serial killers who usually try to leave no trace.

The scenario looked too cinematic, too elaborate, as if someone had tried to realize the plot of a cheap thriller [music] calculating every step except for one detail.

The plausibility of human behavior.

Carter had no proof yet, only a bad feeling.

But he knew that the devil was always in the details, which would eventually surface.

On November 10th, a search operation in the Superstition Mountains finally yielded the result that was supposed to be the key to the clue.

But instead of answers, it raised even more terrifying questions.

Guided by the confusing but detailrich testimony of the rescued girl, a combined team of rangers and detective Lance Carter [music] set out for a remote sector of the park.

Their goal was the LeBarge Canyon area, a wild, inaccessible place rarely visited by ordinary tourists.

It is a deep stone pocket in the shadow of majestic rock formations [music] where direct sunlight peeps in for only 1 hour a day, leaving the gorge in partial shade, even at noon.

After several hours of exhausting combing the area, one of the rangers noticed an unnatural pile of dry branches and stones at the foot of the shear wall.

The entrance was expertly disguised.

[music] The mosquite bushes were laid out in such a way that they blended into the landscape, creating the illusion of a solid shrub wall.

Only after pushing aside the heavy branches [music] did the group see a narrow passage leading deep into the rock.

As the beams of the tactical flashlights cut through the darkness of the cave, the forensic team was struck by the organization of the interior space.

Carter, who had seen many temporary shelters for the homeless and criminals in his career, expected to see chaos, filth, and unsanitary [music] conditions.

Instead, they found what looked like a welle equipped permanent camp.

In the far corner, old but clean sleeping bags were neatly laid out on insulating [music] mats.

Nearby were large plastic water cans lined up in a row.

Climbing ropes were not scattered, but carefully coiled into perfect bays and hung from hooks driven into the wall.

Even the improvised toilet was equipped in compliance with sanitary standards as far as possible in the wild.

This place did not look like a prison where people were held by force.

It looked more like a hideout prepared by a professional for a long [music] stay.

Detective Carter put on his gloves and began to examine the pile of garbage in a separate bag.

Among the [music] dust and small stones, he found several bright, shiny wrappers from Nationwide Energy Bars.

He frowned as he examined the find.

This wasn’t just a supermarket snack.

Nutshell Foods was an expensive brand of specialty organic food with a single bar costing about $8.

They were sold only in upscale eco stores in Scottsdale and Mesa.

The victim’s words from the interrogation report came to mind.

He was starving us, throwing us moldy bread and some kind of bal to keep us alive.

Why then did the maniac [music] himself, who was described as living in the mountains like a savage, eat like a wealthy, healthy lifestyle adherent from a [music] wealthy suburb? The drinking water canisters were even more suspicious.

On the blue plastic of one of them was a halfworn fragment of a barcode sticker.

Using a portable scanner, the forensic experts were able to recover the information.

It was a product from the Walmart hypermarket chain, and the code tied the purchase to a specific store in Mesa.

But the most important thing was the date on the sticker.

It indicated that the water had been purchased on October 12th, exactly 2 days before the sister’s official disappearance.

Feeling a chill run down his spine, Carter immediately sent a request to the police financial monitoring unit.

The wait lasted 4 t hours as the team continued to inventory the physical evidence.

When the detective’s phone finally rang, the financial analyst on the other end of the line sounded concerned and tense.

Detective, we’ve run the transactions on all the accounts associated with the case, the analyst said.

On October 12th, 48 hours before the trip to the mountains, a bank card registered in the name of Sandra Wilson was used at the same Walmart.

Carter asked to read the full list of purchases on that receipt.

What he heard made him freeze in his tracks, [music] and the picture of the crime in his mind began to change rapidly.

The list was as follows.

Four 5gallon cans of drinking water.

Two large packs of Nachas fuel energy bars, 10 meters of strong nylon rope, one roll of silvercoled reinforced adhesive tape, a set of professional tourist carabiners, and the last item that finally knocked the ground from under the investigator’s feet, a men’s size M camouflage suit and a tactical face buff.

