The Maniwauk Caves is intended for mature audiences.

It contains strong language and depictions of bullying, violence, and sexual assault that some may find disturbing.

Listener discretion is advised.

Also, this is an extremely immersive experience and headphones are recommended.

You're listening to The Maniwak Caves, a production of iHeartRadio, Blumhouse Television, and Psycopia Pictures.

Alwayst.

Eleventh, I got a call from Dina this morning, said LeBlanc was driving down wanted us to all meet in person.

It must be important if you dure now for Nashville.

Jill, how you holding up?

I don't fucking know anymore.

Honestly, the only thing I can do right now is keep digging for answers to listen.

I'm so sorry about Tyler Wilson.

I know you too, were close back in the day.

I don't understand it.

I guess you lost this shit.

I don't know.

Or maybe he was the same one and it's the rest of us that they're completely insane.

Either way, Tyler.

Knew something something we don't not yet.

Anyway, how about you, are you taking care of yourself?

What do you mean?

Do you have a psychiatrist.

Where'd you disappear too last night that you were win?

Hey?

Oh yeah, I'm sorry.

I couldn't sleep so I wouldn't get in my car.

How's Jimmy?

Good morning?

I thank you all for coming.

Well, what is it then?

I'm sorry.

There's no easy way to tell you what.

They rejected our appeal.

Fucker's why, Dana hold on?

I'm sorry, mister Leblant, But did we miss the dead No?

No, Look, we made the deadline by the skin of our teeth.

But they still rejected the claim.

Why lacking in merit?

The fuck does that mean the testimony of the key witness was coerced?

They found new evidence the.

Next and all the suspicious shit with Tyler Shirley.

There's an error.

Look, we knew it was a long shot.

That they even read or applied to the brief as a goddamn miracle.

The State Supreme Court does not have to take the case, and in this instance they simply let the appellate Court's decisions stand.

Okay, we anticipated this and we had to do it to exhaust all possible appeals.

And the good news is that they.

Got back to us and read a short order Okay, they could have sat on it until the last minute.

But as it stands now, we still have time to ask for clemency.

We can still make a request to the governor for relief from the death sentence.

Do you know the governor?

I know somebody that knows the governor who Bobby Hadley.

That's right, there's a situation with mister Hadley and Dina, a situation.

That's right.

He may be incentivized to make a personal appeal on James Fincher's.

Behalf encouraging, and I for.

One am not giving up.

Not if there is any thread of a chance, we can ask the governor to at least postpone the execution.

Or commute the sentence to life in prison.

Julian, where are you going now?

Every minute we sit here sixty seconds less of Finch's life.

What do we need?

More proof, more evidence that it wasn't Finch you murdered the Hadley brothers.

We need something more than circumstantial.

Did you find out where to tech to?

Smith's car was.

Found waiting on a callback as we speak, Dina, Hey, look at me.

I'm close.

I am so goddamn close.

I can smell them.

Don't give up.

The moss seems tired with the clean inside tells these tells these.

There was no piece of evidence that was never recounted for five births found under Thomas Hadley's fingernails.

Red wolf.

Maybe Griff Washington's dog had a red collar on or something, but if it did, the red collar was never found.

So where did the red wolf come from?

To the true to the.

Two boys are dead?

These are good people.

They just want justice.

And I would think that you, of all people, would be able to relate to that.

Solomon Sheriff, I.

Know what killed my boy.

Somebody's feeling how they know?

We'll see the bird.

When you He couldn't exactly trust the sharer of soltis.

So whatever Solomon Smith knew, he took that intol with him.

Where was he last seen?

Not sure.

That on his car though, about a decade ago, just north of here.

I think maybe I can dig up the police report.

Did you find it?

Hello?

Did you find the interview?

Good timing?

You're ready to take a few questions like.

The interview, the interview with Detective Smith two thousand and seven, It would have been late June or early July.

You mean the one where he tried to expose Sheriff Hooper for targeting.

Jamis despite other leaders.

The one he gave before he vanished mysterious.

That would be the ones did you find it?

I did, and I digitized it right here on this thumb drive.

WHOA, now, hold on, not just yet?

