- [Narrator] What's up EWU Crew?
The Raven is back again
to share another interesting, shocking,
(eerie music) or just strange,
but very true story with you.
Today, we're going to explore three stories of victims
and the chilling photographs they last appeared in.
In 2015, 18-year-old Cheyenne Rose Antoine
and her best friend, Brittney Gargol,
did something that many young girls do,
something they didn't think twice about.
They took a selfie,
a picture that would later come back to haunt one of them.
The picture shows the friends posing together,
Cheyenne grinning and holding the phone
and Brittney smirking with a hand on her hip.
They posted the picture to Facebook and went on a night out.
The story goes that the two ended up hopping between bars
in downtown Saskatoon.
At some point during the night,
Brittney apparently met a man.
Brittney and this man hit it off,
getting along so well that she decided to leave with him.
Sometime after Brittney and Cheyenne had parted ways,
Cheyenne decided to use social media
to get back in contact with her friend.
She made a post on Facebook asking her where she had gone.
"Where are you, Brittney?
"Haven't heard from you.
"Hope you make it home safe.
"And I need my phone. Love ya"
She never received a reply.
This is the case's first twist,
but I could never have predicted the outcome.
In the early hours of the next morning,
a driver was going down the dark Valley Road,
near the Saskatoon Landfill
on the southern outskirts of the city
when he noticed something peculiar on the side of the road.
Something about the shape turned his stomach.
So he pulled his car over and got out.
As he approached,
he realized that it was the body of a young woman.
She was lying on her back without any shoes.
Worrying that the girl may be injured,
the man checked for any signs of life,
but horribly, he found she was cold to the touch
and she wasn't breathing.
When he saw her neck and the markings there,
he realized that she was dead
and had probably been strangled.
(eerie music)
The man of course called the police
and an investigation was launched
to find the identity of the young woman.
Lucky for the police,
she had distinctive tattoos
and they released pictures to the public
in a bid to match a name to the disturbing corpse.
A woman came forward
and said she was worried that the body belonged
to her friend.
It was determined to be Brittney Gargol.
Investigators started to put the clues together
to understand what happened to her.
They utilized the girl's social media
and everything seemed to point to the mysterious man
who Brittney had left the bar with.
But that isn't what actually happened at all.
No, the real story is much, much darker.
Here's where it gets crazy.
Investigators go to interview Cheyenne.
After all, she was Brittney's best friend
and presumably one of the last people to see her alive.
She worriedly tells the police,
"Yeah, we got ready together that night
"and then went to the bar and then a house party.
"And then last, we went to Colonial Pub and Grill.
"That's where Brittney asked some dude for a lighter
"and kinda invited him to tag along with us.
"But after that, I got dropped off at the Lighthouse.
"It's an assisted living shelter
"'cause I wanted to visit my uncle
"and I never saw Brittney again after that."
Her story sounded credible enough
and Cheyenne was pretty forthcoming,
even putting her uncle on the phone with police
to corroborate her version of the events.
Pretty much everything checked out.
But still, the investigators did their due diligence
and sought to tie up this loose end
by double checking Cheyenne's timeline
with the surveillance footage taken at the pub
she said they last visited.
And that's when they saw something
that made their blood run cold.
Or rather, it's what they didn't see.
They couldn't find any trace of either Brittney or Cheyenne
at the establishment.
Investigators were taken aback.
Could the sweet teenage girl
they'd just spoken with really know more
than she was letting on?
They checked the security footage
from the Lighthouse shelter.
Cheyenne and her uncle had never met up that night either.
Suddenly, they started to doubt Cheyenne's story.
And this suspicion marked the beginning
of a two-year investigation
to untangle the complicated events of that dark night.
(eerie music)
It was the innocent selfie that the two took
and posted only six hours
before the discovery of Brittney's death
that finally broke the case
and was the key to unraveling the truth.
When Brittney's body was discovered,
something had been nearby.
But at the time, no one thought too much about it.
It was a black belt.
A belt that was later believed to be the weapon used
to strangle her.
And that distinctive belt, braided and thick,
was awfully familiar.
That same belt was the one in the photo the girls had taken
at the beginning of the night and was worn by Cheyenne.
I took another look at the picture
because at first I couldn't remember the belt,
but there it is in the very corner of the photo.
So, what actually happened that night?
Well, unfortunately it still doesn't totally make sense
to this day.
The friends spent the evening drinking
and, for the most part, they had a good time.
But this didn't last.