The detective slowly lowered the phone, looking at the neatly folded things in the cave.

The version of a brutal kidnapping by an unknown maniac began to crack at the seams.

Did the victim buy the tools for her imprisonment herself? Did she buy the ropes that allegedly bound her and the camouflage for her executioner? Or did the kidnapper never exist in the form in which Mary described him? The cave was not a dungeon where they were dragged in by force.

It was a pre-prepared warehouse, a shelter that someone had carefully, methodically arranged two days before the hike to ride out the storm and hide from the rest of the world.

Seal up everything here, every last speck of dust, Carter sharply ordered his team, stepping outside into the fresh air where the sun was already hiding behind the rocks.

and immediately send a warrant for the surveillance footage from that supermarket for October 12th.

I want to see with my own eyes who exactly bought that water and ropes because I have a very bad obsessive feeling that it was not Sandra at the checkout or it was Sandra but not in the role of a helpless victim that they are trying to impose on us.

A day after the cave inspection, while the forensic team was still packing the evidence in airtight bags, Detective Lance Carter received a key piece of evidence [music] that turned the investigation upside down.

It was a digital medium with video footage from the surveillance cameras of the Walmart hypermarket located at the intersection of South Signal Beauty Road and East Southern Avenue.

The police seized terabytes of data to find the same check reported by the bank.

When Carter ran the video file on his work computer, the office plunged into silence.

The image was black and white, grainy and without sound, but it left no doubt.

On the screen in the hardware aisle was Sandra [music] Wilson.

She was completely alone.

There was no one nearby who might resemble a kidnapper or accomplice.

The most frightening thing about this video [music] was her behavior.

Sandra didn’t look scared, trapped, or like she was acting under duress.

She was wearing plain jeans and a dark t-shirt, her hair in a casual ponytail.

She rolled the cart slowly, almost relaxed, along the rows, methodically checking the list on her cell phone.

The detective watched with baited breath as she took a coil of thick nylon rope from the shelf, weighted in her hand as [music] if checking its quality, and calmly put it in the cart.

Then a roll of reinforced tape and water canisters went [music] to the same place.

At one point, the camera captured a detail that gave me chills.

Passing by the cash register, Sandra stopped at a rack of glossy magazines.

She took one, looked at the headlines on the cover, put it back, and only then moved to pay for the instrument of her abduction.

This was not a victim who was forced to buy her own shackles.

This was a cold, calculating organizer who was preparing [music] for the most important event in his life.

But the question why remained open.

The answer to it lay not in the supermarket aisle, but in the archives of the private mental health clinic, Scottsdale Mind and Wellness.

Carter, using the newly discovered evidence of the crime, obtained an urgent court order to disclose Sandra Wilson’s full medical history.

What the detective read in the medical records resembled the script of a dark psychological thriller.

It turned out that Sandra had been under the care of a psychiatrist since she was 19 years old.

Her diagnosis was a complex cocktail [music] of borderline personality disorder and a deep pathological form of jealousy.

Her doctor, Dr.

Evans wrote in [music] his personal notes, “The patient demonstrates a persistent obsessive idea about her twin sister.

” Sandra is convinced that at birth, Mary mysteriously took away all her positive qualities, good luck and vitality, leaving Sandra with an empty shell.

She often [music] speaks of her sister not as a separate sovereign person, but as an improved version of herself that should rightfully belong to her.

The dossier contained disturbing [music] incidents about which the family preferred to remain silent.

In 2015, Sandra tried to get a large loan from a bank using Mary’s stolen passport and skillfully imitating her signature.

Later, she called Mary’s then boyfriend several times, pretending [music] to be her sister, and tried to provoke a huge scandal to break up the couple.

The doctor noted that Sandra [music] bought the same clothes, had an identical hairstyle, and spent hours practicing her voice, recording herself on a dictaphone to sound exactly like her successful sister.

The last recording made just a month before the tragedy was the most eerie and prophetic.

Dr.

Evans wrote down the patients words.

