Horror in the High Desert (2021) Movie Script
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Never in my wildest dreams
did I think when I told Gary
something bad is gonna happen,
did I think it was gonna be this.
I can't imagine
what Gary must have been going through
and how he must have felt
being so alone and so far out there.
He said
that the longer he stood
and looked at it,
the more spooked that he
got the feeling of dread,
the sixth sense that he
needed to get out of there.
I first knew something was wrong
when I was on the phone with my publisher,
and Simon kept trying to call in.
And so once I was off the
phone with my publisher,
I called Simon who's Gary's roommate.
And he told me that
Gary was two days late.
That's not Gary,
you know, Gary,
would never leave Tuca that long,
especially knowing that
Simon had to go out of town.
That's when I knew that
there was something wrong,
and I needed to get there.
So I packed up and left Panaca
and headed straight to Ruth.
I needed to see what was going on
and make sure that my brother was okay.
And to take care of Tuca
until he could get back.
I really thought he would be back.
I first met Gary when
they were having an event
at the Nevada Northern Railway.
And we both just kind of,
wandered in each other's paths,
and started talking about trains,
and, we were both looking
for a place to stay.
I was trying to find a place for work,
he was in between places,
and we kind of just
happened upon this place.
The first time I heard
the name, Gary Hinge,
I believe was when I was working
for the radio station NNN,
It was um..
I was an investigative reporter,
it was my first job right out of the gate,
and my producer came
to me and he was like,
we have to cover this,
I think it's a good
idea for us to do this,
because the TV stations, the news,
had stopped recording on it.
And so this was a way
for us to get exclusives
and to keep the story going.
Because according to everyone
else that was hearing about it
and reporting about it,
it had just gone cold.
If you want me to
describe my brother Gary,
the best way to describe him is,
if there was a little lady that said,
can you please watch my purse,
no matter where they were at,
Gary would sit there and
he would watch her purse
and make sure that it was
safe until she came back.
That was just the type
of person that he was,
he was trustworthy and amazing.
Amazing.
So Gary loved the outdoors,
I mean, he was the king of outdoors.
Let's just say that.
And I think a lot of people
were really envious of him.
Like he lived this
beautiful adventurous life,
that I think, those who
have the nine to five job,
stuck behind a desk,
I think, really admired that about him.
Super smart, but definitely private,
he kind of just kept to himself.
If he wasn't in his room on his computer,
then he was working on his model railroad.
But other than that,
yeah, just really kept
to himself in his room
making his videos.
Super funny, though
definitely could make you laugh
with a couple of his one liners.
I started to learn
more about who Gary was.
And I found out
that he was an extremely
highly intelligent man.
He's one of those people that was so smart
that kind of had a hard time
connecting with other people.
So he mostly just kind
of was more, solitude,
and yeah, fascinating.
The more I found out about him,
the more I wanted to keep
finding out about, who is Gary?
Gary had found his dream job,
being such an avid outdoors man,
he started to work for a startup
company called Map Nevada.
Now what they do is,
they map out really remote
locations for hunters.
So they track wildlife, weather, terrain,
and I mean, Gary was in heaven doing this.
He loved to be by himself
out in the wilderness,
he loved hiking,
and being adventurous,
any train, he was drawn
to, he loved trains.
Hey guys filming
another little YouTube video,
at one of my favorite places.
If I had more time I would
become one of the volunteers,
but this is the Nevada Northern
Railway Museum, here in Ely.
And it's kind of an old little copper mine
just preserved and left.
They do some cool stuff, though,
like you can sleep in this
old caboose from Kennecott,
the big copper mine in the area,
right outside my home in Ruth.
It's kind of a neat
little railroad museum,
they just kind of let you walk around.
And you know how much I love
trains on top of hiking,
gotta do something in the winter time
and you can't be outside as much.
So I was really excited
to take on this story,
seeing that it was my first story.
And it also took place
in this tiny little town called Ruth.
And so I grabbed the phone book,
and I just started calling.
And I wanted to talk to
anybody and everybody
that would talk to me.
I first knew something was off
when he asked me to watch his dog Tuca
before he went out on one of his trips.
And he never leaves Tuca.
He always takes the dog with him,
so I thought that was kind of weird.
And he was acting super stressed out
even keeping to himself even more.
When he didn't come back after two days,
I thought that was really strange.
I had a flight to catch,
so I just called Beverly to get the dog.
After I got off the phone with Simon,
I tried Gary, and there was no answer,
so I hurried and left and
I went to Ruth from Panaca.
And it's only a couple hours away,
so when I got there,
Simon and Tuca were
waiting on the front steps.
Simon really needed to get
to the airport in Las Vegas,
so I asked him where Gary had gone to,
and Simon didn't know, his
roommate didn't even know,
he just knew that he was on an expedition.
To me that wasn't right,
so I tried Gary a couple of more times,
and all it did was go to voicemail
and something was definitely wrong.
And so I called the police and waited.
So I got Beverley's phone number,
and this is the only time
that I ever talked to her.
And she was pretty angry with me,
once I told her that I was a reporter.
And she did not want to
have anything to do with me
or our show, which I thought
was really unfortunate,
because, the news stations,
they had stopped recording on this,
and we were the only ones doing anything,
and I thought this is a way
to help find your brother,
I don't understand why
you don't want to give me the time or day,
but she didn't, and she quickly hung up.
And that was the only time
that I spoke to Beverly.
Gary became so obsessed
with survivalism,
he would watch the Discovery Channel,
he would watch YouTube,
he would study it and find
the most remote places,
no cell service, no provisions of any kind
other than what he took.
And it used to scare
the heavens out of me.
I mean, I was petrified for him,
and I would worry so much.
But after a while,
it was Gary.
So guys, I'm here hiking around,
and this is one of the cool secrets
I have in the wilds in Nevada
is this cemetery from the
late 1800s old mining camp,
but I won't disclose the
name for safety reasons.
Don't want anyone getting lost out here,
but you can see all these
old graves, wood stones,
unmarked graves with no names now.
Give you an idea of
where I had to hike from
is that mountain way over there
is my truck's on the other side of it.
So hiked over that mountain
and I'm way out this
way now, hiking around.
I wouldn't say what
Gary was doing was hiking.
These were multiple day,
like survival excursions.
In the beginning, what gave me hope
was the fact that when
Gary was much younger,
much, much younger, like second grade,
we all went camping, and Gary
disappeared from the campsite.
And we searched for him
and searched for him,
and we were all so worried, mom
and dad were just terrified,
I was terrified.
We didn't wanna leave the mountain
to go and get cell service or anything,
we just went looking for him.
And we looked for him all night.
And the next morning we came
up to a sheep herders camp,
thinking, we're gonna tell them look,
keep an eye out for this second grader,
this second grader that was missing
and we walk up and there
is my little brother Gary,
playing with the animals.
He'd known that if he got
to the sheep herders camp,
he would be okay,
that mom and dad would
come and look for him.
And he was so resilient, it
was in him, second nature.
So after speaking to a
bunch of people in Ruth,
I started to learn a little
bit more about Beverly
and Beverly's relationship
with Gary in the past.
So she had a lot of anger towards Gary.
She really blamed him
for their parents' death.
And then when their parents did pass away,
she was stuck, still raising Gary
and so she held quite a lot
of resentment against him.
Well, I was mad at
Gary when mom dad died,
they were out on a fishing trip
and mom and dad liked to
do some night fishing.
And so they went out
and did hang the lantern
where they could see it,
so they could get back to shore safely,
back to camp without hitting any rocks.
Old Gary decided
that he was gonna go
hunting frogs and everything
and so, and he went exploring.
And while he's out there
he hung the lantern up,
so that he could see what he was doing.
Meanwhile, mom and dad
decided that they were gonna come back in
and call it a night.
So they headed for the lantern.
Not knowing that Gary had
moved it while he was exploring
and so they followed the light.
And, it was the wrong spot.
They didn't make it back
because they hit the rocks,
and had Gary not hang the
lantern up where he was at
and left it where it needed to be,
there wouldn't have been any problems.
I just felt super bad for Beverly.
