Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams were three college students who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the Black Hills Forest surrounding Burkittsville, Maryland on October 21, 1994. Despite a ten day search in the Black Hills area, the case remains unsolved.
Disappearance[]
In October 1994, film students Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams traveled to Burkittsville to produce a documentary about the Blair Witch, a mythological figure who haunted the Black Hills Forest. The students interviewed several locals about the myth and events tied to the Blair Witch which includes the 1941 murders committed by Rustin Parr. The students later explored the Black Hills Forest on the morning of October 21 and were last seen by two fishermen, Ed Swanson and his father-in-law Bob Griffin, who warned the students about venturing into the forest.[1]
Investigation[]
Their disappearance was first noticed on October 24 when they were reported for failing to return for classes. The parents of the students soon filed a missing person report to the Burkittsville Sheriff's Office.[2]
On October 25, the police issued an all-points bulletin (APB) before the car belonging to Joshua Leonard was discovered parked on Black Rock Road, undisturbed.[1] The next day, the Maryland State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Burkittsville Sheriff's Office launched a ten-day intensive search for the missing students in the Black Hills. More than one-hundred men including volunteers aided by dogs, helicopters, and a fly over by a Department of Defense Satellite searched for 33,000 man-hours without success.[1] The search was called off on November 5 and the missing person case was classified as inactive and left unsolved on June 19, 1995.[1]
The Found Footage[]
On October 16, 1995, students from the University of Maryland's Anthropology Department, Peter Gould and Andrea Lynn, discovered a backpack and its content belonged to the missing students while performing a field dig in an abandoned 100 year-old cabin.[1][2] The backpack was found in the building's foundation and was apparently left undisturbed for over a century. The anthropology instructor, Professor David Mercer, turned the backpack over to the Burkittsville Sheriff's Office. The backpack contained 11 rolls of black and white film, DAT tapes, 10 H-8 video cassettes, a Hi-8 video camera, a CP-16 film camera, and a journal kept by Heather Donahue.[1][2] One of the video cassette tapes was viewed and the authorities confirmed the evidence belonged to the students.
On October 18, the Burkittsville Sheriff's Office publicly announced the items found by the anthropology students belonged to Heather Donahue and her classmates.[1] The joint Federal, State, and Local task force reopened the case and examined the film footage.[2] After initial study of the bag's content, the authorities allowed the families of the missing students to view select pieces of the footage on December 15.[1]
By January 1996, the task force failed to produce any progress on the case which led Heather Donahue's family to hire the Buchanan's Private Investigative Agency to augment the investigation. The agency's head, C.D. Buck Buchanan, employed a team of several detectives full-time for several months.[2]
After over a month investigating the footage, Sheriff Ron Cravens concluded the found footage a hoax for containing "numerous inconsistencies".[2] On February 19, Cravens publicly announced his conclusion to the press and was met with outrage from Angela Donahue and Greg Williams, the parents of Heather Donahue and Michael Williams respectively.[1][2] In response to Angela Donahue's public criticism, Cravens restricted all access to the footage. Donahue filed two failed lawsuits to uplift the restriction.[1]
On March 1, the Burkittsville Sheriff's Office declared the case inactive and unsolved.[1] The footage was released to the families of the missing students on October 16, 1997 after the legal limit of its classification expired.[1]
Professor Michael DeCoto, Heather's professor from Montgomery College, contacted Haxan Films and requested their help to edit the found footage.[2] DeCoto arranged a meeting between the filmmakers of Haxan Films and Angela Donahue, who gave them the entire footage to edit and assemble the events of the students’ disappearance into what became known as The Blair Witch Project.[1]