A Washington couple drove into the North Cascades for a casual one- night camping trip and simply ceased to exist. Investigators found only their secured vehicle before the trail went cold. And for 4 years, their file sat dormant with no new leads.
The mystery finally broke open in a forest miles from the initial search where a logger was attempting to remove an old rusted wood chipper from a remote track. The machine’s contents, dislodged by the movement, would take the investigation in a completely new and unsettling direction. The accumulation of mail spilling out of the aluminum box was the first sign that the routine rhythm of the Kugman household had stopped. It was September 18th, 2015.
Tieran Klugman stood on the front porch of his parents’ home, a modest singlestory house on the outskirts of Seattle, Washington. He was there for their weekly coffee, a tradition they rarely missed. But the silence hanging over the property felt heavy and wrong. Tieran knocked, then rang the doorbell.
Nothing stirred inside. He called his mother, Deline, then his father, Roric. Both calls went straight to voicemail. His parents, Rooric, 57, and Deline, 58, were creatures of habit, predictable in their retirement age routines. He fumbled for the spare key kept under a ceramic frog by the door.
As he turned the lock and pushed the door open, the atmosphere inside the house rushed out to meet him. It wasn’t just the stale air. It was an overwhelming, suffocating stench. The odor of animal waste was so potent, it burned his eyes. Tieran stepped into the living room and stopped dead. The house looked as if a localized hurricane had torn through it. Furniture was overturned. The sofa cushions were ripped open.
Their foam stuffing scattered across the carpet like snow. Claw marks scarred the wooden door frames. The carpet itself was soiled beyond recognition. “Mom, Dad!” Tieran called out, his voice tight with fear. He moved through the chaos trying to understand what he was seeing. It looked like a break-in, yet the television was still mounted on the wall. His mother’s jewelry box was visible on the bedroom dresser.
Then he heard it, a faint, pathetic scratching sound coming from the back of the house. He followed the sound to the utility room. The door was closed. The area around the bottom splintered and gouged. He opened it.
Inside, huddled in the corner on a soiled blanket, was the family dog, a golden retriever named Sunny. But the animal was barely recognizable. Sunny was severely emaciated, his ribs protruding sharply beneath matted fur. He was dehydrated to the point of delirium, barely able to lift his head. The water bowl nearby was bone dry, coated in dust.
The sight of the dog broke through Tieran’s confusion and replaced it with pure terror. Rooric and Delphine adored Sunny. The idea that they would leave him locked in this room alone without food or water long enough for him to nearly die and destroy the house in a desperate attempt to escape was inconceivable. It defied everything Tieran knew about his parents. It meant they hadn’t just left. Something catastrophic had prevented their return.
Judging by the state of the dog in the house, Tieran estimated they had been gone for at least a week. He immediately dialed 911. Within the hour, the house was an active scene. Authorities began the urgent process of tracing the Klugman’s last movements. Tieran, reeling from the shock, provided the initial timeline. His parents had planned a short trip.
On September 11th, exactly one week prior, they had departed for a one- night camping excursion in North Cascades National Park. It was meant to be a casual getaway. Rooric and Delphine loved the outdoors, enjoying day hikes and well-maintained campsites, but they were not survivalists. This trip was supposed to be simple.
Drive up, camp, hike a familiar trail, and return the next day. As the investigation geared up, standard procedures were followed. This included gathering comprehensive background information on the missing couple. Tieran assisted investigators in compiling his parents’ medical histories, and facilitated the collection of their dental records, routine steps in any long-term missing person’s case, intended to establish a baseline should identification ever become necessary.
While searching the home for clues about their exact destination, investigators also accessed Rooric’s digital footprint. They checked his cloud storage account, looking for recent activity. There they found the last known evidence of Roric and Deline Klugman.
It was a photograph, a selfie uploaded and timestamped the afternoon of September 11th. The image captured a moment of quiet happiness. The sun was bright, the sky behind them a brilliant cloudless blue, framed by the towering pine trees of the North Cascades. Rooric was on the left, his head tilted affectionately toward Delphine.