You know, I could just hear her
inside Gary's room, sobbing.
You know, you're really
making me miss my brother, Gary.
Kept hearing people
refer to Gary as a hiker.
And in my opinion, I don't
really think that's correct.
Because, to me, Gary's
more of a survivalist,
he would go out into the
wilderness for a week or two on end
with just a backpack.
He's kind of like the
MacGyver of the wilderness,
just to survive and live off of the land,
and filter his on water.
So, to hear them just be like,
oh, he's just a hiker gone missing.
He's not.
When Gary and I first
started living together,
I actually went out with
him on one of these things.
And I just kept telling myself
the entire time, never again.
Gary wouldn't let us bring
enough food or water,
and it was the most miserable experience.
The one thing I did like about it
was we kept on finding these 1800's
abandoned mining kind of structures,
which was super cool.
This wasn't a normal search and rescue.
Because, Gary didn't tell
anybody where he was going
on his excursion.
And he would go really
deep into the wilderness,
and he'd be gone for a week or so,
so no one had any idea
where to even start looking.
And so police decided the best way,
or the only thing they could think of
was to maybe check his cell phone,
and his cell phone pings in which tower.
And it looked to be as he
had turned his cell phone off
shortly after leaving his home.
When Beverly showed up to get the dog.
Yeah, I regret that now, I
kind of lashed out at her.
I was so put off when I got to town,
and he was so antsy to get out of there.
And, being my brother's roommate,
not even asking where he was gonna be,
or, if there was gonna,
you know any issue that
might set up a red flag
if he didn't come home.
He had his dog and everything,
and he knew he needed to be out of town.
I just didn't,
I didn't feel right about it,
it just didn't feel right.
And, a week or so before
that, Gary had confided in me
that him and Simon weren't
getting along very well,
and so he wanted to move out.
And so I just,
it just didn't feel right,
so I let the cops know.
You know, I just don't trust him,
there's just something to
not be concerned at all,
where your roommate's gonna be.
And more worried about getting on a plane,
than somebody missing that's
supposed to be your friend,
close to you?
No.
We never talked about that,
he never told me where
he went hiking, ever,
he never mentioned it.
And even if we did talk about it,
I'm pretty sure he probably
wouldn't have told me, so.
But at the beginning, I understood
she needed someone to point the finger at
and she was super upset, understandably.
But after some time, it
just kind of got old,
so I called her and I now told her that,
there's no way I would have
known and just by the way,
you're his sister, so why didn't you know?
When I first reported Gary missing,
the police were wonderful,
they were really on top
of it, they did an APB,
be on the lookout for his truck, himself,
Park Rangers, Fish and Game, everything.
You know, we live in a small town,
people don't go missing all the time.
And so this was a big deal,
and they really took it seriously,
they had it everywhere.
I was embarrassed that I didn't know
exactly where he was at,
you know, I'm his sister,
I should have known.
I should have known.
My first thought when
I heard he was missing was,
oh, it'd be near impossible to find him.
Either, he finally just injured himself,
or maybe he had eaten something
that he didn't know was
gonna make him so sick.
It'd been two days since
I'd reported the missing
and I hadn't slept more than
10 to 15 minutes at a time.
I had people calling and were so concerned
and wanted to know where
to start looking for him.
But not knowing where he was at,
where would I have them look?
And then the phone call came,
they'd found Gary's truck.
And I got such a sinking feeling,
such a sick to my stomach feeling
that this was now very real.
After the cops called in,
and let me know that
they'd found this truck,
they came and picked me
up and took me to it.
It was about 55 miles out of town,
and we got there and seeing his truck,
I was so hopeful, you know, thinking,
he probably fell,
maybe broke an ankle, stuck in a ravine,
can't get himself out.
But I had hope.
I really had hope that we
were gonna find him okay.
It just wasn't in a place
where Gary would have left it.
Like it wasn't in a spot where he wanted,
which he would wanna go to explore.
While I was sitting there,
watching them process Gary's
truck, I was looking around,
this wasn't Gary,
he loved to explore vast
forests, rocky hills,
beauty, not just a rolling hill of dirt.
It just, something wasn't right.
I'm a private investigator.
I was hired by Beverly shortly
after Gary's truck was found.
The High Desert as you can see,
it's very beautiful,
it's very majestic, has mountains,
valleys, plains, forests,
it has it all.
But it's also quite dangerous
and very unforgiving.
So after Gary's truck was found,
a search began and people really rallied.
Gary went missing
in the hottest part of the summer.
And what we see most of the
time in disappearance like his
is people suffering from heatstroke,
dehydration, sometimes even injury.
People started showing up
and then more people started showing up,
and next thing I know,
it's a whole whirlwind,
there were people there
that I didn't know,
that Gary didn't know,
there were people bringing drones,
all kinds of search and rescue.
It was the most humbling experience
to know that these strangers
were out there helping
to try to find my brother
and bring him home.
So once Gary's truck
was found, Beverly was,
let's just say she was very vocal
about how the truck seemed to be parked
in a suspicious location,
like she was just convinced
that her brother had not parked it there,
her brother wouldn't park it there,
and she would not stop talking about it.
So the cops eventually looked into this.
The clock was ticking.
They very much needed to find
Gary as soon as possible.
Beverly, on the other hand,
was very much in their way.
She was in the way, and she
was really messing things up.
Searching the high desert isn't easy,
I mean, it's not an easy task.
People think it is,
people think you can just get
up in the air in a helicopter
and fly around and look at
the ground and see someone,
but once you're on the ground,
there's abandoned mines,
there's bushes and tree cover.
And it's super difficult.
So finding someone, it's not
easy as people think it is.
Oh my god, sheep.
Hi sheep.
Look at all the sheep.
Sheep are a lot nicer than people.
Hey little sheep,
look at all you guys.
Roaming the land, doing
what you need to do.
Jeez, they all ran away from me.
Can't even make friends with sheep.
The officers didn't want me
to participate in the search.
They thought it was best that
I stay home at Gary's place
in case he tried to contact
me, call or show up.
I was very much familiar
with the lead investigator.
We had worked together before,
and we were definitely
familiar with each other.
I called him to kind of check up on things
and see where the
investigation was headed,
and if they had any new information.
He told me that they had made
a discovery in the truck.
But since I was not
formally hired by Beverley,
I had to contact her first
before they would discuss
the matter with me.
I was hopeful that they had good news,
that the officer asked me
if Gary had any enemies,
or if I knew anybody
that may wanna hurt him.
I asked the officer why,
why would he,
why would he ask that.
And in confidence, they told
me that they had evidence
that Gary did not drive
his truck out there.
So I waited a couple of hours
and went over to Gary's house
where Beverly was staying,
and she was absolutely hysterical.
She told me that the
police had informed her
that in Gary's truck they
had discovered prints
on top of Gary's all over,
on top of the steering wheel,
the dashboard, the gear
and what was most surprising or alarming
was that they discovered
footprints, bare footprints,
and they were scarred and unidentifiable,
which even added more to the mystery.
The footprint was,
he said that it was barefoot.
So someone drove Gary's truck barefoot.
And it just doesn't sit well with me,
because it's like, what happened?
Why was this person not wearing shoes?
What was going on?
Like, it's just odd,
and it's very,
I don't know, it's just,
it made my skin crawl.
Oh, look at the little baby deer.
That's kind of cool to see,
you don't see that too often.
You know, I hadn't been
sleeping and everything,
and my mind was just reeling,
I had a lot of things
going through my head,
different scenarios.
Maybe he picked up a friend?
Maybe somebody stole his
truck while he was out hiking?
Or maybe he picked up a hitchhiker,
and the hitchhiker had
done something to him.
I don't know, at this point,
so many things were just
going through my head,
just over and over again,
which didn't help me try to get any sleep.
So Beverly, still
wanted me to vet out Simon
because she still thought
he was very suspicious.
And I did too.
I looked into him again,
and lo and behold, he was
ruled out as a suspect.
But through that process,
I actually learned that
Gary had been talking
to someone that he met on
a Facebook Messenger group.