Deal's deal huh.

First, let's get your interviewing hug this, lamp up your ass and plug it in.

Okay, okay, okay, gee, maybe maybe a new buck board, a piece and.

You or something.

Think about it.

Seasoned detectives understand they must take a step back and look at the whole picture and exhaust all investigative avenue used to present the best case they can to the district attorney.

And didn't you do that with James Cincher?

Absolutely not.

It was nearly impossible to narrow the focus to him.

When there are still other suspects on the board.

Other suspects.

Can you tell us who?

Off the record?

Okay, okay, fine, yeah, off the record.

I'm still interested in the boys who found the bodies.

They were both absent from school the same day the Hadley boys went missing.

Tyler Wilson and Julian Salis, but Sallace gave you information that led to James Finzer.

He told Sheriff Hooper, and that boy was so scared and sleep deprived and hungry, he would have told Hooper that Fincher shot JFK if that's what Hooper wanted.

So are you suggesting that Solace was.

Coerced by by Hooper and his father?

His father, Paul Solace, is still a person of interest in my book.

And you believe these are more likely suspects than James Fincher.

It doesn't matter what I believe, It matters what I know.

I know these are suspects of no alibi.

Suspects were a clear motive.

That's not the only difference.

What's the other difference?

These suspects are white?

So now you're playing the race card.

Tell me the truth.

That's what this is really about.

Being with you.

Goddamn right, it is, and it should be for you too.

Why do you think I'm doing this interview?

Where the hell are you guys in all this?

Where's the goddamn investigative journalism?

All you jokers do is report what Hooper tells you as if it's the truth.

You ain't the press, your mouthpiece for the local authorities.

Well, that's offensive.

I've never gone to the press before.

Never.

I'm giving you a massive window here.

This is a national story.

This is a chance to redeem yourselves, an opportunity to embrace a little journalistic integrity for a change, to do your fucking job.

So take it or leave it, because I'm going to the Times next.

Jew I've got it you ready.

Yeah, Tomman's car was found at the bottom of Spounding Gorge below Madison Road.

Matthewston, Yeah, right.

As mom mark of thirteen, a hunter founded apparently.

Let's see the reporters from October twenty tenth, about three years.

At the Smithson miss did you see Matheson?

Yeah, my Mark at thirteen.

The car was rusted out, maybe went off the side of the road.

I mean that kind of thing.

Happens every year on these wide mountain.

Roads, you know, but normally they find the driver too.

It was definitely registered to detect a Smith Matthison.

Yester, you didn't why that's where we lived, my dad.

I mean, I'm nur distant road right around the ben there, just past my mark at thirteen.

It's Wednesday, still August eleventh.

I think I'm driving up.

The Mountain uh Matthison Road, and I feel it again, the pull, like I'm leaning over an endless abyss.

And the fog beat me here.

But it doesn't matter.

I could drive this road blindfolded.

I know it like my own skin.

I'm trying to comprehend how it's possible, but I can't deny this.

Everything is pointing directly at it, at him.

My father.

In two thousand and seven, his life was in turmoil.

He had been grieving Mom's death for less than a year.

The hospital bills were crippling Jesus.

He cursed our poverty every day, and it was no secret in our house that he despised Bobby Hadley.

Then he sees me getting tormented by Bobby Hadley's sons.

They cornered me in the library, beat me up, scissor my hair off, and later that same week, my dad was fired, fired from his job at the Hadley Dealership, a job he'd had my whole life.

My God, if anyone had a motive to kill, detect to Smith.

He was on my dad's trail, and Smith's car was found at the bottom of the gorge.

Directly below our old house.

Maybe it was just a coincidence, maybe another devil's prank.

Or maybe my father just snapped.

The world is a dark and unjust place where the cowards and the cruel ragin supreme, and so maybe he snapped.

And we're here.

The drive is overgrown.

It's uh, it's been a lot of years since anyone probably came down this way.

But uh, this is that.

Wear here where m This is a ground zero for my existence, this place.

Where I was born, where I grew up, where my mother died, where my house stood before it was guarded by fire.

It burned almost to the ground as soon as I left here.

Jesus, Oh, Jesus Christ.

