The Appalachian Trail Murders: How a Dying Man’s Confession Solved a Six-Year Mystery

In May 2016, three high school friends from North Carolina — Jackson, Miles, and Connor — packed light backpacks, laced up their boots, and drove into the Appalachian Mountains for a three-day hiking trip. All three were 17. They planned to hike a section of the famous Appalachian Trail, camp under the stars, and post photos along the way.

They never came home.

Their car was found at a trailhead parking lot. The last post on their Instagram accounts — a grainy sunset photo — appeared to have been taken on the first night of the trip. Then, silence. Calls went unanswered. Text messages showed no “read” receipts.

Within days, parents sounded the alarm. Search teams mobilized. Helicopters scanned ridgelines. Volunteer crews and trained K-9 units scoured trails, ravines, and creeks. For weeks, nothing turned up — no footprints, no discarded gear, no clue as to where three healthy teenagers had gone.

By late summer, the search was scaled back. The case quietly slid into the “unsolved” category, joining hundreds of other Appalachian disappearances that never make national news. The boys’ parents continued their own searches and pressed media outlets to keep the story alive. But leads dried up.

A Break in the Dark

Five years passed. In 2021, a team of spelunkers exploring an isolated limestone cave system — far from marked hiking routes — stumbled on something strange in a deep crevice. At first, they assumed it was trash left by careless adventurers: a rolled-up tarp weighed down with a large rock.

When they unfolded it, the discovery made their skin crawl.

Inside were three neatly folded sets of clothing and three pairs of hiking boots. The clothing matched what the missing boys were last seen wearing. There were no bones, no cell phones, no wallets — nothing that could directly identify the owners. But the condition and arrangement of the items seemed deliberate, not accidental.

Authorities re-entered the case. Forensic analysis suggested the clothes likely belonged to the missing teens. Yet without bodies, the trail again went cold. Investigators canvassed the area, re-interviewed locals, and reviewed old leads. Nothing new surfaced.

The Deathbed Confession

The following year, 2022, a development came from an unlikely source. At a hospice in a small Appalachian town, a 70-something man named Ray Waters was dying of a serious illness. In a semi-delirious state, he summoned a nurse. According to the nurse’s statement, Waters confessed to killing three teenagers in 2016 after catching them “on my property.”

He mentioned owning land near the very cave where the clothing had been found.

The nurse, shaken, reported the confession to police. Investigators initially treated the statement cautiously — dying declarations can be muddled, influenced by medication, or fabricated. But a check of property records confirmed Waters had indeed owned acreage in the area and had been questioned in 2016 as part of routine interviews. Back then, he claimed to have seen nothing and was dismissed as a lead.

This time, police searched the property thoroughly. They found no human remains. But a review of stored evidence from 2016 — including gloves collected near the boys’ abandoned car — led to a breakthrough. DNA testing, using updated methods, detected the genetic profiles of all three teenagers on the gloves.

Waters died just days after his confession. With his words and the DNA results, authorities formally closed the missing-persons investigation, reclassifying it as a triple homicide.

Who Was Ray Waters?

Neighbors described Waters as a reclusive, confrontational man who lived alone on inherited property near the national park boundary. He was fiercely territorial, known to threaten mushroom pickers and hunters who wandered too close. In one alleged incident, he shot a neighbor’s dog, though the case was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Over two decades, multiple complaints were filed about his behavior — blocking old forest roads, brandishing firearms at passersby — but none resulted in serious charges. He had no documented mental health history and no prior violent-crime convictions.

To investigators, his history painted a picture of someone who saw his land as both fortress and trap.

The Second Search

After Waters’ death, police obtained warrants for a full forensic excavation of his property. Search teams brought in ground-penetrating radar and cadaver dogs. They combed through woods, fields, and ravines.

The old house was fortified with homemade window bars and a reinforced door. Behind it stood a locked shed. Inside, investigators found a workbench, hand tools — and a section of concrete floor that looked newer than the rest.

When forensic crews chipped away the top layer, they found stained, older concrete beneath. Chemical analysis confirmed the stains were human blood, though too degraded for a DNA match. Metal rings were bolted into the shed’s walls; fibers caught in the hardware matched the fibers from the clothing in the cave.

In the corner, a burn barrel contained melted fragments of plastic and metal — consistent with cell phone casings and electronics. Investigators concluded Waters had destroyed the boys’ personal effects.

The Diary

The most chilling find was in the house: a weathered notebook buried under newspapers in a drawer. Most entries were mundane — notes on weather, garden pests, complaints about neighbors. But entries from May 2016 stood out:

“Strangers on my land again. They’ll never learn.”
“Had to clean up. A lot of work. Need to clean out the shed.”
“Check the crevice. Everything’s in place. Good spot. Quiet.”

“Crevice” was an unmistakable reference to the cave where the clothing had been planted. Investigators now believe Waters deliberately staged the discovery site to mislead searchers into thinking the teens had suffered an accident underground.

The Well

Other diary notes mentioned an “old well” and an “abandoned mine.” Crews located the well — choked with decades of junk — at the edge of the property. Digging it out became a painstaking process, with every shovelful sifted for evidence.

Weeks into the excavation, a worker’s shovel hit something hard. Forensic specialists were called in. Slowly, they uncovered human bones — then more. In total, three sets of remains were recovered from roughly 30 feet down, buried under layers of scrap metal, tires, and compacted dirt.

Anthropologists determined the bones belonged to three young males. Fractures showed they had been beaten with a blunt object before death. The remains were identified as Jackson, Miles, and Connor.

Reconstructing the Crime

Investigators believe that on the evening of May 7, 2016, the teens wandered off the marked trail, perhaps looking for a better sunset view. They crossed onto Waters’ land — an invisible boundary with deadly consequences.

He likely confronted them with a weapon and forced them into his shed, where he restrained them using the wall-mounted rings. What happened next may never be fully known, but the evidence suggests they were beaten to death.

Waters then burned their backpacks, phones, and gear in the barrel, destroying potential GPS or trace evidence. He staged the cave site by placing their clothing and boots inside, hoping any future discovery would send the investigation underground, far from his land.

Finally, he dumped the bodies into the old well, covering them with layers of trash over the next several years — concealing them until the end of his life.

Aftermath

With the remains recovered, the families could finally bury their sons. Waters’ house and shed were demolished. The property was cleared, erasing the physical remnants of the crime.

For local residents, the case is a lasting warning: in the quietest parts of the Appalachians, an innocent wrong turn can lead to danger. For investigators, it was a reminder that persistence — and even an offhand confession — can crack a case once thought unsolvable.

The Appalachian Trail still draws millions each year. Most will return home with photos and memories. But for the families of Jackson, Miles, and Connor, every May carries a different memory: a hike that should have been the start of summer became a six-year search for the truth — and a lifetime of what-ifs.