They had been corresponding
with each other
through a local sellers group,
and I guess they had been
commenting on each other's posts
and one thing led to another
and they became more than friends.
When I confronted this person,
he was very much terrified,
didn't wanna talk to me,
didn't wanna have anything to do with me
or the investigation.
And I told him, if you don't talk to me,
you're gonna have to talk to the cops,
and they're gonna really bust your ass.
And I think he was terrified
of being outed in this community,
because it's such a small
town, not a lot of gay people.
And so he did talk to me, he told me that,
he didn't have anything to
do with Gary's disappearance.
He was sad and upset that
Gary had disappeared,
he didn't know what happened to him.
I guess I did believe him.
He really didn't wanna discuss it,
but ultimately, when I
did check out his alibi,
he was cleared as a suspect.
Hey guys, now that I'm
done chasing sheep around
like a crazy person in the mountains.
I've seen a lot out here, mining camps,
mines, abandoned towns,
buildings, remnants of the past,
but the coolest and my
favorite personally,
is all the Native American remnants,
I love finding arrowheads
and seeing petroglyphs on mountain sides.
Just old writing from the native people
who lived here long before
any settlers moved in.
To me, that's the coolest stuff to see.
But it's getting dark
now, the sun's setting
I think I'm gonna call it
a night and get settled in,
in my camp.
They were still processing
the crime scene and everything
and they came across an
envelope in his center console,
it had a money in it.
To me that said that whoever he was with,
wasn't there to take his money
or anything that he might have had.
I woke to the police
officers knocking on my door.
And they were informing me that
they called off the search.
And while they're explaining things to me,
I'm seeing them talking,
I'm not comprehending any of the it,
everything was just kind of flashing.
And, I'm seeing their faces,
and I'm seeing their lips move,
and then they're looking
at me like I'm crazy.
And next thing I know, I'm on a stretcher.
And taken to the ER where
they had to give me hydration
and IV with fluids and
medicine that helped me sleep,
and for the first time
since all of this started,
I got 10 hours of sleep.
This was the largest search and rescue
that Nevada had ever seen.
And when they finally called it off,
everyone was just so shocked.
But, you mean, you can't search
the entire state of Nevada,
it's just too vast, it's too broad,
and it had been so long that
the chances of finding him
and finding him alive were slim to none.
The investigation was dead in the water,
we didn't have any leads,
the fingerprints in the truck
didn't match any database,
so we didn't know what to do.
But then.
Gary's followers started calling.
And this whole thing
was turned on its head.
So I'm at my desk,
and I'm going through the show notes,
I'm getting ready to go on air
and my producer comes through
my door, and he's like,
you have a phone call, you
have to take this phone call.
And I get on the phone, and
it's one of our listeners.
And he's telling me that I
have to look into Gary's blog.
He's going on and on about
this crazy story about Gary,
and he's telling me that he
thinks he knows where he is,
he thinks he knows what happened to him.
And that I have to go and
look at this blog right now.
My friend Monica calls me
and tells me that it's all over the news
that all these people are
calling into the radio station.
And she tells me that they're
talking about Gary's blog
and the fact that it needs to be read
and that there's comments and everything.
And so once I got discharged,
I went straight to Gary's house,
so I could read the blog
and see what all this was
that they were talking about.
Unfortunately, Beverly
found out about Gary's blog
hours before we did, and
she went right over there,
and really messed things up.
Hey guys, it's me again.
A lot of people have
been following the blog
and new to the blog and been saying,
I'm just trying to copy
"Naked and Afraid".
And as you can tell, I'm not
naked or afraid out here,
so I'm not trying to copy the show and,
also my ex loved that
show, so I'm sick of it,
there's a reason why
people are called exes.
So while I'm trying to
navigate through everything
on his blog,
going through the operator
stuff and everything
and I finally get in there
and I realize he has 50,000,
50,000 viewers.
I was shocked.
Not a single person in Gary's
life knew about his blog,
which was really shocking
considering the fact that
he had 50,000 followers.
That really says something,
if you think about it.
Of course, I immediately
jump on my computer
and I go to his blog, and
I'll never forget the title,
because I actually thought
it was really clever.
It was called "Don't
Hike With Headphones".
Hey guys up here at
the top of the mountain,
as you can see, there's
the great view behind me.
One of the questions I've got
asked on the blog a lot was,
what dangers,
are there any threatening animals
like rattlesnakes and mountain lions?
And, yeah, there're rattlesnakes
at the lower elevations,
you might have noticed I
don't hike with headphones
or anything on so I can listen for them.
And it's your basic,
survivalist type blog,
you know, how to build a
fire, how to filter water,
and I just start scrolling through
and I scroll and scroll
all the way to the,
like the latest videos that he had posted.
I'm trying to navigate
to find out where these
notifications are coming from
because he is getting
notification after notification,
I mean, it's ding, ding, ding, ding.
So I was driving when I
found out Gary had a blog,
I pulled over and looked
for it on my phone.
And the first thing that I noticed
was that he didn't go by his real name,
he went by Scorpion Sam.
My biggest thing I've ever ran into
was I got stung by a scorpion,
kicking over a rock once,
had to go to the hospital
once I got back to my truck,
that was the day I hiked
with a swelling up hand.
I'm finally able to
get to the notifications
and this notification pops up
and they're saying, I bet he found it,
and that something bad happened,
and I'm thinking, they're
saying he found it?
And something bad happened?
Found what?
And then came Gary's
now infamous video post.
I have worked a lot of
strange cases in my career,
and Gary's by far was the most unusual,
just the way that he described
what he was looking at,
what he saw, how terrified he was,
it just really scares me.
So I started watching
the second to last video
on Gary's blog.
And he's at his home
and he's sitting there
and he's telling his viewers
basically what he came across
on his last expedition.
I saw his last three videos
and,
what I saw,
changed everything.
He's pretty worked up in this video,
you can tell he's nervous, he's scared.
As soon as his video started,
I could tell he was troubled by something,
something had him so unnerved.
He was three days into his expedition,
and he started to smell smoke and that,
and he was out in the middle of nowhere.
So he got curious and
started to look around.
He comes across this cabin,
and it's not like a nice cabin,
it's like a makeshift cabin,
almost kind of like a
homeless type of structure,
sticks and twigs,
and there's smoke coming
out of the chimney.
And Gary's not someone to
be scared of someone else,
out in the wilderness,
but he said he was just
like frozen in his tracks,
and he just felt this like sixth sense
of basically impending doom.
It was the look on his
face, that really got to me,
when he described this
cabin out in Nevada.
He said that the longer
he stood and looked at it
the more spooked that he
got the feeling of dread,
the sixth sense that he
needed to get out of there.
And he wanted nothing
to do with that place.
And so, he hightails it out of there
and he goes to sleep in his tent,
I remember this because he talks
about how he was so scared,
he slept with his shoes on all night.
You know, he didn't bring his firearms,
so he was totally just vulnerable
out there and terrified.
And he wakes up the next
morning, and there's footprints,
and they're barefoot footprints.
These two things are now connected,
we had something to go on.
The hike back to his track,
which took three days,
he felt like somebody was following him.
So this was a really sad story to me,
to see Gary's followers turn on him,
that blog was everything to him.
He really admired them,
and their comments,
it was something really special to him.
And to see them go from
loving him to bullying him,
calling him a loser, a liar,
and putting him down, it
was really sad to see.
And the comments are like,
everyone's kind of just
like, well, go back,
take video, show us this place,
does this place even
exist, is this even real?
And he's getting like
really hit by his followers,
basically, they're kind of bullying him,
they don't believe that
he came across this,
they go to his blog for a reason,
and now they feel like he's just
getting into ghost stories or something.
And so they,
I really feel like he fell
into a bit of cyber bullying
and the fact that they were not gonna be
his faithful followers anymore,
unless he goes back and
proves that he saw this,
he experienced this.
You know, it broke my
heart to read the comments
that said that he was
nothing but a lonely loser,
and that all he was doing
was trying to get
attention by making shit up
and that they didn't believe him.
I actually didn't know about the blog,
but I knew he was doing something
because he was always in
the backyard making videos,
telling the camera how to make a campfire,
or I always heard him in his room
like giving survival tips and things.