He wore a simple gray t-shirt, his sunglasses pushed back into his dark hair. Strapped to his back was a vibrant orange backpack. Deline, her blonde hair slightly windswept, was smiling broadly, wearing a bright red jacket and a delicate silver beaded necklace. The metadata indicated the photo had sinked to the cloud just moments before their phones likely lost service, swallowed by the vast, rugged wilderness of the national park. They had arrived.
They were happy and then they vanished. The North Cascades National Park Complex is a sprawling, intimidating expanse of wilderness. It encompasses over 684,000 acres of jagged peaks, deep valleys, dense forests, and more than 300 glaciers. It is a place of breathtaking beauty, but also profound danger. For search and rescue SAR teams, it presents a logistical nightmare.
The mobilization to find Rooric and Delphine Klugman was massive. By September 19th, teams from multiple counties, park rangers, and specialized volunteer groups were converging on the area. However, they were immediately operating at a severe disadvantage. The Klugman’s had a 7-day head start. Any scent trails were long gone, footprints washed away by intermittent rain earlier in the week.
The search area was essentially the entire park. The first critical objective was to locate their vehicle. Park rangers began a systematic check of every trail head parking lot and scenic overlook within the complex. It took nearly 48 hours of exhaustive searching before the Klugman’s Silver Subaru Outback was located at the Thunder Creek trail head.
The discovery provided the first tangible anchor point for the investigation, but it offered few answers. The car was locked and secured. Inside, everything appeared normal. There were snacks in the console, water bottles in the holders, and no signs of a struggle, forced entry, or distress. It looked exactly as one would expect if the owners had simply parked, geared up, and headed out for a hike. With the trail head established, the ground search began in earnest.
Teams fanned out along the Thunder Creek Trail, a relatively flat, well-maintained path that followed the creek deep into the valley. Given the Kugman’s casual hiking style, it was the most logical route. K-9 units were deployed, though expectations were low given the time elapsed.
Helicopters equipped with thermal imaging cameras flew low over the canopy, scanning for any heat signatures or anomalies. Days turned into a week. The searchers battled exhaustion, difficult terrain, and the growing realization that they were looking for needles in a hay stack made of pine trees and granite. The mood among the teams was grim.
In the wilderness, the margins for survival are thin. Tieran remained at the command post, waiting agonizingly for any news. He provided details about his parents’ gear, emphasizing the bright orange color of Rooric’s backpack, hoping it would provide a visual beacon. Then a break seemingly arrived. A hiker who had been backpacking in a remote area several miles from the Thunder Creek Trail reported a sighting.
While reviewing photos taken during his trip, he noticed something anomalous in the distance. He contacted the command post, reporting that he had seen a flash of bright orange fabric deep within a treacherous scree field high above the valley floor.
The location was difficult to access, situated on a steep slope of loose rock and debris far from any established trail. It was not a place casual hikers like the Klugman would likely venture, but if they had become disoriented, it was possible. The report galvanized the command post. A specialized high-angle rescue team was assembled. The operation to reach the object was inherently risky.
The screfield field was unstable, prone to rockfall, and the weather conditions were deteriorating. The team began the arduous ascent. The terrain required technical climbing skills. They moved slowly, deliberately, securing ropes and navigating the shifting ground. The tension was palpable.
Every loose rock that clattered down the slope echoed through the valley. From the command post, observers monitored their progress through high-powered binoculars, the radio crackling with updates. It took the team nearly 6 hours to reach the location. They approached the object cautiously. The anticipation was immense.
This could be the key to finding the Kugman’s, the first piece of evidence that would tell them what happened. The team leader reached the object and keyed his radio. The message was brief and deflating. The orange fabric was not Rooric’s backpack. It was an old weathered piece of climbing gear, a faded sling webbing that had been abandoned years ago. The disappointment was crushing.