Sandra claims that the universe is unfair.

She literally said, “Mary doesn’t deserve this perfect life because she never suffered like I did.

If I take her place, no one will even notice the difference.

I can be her better than she can be herself.

I have studied her to perfection.

” While Carter was analyzing these documents, [music] Mary continued to play her role in her parents’ home.

She took over her missing sister’s room, surrounding herself with her [music] belongings.

Neighbors of the Wilson family told investigators strange things.

Mrs.

Gable, who lived across the street, testified that she saw her grieving sister taking large black bags to the trash.

She threw away everything that reminded her of Sandra.

The woman said, lowering her voice.

When I asked her what she was doing, she looked at me with completely dry eyes and said, “I don’t want my mom to cry when she comes across these things all the time.

I need to get rid of all the extra stuff.

That evening, Detective Carter sat in his office in the semi darkness with two photographs spread out in front of him.

One showed a happy, radiant Mary a month before she was kidnapped.

The other showed an emaciated, bandaged Mary in a hospital bed.

The puzzle in the detective’s mind began to form a terrifying picture.

He realized that the blood on her hands that night on the highway was not the result of a heroic struggle against the shackles.

It was a deliberate, cruel punishment.

She had deliberately, methodically peeled off the skin on her own palms, inflicting excruciating pain on herself to drown out her guilt or what seemed more likely to make her performance flawless.

No amount of makeup could replace real blood, and she knew it.

But there is always a fatal flaw in every plan, even the most ingeniously perfect one, a factor [music] that cannot be played up or faked.

Carter recalled the initial medical report from the hospital emergency room.

In addition to a description of the wounds, it contained the [music] blood type and the results of a full body scan, including an X-ray of the jaw, which had been taken to check for hidden fractures after the alleged beating by the maniac.

The detective opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the old dental records of the real Mary Wilson.

Her parents had provided it at the beginning of the investigation to potentially identify the body that everyone thought would soon be found in the desert.

Carter placed the two images side by side.

A recent digital X-ray of the survivor and a 5-year-old film image.

He was not a doctor, but even his untrained eye could see the difference in the structure of the root canals and the position of the wisdom teeth.

However, the court needed an official opinion.

The detective picked up the phone and dialed the number of the state’s leading forensic dentist, knowing that this call would change the fate of the Wilson family forever.

On November 12, 2017, at 9:00 in the morning, Detective Lance Carter stepped into the office of the state’s leading forensic dentist in Phoenix.

The air in the room was saturated with the smell of antiseptics, and the humming of the ventilation system seemed too loud in the tense silence.

Two envelopes were already on the doctor’s desk, the contents of which were to decide the fate of the investigation.

One contained a fresh panoramic X-ray of the jaw taken of the injured Mary at Mountain Vista Hospital immediately after her miraculous rescue.

The other was the official dental record of the real Mary Wilson from 2016, which investigators had seized from her family doctor.

The dentist, an elderly man with meticulous movements, silently walked over to the wall-mounted negatoscope [music] and turned on the light.

He mounted the two images side by side.

The black and white images of the skulls looked like eerie twins, but to a professional, the difference was obvious.

“Look closely here, detective,” the doctor said, pointing to the lower left side of the jaw in the old 2016 image.

“Mary Wilson was undergoing complex endodonic [music] treatment.

See this canal, tooth number 36.

Here you can clearly see the titanium post and the large photopolymer filling that covers the cavity.

These are traces of a deep intervention that cannot be confused with anything else.

Then the doctor slowly moved the pen to a fresh picture of the survivor taken a week ago.

And here is the current picture of the woman your people brought from the highway.

Look at the same position.

Tooth number 36 [music] is absolutely healthy, intact, no pins, no fillings, no root canals.

The doctor took off his glasses [music] and looked at the detective with a hard look over the frames.

Medicine knows many miracles, but this is not one of them.

People can change their name, dye their hair, have plastic surgery, and even burn [music] their fingerprints with acid.

But no one can make an extracted tooth nerve grow back or a titanium pin dissolve without a trace.