Hey, guys, just
walking through the woods here.
It's a beautiful day in
the backwoods in Nevada.
But a lot of people asked what I would do
if I got lost back here,
I had to spends several
more days than I planned on,
I guess first thing I would do
would be find a nice nutritious cow patty,
because there're so yummy.
I'm just kidding, you
don't wanna eat cow shit.
That will be bad.
But there are ways you can
scavenger for food out here.
I'm so upset by everything and,
I wanted to download this
and do what I could so that
I could take it to the cops,
and during all the frustration
and the upset and everything,
I accidentally deleted it.
Beverly really beat herself
up about deleting the video,
and I felt bad for her.
I didn't wanna press it because
I knew she felt terrible,
her brother was missing.
But it was a missed
opportunity definitely,
and a definite disappointment.
The last video of Gary on that blog,
is him basically telling his followers,
okay, here I go, I'll go back.
And he doesn't look okay about it.
Gary's final video is truly haunting.
And it is really the
beginning of a bigger mystery.
Gary's last video that
he posted to his blog
said that he was gonna go back out
and record everything
and prove to everyone
that this was real, that
this really existed.
It's the last time that
he ever posted anything
or anybody heard from him.
Hey guys, I'm back.
Wanted to make a video
about the different comments
people left on my last video.
A lot of you were coming up
with some crazy theories,
what was out there,
what I saw in the woods.
Some of you don't believe it,
some of you are asking for the location
and wanna find it yourself.
I'm really against people going out
in the backwoods in
Nevada without experience,
there's a lot dangers out there,
from old mines to just random people
and you can get lost easily,
the scenery looks a lot the same,
and if there's no trails,
you can get lost and turn around
and be out there for days.
And if you don't bring
enough food or water,
you're in real danger.
So I don't wanna give out the location
and just be the one that
causes a whole bunch of people
to go out in the backwoods in Nevada.
I'll go out there, find the shelter again.
This time, I'll bring
my camera and firearm,
I have to do some work first,
but I plan on leaving on the 22nd,
and I'll need a good six
days to be out there again.
It's a good three days
in, and three days back,
but we're gonna find out what this is,
and look forward to another video,
once we finally get out there,
I'll have something for you guys posted.
He goes and that's it.
And that's the last,
that's the last video of Gary.
And no one knows where he was going.
So the search is so
vast and Nevada is huge,
and he could be anywhere.
This place that he talks
about could be anywhere.
This became a perfect storm
because now we knew what Gary was doing,
we just had no idea where.
I had no idea that he
had this whole other life,
this blog, all these
followers and everything
had I known that,
I would have never, ever,
let him go back out there.
This whole case turned
from a missing persons
to a huge mystery.
Whose cabin was this?
I mean, who lives out there?
Where is this cabin?
I mean, if it's in the middle of nowhere,
what type of person lives
in the middle of nowhere?
And if you're about to
go find that person,
I don't know if they're gonna
be too happy to be found.
I mean, if they're out there that far,
they're out there that far for a reason.
Once the radio station
broadcasts about it,
his blog and everything,
everybody just went crazy
before the cops could even take it down.
The conspiracy theories
were just everywhere,
from witches to aliens,
area 51, you name it.
People started coming
out of the woodwork
and everyone had a theory
as to who the cabin belonged
to, what was in the cabin.
There were some comments about
Gary had discovered a witch,
and she was making secret potions
and somehow he had gotten involved,
and I mean it was crazy.
Other people thought it was just a hermit,
you know someone who just
wanted to be left alone.
People thought that maybe
it was a government,
secret government operation, aliens.
I mean it's,
I could go on and on
about the many theories
that people thought.
The only reasonable
explanation I could come up with
was maybe, Gary had stumbled upon
an illegal marijuana growing operation
out there in the middle
of nowhere in Nevada
and they killed him for
it, it has happened before.
But,
I was wrong.
I just couldn't shake
this sickening feeling.
Before I knew it, the cops showed up
and they had known all about his blog
and I was actually on the
computer when they got there.
And they gathered everything
up, seized everything,
including his hard drives.
Guys,
another model train video here,
I just got back from a flea market,
and look what I picked up today.
Got a nice little HO diesel locomotive,
lettered for one of my favorite railroads,
it's called the California Western,
out of Northern California.
Set that down.
Then got this brand new steam
engine for the Santa Fe.
My private investigator
called and said that,
the detectives on the case
wanted to meet with me.
So I ended up going down
to the precinct and,
they kept asking me, is
there anything you need?
Have you eaten today?
Just beating around the bush
and I finally asked
them, what is going on?
It's back on.
We are back with a break in the case
of missing hiker, Gary Hinge.
Was made yesterday when his backpack
was discovered by a couple
camping in White Pine County.
When they woke up in the morning,
they found the backpack
had been intentionally
placed in their campsite.
What they found inside
has sent a shockwave
through the state of Nevada.
Hinge's truck was found parked
in Eureka earlier this month.
But police now say they have evidence
that it was parked there,
to throw off investigators
searching for him.
They woke up to find Gary's backpack
draped on a shovel that they had there.
And when they opened it,
Gary's belongings were in there,
as well as a severed hand,
Gary's hand.
The way that his hand was severed
was incredibly violent.
The way that it was chopped
off, was just gruesome.
It was deliberately placed there,
because someone wanted it to be found.
The forensic showed,
that his hand had been severed,
for more than five weeks.
And it was still
clutching a video camera.
And what's even more crazy was,
the hand wasn't like torn off from a body,
it was a clean cut.
I was gutted,
by the fact that he had suffered.
Once the camera was discovered,
everybody wanted to know, is there a tape?
And does the tape work?
And what's on the tape?
We were very anxious for the crime lab
to process the evidence.
And sure enough, when they did,
the memory chip was still in the camera.
It was truly terrifying to watch
and I can't even imagine the true horror
that he faced out there.
Bill calls me and the
forensic investigators
have video of Gary's final moments
and so they take us into a room.
The team thought it would be best
if I sat down with Beverly and
watched the videos with her,
because I had a relationship with her
and I had a kind of a special rapport.
So they thought it would probably be best
if maybe I sat down with her first.
Bill started the first video
and there was Gary shining his
light around, saying hello.
And the innocence in his voice,
I just,
I couldn't do it.
I
I had to stop.
And then Bill finished watching.
The clips begin
like all the other clips,
Gary's even smiling,
but he has no idea what's about to happen.
Hey guys, a little video update.
I am.
Oh, there's thunder.
Storm's coming in, I
gotta make this quick.
Got a whole nother ridge line to climb
before I get to the spot
where I saw that shelter
but I'm about halfway
there, a day and a half in.
We'll see what we find.
Climbed over one mountain range
already, got one more to go.
And, better make it quick,
because that storm's coming in fast.
We'll see what's on the other side.
I got ways to go,
but, weird thing is,
I'm already distinctly smelling the smoke,
like I smelled last time.
There's no fires around, there
shouldn't be anyone out here,
but it's very faint but very
distinct smell of smoke.
Kind of getting creeped out
but not as much as I was last time yet.
We'll see what happens.
Look for another video update soon.
All right, here's the final marker.
From what you do see
from the person in the video,
you can tell that they have a
lot of physical deformities.
And it's probably one of the main reasons
why they chose to live where they lived,
they felt shunned by society.
When we found
out what actually happened,
it was like this weight
had been taken off of
Beverly and I's relationship.
And now we're actually really close.
And I actually consider
her kind of a big sister.
I'm just hiking
along, almost to the top.
Over that mountain side.
Still some thunder in the distance.
Amazing how far you can hike
and only seeing a couple of deer,
how much wildlife that I've seen,
I'm sure they see me, stay hidden.
But just a lot of sagebrush
and trees and peaceful desert,
to walk.
The great thing about
Nevada, wide open spaces.
Everybody immediately
wants to go and search
for the one thing
that they've been told
not to go search for.
And so now there's this
whole band of influencers
who are out there wanting
to find this person
and post about it and blog about it
and make a video about it.