The risky operation had yielded nothing but more questions. Why had the Clugmans vanished without a trace? If they were lost, why hadn’t they left any signs of distress, any dropped gear, any indication of their path? As the active search scaled back due to the lack of new leads and the approaching winter weather, the investigation shifted focus.
If the wilderness wouldn’t yield the answers, perhaps the Cluggman’s life before the trip would. Detectives began a deeper dive into Rooric and Deline’s background. They were a quiet couple well-liked by their neighbors with no known enemies or financial troubles. They seemed to be enjoying their transition into retirement. However, one recent event stood out. Tieran revealed that Rooric, who had worked for decades as a highly skilled machine technician, had recently lost his job at Vancamp Industries, a local manufacturing plant specializing in heavy industrial equipment. This was a significant life
event, but according to Tieran, Rooric had downplayed it. He had told his family that the company was undergoing routine downsizing and that he had accepted a severance package, framing it as an early retirement opportunity. He seemed optimistic.
Investigators considered the possibility that the job loss had caused more stress than Rooric led on. Had he been hiding financial difficulties? Had the pressure led to a domestic dispute during the camping trip? Or perhaps something darker, a suicide pact or an intentional disappearance? These theories were explored, but they didn’t align with the couple’s behavior or the evidence found. Their financial records showed they were stable.
Their friends and family insisted they were deeply devoted to each other. As part of the routine investigation, detectives conducted an interview with Rooric’s former employer, Oswin Vancamp, the owner of Vancamp Industries. Vancamp was cooperative and professional. He met with the detectives at his office, expressing shock and concern over the Klugman’s disappearance.
He confirmed that Rooric’s layoff was indeed due to redundancy, a necessary costcutting measure. He described Rooric as a reliable employee and stated they had parted on amicable terms. He hoped the couple would be found safe. The interview was unremarkable. Vancamp provided the necessary information and the detectives moved on.
The lead regarding the job loss seemed to fizzle out. With no evidence of foul play and no trace of the couple in the wilderness, the case stalled. The prevailing theory was that Rooric and Deline had succumbed to the elements, their remains lost somewhere in the vast expanse of the North Cascades. Winter arrived, burying the park under feet of snow.
The active search was officially suspended. The case of the missing Kugman’s went cold. The years following the disappearance of Rooric and Delphine Klogman offered no answers, only a slow, grinding ache of uncertainty. Tieran Klogman navigated a life suspended between grief and hope. The house was eventually cleaned and repaired. The dog, Sunny, slowly nursed back to health, but the absence of his parents remained a gaping wound.
The case file sat dormant in the cold case unit, one of many mysteries swallowed by the Washington wilderness. Summer 2019 arrived nearly 4 years after the Kugmans parked their Subaru and walked into the North Cascades. The landscape had changed. Fires had scarred some areas while new growth emerged in others. The memory of the massive search had faded.
Brody Houston was a contract logger, a man accustomed to the solitude and hard labor of the forest. He wasn’t working within the national park boundaries, but in an adjacent section of the national forest, a dense, remote area characterized by steep slopes and thick undergrowth. His current contract involved clearing debris and overgrowth from a network of decommissioned logging access roads.
It was mundane, grueling work intended to maintain fire brakes and manage the forest resources. Husted spent his days navigating the ruted, half-for-gotten roads in his heavyduty flatbed truck, equipped with a winch and chainsaws. The air was thick with the smell of pine, damp earth, and diesel fumes. He was clearing a particularly overgrown section of road, a narrow track that hadn’t been used in years.
The vegetation was so dense it formed a canopy over the road, casting the area in perpetual shadow. He maneuvered his truck around a sharp bend, the tires slipping on the muddy ground. The area was damp, the ground covered in a thick carpet of decaying leaves. Moss clung to the tree trunks, thriving in the shade.
It was there, half hidden by the undergrowth, that Husted spotted something out of place. It was a piece of machinery abandoned and forgotten. He stopped the truck and got out to investigate. The object was a portable wood chipper. It was tilted at an awkward angle, its wheels half sunk into the soft earth.