There was not much left, just blackened and rotting remains of the house.

I saw the pictures after it first burned, a hollow shell, windows blown out, like an empty, leering skull.

Now it's caved in, brick ruins, overtaken with Thignes and Kutzu.

It's hard to explain what I saw in that moment, more than a shadow, less than a person, the gray man down by the southwest corner of the house, behind the trees.

What what the fuck do you want?

He was most no reaction at all.

Why are you following me, just stood there in the shadows.

As I moved closer, he became obscure by this huge, gnarled oak tree there, the same one that once held a swing where my mother used to push me.

It was just a blink an instance.

As I came around the curved drive, he was gone.

Any other time I'd have excused it as a trick of the light.

The cloud gusts surged along the ridge of forty miles an hour, strange movement everywhere, the mind playing its games.

But I knew better.

I walked to the oak tree.

The rope of the tire swing and long since broken, and the rubber tire was almost completely buried under dirtant leaves.

But there was something else there lying on the ground.

Oh my god.

Then I saw it.

The scarf, my mom's red scarf.

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

I could feel the gray man's eyes on me.

I scanned the woods, hoping he would turn his gray stare, but he was nowhere to be found.

I circled the yard, then, tracing the shadows that stretched into the woods, but he was gone.

Instead, my eyes fixed on a small, half rotten wooden door leading to the cross space, under the buried ruins and the foundation of the house that was still intact.

I crawled in.

It was pitch black.

I turned on the flashlight on my phone and raised it into the darkness, damp earth covered in animals catting debris.

The floor joists and hartwood pond floorboards that withstood the fire, but they were rotten and sagging downward, making a low space feel perilously tight.

Something scurried for the back end of the darkness, just at a range of my flashlight.

I panted across the space until until something glinted in the darkness in a far corner, just enough light to catch the eye.

Damn it, I could feel it.

This place, just below where I'd spent my youth.

It was a place of death.

The earth was black and wet and harbored, no life except for a large growth of mushrooms there in the furthest corner of the cross space, where the brick had crumbled away, perhaps allow on some sunlight through in the daytime.

The earth around it was sunken in and the fungus seemed to bloom from there.

I crawled on my belly, inch by painful inch.

The dampness seeping into my bones.

And other worldly chill.

A strange breeze making its way through the cracks of the broken house above reminded.

Me of the breath of the caves.

Then I saw what looked like a leather a container jutting from the sunken earth.

I dug.

The soil was loose here in the sunken spot, not tamped down by time like the rest of the ground in the space, someone had dug here.

The angle was difficult lying down, My shoulders cramped and fingernails got caked with earth.

But finally, yeah, something emerged.

It was a holstered gun, still attached to its owner.

It was at long before I uncovered the black cloth of a suit coat, tattered and rotten, but still intact.

And it wasn't long after that that I unearthed the bones ribs vertebrate.

I traced the coat sleeves to the scalpetal remains of a hand.

There I found a wristwatching a ring, Dad, what did you do?

Most importantly, I noticed there was something bulging from the inside coat pocket, a small cassette player.

Mostly preserved in the silk.

Lining in folds of cloth.

I crawled back out with all the contents of the bag.

I set the red.

Scarf down on the passenger seat, I put the nine millimeter pistol in the club box, and I carefully started the cassette player.

Joe twenty fourth, two thousand and seven.

They captured their monsters.

Dammit what.

Joe twenty fourth, two thousand and seven, they captured their mossia.

Yesterday James Fincher was arrested and charged with a double homicide.

And I'm still not satisfied.

I drove back up Roots seventeen to the caves to take the motion sense of cams.

This morning.

They picked up a few visitors paying respect.

They left flowers and burned candles at the front of the cave, but only one visitor looked familiar.

The motion sensor caught him moving through the shadows, no flashlight, and the night vision is grainy.

But he's a He's a tall man, beard, baseball recover rolls, scarfed.

He didn't leave any flowers.

First time the camera picked him up was June sixteenth.

Saturday, midnight.

One month after the Hadley Boys went missing, same day of the week, same time of day, and here he is again.

One week later, Saturday, June twenty third, midnight and he ain't leaving no flowers.

