The Tube Sock Killer

if you live in the pacific northwest of the united states then you want to pay close attention to the ending of today's video but before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three four even five times every week so if that's of interest to you please ask the like button to go for a walk with you in northeastern australia and push them into a gimpy gympie plant also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's story in 1985 36 year old michael riemer was a roofer in tacoma washington and his boss described him as being a work hard play hard type of guy in the winter months when there really wasn't any roofing to be done mike would supplement his income by trapping coyote mink and muskrat in the forest that butted up against the nisqually river which was an 80-mile stretch that ran right near his home most of the traps mike would set would be far away from any actual trail because wherever there was a trail you would have human foot traffic and that would scare away the animals that you're trying to catch in your trap and so as a result he would place his traps in very remote you know isolated sections of the forest which meant he needed to know where those sections were and so over the 15 years he spent trapping in this forest he got really really good at navigating it it was like he had a map in his head of where everything was in this forest plus mike was already an avid outdoorsman and so navigating a forest and being out in the wild was something that just kind of came naturally to him mike's girlfriend was a 21 year old woman named diana robertson and they had a two-year-old daughter named crystal mike and diana had a rocky relationship to say the least in fact in october of that year diana had filed a restraining order against mike after he had kicked in the door and thrown her to the ground mike also always carried a gun on him and he had a very quick temper but despite their significant relationship issues the one thing they could always see eye to eye on was their daughter crystal they adored her and when it came to decisions about her they were always on the same page it was whatever is in the best interest of crystal in december of that year diana and mike were able to reconcile and so diana threw the restraining order out and in fact she and crystal moved back in with mike which made crystal very very happy just a couple of days after moving back in they decided they wanted to go out and go camping together as a family and then also pick out a real christmas tree that could bring back the holidays and so they settled on an area that was going to be in the same forest where mike had all of his traps set and they figured they could you know get their family time in they could get their christmas tree and mike would be able to check his traps saving himself from making another trip later on so on december 12th the three of them loaded up into mike's red pickup truck and they drove the 30 minutes down towards the squally river where there was this logging road that mike would use to park his truck and then walk in to check his traps so mike pulls over on the side of the road they all hop out and mike leads the way right into the middle of the woods there's no trail mike is just bringing them to an area where one his traps will be and two he thinks is suitable for camping and for looking for a christmas tree later that afternoon crystal was spotted walking around a parking lot of a kmart 20 miles away from where mike had parked the car near nisqually river and she's just walking around she looks totally confused she's all alone and the employees of the kmart are looking out and they see this girl and they're all watching waiting for you know her parents or a guardian or someone to walk over and show that they are with this girl but after a couple of minutes when no one does that one of the employees goes out and tries to talk to her and this employee would say when she talked to the girl she kept looking over her shoulder and she was just terrified the whole time and so this employee asked her you know what's your name and she didn't say anything she asked her you know where you coming from where are your parents who's looking after you and to all the questions she was asked she didn't say anything she just looked terrified and was looking over her shoulder and so this employee brings the girl back inside and they call the police and so the police show up and they ask the girl the same questions that the employees have been asking her and the girls still not speaking and so after they made an announcement inside to say hey is anybody in here the parent or guardian of this child and no one came forward they said okay well we have no other choice but we're gonna have to move her to temporary foster care and so they move her to a foster home and then they put an ad out in the newspaper that day with a picture of her basically saying if you know me contact this number two days later crystal's maternal grandmother would see the picture in the newspaper and the ad did not have a description of you know how she was discovered it just said she had been found at this particular kmart and if you know who she is please contact this number even without the details the grandmother knows something has gone wrong because there's no reason in the world those two parents would abandon their beloved crystal and so she calls diana she calls mike they don't pick up the phone that's when she calls the number and she says what's going on i'm her grandmother where is she the police tell her to go to the foster home and they will meet her there and they're going to talk about what happened so the grandmother flies to the foster home and she arrives there before the police she goes inside and crystal is so happy to see her it's the first time crystal has really broken out of that kind of catatonic state she had been in ever since she was found at the kmart so she runs up to her grandmother they have this reunion and the grandmother's so happy to see crystal but she's also thinking where are your parents where are diana and mike and so she asks crystal where are they honey where is your mom where's your dad and crystal would speak to her grandmother and she would say mommy's in the trees her grandmother didn't know what this meant and so she tried to ask clarifying questions but crystal was not very verbal she was not able to articulate more than what she was saying so she just kept repeating it saying mommy's in the trees mommy's in the trees and so then the police show up and the grandmother turns to them and she says where are her parents where are mike and diana and the police turned to her and they're like we don't know we found her abandoned in this parking lot and she