AI Summary
5 min readOn a clear October morning in 2012, 53-year-old Mark Sutherland drove into the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona for what was supposed to be a routine five-day archery deer hunt—the same trip he had made every year for more than three decades. He was a father of three, a youth baseball coach, a volunteer firefighter, and an electrical contractor who knew those mountains better than most park rangers. He never came home. When investigators finally found his campsite, they discovered something that defied easy explanation: Mark had been killed in his sleeping bag, but the killers had first sat by his campfire, eaten his food, drunk their own whiskey, and smoked cigarettes before cutting open his tent and delivering a single fatal stab wound to his throat. The case remains open more than a decade later.
The Victim and His Routine
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:25) **A Father’s Last Hunt** - Mark Sutherland, a 53-year-old father and experienced bow hunter, drives into the Santa Rita Mountains for his annual five-day solo hunting trip, a tradition he has kept for over 30 years.
- 2 (03:55) **A Routine Trip Begins** - Mark’s final preparations and the last communications from him, as he drives into the mountains and sets up his secret campsite.
- 3 (05:51) **The Disappearance** - Mark fails to return home on Friday, October 26, leading his family to report him missing.
- 4 (07:49) **The Search and the Discovery** - Search and rescue teams search the forest for days before a helicopter spots Mark’s truck, leading them to a gruesome scene.
- 5 (09:19) **The Killer’s Campfire** - Evidence at the scene reveals the killer or killers spent time in Mark’s camp before the murder, sitting by his fire.
- 6 (10:54) **The Investigation Begins** - The Pima County Sheriff’s Office launches a massive investigation, and the autopsy reveals the cause of death.
- 7 (11:30) **The Trail and the Cache** - Investigators find a faint trail leading away from the camp to a hidden box canyon, where a drug pack’s camp is discovered.
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Show Notes
The Killer Who Sat By His Campfire
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