The team was back at square one. 😞
In late fall, they reopened the 2019 files, this time without any assumptions. Buried in old interview transcripts, a forester and two fishermen had mentioned the same thing: that in recent years they’d seen the cabin’s shutters open and the door ajar. One hunter described a tall, slender young man with a quick stride, walking without a flashlight, moving through the forest at dusk like someone who knew it by heart. At the time, it was dismissed as teenage pranks.
Then an analyst laid out everything Hannah and Lily had done on the day they vanished, and one name stood out.
Tyler Marsh. Twenty-six, a clerk at the kayak rental shop.
In 2019, he had been the model citizen. He was the one who called the police a few hours after the girls missed their deadline. He opened the shop’s records without hesitation, volunteered for the search, and showed sincere regret. In the transcripts, detectives described him as friendly, calm, meticulous.
But he was also the last confirmed person to see the girls alive before they hit the water. He’d given them their safety briefing, adjusted their life jackets, and checked their gear. He knew their route, their stops, their return time. He had even recommended a specific cove “because of the weather and the lack of current.”