wasn't speaking and no one knew anything about her and so until right now we didn't even know her parents names do you have any idea where they might be and the grandmother's like i have no idea i mean i'm just learning about all this stuff now but when i came over here crystal said to me mommy's in the trees and you know she's not she's not very verbal so she can't explain much more than that but she just kept saying mommy's in the trees and i know mike liked to go camping in this one area near the nisqually river he keeps traps out near the edge of the water he catches some small animals out there so i know he goes out there and goes camping and so maybe that's what crystal's referencing that they were in the trees so they were in that forest over there the grandmother also gave the police the address to mike's house and the police used that information to launch their search for the parents and so the first place they go is mike's house and all the lights are off the door is locked and his red pickup truck because the grandmother said he drove a red pickup truck his red pickup truck is not there and so they rule out his house they're not there and they begin flying a plane not only over tacoma which is the area where they were living but also over that forest that was right up against the nisqually river and as they're flying they're looking for campsites that could potentially be mike and diana but they're also looking for the red pickup truck which is fairly distinctive and after a couple of days of flying all over the forest and looking around the side streets and putting people in the forest walking on foot they couldn't find anything and they turned the search off and they would tell the grandmother and the rest of the family on diana's and mike's side that they really just needed to wait for more information to come in because they couldn't just spend an indefinite amount of time scanning a fairly large area they have all of tacoma and this huge forest and so everyone just had to wait two months later a man and his dog were out walking on this logging road that was about 10 miles away from the nisqually river and 30 miles away from the kmart where crystal was found and they're walking on this road and they see way off in the distance there's this truck that's pulled over to the side of this road and even from a distance they can tell it's covered in snow but it hasn't snowed recently there's there's snow on the ground but the amount of snow that is on this truck indicates it's been sitting here for quite a while and so as they get closer to the truck this man is looking around seeing if maybe the owner is nearby even though it seemed unlikely given the fact that it looks like it's been sitting here a while and so after he stands there for a minute looking around feeling pretty confident there's no one in the area he brushes the snow off the passenger side window and he looks inside and he doesn't see anything at first but he notices on the passenger front seat there is a significant amount of blood on the seat or what appears to be blood and this startles the guy so he backs up from it and he and his dog very quickly leave this area because they're in this kind of desolate you know logging road he's pretty isolated and so he gets out of there as quickly as he can and when he gets to a phone he calls the police police show up and they brush the rest of the snow off and they find it is a red pickup truck it's mike's red pickup truck mike and diana's case had been very big news in the area when it happened and the news had really not gone away people were out there looking for this couple and so as soon as they saw this was mike's truck they start fanning out and searching the area seeing if they can find any other clues about what happened to mike and diana and very quickly they discovered diana's body she was located not far from the red truck just barely off the road in the forest she was under several inches of snow and she had been stabbed 17 times and there was a tube sock wrapped around her neck there was no sign of mike but once they got inside the truck there was a manila folder that had been tucked up on the dashboard that just said i love you diana when police showed that message to diana's family they all said that looks like mike's handwriting he used to send us handwritten christmas cards and that looks exactly the way he writes as for the blood that was on the passenger seat inside the truck it had been sitting out for too long so they weren't able to determine whose blood it was but they were able to determine it was human so between the blood on the front seat the note that was left on the dashboard the personal furious nature of the way in which diana was killed combined with mike's history of violence and his disappearance because he's not here anymore that all made it seem an awful lot like mike was the guy that did this in fact this made for a very tidy ending to a mystery that it actually started before diana had been killed on august 10th 1985 so four months before mike diana and crystal ventured off into the woods near an esqually river 27 year old stephen harkins and his girlfriend 42 year old ruth cooper were going camping near nisqually river in the same forest they were actually about 15 miles from where diana's body was ultimately found and they were very close to a number of mike's traps although they probably didn't realize they were near them during their trip an unknown assailant walked up to their campsite in the middle of the night and shot them both to death stephen was found right away and he was found inside the sleeping bag at their campsite indicating he had been killed in his sleep ruth wasn't found for months and when she was she was found a mile and a half away from the campsite and she had a tube sock tied around her neck the same way diana had and the knot that was used on the tube sock was even the same as the not used on diana's tube sock so the similarity was just too much to overlook and so to the police they're thinking mike has to be the guy in both of these cases you know he attacked ruth and stephen perhaps because they were you know on his territory where his traps were and he didn't like that you know he has a history of violence and so he attacks them and then a couple months later he attacks diana and then he flees as for his daughter being found alive at the kmart it would seem he just did not have it in him to harm his own child and so he dropped drop at the kmart before he ultimately fled despite everything seeming to fit just perfectly to where yup mike is definitely the guy not only for diana but for ruth and for stephen we figured it out despite that being the overwhelming feeling there were a couple of questions that remained unanswered