The woman you call Mary Wilson is a biologically different person.

This is not Mary.

For Carter, it was a moment of truth.

His intuition had not failed him, but it was only the first strike.

An hour later, he received an urgent report from the crime lab on the analysis of the physical evidence found in the cave.

Experts completed [music] a detailed examination of the silver reinforced tape that the victim said the attacker had used to tie her hands.

The result of the examination was conclusive.

A clear fragment of an index fingerprint was found on the inner adhesive side of the tape between the layers.

Scanning confirmed a 100% match with Sandra Wilson’s fingerprint card.

It was a checkmate to the whole kidnapping story.

A victim being tied up by an outsider cannot physically leave his or her fingerprint on the adhesive side of the tape in that position.

This could only have been done by someone who held the roll, unwound the tape, and prepared the props for their own performance.

Sandra didn’t just buy this tape.

She created her own shackles.

At 3:00 in the afternoon, a convoy of three patrol cars without sirens and Detective Carter’s black SUV slowly drove up to the Wilson parents luxurious estate [music] in the prestigious Paradise Valley neighborhood.

The house was immersed in greenery and [music] silence, contrasting with the storm the police had brought with them.

Mary was sitting on the spacious veranda [music] in a wicker chair.

She was wrapped in a soft cashmere blanket with an open book on her lap.

From the outside, she looked like the perfect picture of recovery.

Calm, almost peaceful.

When police cars pulled into the driveway and officers in bulletproof vests began to get out, she didn’t even flinch.

She did not run, did not scream.

She just slowly closed the book, carefully bookmarking the right page [music] as if she planned to return to reading later.

Her parents ran out of the house when they heard [music] the sound of the engines.

Their faces a mixture of panic and incomprehension.

“What’s going on?” the father shouted, trying to block his daughter’s view of the car.

“Did you come [music] to tell me you caught him?” “Detective Carter walked past the parents, ignoring their cries, and stopped right in front of the girl.

” “Sandra Wilson,” he said loudly and clearly so that every word would sink into the air.

You are under arrest on suspicion of first-degree murder of your sister Mary Wilson, tampering with evidence and fraud.

There was a ringing dead silence in the air.

A moment later, it was broken by the mother’s piercing scream.

Are you crazy? It’s Mary.

It’s my Mary.

Sandra died in the mountains.

What are you doing? Get away from her.

The mother rushed toward the detective, trying to push him away, but the officers gently intercepted her.

The father stood pale as a wall, clutching his heart.

The detective kept his eyes on the suspect.

“Stand up, Sandra.

The game is over.

” At that moment, what Carter later described in his report as an instantaneous transformation of the personality happened.

The mask fell off.

The expression on the girl’s face, which a second ago was full of gentle grief, changed beyond recognition.

The victim’s fright disappeared, and her vulnerability disappeared.

Her features sharpened, and her eyes became glassy, cold, and completely empty.

She slowly got up from the chair, throwing the blanket to the floor.

She did not utter a single word of justification.

She calmly stretched her hands forward, wrists up, ready to place them under the cold steel of the handcuffs.

The worst part was that she didn’t even look at her parents, [music] who were sobbing hysterically a few meters away.

For her, they ceased to exist.

As Carter closed the bracelets on her arms, where the scars from her own torture were still visible, [music] the corners of her lips slowly turned up.

It was not a nervous grimace.

It was the sincere, eerie smile of a person who had finally thrown off the heavy, unbearable burden of pretense.

She no longer had to play the role of the perfect sister.

The officers led her to the patrol car.

Before getting in the back seat, she stopped for a moment, looked at her handcuffed hands, and then directly into the camera of one of the officers recording the arrest.

It doesn’t matter,” she said in a quiet but completely calm voice that made even seasoned cops shudder.

“And they were the best three weeks of my life.

” The trial of Sandra Wilson, which began on June 14, 2019, was the culmination of this terrible drama.

The hearings were held in the historic Pineal County Superior Court building in Florence.