And,
to me that's,
I mean, that's terrifying.
Never in my wildest dreams
did I think when I told Gary
something bad is gonna happen,
did I think it was gonna be this.
I can't imagine
what Gary must have been going through
and how he must have felt
being so alone and so far out there.
He said
that the longer he stood
and looked at it,
the more spooked that he
got the feeling of dread,
the sixth sense that he
needed to get out of there.
I first knew something was wrong
when I was on the phone with my publisher,
and Simon kept trying to call in.
And so once I was off the
phone with my publisher,
I called Simon who's Gary's roommate.
And he told me that
Gary was two days late.
That's not Gary,
you know, Gary,
would never leave Tuca that long,
especially knowing that
Simon had to go out of town.
That's when I knew that
there was something wrong,
and I needed to get there.
So I packed up and left Panaca
and headed straight to Ruth.
I needed to see what was going on
and make sure that my brother was okay.
And to take care of Tuca
until he could get back.
I really thought he would be back.
I first met Gary when
they were having an event
at the Nevada Northern Railway.
And we both just kind of,
wandered in each other's paths,
and started talking about trains,
and, we were both looking
for a place to stay.
I was trying to find a place for work,
he was in between places,
and we kind of just
happened upon this place.
The first time I heard
the name, Gary Hinge,
I believe was when I was working
for the radio station NNN,
It was um..
I was an investigative reporter,
it was my first job right out of the gate,
and my producer came
to me and he was like,
we have to cover this,
I think it's a good
idea for us to do this,
because the TV stations, the news,
had stopped recording on it.
And so this was a way
for us to get exclusives
and to keep the story going.
Because according to everyone
else that was hearing about it
and reporting about it,
it had just gone cold.
If you want me to
describe my brother Gary,
the best way to describe him is,
if there was a little lady that said,
can you please watch my purse,
no matter where they were at,
Gary would sit there and
he would watch her purse
and make sure that it was
safe until she came back.
That was just the type
of person that he was,
he was trustworthy and amazing.
Amazing.
So Gary loved the outdoors,
I mean, he was the king of outdoors.
Let's just say that.
And I think a lot of people
were really envious of him.
Like he lived this
beautiful adventurous life,
that I think, those who
have the nine to five job,
stuck behind a desk,
I think, really admired that about him.
Super smart, but definitely private,
he kind of just kept to himself.
If he wasn't in his room on his computer,
then he was working on his model railroad.
But other than that,
yeah, just really kept
to himself in his room
making his videos.
Super funny, though
definitely could make you laugh
with a couple of his one liners.
I started to learn
more about who Gary was.
And I found out
that he was an extremely
highly intelligent man.
He's one of those people that was so smart
that kind of had a hard time
connecting with other people.
So he mostly just kind
of was more, solitude,
and yeah, fascinating.
The more I found out about him,
the more I wanted to keep
finding out about, who is Gary?
Gary had found his dream job,
being such an avid outdoors man,
he started to work for a startup
company called Map Nevada.
Now what they do is,
they map out really remote
locations for hunters.
So they track wildlife, weather, terrain,
and I mean, Gary was in heaven doing this.
He loved to be by himself
out in the wilderness,
he loved hiking,
and being adventurous,
any train, he was drawn
to, he loved trains.
Hey guys filming
another little YouTube video,
at one of my favorite places.
If I had more time I would
become one of the volunteers,
but this is the Nevada Northern
Railway Museum, here in Ely.
And it's kind of an old little copper mine
just preserved and left.
They do some cool stuff, though,
like you can sleep in this
old caboose from Kennecott,
the big copper mine in the area,
right outside my home in Ruth.
It's kind of a neat
little railroad museum,
they just kind of let you walk around.
And you know how much I love
trains on top of hiking,
gotta do something in the winter time
and you can't be outside as much.
So I was really excited
to take on this story,
seeing that it was my first story.
And it also took place
in this tiny little town called Ruth.
And so I grabbed the phone book,
and I just started calling.
And I wanted to talk to
anybody and everybody
that would talk to me.
I first knew something was off
when he asked me to watch his dog Tuca
before he went out on one of his trips.
And he never leaves Tuca.
He always takes the dog with him,
so I thought that was kind of weird.
And he was acting super stressed out
even keeping to himself even more.
When he didn't come back after two days,
I thought that was really strange.
I had a flight to catch,
so I just called Beverly to get the dog.
After I got off the phone with Simon,
I tried Gary, and there was no answer,
so I hurried and left and
I went to Ruth from Panaca.
And it's only a couple hours away,
so when I got there,
Simon and Tuca were
waiting on the front steps.
Simon really needed to get
to the airport in Las Vegas,
so I asked him where Gary had gone to,
and Simon didn't know, his
roommate didn't even know,
he just knew that he was on an expedition.
To me that wasn't right,
so I tried Gary a couple of more times,
and all it did was go to voicemail
and something was definitely wrong.
And so I called the police and waited.
So I got Beverley's phone number,
and this is the only time
that I ever talked to her.
And she was pretty angry with me,
once I told her that I was a reporter.
And she did not want to
have anything to do with me
or our show, which I thought
was really unfortunate,
because, the news stations,
they had stopped recording on this,
and we were the only ones doing anything,
and I thought this is a way
to help find your brother,
I don't understand why
you don't want to give me the time or day,
but she didn't, and she quickly hung up.
And that was the only time
that I spoke to Beverly.
Gary became so obsessed
with survivalism,
he would watch the Discovery Channel,
he would watch YouTube,
he would study it and find
the most remote places,
no cell service, no provisions of any kind
other than what he took.
And it used to scare
the heavens out of me.
I mean, I was petrified for him,
and I would worry so much.
But after a while,
it was Gary.
So guys, I'm here hiking around,
and this is one of the cool secrets
I have in the wilds in Nevada
is this cemetery from the
late 1800s old mining camp,
but I won't disclose the
name for safety reasons.
Don't want anyone getting lost out here,
but you can see all these
old graves, wood stones,
unmarked graves with no names now.
Give you an idea of
where I had to hike from
is that mountain way over there
is my truck's on the other side of it.
So hiked over that mountain
and I'm way out this
way now, hiking around.
I wouldn't say what
Gary was doing was hiking.
These were multiple day,
like survival excursions.
In the beginning, what gave me hope
was the fact that when
Gary was much younger,
much, much younger, like second grade,
we all went camping, and Gary
disappeared from the campsite.
And we searched for him
and searched for him,
and we were all so worried, mom
and dad were just terrified,
I was terrified.
We didn't wanna leave the mountain
to go and get cell service or anything,
we just went looking for him.
And we looked for him all night.
And the next morning we came
up to a sheep herders camp,
thinking, we're gonna tell them look,
keep an eye out for this second grader,
this second grader that was missing
and we walk up and there
is my little brother Gary,
playing with the animals.
He'd known that if he got
to the sheep herders camp,
he would be okay,
that mom and dad would
come and look for him.
And he was so resilient, it
was in him, second nature.
So after speaking to a
bunch of people in Ruth,
I started to learn a little
bit more about Beverly
and Beverly's relationship
with Gary in the past.
So she had a lot of anger towards Gary.
She really blamed him
for their parents' death.
And then when their parents did pass away,
she was stuck, still raising Gary
and so she held quite a lot
of resentment against him.
Well, I was mad at
Gary when mom dad died,
they were out on a fishing trip
and mom and dad liked to
do some night fishing.
And so they went out
and did hang the lantern
where they could see it,
so they could get back to shore safely,
back to camp without hitting any rocks.
Old Gary decided
that he was gonna go
hunting frogs and everything
and so, and he went exploring.
And while he's out there
he hung the lantern up,
so that he could see what he was doing.
Meanwhile, mom and dad
decided that they were gonna come back in
and call it a night.
So they headed for the lantern.
Not knowing that Gary had
moved it while he was exploring
and so they followed the light.
And, it was the wrong spot.
They didn't make it back
because they hit the rocks,
and had Gary not hang the
lantern up where he was at
and left it where it needed to be,
there wouldn't have been any problems.
I just felt super bad for Beverly.
You know, I could just hear her
inside Gary's room, sobbing.
