This week's post was going to be a brief discussion on the merits of alpacas vs. llamas, but something in the news this week caught my eye. If you read the Baltimore Sun online, you may have also seen this story on Tuesday -
before it was taken down on Wednesday!
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| luckily I had the blog in mind so I took these screenshots |
It's easy to miss it at first, but the middle story at the bottom of the homepage for Baltimore County reads "A Monster at the Loch: Mysterious deaths at Loch Raven Reservoir, manhunt begins..." When I saw this, my jaw dropped. I clicked through to read the story:
The article is astonishing - two brothers were fishing at the reservoir when they were attacked and killed. The attacker apparently used a fairly blunt object to stab them repeatedly, and the forensics point to an ice pick or hay hook, just like we use for our Hookman! This was too crazy to be true!
The article goes on, saying that one of the permanent patients in psychiatric custody at Sheppard Pratt had escaped his handlers just twelve hours before the attack occurred... check this guy out:
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| holy crap - an eyepatch? |
The article ended by saying that the manhunt continues, and seeing as how the article was taken down 24 hours later, it must have ended...? I had no idea why the Sun would have taken down the link without comment, so I emailed the author. Mr. Ronald O'Neill said he was legally bound not to comment on the article because, basically, the police don't want open investigations reported on, and that he had (in their opinions) disclosed "too many gruesome details." The only thing he would say is that last he knew, the police were still looking for this guy, and weren't reporting any more deaths.
I think the most overlooked part of the whole story was that the guy carved an "H" into a tree, then filled the carving with blood and dumped the bodies below it. I asked Mr. O'Neill about that, and he just said "it was a disturbing piece of vandalism."
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| The original "H" - still stained red from the blood reported to have been rubbed into the carving |
This was crazy, I thought. There's a guy running around Loch Raven killing people wearing an eyepatch, and possibly using a hook. Not only that, but no one was being allowed to report on it! I thought this whole "H" business was the icing on the cake - like he was taunting the police, or marking his territory. Apparently the suspect's name is Christian Danielsson - why would he be carving an "H" (I immediately thought Hookman!). So I did something incredibly stupid - I know the trails around the dam pretty well from filming there for the movie, so I decided I'd go check out a real Hookman crime scene!
I went into the woods Thursday afternoon around 4pm. There were signs everywhere about trails being closed, and a lot of reservoir police trucks patrolling the roads, so I hiked in the long way. I got close to the original crime scene, but that was swarming with cops so I took a different trail. I wasn't 500 feet down a side trail when I saw another "H" and took a picture:
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| "H" number two |
Holy crap. I probably should have turned back, but I kept walking. Another 500 feet, another H, then another:
This was without a doubt the same trail the psycho had gone down at some point, marking the way. I found another "H" that looked more freshly carved than any of the other ones and was about to take a photo of it when I heard someone coming from down the trail, so I ran away. I didn't know if it was a cop or the hookman, but I didn't care - I didn't want to meet either of them! I took a side trail to shortcut back to my car (it was getting dark by this point) and I kept seeing "H"'s on every couple of trees, and they were all fresh...
I stopped to catch my breath for a second and noticed the next tree was bare except for one letter, but it wasn't another "H" - this one was an "O"... The next tree, another "O" carved into it. This was it! The guy was about to spell out "Hookman"! Man, I wish I had my video camera!
Click to the next page!