Someone's coming up the drive.

Hello, Sheriff, what could you possibly want?

And you brought backup, Sheriff Hooper.

To what do I.

Owe this on?

I'm just here to talk, Solomon.

Oh, we're on first name basis again.

Now are we?

Can I come in?

You don't see why not?

I am here as a courtesy Detective Smith.

Uh huh?

Go on, Now, we do things a certain way here in Pottsfield, Detective.

Yeah, I'm aware.

And you going to the press as a big fucking problem.

For one thing, it undermines our process.

It also pains your investigation in a certain light that could endanger your ability to put an innocent boy on death road.

Goddamn it, Solomon, I know to Solomon, all right, you listen to me, Detective you are office.

You listen, your spinest motherfucker.

You got a boy, a boy locked up for a crime he didn't fucking commit, says fucking you, And I will continue to investigate.

Hell you as a private citizen playing with fire boy.

Ah, there it is.

You see.

It doesn't take much to shake the demons and drive them into the fire.

Did you say.

I think that it would be best.

If you move on.

Leave our town.

That a threat.

Let's just say, in Maniwauk County, things happen a certain way.

Like I said, I'm aware.

All right, Detective Smith, things happen here to people who dig and try as I might, the best I can do is to curtail those things.

What the hell are you saying, Kirby, that you can't control the good old boy.

No, it's more than that.

There's something about this place, something in the fog.

I could never put my finger on it, even after a whole life spent here, and god knows I have tried.

And it's not just your normal small town bigotry.

I mean, now, obviously that's here too, but there's something deeper.

It's a rot.

Beneath the rot, people who try to suss it out, bad things happen.

Look, if you're going to threaten me, just do it.

That ain't it, Solomon.

Look I do respect you, Detective Smith, genuinely, I admire you.

And I don't know for sure about the Fencer kid, but I do know for sure that he was involved and all he'd have to do to throw us off his scent would be to talk.

That's it, and he won't.

And why do you think that is?

Well, I know what you're thinking, that he's scared of me.

But Detective, it's more he feels what I do.

There's something deeper here, something beyond his control and beyond mind.

All I can do is try to keep it in check.

That's some vague shit, Sheriff.

You haven't felt it, Yeah, yeah, you have.

Give me one more night, Detective, Sheriff, one more to tie up a couple of loose ends.

We visit a few ideas.

If I don't find what I need, I'll be gone by dawn.

Won't even say goodbye.

It'll be like I was never even here.

Where are you gonna go?

You got family somewhere.

They're all long gone.

Only brother died a few years back.

Our next wife, who hates my guts.

Been there.

I'll bet.

All right, fine, fine, old billy voodoo bullshit.

Sorry, Kirby, but I ain't going nowhere.

Saturday, June thirtieth, two thousand and seven, seven twenty am, I'm heading Upstate Route seventeen to the Griff Washington property.

Richard Rydale couldn't hide forever, even in a major metravelers like Atlanta a concrete jungle.

But this is a different environment, this backwater delivering shithole.

The population of all Man of Walk County is less than three percent that of Atlanta.

But the method works the scale, just follow the patterns.

A killers returned eventually to the scene of the crime.

Got my tent, a good sleeping bag, all the food I need.

We're gonna live in a cave for a while, called a stakeout.

Radell returned to the scene of his greatest night.

I'm sure whoever killed those Hadley boys were return again too, just like he did last Saturday and the Saturday before that.

June thirtieth and eleven fifty two.

Perm got ahead.

Hard to make him out, but he's down there at the mouth of the caves.

He looks about six one, about two hundred and maybe ten coveralls, baseball.

Cap ride on time, motherfucker.

Now what exactly the hell are you doing here?

Wait a minute, Wait a.

Minute, he's on his knees praying.

Nope, not a good look.

July first, one, eleven AM made my way back to the road ahead of the subject.

Mister Midnight Prayer found his truck here talked in, turned about a few hundred meters up the road and waited ret the corn got his plates.

Sunday, July first.

Nine am.

I couldn't risk following a midnight man on Route seventeen or two am.

There's no way he wouldn't know he was being followed.