You know, you're really
making me miss my brother, Gary.
Kept hearing people
refer to Gary as a hiker.
And in my opinion, I don't
really think that's correct.
Because, to me, Gary's
more of a survivalist,
he would go out into the
wilderness for a week or two on end
with just a backpack.
He's kind of like the
MacGyver of the wilderness,
just to survive and live off of the land,
and filter his on water.
So, to hear them just be like,
oh, he's just a hiker gone missing.
He's not.
When Gary and I first
started living together,
I actually went out with
him on one of these things.
And I just kept telling myself
the entire time, never again.
Gary wouldn't let us bring
enough food or water,
and it was the most miserable experience.
The one thing I did like about it
was we kept on finding these 1800's
abandoned mining kind of structures,
which was super cool.
This wasn't a normal search and rescue.
Because, Gary didn't tell
anybody where he was going
on his excursion.
And he would go really
deep into the wilderness,
and he'd be gone for a week or so,
so no one had any idea
where to even start looking.
And so police decided the best way,
or the only thing they could think of
was to maybe check his cell phone,
and his cell phone pings in which tower.
And it looked to be as he
had turned his cell phone off
shortly after leaving his home.
When Beverly showed up to get the dog.
Yeah, I regret that now, I
kind of lashed out at her.
I was so put off when I got to town,
and he was so antsy to get out of there.
And, being my brother's roommate,
not even asking where he was gonna be,
or, if there was gonna,
you know any issue that
might set up a red flag
if he didn't come home.
He had his dog and everything,
and he knew he needed to be out of town.
I just didn't,
I didn't feel right about it,
it just didn't feel right.
And, a week or so before
that, Gary had confided in me
that him and Simon weren't
getting along very well,
and so he wanted to move out.
And so I just,
it just didn't feel right,
so I let the cops know.
You know, I just don't trust him,
there's just something to
not be concerned at all,
where your roommate's gonna be.
And more worried about getting on a plane,
than somebody missing that's
supposed to be your friend,
close to you?
No.
We never talked about that,
he never told me where
he went hiking, ever,
he never mentioned it.
And even if we did talk about it,
I'm pretty sure he probably
wouldn't have told me, so.
But at the beginning, I understood
she needed someone to point the finger at
and she was super upset, understandably.
But after some time, it
just kind of got old,
so I called her and I now told her that,
there's no way I would have
known and just by the way,
you're his sister, so why didn't you know?
When I first reported Gary missing,
the police were wonderful,
they were really on top
of it, they did an APB,
be on the lookout for his truck, himself,
Park Rangers, Fish and Game, everything.
You know, we live in a small town,
people don't go missing all the time.
And so this was a big deal,
and they really took it seriously,
they had it everywhere.
I was embarrassed that I didn't know
exactly where he was at,
you know, I'm his sister,
I should have known.
I should have known.
My first thought when
I heard he was missing was,
oh, it'd be near impossible to find him.
Either, he finally just injured himself,
or maybe he had eaten something
that he didn't know was
gonna make him so sick.
It'd been two days since
I'd reported the missing
and I hadn't slept more than
10 to 15 minutes at a time.
I had people calling and were so concerned
and wanted to know where
to start looking for him.
But not knowing where he was at,
where would I have them look?
And then the phone call came,
they'd found Gary's truck.
And I got such a sinking feeling,
such a sick to my stomach feeling
that this was now very real.
After the cops called in,
and let me know that
they'd found this truck,
they came and picked me
up and took me to it.
It was about 55 miles out of town,
and we got there and seeing his truck,
I was so hopeful, you know, thinking,
he probably fell,
maybe broke an ankle, stuck in a ravine,
can't get himself out.
But I had hope.
I really had hope that we
were gonna find him okay.
It just wasn't in a place
where Gary would have left it.
Like it wasn't in a spot where he wanted,
which he would wanna go to explore.
While I was sitting there,
watching them process Gary's
truck, I was looking around,
this wasn't Gary,
he loved to explore vast
forests, rocky hills,
beauty, not just a rolling hill of dirt.
It just, something wasn't right.
I'm a private investigator.
I was hired by Beverly shortly
after Gary's truck was found.
The High Desert as you can see,
it's very beautiful,
it's very majestic, has mountains,
valleys, plains, forests,
it has it all.
But it's also quite dangerous
and very unforgiving.
So after Gary's truck was found,
a search began and people really rallied.
Gary went missing
in the hottest part of the summer.
And what we see most of the
time in disappearance like his
is people suffering from heatstroke,
dehydration, sometimes even injury.
People started showing up
and then more people started showing up,
and next thing I know,
it's a whole whirlwind,
there were people there
that I didn't know,
that Gary didn't know,
there were people bringing drones,
all kinds of search and rescue.
It was the most humbling experience
to know that these strangers
were out there helping
to try to find my brother
and bring him home.
So once Gary's truck
was found, Beverly was,
let's just say she was very vocal
about how the truck seemed to be parked
in a suspicious location,
like she was just convinced
that her brother had not parked it there,
her brother wouldn't park it there,
and she would not stop talking about it.
So the cops eventually looked into this.
The clock was ticking.
They very much needed to find
Gary as soon as possible.
Beverly, on the other hand,
was very much in their way.
She was in the way, and she
was really messing things up.
Searching the high desert isn't easy,
I mean, it's not an easy task.
People think it is,
people think you can just get
up in the air in a helicopter
and fly around and look at
the ground and see someone,
but once you're on the ground,
there's abandoned mines,
there's bushes and tree cover.
And it's super difficult.
So finding someone, it's not
easy as people think it is.
Oh my god, sheep.
Hi sheep.
Look at all the sheep.
Sheep are a lot nicer than people.
Hey little sheep,
look at all you guys.
Roaming the land, doing
what you need to do.
Jeez, they all ran away from me.
Can't even make friends with sheep.
The officers didn't want me
to participate in the search.
They thought it was best that
I stay home at Gary's place
in case he tried to contact
me, call or show up.
I was very much familiar
with the lead investigator.
We had worked together before,
and we were definitely
familiar with each other.
I called him to kind of check up on things
and see where the
investigation was headed,
and if they had any new information.
He told me that they had made
a discovery in the truck.
But since I was not
formally hired by Beverley,
I had to contact her first
before they would discuss
the matter with me.
I was hopeful that they had good news,
that the officer asked me
if Gary had any enemies,
or if I knew anybody
that may wanna hurt him.
I asked the officer why,
why would he,
why would he ask that.
And in confidence, they told
me that they had evidence
that Gary did not drive
his truck out there.
So I waited a couple of hours
and went over to Gary's house
where Beverly was staying,
and she was absolutely hysterical.
She told me that the
police had informed her
that in Gary's truck they
had discovered prints
on top of Gary's all over,
on top of the steering wheel,
the dashboard, the gear
and what was most surprising or alarming
was that they discovered
footprints, bare footprints,
and they were scarred and unidentifiable,
which even added more to the mystery.
The footprint was,
he said that it was barefoot.
So someone drove Gary's truck barefoot.
And it just doesn't sit well with me,
because it's like, what happened?
Why was this person not wearing shoes?
What was going on?
Like, it's just odd,
and it's very,
I don't know, it's just,
it made my skin crawl.
Oh, look at the little baby deer.
That's kind of cool to see,
you don't see that too often.
You know, I hadn't been
sleeping and everything,
and my mind was just reeling,
I had a lot of things
going through my head,
different scenarios.
Maybe he picked up a friend?
Maybe somebody stole his
truck while he was out hiking?
Or maybe he picked up a hitchhiker,
and the hitchhiker had
done something to him.
I don't know, at this point,
so many things were just
going through my head,
just over and over again,
which didn't help me try to get any sleep.
So Beverly, still
wanted me to vet out Simon
because she still thought
he was very suspicious.
And I did too.
I looked into him again,
and lo and behold, he was
ruled out as a suspect.
But through that process,
I actually learned that
Gary had been talking
to someone that he met on
a Facebook Messenger group.
They had been corresponding
with each other
through a local sellers group,
and I guess they had been
commenting on each other's posts
and one thing led to another
and they became more than friends.