It was clear it had been there for a very long time. The paint, once a bright industrial orange, was now faded, chipped, and covered in large patches of rust and grime. The engine block was coated in a layer of dried mud and grease. The feeding chute was heavily rusted and a protective guard at the top was bent and broken.
It looked like it had been sitting there for years, perhaps left behind by a logging crew long ago. Hostage circled the machine. It looked inoperable, a piece of junk. It was an eyes sore, and technically it was part of the debris he was contracted to manage. He considered leaving it. It was heavy, rusted, and buried in the mud. But Houston took pride in his work. He decided to haul it out and take it to the nearest disposal site.
He returned to his truck and unspooled the winch cable. He was working alone that day. He dragged the heavy cable through the mud and secured it around the frame of the wood chipper. He engaged the winch, the motor straining against the weight of the machine and the suction of the mud. The wood chipper groaned, the rusted metal protesting as it was dragged from its resting place.
It took several attempts, repositioning the cable and maneuvering the truck before Husted managed to haul the machine onto the access road. Now the challenge was getting it onto the flatbed truck. He backed the truck up to the chipper, positioning it for a direct lift. He reattached the winch cable, aiming to lift the front end of the machine onto the bed and then pivot the rest up. He engaged the winch again.
The cable went taut. The front of the wood chipper lifted off the ground. The machine swung precariously. Husted maneuvered the controls carefully, lifting it higher, aiming to clear the edge of the flatbed. As the chipper reached its apex, it tilted sharply upward. The angle was steep, nearly vertical.
The movement shifted the contents of the machine. Deep within the rusted feeding chute, compacted material that had been lodged in the mechanism for years was dislodged by the sudden shift in gravity. A clump of debris fell from the chute and landed on the muddy ground near Hustid’s boots. He glanced down, expecting to see a compacted mass of wood pulp, leaves, and dirt.
But what he saw didn’t make sense. The clump was dark and degraded. He kneled down, examining it closely. He poked at it with a stick. It wasn’t just organic material. He noticed unrecognizable hard fragments, small and dense, mixed into the compacted dirt. Husted felt a sudden chill despite the humidity of the forest. This wasn’t just wood pulp.
He reached into the feeding chute, probing deeper into the mechanism. He pulled out another handful of the material. Embedded within it were small, hard objects that looked disturbingly familiar. He stood up, his heart pounding. He wasn’t a forensic expert, but he had spent his life in the wilderness.
He knew what decomposed organic material looked like. This was different. The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. This machine hadn’t just been used to chip wood. Alarmed and deeply disturbed by what he had found, Houston stopped the operation immediately.
He left the wood chipper hanging precariously from the winch, suspended between the truck and the ground. He climbed into the cab, his hands shaking, and radioed his base, reporting an unusual discovery. He didn’t elaborate on his suspicions, but his tone conveyed the urgency of the situation. He requested immediate contact with the state police.
The discovery of the rusted machine deep in the remote wilderness had just cracked open the cold case of Rooric and Delphine Kugman. The response to Brody Husted’s call was swift and significant. The remote access road, previously forgotten and silent, was suddenly transformed into a major crime scene. State police and forensic teams descended on the location, navigating the difficult terrain to reach the spot where the rusted wood chipper hung suspended from the logger’s truck.
The area was secured, the perimeter marked with yellow tape. The wood chipper, coated in rust and grime, became the central focus of the investigation. The first task was to carefully document and collect the material that had fallen from the chute. The hard fragments were meticulously photographed in situ before being collected and packaged as evidence.
The forensic team then began the arduous process of dismantling the wood chipper, examining every component for potential evidence. It quickly became clear that the machine had been used for something far more sinister than landscaping. Embedded within the mechanism, compacted in the crevices and coating the blades were traces of biological material.
But the discovery extended beyond the machine itself. The area where the wood chipper had rested for years became the next focus. Investigators realized that if the machine had been used to process remains, the surrounding environment would likely contain ejected material.
