The girl had just turned 14 years old. Like barely by a week. The sub was 31 or 32 and had gotten divorced and fired after a DWI. His ex wife had enough of his b******* so she left him. Then he got fired and had his license suspended for a year

The guy sold his house and kept his half of the money. He used his insurance money from his totaled car to pay cash for a used POS and keep a few thousand. His car insurance carrier dropped him, and when he was fired the week after his DWI – the week after his wife left him – he lost his health insurance too

He almost killed himself in spring 2011. He tried quitting drinking but it didn’t work. He tried quitting smoking cigarettes but it didn’t work. He had hidden his smoking addiction from his ex wife, but now it was coming out and taking over. He always thought about cigarettes now. About how badly he needed them. He couldn’t get away from his obsessive thoughts.

He tried going to the gym. Or being proactive in something. He tried moving back in with his mother for a while but couldn’t deal with her. He tried living with a friend, but that didn’t work either.

Eventually within six weeks he knew he had to leave. he sold most Of what stuff he could gather. Several guns, and rifles, made about $3,500 from theguns and everything else. He kept one revolver for himself, and a backpack with camping gear, survival knive, hiking clothes, jacket, boots etc.

There wasn’t much else left. He closed his Facebook and social media accounts, canceled them. Cancelled his phone plan – it had been on his ex wife’s cell plan since college – he wiped the iphones memory and sold it for cash

For the first time since high school he had no cell phone in his pocket. He had no phone at all. No computer either. The laptop had belonged to the company so he had to give it back the day he was fired. His ex wife kept the computer he’d bother herthe year before for Christmas. He had no computer. No internet. No phone. No tv. He let her kept the plasma tv too since he obviously had no place for it. He had no place for anything really.

He had kept several boxes of old books, moved them to his father’s garage for storage. he had one suitcase and two other gym bags packed with regular street clothes and toiletries and so forth he kept there too, to pick up sometime later whenever he was ready to move On.

But first he needed to get a way into the Wild for a while

May of 2011 was time to go away for a while. He had hired a lawyer and was on probation. So he went camping. Would check in with hisnparole Officer. That summer of 2011 was long and hot.

Scorching hot.

Burning in Texas. He rode through east Texas in a car a friend sold him and found fields and trees burned to ashes.

The fires took everything the alcohol had not already.

In September his probation was lifted. He was free to leave the state. He had even

He had heard of a possible job opening in town – but he had to leave. The town was full of ghosts. His ex wife, her family, his old company, his own family, all disgraced by him

So the day his parole was lifted, he went to get his temporary drivers license, and also reported into the licensing board lawyer. The lawyer told him to submit a request for a two years voluntary suspension and then he could reapply; so he sent in the paperwork like the lawyer told him.

Later that afternoon in September, he swung by his father’s garage and picked up his clothes and a few books, put it in the trunk of the old used car with his camping gear and he headed out

Heading north

He made touch with an old friend in Chicago

The. He headed on up to Michigan where he lied about his background and got a job as a substitute teacher at a rough urban high school in Detroit

He found a small one bedroom garage apartment to rent. Flat $300 a month, with water and power.

He loved it. It was at the end of a street in a rundown neighborhood of 40s wooden houses falling into disrepair with mostly empty houses

There was nobody in the house that the garage apartment was located behind, and he yard was overgrown with thick bushes.

You couldn’t see into the garage from the street. There wasn’t an inhabited house for two blocks.

It was dark and quiet.

That’s where he took the young 14 year old girl

She had wanted to run away

She had talked to her teacher after class one day and he offered to tutor her privately

That’s how she ended up there

They left on a Friday afternoon around Christmas time not long after school had gotten out

I can’t believe it’s been 7 years now