That summer, the heat in Arizona was breaking records, but the temperature in the courtroom seemed even higher because of the tension in the air.

It was without a doubt the highest profile case in the state’s history in the past decade.

The courtroom was packed to capacity and the line of journalists, bloggers, and onlookers eager to see the mirror killer stretched for an entire block wrapping around the courthouse.

Sandra’s defense team chose a predictable but risky strategy.

They tried to play the insanity card, relying on the defendant’s complicated history of mental disorders.

The defense lawyers called psychiatric experts who claimed that Sandra suffered from profound dissociative identity disorder.

According to their version, at the time of the crime, she lost touch with reality and sincerely believed that she was saving her sister from a non-existent threat by merging with her into one.

The defense insisted that her actions were not a crime, but a desperate attempt by a sick mind to restore her lost integrity.

The prosecution, however, methodically and cold-bloodedly shattered this theory, using only one piece of evidence, but a killer one, the very receipt from the Walmart supermarket.

“Insanity is chaos.

Its impulsiveness, its lack of logic,” he said to the jury, looking them all in the eye.

“And this piece of paper is pure, cold calculation.

” She bought four jerry cans of water, 10 m of nylon rope, and reinforced duct tape exactly 2 days before the trip.

She was not rescuing her sister in a fit of madness.

She was preparing a scene for her one-man theater, where the main role cost another person their life.

The most emotional moment of the trial was the testimony of the girl’s parents.

They were sitting in the front row, and the audience noted that the couple had aged at least 10 years in the [music] past year and a half.

The mother dressed in all black flatly refused to look towards the dock where her only living daughter was sitting.

The father testifying could not hold back his tears.

The room stood still as he described how Sandra playing the role of Mary comforted them after her sister’s death.

She looked me in the eye, held my hand with her bandaged [music] hands, and promised to live for two, he said in a trembling voice.

She ate at our table, slept in her victim’s bed, and accepted our love, knowing that she had killed the one we mourned.

[music] This is not just the murder of a body.

It was the murder of the soul of our family.

Sandra listened to these words with a completely stoned face.

Throughout the entire process, [music] she sat perfectly straight, displaying impeccable posture, the same posture she had been copying from her successful sister for years.

Not a single muscle in her face flinched.

Not a single tear, not a single sign of remorse or regret.

She looked like a porcelain doll, beautiful, empty, and frighteningly calm.

On August 18th, the jury went to the deliberation room.

It was expected [music] that the deliberations would last for several days given the complexity of the case, but they returned after only 2 hours.

The verdict was unanimous [music] and devastating.

Guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and large-scale [music] fraud.

The judge, reading out the verdict, did not hide his contempt for what he had done.

Sandra Wilson was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus an additional 25 years for related crimes to ensure that she will never see freedom again.

After the trial, the remains of the real Mary Wilson, which a search team eventually recovered from a deep gorge at the convict’s direction, were buried in a private cemetery in Scottsdale.

On a simple granite slab, the parents asked that only their [music] names and dates be engraved with no epitaps.

Silence was the best honor for someone whose voice was stolen.

Sandra [music] was transported to Pville Prison, a maximum security women’s correctional facility.

In their reports, prison staff noted that she is a model inmate.

She works in the library, is always neat, and keeps to herself.

But there is one detail that frightens [music] the wardens.

Sometimes she can be seen in front of the mirror in the shared restroom.

She stands there for hours looking at her reflection and talks quietly to herself using two different voices.

The story of the Wilson sisters has become a black legend of the Superstition [music] Mountains, adding a new page to the mythology of this harsh land.

Hikers who venture up the grueling climb to Flat Irons often stop at the point where the trail turns sharply toward wild, desolate canyons.

Local guides say that there among the red hot stones, even on the hottest day, you can feel a sudden piercing cold.

This is a reminder of a simple and terrible truth that this tragedy revealed.

The most terrifying monsters do not hide in dark caves or under the bed.

They do not have fangs or claws.

They come with you in the same car, laugh at your jokes, hold your hand when you are scared, and have your