A large area around the discovery site was cordoned off. The forensic team began a meticulous, painstaking search of the forest floor. The ground was covered in a thick layer of decaying leaves, mud, and undergrowth. The search required getting down on hands and knees, systematically clearing the vegetation, and screening the soil.
The process was slow and grueling. The team used fine mesh screens, sifting through the dirt and debris, looking for anything that didn’t belong. The work continued for days, hampered by the remote location and the difficult conditions. The search yielded horrifying results. Scattered throughout the soil and leaf litter embedded in the mud and hidden among the roots were highly fragmented biological remains.
The level of destruction was extreme. The mechanical action of the wood chipper combined with four years of exposure to the elements had severely degraded the material. The remains were collected, documented, and sent to the state crime lab for analysis. The initial findings confirmed the investigator’s worst fears.
The remains were human. The critical question now was identification. Who was the victim? The forensic anthropologists at the lab faced a significant challenge. The remains were so fragmented and degraded that reconstructing a biological profile was difficult.
Crucially, they noted that the total volume of remains recovered was alarmingly small, far too little to account for even one complete adult body. Furthermore, the fragments seemed consistent primarily with smaller bones, including cranial and felangial structures rather than the larger bones of the torso or limbs. This suggested a terrifying realization. They were likely only looking at partial remains disposed of in a manner specifically meant to erase identity while the rest of the bodies were elsewhere.
They attempted to extract DNA hoping for a match in the national databases. However, the degradation and contamination from the environment and the rusted machine made extracting a viable DNA profile impossible. The DNA was too damaged, the samples too compromised. The investigation hit a wall. They had human remains, evidence of a brutal homicide, but no identity, and the unsettling knowledge that this was only a fraction of the victims.
Faced with the failure of DNA analysis, the investigators returned to the scene. They needed something more, something that had survived the mechanical destruction and the passage of time. They expanded the search perimeter, employing metal detectors and conducting an even more rigorous screening of the soil. A second sweep was initiated.
The team worked meticulously, driven by the urgency of identifying the victim. They knew that any metal objects, jewelry, surgical implants, dental work might have survived where organic material had not. The metal detectors pinged repeatedly, mostly yielding old nails, discarded shell casings, and other metallic debris common in logging areas.
But then, embedded deep in the soil, a strong signal registered. The team carefully excavated the area. They uncovered a small metallic object. It was carefully cleaned and examined. It was a piece of dental work, a uniquely crafted silver dental inlay, a type of tooth replacement. It was a critical discovery.
The investigators now had a tangible piece of evidence, but they still needed to connect it to a specific person. Given the location of the discovery adjacent to the North Cascades National Park in the general vicinity of where Roric and Deline Kugman had disappeared four years prior, investigators immediately prioritized their file. The Kugman case was the most prominent unsolved missing person’s case in that specific region. It was the most logical connection.
They retrieved the dental records that had been collected during the initial 2015 investigation. A forensic odontologist was called in to compare the recovered silver inlay against the dental charts of both Rooric and Deline. The comparison against Delphine’s records yielded no match. Then the odontologist turned to Rooric’s file.
The challenge was that the inlay was not a complete tooth. It was a fragment of a larger dental appliance. A traditional bite match or comparison based on tooth morphology was impossible. However, Roric’s dental charts contain detailed notes and diagrams from his dentist documenting the unique craftsmanship and specific metallurgical composition of the silver inlay he had received years earlier.
The forensic odontologist conducted a detailed analysis of the recovered inlay, comparing its specific characteristics, the precise curvature, the unique tooling marks, the composition of the silver alloy against the detailed descriptions in Roric’s dental history. The match was positive. The unique characteristics of the silver inlay confirmed with a high degree of certainty that it belonged to Roric Kugman. The discovery provided the first definitive proof of Roric Kugman’s fate.