At some point during the night,
the alcohol the two had been consuming
stopped encouraging their laughter
and instead fueled a heated argument.
Brittney never met a man and left with him.
The Facebook post Cheyenne had made to Brittney that night
was an attempt to cover her tracks.
And she used social media to create a web of lies
that kept investigators looking for a different suspect.
Ultimately, it was a tip
to the police from a witness
who claimed Cheyenne confessed to the unthinkable.
Reportedly, she had shown up at the witness's house
and hysterically confessed to how she had hurt her friend,
hitting and strangling her.
But what kind of argument could lead someone
to kill their best friend?
We don't know.
Cheyenne says she doesn't remember strangling Brittney,
but she doesn't dispute that she killed her.
Cheyenne was initially charged with the second-degree murder
of her best friend, Brittney Gargol.
But at the trial in 2018,
she pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter
and was sentenced to seven years behind bars.
Looking at the picture,
I find it so eerie to see Brittney smiling happily
after having just helped her friend decide
to wear the weapon that would be used to kill her.
(eerie music)
The next last photo we are we're exploring
is one that captures a moment of delight,
as an adventure is about to take place,
but has now become a haunting reminder
of a life cut too short.
30-year-old Swedish freelance journalist,
Kim Isabel Fredrika Wall,
had a promising career ahead of her.
And by 2017, had already accomplished publishings
in "Time," "The Guardian," and "The New York Times."
And had even won awards for her reports.
One of Kim's upcoming career endeavors
was to interview the Danish inventor
and entrepreneur, Peter Madsen.
In early 2017, she had requested an interview with him,
but Madsen didn't agree until August.
As a bit of an eccentric,
Madsen invited Kim to interview him alone
on his homemade submarine, UC3 Nautilus.
Kim agreed, but only planned to be there
for two hours as she and her boyfriend
were throwing a going away party to celebrate
their planned move to Beijing later that month.
On August 10th, Kim boarded the submarine
and this photo was taken.
In it, Kim smiles standing with her upper body
above the submarine's tower hatch.
At her side, looking over his shoulder,
is Peter Madsen.
Kim was apparently afraid to go into the submarine,
according to her boyfriend.
But despite her reservations,
she went anyway as she was fascinated
by people dedicated to something.
Kim's boyfriend became concerned
when Kim never arrived at their party.
He went in search and reported Kim as missing.
But then Madsen was found.
The morning after Kim had come to interview him,
he was rescued from his submarine after it foundered.
Despite being aboard a sinking submarine
and nearly trapped within,
Madsen was discovered to be calm and serious
and unshaken by the frightening events.
But there was no sign of Kim.
Initially, Madsen claimed that he had dropped Kim off
after her interview concluded.
But as you will see, that wasn't the case at all.
Something about the damage to the submarine
was suspicious to the authorities who saved Madsen.
And they soon suspected
that he had intentionally scuttled the ship.
But why would Madsen destroy his own submarine?
And where was Kim Wall?
The ship was eventually raised up
and there was no evidence of Kim onboard.
Yet Madsen's calm demeanor and matter-of-fact recounting
of the night's events was unnerving.
When researching, I found quite a few different accounts
of that night, and it turns out,
Madsen gave multiple different stories,
none of which added up.
This is probably why he came under suspicion
in the first place,
along with the fact that the submarine never docked
after Kim boarded.
So no matter what he said,
nothing could explain how Kim could be safe
if the submarine never came back to land
until after it had foundered.
Because of this, Madsen was swiftly arrested
after his rescue.
Initially he was charged with negligent manslaughter,
as police suspected Kim's fate
had been an unfortunate accident.
And at first, Madsen changed his story again
to match this assumption.
But soon more evidence washed ashore.
Gruesome and horrifying evidence.
(eerie music)
11 days after Kim's disappearance,
a cyclist was enjoying a bike ride along a beach
in the Southwest of Amager.
The wind was whipping up off the water,
but the sea breeze was pleasant.
Among the rocky shore,
the cyclists noticed something peculiar
and they slowed down,
coming to a full stop near the misshapen lump
that they just couldn't quite identify.
Nearing it, the cyclists realized with horror
in the knowledge that they would never be able to forget
what they were seeing,
that it was part of a woman's body.
Her torso beheaded and without limbs
and bearing the marks of stab wounds
congregated around the groin.
Body parts just kept washing up on the shore.
And, at first, no one was sure who the body belonged to.
In order to end the horror of
a beach laden with body parts,
cadaver dogs and police divers were brought in.
They found Kim Wall's head in a plastic bag.
