Chapter 2: The Devil in Oakridge

Seven bodies, including one boy and several girls, all with their eyes gouged out.

It was early 1983, in Oakridge, Ohio—a small city tucked between endless cornfields and faded strip malls. There, the quiet routine of Midwestern life had been shattered. Michael, then a newly promoted lieutenant and behavioral analyst at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, was called in to help solve a string of murders that made even hardened cops lose sleep.

Before Michael’s boots hit Oakridge soil, three female bodies had turned up, each discovery more gruesome than the last. Every single victim had their eyes gouged out—a detail that gnawed at Michael. It was bizarre, ritualistic, and sickeningly deliberate.

The first victim was a 13-year-old girl—brutally stabbed at least 22 times. Her body was dumped in a thicket beside a cornfield, left to rot beneath the thick summer leaves. The local deputies had nothing—not a print, not a witness, not a single clue.

The second was a grown woman, found naked and facedown near the old railroad depot—her body splayed out in a pose that screamed contempt. The third, if you could call her that, was so mutilated the medical examiner had to use dental records. A jagged branch had been rammed into her wounds—a display of rage that left the room silent.

Time passed, and the killer only got bolder. The police, desperate and out of their depth, sent for Michael. He arrived burning with resolve, convinced he’d track down the animal responsible.

But almost as if to mock him, the killer delivered a fourth corpse as a twisted welcome—another little girl, eyes torn out.

Why the eyes? Was it a depraved fetish, or something else—a private ritual known only to the killer? The case files were thin, the leads thinner.

Michael started at the basics. He combed through missing persons reports, flipping through faded photos and anxious notes. One caught his attention: a 10-year-old girl who vanished after leaving for her weekly piano lesson downtown.

He dug in—interviews, phone records, hours at the station. Four months passed. Then, just as winter sank its claws into Oakridge, the girl was found—dead, dumped three miles from the music school, her tiny body preserved by the relentless Ohio snow.

The crime scene was a frozen tableau of horror. The girl’s skin had gone ghostly blue, her body covered in stab wounds. Her chest and stomach had been shredded—her abdomen ripped open, organs torn out. The killer hadn’t just gouged her eyes; he’d mutilated her genitals, cut her open, and stolen her intestines and uterus.

Michael stood at the edge of the crime scene, snow crunching beneath his boots, and felt a sickening cocktail of fury and helplessness. All his skills—fingerprints, forensics, criminal profiling—felt useless. Whoever this monster was, he moved like a ghost, leaving nothing behind but carnage.

It was as if a wild animal had torn through a family picnic in the heartland—but with a predator’s cunning. Not one piece of real evidence. No prints, no hair, no trace. Just seven ruined lives and a town bracing for more.

Michael forced himself to regroup. He retreated to a run-down Motel 6 off the interstate, its neon sign flickering through the threadbare curtains. He mapped out every case, every detail, and hammered out three deductions:

First: The killer had wheels. No way he hauled bodies that far on foot. Second: He had to seem safe. The kind of guy who’d help you carry groceries or hold the door. Third: This was about power—a ritual, maybe even a sick kind of worship.

Later, Michael would see most of his hunches confirmed. But right then, he was grasping at shadows.