He was deceased, the victim of a brutal homicide. His remains partially disposed of using the wood chipper. The case was officially reopened as a homicide investigation. The question of where the rest of him and Deline were located became the investigation’s central haunting mystery. The investigation briefly considered an alternative theory.
Rooric had recently lost his job. Had this created a rift in the marriage? Had Deline murdered Rooric and then fled? Investigators explored this possibility, but the theory didn’t hold up. The brutal nature and calculated methodology of the disposal suggested organization and violence that seemed unlikely for Deline acting alone.
Furthermore, there was no evidence that she had accessed their finances or made any preparations to disappear. The focus shifted back to the more likely scenario. Both Rooric and Deline were victims of a targeted attack. The discovery of the wood chipper and Rooric’s partial remains had confirmed the how. But the critical questions remained.
Why? And who was responsible for this calculated brutality? The news that his father’s remains had been identified hit Tieran Klogman with the finality of a death sentence. The agonizing uncertainty of the past four years was replaced by the horrific reality of the wood chipper and the sickening realization that only fragments had been found.
The brutality of the disposal method suggested a level of violence and calculation that went far beyond an accidental death. It felt organized, targeted, and designed to erase them completely. Devastated, but driven by a desperate need for answers, Tieran began his own investigation. He focused on the one anomaly in his parents otherwise quiet life, Rooric’s recent job loss.
He knew his father had downplayed the circumstances, framing it as an early retirement. But what if there was more to the story? What if the job loss was the key to understanding why someone would want his parents dead? Tieran began meticulously examining his parents’ financial records.
He spent weeks going through bank statements, credit card bills, investment accounts, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He was looking for signs of financial distress, hidden debts, anything that might explain the pressure Rooric might have been under. Instead, he found the opposite. Buried in the bank statements from the week before the disappearance, Tieran discovered a massive anomaly.
Rooric had made a cash withdrawal of $50,000. The discovery stunned Tieran. His parents were financially conservative. They didn’t deal in large amounts of cash. A $50,000 withdrawal was highly uncharacteristic. It represented a significant portion of their liquid assets. Where had the money gone? It wasn’t in the house. It hadn’t been deposited in another account.
It had simply vanished along with his parents. The discovery of the cash raised alarming possibilities. Was it a payoff? Blackmail? Had Rooric been involved in something illegal. The questions tormented Tieran, but he refused to believe that his father was a criminal. He had to understand the context of that withdrawal. He turned his attention back to Vancamp Industries.
He needed to understand the true nature of his father’s dismissal. He decided to contact Rooric’s former colleagues, the men he had worked alongside for decades. He started making calls, attempting to discreetly gather information. But he encountered a wall of silence. The people he spoke to were evasive, their responses brief and guarded.
They expressed sympathy for his loss. But when the conversation turned to Vancamp Industries and Rooric’s departure, the tone shifted. There was an underlying atmosphere of fear. They spoke in hush tones, mentioning concerns about retaliation from the company about the need to protect their jobs. None of them would confirm the official story of the downsizing. They simply wouldn’t talk about Oswin Vancamp.
The pervasive fear surrounding Vancamp Industries only fueled Tieran’s suspicion. Something was wrong at that company, and his father had been caught in the middle of it. He intensified his efforts, digging through his father’s old work files, looking for anything related to Vancamp Industries, contracts, manuals, notes.
He was becoming consumed by the investigation, driven by the conviction that the answers lay hidden within the company’s secrets. Then the pressure escalated. Tieran returned to his apartment one evening after spending hours reviewing documents at the library.
As he unlocked the door, he immediately felt that something was off. The air inside felt disturbed. He stepped into the living room. The apartment hadn’t been ransacked, not like his parents’ house. It was subtle, but unmistakable. The boxes containing his parents’ financial documents and his father’s old work files, which he kept stacked in his home office, had been rifled through. The lids were a skew, the files slightly rearranged.