When I confronted this person,
he was very much terrified,
didn't wanna talk to me,
didn't wanna have anything to do with me
or the investigation.
And I told him, if you don't talk to me,
you're gonna have to talk to the cops,
and they're gonna really bust your ass.
And I think he was terrified
of being outed in this community,
because it's such a small
town, not a lot of gay people.
And so he did talk to me, he told me that,
he didn't have anything to
do with Gary's disappearance.
He was sad and upset that
Gary had disappeared,
he didn't know what happened to him.
I guess I did believe him.
He really didn't wanna discuss it,
but ultimately, when I
did check out his alibi,
he was cleared as a suspect.
Hey guys, now that I'm
done chasing sheep around
like a crazy person in the mountains.
I've seen a lot out here, mining camps,
mines, abandoned towns,
buildings, remnants of the past,
but the coolest and my
favorite personally,
is all the Native American remnants,
I love finding arrowheads
and seeing petroglyphs on mountain sides.
Just old writing from the native people
who lived here long before
any settlers moved in.
To me, that's the coolest stuff to see.
But it's getting dark
now, the sun's setting
I think I'm gonna call it
a night and get settled in,
in my camp.
They were still processing
the crime scene and everything
and they came across an
envelope in his center console,
it had a money in it.
To me that said that whoever he was with,
wasn't there to take his money
or anything that he might have had.
I woke to the police
officers knocking on my door.
And they were informing me that
they called off the search.
And while they're explaining things to me,
I'm seeing them talking,
I'm not comprehending any of the it,
everything was just kind of flashing.
And, I'm seeing their faces,
and I'm seeing their lips move,
and then they're looking
at me like I'm crazy.
And next thing I know, I'm on a stretcher.
And taken to the ER where
they had to give me hydration
and IV with fluids and
medicine that helped me sleep,
and for the first time
since all of this started,
I got 10 hours of sleep.
This was the largest search and rescue
that Nevada had ever seen.
And when they finally called it off,
everyone was just so shocked.
But, you mean, you can't search
the entire state of Nevada,
it's just too vast, it's too broad,
and it had been so long that
the chances of finding him
and finding him alive were slim to none.
The investigation was dead in the water,
we didn't have any leads,
the fingerprints in the truck
didn't match any database,
so we didn't know what to do.
But then.
Gary's followers started calling.
And this whole thing
was turned on its head.
So I'm at my desk,
and I'm going through the show notes,
I'm getting ready to go on air
and my producer comes through
my door, and he's like,
you have a phone call, you
have to take this phone call.
And I get on the phone, and
it's one of our listeners.
And he's telling me that I
have to look into Gary's blog.
He's going on and on about
this crazy story about Gary,
and he's telling me that he
thinks he knows where he is,
he thinks he knows what happened to him.
And that I have to go and
look at this blog right now.
My friend Monica calls me
and tells me that it's all over the news
that all these people are
calling into the radio station.
And she tells me that they're
talking about Gary's blog
and the fact that it needs to be read
and that there's comments and everything.
And so once I got discharged,
I went straight to Gary's house,
so I could read the blog
and see what all this was
that they were talking about.
Unfortunately, Beverly
found out about Gary's blog
hours before we did, and
she went right over there,
and really messed things up.
Hey guys, it's me again.
A lot of people have
been following the blog
and new to the blog and been saying,
I'm just trying to copy
"Naked and Afraid".
And as you can tell, I'm not
naked or afraid out here,
so I'm not trying to copy the show and,
also my ex loved that
show, so I'm sick of it,
there's a reason why
people are called exes.
So while I'm trying to
navigate through everything
on his blog,
going through the operator
stuff and everything
and I finally get in there
and I realize he has 50,000,
50,000 viewers.
I was shocked.
Not a single person in Gary's
life knew about his blog,
which was really shocking
considering the fact that
he had 50,000 followers.
That really says something,
if you think about it.
Of course, I immediately
jump on my computer
and I go to his blog, and
I'll never forget the title,
because I actually thought
it was really clever.
It was called "Don't
Hike With Headphones".
Hey guys up here at
the top of the mountain,
as you can see, there's
the great view behind me.
One of the questions I've got
asked on the blog a lot was,
what dangers,
are there any threatening animals
like rattlesnakes and mountain lions?
And, yeah, there're rattlesnakes
at the lower elevations,
you might have noticed I
don't hike with headphones
or anything on so I can listen for them.
And it's your basic,
survivalist type blog,
you know, how to build a
fire, how to filter water,
and I just start scrolling through
and I scroll and scroll
all the way to the,
like the latest videos that he had posted.
I'm trying to navigate
to find out where these
notifications are coming from
because he is getting
notification after notification,
I mean, it's ding, ding, ding, ding.
So I was driving when I
found out Gary had a blog,
I pulled over and looked
for it on my phone.
And the first thing that I noticed
was that he didn't go by his real name,
he went by Scorpion Sam.
My biggest thing I've ever ran into
was I got stung by a scorpion,
kicking over a rock once,
had to go to the hospital
once I got back to my truck,
that was the day I hiked
with a swelling up hand.
I'm finally able to
get to the notifications
and this notification pops up
and they're saying, I bet he found it,
and that something bad happened,
and I'm thinking, they're
saying he found it?
And something bad happened?
Found what?
And then came Gary's
now infamous video post.
I have worked a lot of
strange cases in my career,
and Gary's by far was the most unusual,
just the way that he described
what he was looking at,
what he saw, how terrified he was,
it just really scares me.
So I started watching
the second to last video
on Gary's blog.
And he's at his home
and he's sitting there
and he's telling his viewers
basically what he came across
on his last expedition.
I saw his last three videos
and,
what I saw,
changed everything.
He's pretty worked up in this video,
you can tell he's nervous, he's scared.
As soon as his video started,
I could tell he was troubled by something,
something had him so unnerved.
He was three days into his expedition,
and he started to smell smoke and that,
and he was out in the middle of nowhere.
So he got curious and
started to look around.
He comes across this cabin,
and it's not like a nice cabin,
it's like a makeshift cabin,
almost kind of like a
homeless type of structure,
sticks and twigs,
and there's smoke coming
out of the chimney.
And Gary's not someone to
be scared of someone else,
out in the wilderness,
but he said he was just
like frozen in his tracks,
and he just felt this like sixth sense
of basically impending doom.
It was the look on his
face, that really got to me,
when he described this
cabin out in Nevada.
He said that the longer
he stood and looked at it
the more spooked that he
got the feeling of dread,
the sixth sense that he
needed to get out of there.
And he wanted nothing
to do with that place.
And so, he hightails it out of there
and he goes to sleep in his tent,
I remember this because he talks
about how he was so scared,
he slept with his shoes on all night.
You know, he didn't bring his firearms,
so he was totally just vulnerable
out there and terrified.
And he wakes up the next
morning, and there's footprints,
and they're barefoot footprints.
These two things are now connected,
we had something to go on.
The hike back to his track,
which took three days,
he felt like somebody was following him.
So this was a really sad story to me,
to see Gary's followers turn on him,
that blog was everything to him.
He really admired them,
and their comments,
it was something really special to him.
And to see them go from
loving him to bullying him,
calling him a loser, a liar,
and putting him down, it
was really sad to see.
And the comments are like,
everyone's kind of just
like, well, go back,
take video, show us this place,
does this place even
exist, is this even real?
And he's getting like
really hit by his followers,
basically, they're kind of bullying him,
they don't believe that
he came across this,
they go to his blog for a reason,
and now they feel like he's just
getting into ghost stories or something.
And so they,
I really feel like he fell
into a bit of cyber bullying
and the fact that they were not gonna be
his faithful followers anymore,
unless he goes back and
proves that he saw this,
he experienced this.
You know, it broke my
heart to read the comments
that said that he was
nothing but a lonely loser,
and that all he was doing
was trying to get
attention by making shit up
and that they didn't believe him.
I actually didn't know about the blog,
but I knew he was doing something
because he was always in
the backyard making videos,
telling the camera how to make a campfire,
or I always heard him in his room
like giving survival tips and things.
