in a quiet rural township in michigan, as october chilled into autumn, two young women prepared for the social event of the season. it s gonna be great. there will be so many people. so they imagined. , so they hoped, in their naivete. then so many others of a particular demographic of the farms and in the small towns around moran county. it was a buildup that whole summer that we coordinate way to go to the halloween party. halloween! becky brinson and her friend chelsea bruck just loved dressing up for halloween. chelsea and becky worked together at a restaurant called olga s kitchen in monroe and, as they served their customers, they talked endlessly about what was coming. this wasn t going to be just any halloween party. it was big mike s annual halloween bash of 2014. everyone just everyone knew, big mike has the biggest halloween party. and after all, their friends were going and there d be bands and noise and excitement and, who knew what all there d
i kinda babied her a little bit. like, oh, you re gonna be okay. it s gonna be okay. she wanted to go home right then. oh? it s gonna be okay, it s gonna be okay. just drink a little bit. it ll go away. you know, and after a minute or two, she was fine. then she was back, enjoying the party. then, about 1: 00am, it was time to go home. earlier, chelsea had asked penny for a ride home, but sometime during the bonfire they lost sight of each other. and penny s sister had work the next morning, and so had to leave right then. she had to be up at 6:00, so oh my so it was time to go. such confusion. by then becky was holding chelsea s phone because chelsea had no pockets in her poison ivy get-up, but becky couldn t find chelsea either. and i was, like like, what do i do? like, do i find a different ride? do i get stuck here? like, find go find chelsea? i assumed that, you know, she knew other people and she someone would give her a ride home. i felt like s
october 25th, 2014. and blended into the wild, bacchanalian scene inside two giant tents big mike had set up for the occasion. and the revelers poured in 600, 700 people, hundreds more maybe. who knew? a parade of eight heavy metal rock bands blasted their shock waves into the night. one of them big mike s very own band, pick axe preacher. that s him, singing the band had dressed up as ninja turtles for halloween. somewhere out there in that crowd were becky and chelsea and their friend penny watkins. me and chelsea kind of kind of attached at the hip. penny was a decade older than chelsea, had four growing kids. but, that night at the party? we were walking around and being goofy [laughs] kind of like two little schoolgirls, just laughing and giggling and drinking a little bit. i felt like 21 again when i was hanging out with her. chelsea was 22, grew up in a
hope. that chelsea was alive might still come home. absolutely miss you. love you. if someone is holding you no matter where you re at no matter, we just want you home. the family s organization was impressive. each volunteer assigned to a group, each group sent to a particular area or neighborhood. and this just went on and on. soon there were posters of chelsea s face and purple ribbons her favorite color everywhere. friends like penny worried she might have been kidnapped by sex traffickers. so penny went looking in the darker corners of toledo, ohio, a half hour south of monroe. i was handin out flyers. have you seen this girl? you know in the areas where prostitution is known. i had policemen tell me, you don t need to be out here, you need to go back home, because i would go out at night because that s when the prostitutes were out that s kind of a dangerous thing to do, you know?
demeanor, cause she had been real upbeat during the whole investigation. you could just feel feel negativity. you just she knew at that point, i think, that like the air coming out, yeah. yeah. spring. people go outside. they see things. was this here before? was this here when you came that day, this berm, this earthen thing you re climbing up? yeah. it wasn t as big to my knowledge but it was definitely there. erik kassab and a friend were trying to make some quick cash finding and selling abandoned bits of metal. this was 10 miles from big mike s. that day, i was comin here to