Sam moved to Toronto to live with her aunt and uncle while she underwent therapy. During that time, the University of Toronto reached out to her, informing her that her admission and spot at the school would be waiting for her whenever she was ready to begin her studies.

Sam knew Kevin had been consumed with guilt. She remembered how her mother had loved Kevin, saying, “He’s a good-hearted boy, a keeper.” So Sam came to forgive him. It helped her heal when they resumed their relationship.

After Kevin had earned his degree, executives at the brokerage firm where he’d worked—who’d been sympathetic to Sam’s disappearance—used their connections to help him land a job with the firm’s Canadian headquarters in Toronto, so he could join Sam.

Meanwhile, in their investigation, the FBI and Vermont State Police found more human remains in the abandoned mine shafts and the cemetery on the property. DNA analysis confirmed the remains were those of people reported missing from across the country.

Additional testing with new samples from the house on the property further confirmed that Lasius Byyle’s DNA matched DNA recovered in the Hydra case.

In a key development, a Vermont State Police drone picked up unusual shading in the water in an abandoned granite quarry several miles from the property. That led to the discovery of a submerged vehicle. Police divers hooked chains to the vehicle, and heavy-duty tow trucks hauled out a camper van. It matched the van in the video recorded by the bird cam at the time of Moore’s abduction.

The vehicle identification number showed the van as being registered to Lasius Byyle of College Street, Providence, Rhode Island. However, further investigation showed that a Lasius Byyle, of Syracuse, New York, had died at the age of three in a car accident 40 years earlier. About 15 years ago, an application was made for his birth records, then his social security number. Those records were sent to a fictitious name using an elaborate system of mail forwarding services, indicating the 3-year-old’s identity had been stolen.

Fingerprints and dental records of the dead man known as Byyle did not come up in any state, national, or international databanks.

“Who was this guy? It’s like he’s a phantom who never existed,” Noble said during one of his calls with McDade.

“How fitting,” McDade said.

She’d been studying material found on the property when she discovered a note Byyle had made, confirming the message that had been found in each of the Hydra murders. He’d written it across articles on the case that had speculated that the full message was “You can’t do this to me,” or, “You can’t get away,” or “You can’t go to Heaven.”

WRONG!!! Byyle had scrawled. YOU CAN’T FIND ME!