Hey, guys, just
walking through the woods here.
It's a beautiful day in
the backwoods in Nevada.
But a lot of people asked what I would do
if I got lost back here,
I had to spends several
more days than I planned on,
I guess first thing I would do
would be find a nice nutritious cow patty,
because there're so yummy.
I'm just kidding, you
don't wanna eat cow shit.
That will be bad.
But there are ways you can
scavenger for food out here.
I'm so upset by everything and,
I wanted to download this
and do what I could so that
I could take it to the cops,
and during all the frustration
and the upset and everything,
I accidentally deleted it.
Beverly really beat herself
up about deleting the video,
and I felt bad for her.
I didn't wanna press it because
I knew she felt terrible,
her brother was missing.
But it was a missed
opportunity definitely,
and a definite disappointment.
The last video of Gary on that blog,
is him basically telling his followers,
okay, here I go, I'll go back.
And he doesn't look okay about it.
Gary's final video is truly haunting.
And it is really the
beginning of a bigger mystery.
Gary's last video that
he posted to his blog
said that he was gonna go back out
and record everything
and prove to everyone
that this was real, that
this really existed.
It's the last time that
he ever posted anything
or anybody heard from him.
Hey guys, I'm back.
Wanted to make a video
about the different comments
people left on my last video.
A lot of you were coming up
with some crazy theories,
what was out there,
what I saw in the woods.
Some of you don't believe it,
some of you are asking for the location
and wanna find it yourself.
I'm really against people going out
in the backwoods in
Nevada without experience,
there's a lot dangers out there,
from old mines to just random people
and you can get lost easily,
the scenery looks a lot the same,
and if there's no trails,
you can get lost and turn around
and be out there for days.
And if you don't bring
enough food or water,
you're in real danger.
So I don't wanna give out the location
and just be the one that
causes a whole bunch of people
to go out in the backwoods in Nevada.
I'll go out there, find the shelter again.
This time, I'll bring
my camera and firearm,
I have to do some work first,
but I plan on leaving on the 22nd,
and I'll need a good six
days to be out there again.
It's a good three days
in, and three days back,
but we're gonna find out what this is,
and look forward to another video,
once we finally get out there,
I'll have something for you guys posted.
He goes and that's it.
And that's the last,
that's the last video of Gary.
And no one knows where he was going.
So the search is so
vast and Nevada is huge,
and he could be anywhere.
This place that he talks
about could be anywhere.
This became a perfect storm
because now we knew what Gary was doing,
we just had no idea where.
I had no idea that he
had this whole other life,
this blog, all these
followers and everything
had I known that,
I would have never, ever,
let him go back out there.
This whole case turned
from a missing persons
to a huge mystery.
Whose cabin was this?
I mean, who lives out there?
Where is this cabin?
I mean, if it's in the middle of nowhere,
what type of person lives
in the middle of nowhere?
And if you're about to
go find that person,
I don't know if they're gonna
be too happy to be found.
I mean, if they're out there that far,
they're out there that far for a reason.
Once the radio station
broadcasts about it,
his blog and everything,
everybody just went crazy
before the cops could even take it down.
The conspiracy theories
were just everywhere,
from witches to aliens,
area 51, you name it.
People started coming
out of the woodwork
and everyone had a theory
as to who the cabin belonged
to, what was in the cabin.
There were some comments about
Gary had discovered a witch,
and she was making secret potions
and somehow he had gotten involved,
and I mean it was crazy.
Other people thought it was just a hermit,
you know someone who just
wanted to be left alone.
People thought that maybe
it was a government,
secret government operation, aliens.
I mean it's,
I could go on and on
about the many theories
that people thought.
The only reasonable
explanation I could come up with
was maybe, Gary had stumbled upon
an illegal marijuana growing operation
out there in the middle
of nowhere in Nevada
and they killed him for
it, it has happened before.
But,
I was wrong.
I just couldn't shake
this sickening feeling.
Before I knew it, the cops showed up
and they had known all about his blog
and I was actually on the
computer when they got there.
And they gathered everything
up, seized everything,
including his hard drives.
Guys,
another model train video here,
I just got back from a flea market,
and look what I picked up today.
Got a nice little HO diesel locomotive,
lettered for one of my favorite railroads,
it's called the California Western,
out of Northern California.
Set that down.
Then got this brand new steam
engine for the Santa Fe.
My private investigator
called and said that,
the detectives on the case
wanted to meet with me.
So I ended up going down
to the precinct and,
they kept asking me, is
there anything you need?
Have you eaten today?
Just beating around the bush
and I finally asked
them, what is going on?
It's back on.
We are back with a break in the case
of missing hiker, Gary Hinge.
Was made yesterday when his backpack
was discovered by a couple
camping in White Pine County.
When they woke up in the morning,
they found the backpack
had been intentionally
placed in their campsite.
What they found inside
has sent a shockwave
through the state of Nevada.
Hinge's truck was found parked
in Eureka earlier this month.
But police now say they have evidence
that it was parked there,
to throw off investigators
searching for him.
They woke up to find Gary's backpack
draped on a shovel that they had there.
And when they opened it,
Gary's belongings were in there,
as well as a severed hand,
Gary's hand.
The way that his hand was severed
was incredibly violent.
The way that it was chopped
off, was just gruesome.
It was deliberately placed there,
because someone wanted it to be found.
The forensic showed,
that his hand had been severed,
for more than five weeks.
And it was still
clutching a video camera.
And what's even more crazy was,
the hand wasn't like torn off from a body,
it was a clean cut.
I was gutted,
by the fact that he had suffered.
Once the camera was discovered,
everybody wanted to know, is there a tape?
And does the tape work?
And what's on the tape?
We were very anxious for the crime lab
to process the evidence.
And sure enough, when they did,
the memory chip was still in the camera.
It was truly terrifying to watch
and I can't even imagine the true horror
that he faced out there.
Bill calls me and the
forensic investigators
have video of Gary's final moments
and so they take us into a room.
The team thought it would be best
if I sat down with Beverly and
watched the videos with her,
because I had a relationship with her
and I had a kind of a special rapport.
So they thought it would probably be best
if maybe I sat down with her first.
Bill started the first video
and there was Gary shining his
light around, saying hello.
And the innocence in his voice,
I just,
I couldn't do it.
I
I had to stop.
And then Bill finished watching.
The clips begin
like all the other clips,
Gary's even smiling,
but he has no idea what's about to happen.
Hey guys, a little video update.
I am.
Oh, there's thunder.
Storm's coming in, I
gotta make this quick.
Got a whole nother ridge line to climb
before I get to the spot
where I saw that shelter
but I'm about halfway
there, a day and a half in.
We'll see what we find.
Climbed over one mountain range
already, got one more to go.
And, better make it quick,
because that storm's coming in fast.
We'll see what's on the other side.
I got ways to go,
but, weird thing is,
I'm already distinctly smelling the smoke,
like I smelled last time.
There's no fires around, there
shouldn't be anyone out here,
but it's very faint but very
distinct smell of smoke.
Kind of getting creeped out
but not as much as I was last time yet.
We'll see what happens.
Look for another video update soon.
All right, here's the final marker.
From what you do see
from the person in the video,
you can tell that they have a
lot of physical deformities.
And it's probably one of the main reasons
why they chose to live where they lived,
they felt shunned by society.
When we found
out what actually happened,
it was like this weight
had been taken off of
Beverly and I's relationship.
And now we're actually really close.
And I actually consider
her kind of a big sister.
I'm just hiking
along, almost to the top.
Over that mountain side.
Still some thunder in the distance.
Amazing how far you can hike
and only seeing a couple of deer,
how much wildlife that I've seen,
I'm sure they see me, stay hidden.
But just a lot of sagebrush
and trees and peaceful desert,
to walk.
The great thing about
Nevada, wide open spaces.
Everybody immediately
wants to go and search
for the one thing
that they've been told
not to go search for.
And so now there's this
whole band of influencers
who are out there wanting
to find this person
and post about it and blog about it
and make a video about it.
And,
to me that's,
I mean, that's terrifying.