Ran the plates.

Though the truck is registered to one Paul Solace.

I ain't very interesting incidence, oh son.

Julian happened to be one of our first suspects, and Julian is the one who found the bodies.

And it was Julian who pointed the finger at James Fincher.

I guess I'm gonna need to have a chat.

With old Paul.

Hello, missus Sutlers catch Smith.

Sorry I didn't hear the door right away.

I don't get too many visitors.

It's all good.

Look I you for more information.

I'm afraid Julian has said everything he's know, so no.

No, no, no, I just I just need to I just need to use your phone, my phone, Yeah, I need to call Triple A.

My car just blew a couple of tires on that sharp curve down the road there.

Yeah, I care, what's got more than if.

You drivers a headache.

I'm sorry.

Please come in this way.

How's your boy.

Fine?

You there yesterday?

Sem a vacation.

I think he.

He needs to get away from all this.

You know, he's a starting college in a couple of months.

It's uh one of all these moving boxes.

Where were you, head of Detective?

Uh?

Now, I'm going away too, actually, way out of Pottsville moving.

Yeah, sorry to hear it.

I'm just I guess your work is done.

What's up the prosecution guys?

Now, Detective Smith, we are all grateful the expertise you brought to the case.

I hope you feel good about the results of your efforts.

Well, it's been a complicated one, that's for certain.

Phone through here in the kitchen.

Thanks.

I'm just going to see a man about a horse real quick.

You want to coffee or something out yourself?

Yeah?

Thanks?

All right, Well I'll be goddamn christ scissors.

What you got there?

I don't know.

It looks like an old scarf just to afford it here in this moving.

Bob, Please put that down.

That's special to me.

Missus Solace.

Do you know why we suspected your son, Julian?

No, I do not.

Simple First he was absent from Carter High on May eighteenth.

And see only four students were absent that day, Deacon and Thomas Hadley.

Of course, that was the day they went missing.

The other two were Tyler Wilson and Julian.

I told Hooper, Julian was with me that day.

We went to the cemetery that morning to pay her respects.

Julian's mother was later rest early that year.

Oh well, I'm sorry for your loss.

The other reason Julian was the.

Suspect was this year book picture here Tyler Wilson, James Fincher and Julian.

When I saw the scoff Julian's wearing in this picture, it all made sense.

This is the same wool scarf here in my hand, I believe, And.

You see here where it's been stretched and torn.

Missus Sullis, I have a little hunched matches the fabric found at the crime scene.

Red wool fibers.

It's like the ones found under Thomas Hadley's fingernails.

That's my scarf the wife n did before she died.

Red was a favorite color.

And what about these.

When my wife's so and says, why would so and scissors have blood?

On them, mister Saulas, But I've been doing this for a while.

I know what it is when I see it that there is dried blood.

Turn around, face of sink.

You gonna shoot me?

Paul, Please turn around.

Look.

I know what it's like I do to have a son who is bullied, daddy.

Why is everyone being mean to me?

That's what my boy asked me when he was only five years old.

And it got worse if only I could have seen it.

By the time he was in high school, he was completely isolated.

I thought something was wrong with him.

I also bullied him, shamed him because I was disappointed that he was so weak.

I thought he just needed to man up, thought he needed tough love.

No matter how many times I screamed at him, you are better than them, it only made him more isolated, made him feel even more let down.

And the truth is he was a disappointment.

Fuck it, I'll say it, might as well say to the man who's got a gunpointed at me.

And my boy knew it.

Too, knew I was I was disappointed at him, knew I would never accept him for who he was, and it only made him feel more unlovable.

Sound familiar hmm, Because my own son was bullied too, bullied so bad he actually.

Took his own life.

So I understand as a father, it makes you want to kill, don't it.

Just walk, turn around and walk the back door the house.

These nasty, spoiled fuckers dumber's dirt, giving your boy a regular.

Beatdown, and you were powerless to stop it.

Couldn't do shit.

Until you could, until you had no choice.

That's why you got fired from the Hadley Dealership, ain't it.

You went to have a chat with Bobby Hadley, man the man, to see about getting his boys to stop kicking the shit out of your kid, Julian, but you lost your temper.

