Sparsely populated Humboldt County stretches along the coast of northern California (USA). It is famous for its mountains covered with lush vegetation, beautiful coastal landscapes and dense forests, including incredible groves of huge sequoias.
These are places of extraordinary beauty, so it is not surprising that many tourists come here, including to see the towns, which have preserved remarkable buildings of the Victorian era.
It is also a real mecca for hippies, free artists, travelers and other creative people who want to get away from the bustling industrial society and hectic modern life.
However, there is also a dark side here.
In 1992, 20-year-old Jennifer Wilmer came from New York to the coastal town of Arcata in Humboldt County, seeking spiritual freedom. The girl was fond of hippie culture, and in order to earn money for food, she took a part-time job as a waitress in a pub in a neighboring district.
On September 13, 1993, the girl was supposed to leave for New York to visit her mother, but she did not appear at the agency for the ordered ticket. When the police started looking for her, the last ones who saw Jennifer said that she was standing on the side of Willow Creek, not far from her house and asked for a ride.
No one else saw this girl, and later they did not find her either alive or dead.
The more famous and darker disappearance in Humboldt County happened in November 1997. 16-year-old Karen Mitchell, originally from Southern California, moved to the town of Eureka with her aunt and uncle Bill and Annie Casper. On November 25, 1997, Mitchell left her home and headed towards the community center, where she volunteered to help the children.
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She walked along a crowded street in the city center in the midst of the day and disappeared literally out of the blue, as if she had vanished into thin air. Her uncle and aunt went to the police that evening, and they started looking for the girl all over the city. Almost every house was checked and everyone who got in the way was interviewed. Yurika is a small town, just over 27 thousand people.
Oddly enough, none of the local residents could give the police any clue, although many of them saw the girl in the city that day. Everything looked as if she was walking down the street as usual and suddenly disappeared. It seemed unlikely that she could run away somewhere, she really hoped to go to a local college and for this she came to Yuriku. She also seemed carefree and happy, she had no problems.
The search in the following weeks also yielded nothing. One of the clues was that someone seemed to have seen Karen talking to people in a blue Ford Granada. The police checked all the cars of this brand in the area, but none of them aroused the slightest suspicion. Conversations with their owners also yielded nothing.
In 1999, it seemed that Karen's killer had finally been found. A local resident, 36-year-old Wayne Allen Ford, volunteered for the police, confessing to the murders of four women in 1997. He was convicted of the crimes, but none of his victims turned out to be Karen and the police did not find any evidence during a search of Ford's house that indicated that he could be involved in her disappearance.
Then another possible suspect was found, who turned out to be an eccentric millionaire named Robert Durst. He was charged with the murder of his wife in 1982, and then it turned out that he was in Yurik on the day of Karen's disappearance and even visited her aunt and uncle's shoe store. But no other evidence was found against him, and Karen's case was never solved even in subsequent years.
The third mysterious disappearance of the girl in Humboldt County was far stranger than the disappearance of Karen Mitchell. 23-year-old Christina Walters disappeared in November 2008 after a meeting in Humboldt County with members of the Green Life Evolutions, for which she specially traveled from her home state of Wisconsin.
It was a strange move for a girl who had previously been determined to graduate from college and even decided on a profession. Suddenly she found new friends in the Green Life Evolutions, a New Age culture, and her parents were convinced that Christine had been brainwashed and lured into the sect.
Prior to her disappearance, Christina was seen engaging in a number of strange acts. On November 7, 2008, Christina and about 20 friends from her group organized a ritual tea ceremony, during which they were to have different visions. They drank a drink - the hallucinogen Ayahuasca, which is famous among the Indians.
Christina was among friends until November 11, and then she was found naked on the porch of the hotel. The girl was asleep, and her whole body was covered with scratches. She was taken to the hospital and there she said that demons were following her. Nevertheless, the girl was soon discharged.
After that, the girl behaved paranoid. She contacted her parents to urgently fax a copy of her driver's license and Social Security card. She said. that she needs them to access her bank account. Her parents sent copies to her on November 14th. On the same day, the girl left her hotel at about one in the afternoon to go to the copy center and get these copies, dressed only in pajamas and muttering something.
Subsequently, eyewitnesses said that the girl looked exhausted and tired, and she constantly looked around, as if she did not understand where she was. She went to the copy center, but then said that she had lost her wallet and then suddenly decided to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles. She was shown the direction, but in the end she never made it. She disappeared without a trace. It was around 15.30.
Later, no interviews with eyewitnesses, friends of the girl and others did not give anything to the police. Like Jennifer and Karen, Christina disappeared literally in the center of the city in broad daylight without the slightest clue.
One of the most experienced private detectives from Indiana, Thomas Louth, worked with the case of Christina Walters:
“This was one of the most mysterious cases I have seen in my 20 years of investigating tangled missing persons cases across the country. Young women often go missing in Humboldt County and all this may be the case of a bloody serial killer, but we always try to find at least some leads and give the family of the missing answers to their questions. There was nothing right there."
The entire series of these mysterious disappearances in Humboldt County is called "Humboldt Missing 5" ("5 Humboldt disappearances), because there were as many as 5 mysterious unsolved disappearances of girls between 1992 and 2014.
In 2013, 23-year-old Danielle Bertolini decided to start a new life after the tragic death of her child and moved from Bangor, Maine to Humboldt County. In early 2014, Bertolini suddenly disappeared without a trace, and the last person to see her was 43-year-old sawmill worker James Eugene Jones, who gave her a lift to her house and assured her that he had safely dropped the woman off and had nothing to do with her disappearance.
In fact, Jones appeared to the police as a very suspicious man. It turned out that he had previously known Karen Mitchell, one of the missing, and there were also rumors that he knew other missing girls. Moreover, Bertolini's sister found Danielle's wallet with all her credit and bank cards in the glove compartment of Jones' car.
The case took a much more sinister turn when on March 9, 2015, a naked skull was found by the river, which turned out to be Bertolini's. But he again did not give any clues, including finding Jones's connection to this skull. Jones was neither charged nor arrested, and the case of the loss and death of Bertolini remained the same mystery as the disappearance of other girls.
The fifth missing victim of Humboldt County was 37-year-old Sheila Franks. She disappeared a week before Bertolini's disappearance, and the suspicious James Eugene Jones was also suddenly linked to her. He told the police that he saw Sheila walking down the street the day she disappeared.
As in the case of Bertolini, Jones was the last person to see this woman alive, but nothing else connected him with the victims and nothing suspicious was found in his house during a search.
The mystery without a trace (with the exception of Bertolini's skull) of the missing Humboldt women still amazes the minds of researchers. Maybe it's a serial murder, or maybe something more sinister is happening, like the activities of religious cults or even the abduction of UFOs.