He checked the rest of the apartment. Nothing of value was stolen. The electronics were untouched, the cash in his wallet undisturbed. This wasn’t a burglary. It was a message. Someone knew what he was looking for, and they were looking for it, too. Tieran reported the break-in to the police, but without any stolen property or signs of forced entry, whoever had entered had picked the lock.
The police dismissed it as an unrelated incident, a neighborhood burglary attempt that had been interrupted. Tieran knew better. The connection to his investigation was undeniable. The break-in left him feeling violated and exposed. He was no longer just investigating a cold case. He was actively engaged in a confrontation with something dangerous.
A few days later, the confrontation turned violent. It was late evening. Tieran was returning home, pulling into the underground parking garage of his apartment building. The garage was dimly lit, the concrete walls echoing the sound of his engine.
He parked his car and got out, his mind preoccupied with the $50,000 withdrawal and the fear surrounding Vancamp Industries. He didn’t see the man until it was too late. A large figure emerged from the shadows between two pillars. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with an intimidating presence. Before Tieran could react, the man was on him. The attack was swift and brutal.
The man grabbed Tieran by the throat and slammed him against the side of his car. The impact knocked the wind out of him. He gasped for air, struggling against the man’s powerful grip. The man leaned in close, his face inches from Tieran’s. “Stop digging,” he hissed, his voice low and menacing. Tieran tried to fight back, but he was overpowered.
The man delivered a series of punishing blows to his ribs and stomach. Tieran collapsed to the concrete floor, writhing in pain. The man stood over him, his expression cold and detached. “The files, where are they?” Tieran, struggling to breathe, refused to answer. The man delivered a final brutal kick to his ribs. This is your only warning.
Stop digging into vanamp business or you’ll end up like your old man. The threat hung in the air, chilling and explicit. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, the man vanished into the shadows, the sound of his footsteps echoing in the empty garage. Tieran lay on the cold concrete, injured and shaken, but the assault had galvanized his resolve.
The threat against him, the specific mention of Vancamp business, was the confirmation he needed. He dragged himself to his feet and called the police. This time they couldn’t dismiss it. The targeted intimidation, the violent assault, the direct connection to Vancamp Industries, it forced the police to finally acknowledge what Tieran had suspected all along.
Rooric’s employment was inextricably linked to his murder. The investigation was no longer just about a missing couple. It was about a conspiracy that reached far beyond the wilderness of the North Cascades. The violent assault on Tieran Klugman changed the trajectory of the investigation entirely.
What had been a localized homicide case focused on the discovery of Rooric’s partial remains in the wilderness suddenly expanded into a complex financial conspiracy. The specific threat regarding Vancamp business acted as a catalyst, forcing authorities to look beyond the surface of Rooric’s dismissal and scrutinize the operations of Vancamp Industries.
The case was elevated to a joint investigation, bringing together homicide detectives from the state police and the specialized expertise of the FBI’s financial crimes unit. The focus shifted intensely onto Oswin Vancamp, the seemingly respectable owner of the manufacturing plant. The first step was to follow the money.
The FBI launched a comprehensive forensic audit of Vancamp Industries financial records. They were looking for anomalies, inconsistencies, anything that might suggest illegal activity. The task was monumental. Vancamp Industries was a large established company with complex financial structures. The forensic accountant spent weeks meticulously analyzing years of records, invoices, inventory logs, insurance claims, bank statements. They were looking for the source of the fear that permeated the company culture.
The breakthrough came when they started examining the company’s insurance claims. They uncovered a pattern of anomalies that suggested a sophisticated large-scale fraud operation. Vancamp Industries specialized in heavy industrial machinery. The accountants discovered that over the past decade, the company had filed an unusually high number of insurance claims for damaged or stolen machinery.
The claims totaled millions of dollars. On the surface, the claims appeared legitimate. They were supported by detailed documentation, police reports, and inventory logs. But when the accountants started cross-referencing the serial numbers of the lost equipment with other databases, they uncovered the truth. The machinery wasn’t damaged or stolen. It was being systematically hidden.