You threatened him and he canned your ass, didn't he After twenty motherfucking years, and.

You ain't rich like him.

You got to work to pay for the way up for your son so he don't end up just like you.

I'm a be able to pay for medical bills and funeral costs after your wife died that horrible.

Slow death, leaving you with nothing nothing but your son, Julian and this red wolf scarf.

What God damn it, Nah, I'm not gonna do it.

I ain't going out back.

Shit, don't look at me like that.

I'm standing here holding evidence while you point a shotgun at me.

Man, I know.

Which way the wind is blowing, and I ain't going out like that.

Damn you're smart, but you are one hair offer.

Ben.

I'm on the business side of this barrel and you are still making demands.

Ye goddamn right.

If you're gonna kill me, I'm not gonna let you do it outside.

It's gonna be right here in the middle of your home, where you'll have to scrub the fucking cheap bass linoleum to get the blood and bones and fragments out.

Well, you'll have to use stain blocker and plaster over pellet holes where you'll have to see my ghosts every fucking morning when you pour your couple of weak ass folders and eat your scrambled fucking eggs.

Please, dear, no, no, please, I don't want to have you can't you have to, goddamn it.

This is the choice.

You are making, a choice you.

Now.

You can put the gun down and come quietly with or you can shoot me dead in the middle of this house, the one you bought with your wife, the one you wake up nights for your boy, hoping he's ever gonna come back at all.

But I'm sure as hell they ain't gonna be an accessory to my own murder by making it easy on you.

So which is it?

Huh?

What's it gonna be?

Paul Hi, Paul Solace, you are under harress.

You have the right to.

Remain the ghosten Emir and the Hounds of Hell.

Dan send in your vinzend and.

The Man Walk Caves stars Jonathan Tucker as Julian Sallace, Eddie Gatheggy as James Fincher, Clark Peters as Detective Solomon Smith, Nick Cercy as Sheriff Kirby Hooper, Justin Welborn as Tyler Wilson, Jill Jane Clements as Jill Campbell, Brad Carter as Doodlee Tappert, Scott Poythrus as Reverend Perkins, Samantha Ashley as Dina Fincher, Justin Matthew Smith as Paul Sawace, Tara Oaks as Laura Sawas, Jonathan Horn as Deacon Hadley, Alden Karanovich as Thomas Hadley, Mike w Anderson as Griff Washington, Body Walter Off as Jimmy Fincher, Brian McClure as Ian Speaks, Larry Clark as Bobby Hadley, Payden Fallis as Ed LeBlanc, Vic Palisis as William Fowler, Nick Takosky as Richard Rydell, and Aileen Loy as The Darkness, with additional performances by Clint McGowan, Dina Dill, Edward Howard, Henry Foster Brown, Jamie Joseph, Juan Monsalvez, Christopher Curry, Bailey Hineman, David Mitchell, and Bernard Sataro Clark.

Created by ConL Byrne and Dan Bush.

Written by Dan Bush, Zoe Cooper and Nicholas Dakosky, featuring our theme song Killer Inside, written produced and performed by Lerea Lynn.

Our executive producers are Matt Frederick, Alexander Williams, Michael Monty, and Courtney du Frees.

Our executive producers at Blumhouse Television are Jeremy Gold, Chris Dickey and Noah Fine.

Produced by Dan Bush, music by Ben Lovett, Additional music by Alexander Rodriguez, edited by Dan Bush, Chris Childs, Stephen Perez and David Chen.

Sound design by Benjamin Malcolm.

Additional sound design by Alexander Rodriguez.

Dialogue editing and sound mixing by Jant Campos.

Recorded at Studio Awesome in Los Angeles, Sound by Studio in Atlanta and Echo Mountain in Ashville.

Casting by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon.

Our dialect coach is Linda Bessesti, Assistant director, Michael Monty, second assistant director, script supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.

Supervising producer Josh Thain.

Special thanks to Mary Ellen and Jason Davis, Jonathan Dieter, and Joe Rickman.

The Manowac Caves is a production of iHeart Radio, Blumhouse Television, and Psycopia Pictures.

Superb said the Boy

Flying