like the fbi they were unable to confirm the handwriting on that folder that said i love you diana they were unable to confirm that that in fact was mike's handwriting diana's family was really convinced it was his but the fbi said it's not necessarily a match and then you have the motives for the two crimes we can understand one of them him attacking diana unfortunately people attack their partners all the time and so we can we can understand that we can rationalize that but for him to attack ruth and stephen two total strangers because what they encroached on your land even though it's not your land it's public land and you just happen to put your traps out there that didn't seem like a strong enough reason for him to want to kill them but the circumstantial evidence was overwhelmingly pointing at mike being the guy you have the fact that he's this violent guy with a history of domestic abuse he knows this area well where both crimes were committed you have the tube sock tied around diana the same way it's tied around ruth it just had to be mike and so because the police felt so strongly it had to be mike they were willing to overlook these lingering questions and so the police wanted to issue an arrest warrant for mike but they needed to be able to prove he was alive because if he was dead then that calls into question his ability to have committed these two crimes and so they didn't have proof he was alive and so very quickly this story faded out of the headlines because basically everybody believed mike had done it and he'd run off somewhere and maybe someday we'll figure out where he went and we'll bring him to justice but until then we know he's the guy for years no one heard from mike no one saw mike it was like he had just totally vanished crystal was raised by relatives and many of the detectives that were working on these cases eventually retired or moved on then 25 years later in march of 2011 a hiker was walking through the forest near the nisqually river about one mile from where diana's body was found and they would stumble upon a piece of a human skull she calls the police police show up they search the area and they discover another bone a human jawbone and it would turn out it was mike's the rest of mike's remains were never found and because there was so little of him to work with police were not able to determine a cause of death however they were able to date his death back to almost exactly the same time frame that diana had died additionally investigators believe the reason they did not find more of mike's remains is because he had been buried the two bones that were found the skull and the jawbone they were located within one mile of where diana's body had been found and that area after diana had been found had been scoured they looked everywhere for clues and because he apparently died at the same time she did he would have been out there and they would have found him so the fact that they didn't find him can only mean he was underground so this all meant mike could not have been the killer because in order for him to have been the killer he not only would have had to attack diana and then drive his daughter to the kmart and then drive back to the forest he would then need to take his own life and then also somehow bury himself some of the police officers that had worked that case were still on the police force and so when they heard this news about mike not being the killer they were like you know it never really made any sense that he would attack ruth or steven unless he was a serial killer and then it clicked they probably were dealing with the serial killer it just wasn't mike and their only eyewitness was the toddler crystal who apparently the serial killer could not bring themselves to harm and so as a result crystal just sat there and watched these horrible things happen to her parents and then probably spent a fair amount of time with the serial killer afterwards because they needed to drive her to the kmart investigators and her family had tried to get her to give more information about what she had witnessed but all she could say was mommy's in the trees and so there are really only two interpretations of what that means either one she was just stating that her mother was in the forest and that would have been accurate or she's remembering her mother trying to escape a serial killer by climbing up into a tree or maybe even that she was in the tree with her mother as they both were trying to escape a serial killer with a knife so when the police had this revelation that mike was not the killer that in fact it was probably a serial killer and we know nothing about this serial killer besides what crystal had to say as a toddler and that didn't provide any sort of real clarity on who this person was or what their mo was they went back and looked at all the unsolved murders in the pacific northwest specifically around this forest they discovered that in addition to mike and diana and ruth and stephen there were four other sets of couples that were killed in and around this forest and all of them beared striking resemblances to one another the most recent attack that is associated with the tube sock killer occurred in 2006 but the reality is police don't really know anything about the tube sock killer all they know is that they're probably in the pacific northwest and they are definitely still at large so that's going to do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it so give us the time stamp and if you're the first to do that we will pin you at the top of the comment section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please go on a walk with the like button in northeastern australia and push them into a gimpy gympie plant also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly 3 4 even 5 video uploads if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's just john ballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tiktok where my username is mr ballin if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on instagram twitter tick tock reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 2,817,078

Rating: 4.9604249 out of 5

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, unsolved, unsolved mystery, unsolved mysteries, mrballen story, scary story, crime, true crime, true story, gruesome, missing person, missing, lost, scary, horrifying, terrifying, scary af, nope, Washington, Kmart, discovery, nonfiction, mystery, horror, horror fan, horror story, criminal, woods, forest, trapping, trapper, tacoma, seattle, whodunnit, strange story, story time, campfire story, 1980s, pickup truck, mrballen stories, stories, story, chills, confusing, Pacific Northwest

Id: F9PCCZwKHE4

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020