Madsen maintained that Kim's death had been an accident,
though he soon admitted
that he had been the one to dismember
and dispose of her body in the sea.
Here's where the story gets crazy.
Madsen's explanation was that,
while he had been up on the deck,
the air pressure within the submarine suddenly dropped
and cause toxic fumes to fill the air supply, killing Kim.
The problem is, the medical examiner can't determine
the exact cause of death
because Kim's body had been exposed to water
for so long and decomposed.
However, the coroner testified
that they were doubtful that Kim's death
was caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.
Though it was possible,
but thought it was more likely strangulation,
a cut to her throat, or drowning.
What the medical examiner did know for certain
was that Kim's body had sustained more
than 14 wounds and cuts.
But Madsen had an explanation.
He, "Claimed he slashed her body
"to prevent the buildup of gases
"that occurs when a person dies."
That way she would sink to the seabed.
He also admitted that he dismembered her
because he couldn't lift her body off
the submarine otherwise.
Well, it didn't make sense to the judge.
Madsen was found guilty of premeditated murder,
aggravated assault, and desecrating a corpse
and sentenced to life in prison.
I can't help but wonder what Kim was thinking
when that chilling last photo her was taken.
Did she have any idea of the horror
that was waiting for her in that submarine?
The final disturbing last photo we're taking a look at today
might be the most chilling of them all.
And, in fact,
has frequently earned the title
of the most terrifying photograph.
In 1990, 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters
and her boyfriend, Rickie Lee Jones,
were standing alongside a highway,
hoping to hitchhike a ride.
The two young teens had just run away from their homes
in Pasadena and thought that their luck had turned
when a truck pulled over to offer them a ride.
The driver was Robert Ben Rhoades,
a man who, at this point, is believed
to have had a long criminal career
and had already killed a couple
in a situation eerily similar
to the one that Regina and Ricky found themselves in.
Of course, they had no idea that Robert,
who seemed trustworthy and was kind enough
to offer them a ride,
was plotting to make them his next victims.
Almost as soon as Regina and Ricky climbed
into Robert's truck, everything went wrong.
Robert killed Ricky before quickly disposing of his body
in a methodical and cold manner.
But, of course, it was methodical.
Robert ostensibly had a lot of practice at this point.
Robert had already done this exact calculated routine
on his previous victims,
Patricia Candace Walsh and her husband, Douglas Zyskowski,
a few months prior.
He felt sure of himself
as he held Regina captive in the truck.
It is reported that he continually assaulted her
in a variety of ways,
and even cut off all of her long curly brown hair.
Robert would occasionally call Regina's father
on a payphone,
taunting him and telling him about how he had cut off
all of his daughter's hair.
This time, Robert forced Regina to stay with him longer
than his other victims,
probably because he had been able to get away with it
up to this point and didn't worry, he'd be caught.
It's unknown exactly how long he kept Regina captive,
nor the extent of the horrors that the young girl faced.
I tried to narrow down an exact timeline,
but unfortunately, the only piece of evidence
that gives any indication are photographs
that Robert took of Regina.
These pictures show her hair growing back
and multiple bruises, all in different stages of healing.
With this in mind,
it's a safe guest to say he held her hostage for months.
Among the photos Robert had taken was one
that is haunting, to say the least.
It shows Regina in an abandoned farmhouse
wearing a black dress and heels
that Robert had forced her to put on.
He then calmly took photos of her,
one of which shows that her hair is cropped short
and her dress is unbuttoned.
Regina's face expresses so much in one photo,
absolute fear and sadness,
but also a hint of defiance in the way she frowns.
She holds her arms out in front of her in defense.
The longer I look at the picture,
the more I could see everything
that must've been going through her mind.
This is the last photo of Regina alive
and Robert, behind the camera,
was the last thing she ever saw.
After the photo was taken,
Robert picked up baling wire and strangled Regina.
As a testament to his state of mind
and the coldness with which he treated Regina.
After she was dead,
he simply left her body on the floor of the barn,
where it began to decompose.
Robert later earned the infamous name
of The Truck Stop Killer.
And though Regina was his last victim,
she was allegedly just one of many.
Purportedly, Robert was arrested
when another woman he had kidnapped screamed
until she was found in Robert's truck by a trooper.
Robert was convicted of Regina Kay Walter's death
and two others.
He was given life without parole.
Robert is suspected of assault and killing up to 50 women
between the years of 1975 and 1990.
To this day, Robert sits in Maynard Correctional Center
in Chester, Illinois.