Oswin Vancamp had orchestrated an elaborate shell game. He would report a piece of expensive machinery as damaged beyond repair or stolen from a job site. He would collect the multi-million dollar insurance payout, inflating the value of the equipment to maximize the profit.
Then instead of disposing of the lost equipment, he would move it off the books. The investigation traced the movement of the machinery to a network of shell corporations controlled by Vancamp. These corporations owned unmarked warehouses in industrial areas outside the city as well as more remote locations in the foothills.
The lost equipment was transported to these warehouses where it was either resold on the black market or used in offthebooks operations. generating even more illegal revenue. The scale of the fraud was staggering. Vancamp had built his wealth not on the legitimate operations of his company, but on a foundation of deception and theft. The discovery of the fraud scheme provided the context for Rooric Kugman’s murder.
Rooric wasn’t just a machine technician. He was the lead technician responsible for maintaining and logging the very machinery that Vancamp was reporting as stolen. He had intimate knowledge of the equipment, its condition, its location. Investigators realized that Rooric was uniquely positioned to notice the inconsistencies.
He would have known that equipment supposedly decommissioned was still operational or that machinery reported stolen was simply missing from the inventory logs. He would have seen the numbers that didn’t add up. The $50,000 cash withdrawal that Tieran had discovered was no longer a mystery. It was now viewed as a likely blackmail payment or a payoff.
Rooric had discovered the fraud, and Vancamp had tried to buy his silence. The motive for the murder was clear. Rooric posed an existential threat to Vancamp’s multi-million dollar criminal enterprise. With the fraud uncovered and the motive established, the investigation turned to identifying the accomplice. They needed to identify the man who had assaulted Tieran in the parking garage, the muscle behind Vancamp’s operation.
They started interviewing former employees of Vancamp Industries, focusing on those who had worked in security or management roles. They were looking for someone with a reputation for intimidation, someone fiercely loyal to Vancamp. The name Jory Pastasternack surfaced repeatedly.
Pastasternack was a former security foreman at Vancamp Industries known as Vancamp’s enforcer. He had a history of violence and intimidation and he had left the company shortly after Rooric’s dismissal. Investigators located Pasternac and put him under surveillance. He matched the physical description of Tieran’s attacker. Tall, broad-shouldered, intimidating. When presented with a photo lineup, Tieran positively identified Pasternac as the man who had assaulted him.
The net was closing in. The investigation now focused on gathering enough evidence to arrest Vancamp and Pasternac for the murders of Roric and Deline Kugman. They needed to connect the fraud directly to the homicide. The key lay in the Shell Corporations and the hidden warehouses.
The FBI traced the financial transactions of the Shell corporations, identifying the addresses of several warehouses. They focused on a large unmarked industrial warehouse located in a remote industrial park south of Seattle, one of the central hubs of the current operation. A surveillance team was deployed to the warehouse. They set up a command post in a nearby building monitoring the activity at the warehouse 24/7. For days, there was no activity.
The warehouse appeared dormant. Then late one evening, the surveillance team observed movement. A luxury sedan arrived at the warehouse, followed shortly by a large panel truck. The sedan belonged to Oswin Vancamp. The driver of the truck was identified as Jory Pastnac. The two men entered the warehouse.
The lights inside were activated. The surveillance team monitored the activity, listening to the sounds of heavy machinery being moved inside. It appeared that Vancamp and Pasternac, perhaps sensing the closing net of the investigation, were preparing to move the evidence. They were attempting to empty the warehouse to destroy the physical proof of the fraud.
The observation galvanized the investigation. They had caught Vancamp and Pasternac in the act of concealing their criminal enterprise. The time had come to act. The decision was made to execute an immediate tactical operation. They couldn’t risk losing the evidence.
The warehouse was the key to solving the murders of Rooric and Delphine Kugman. The realization that Oswin Vancamp and Jory Pastnac were actively moving evidence critical to both the massive fraud operation and the cover up of the Kugman murders forced the hand of the FBI. The situation was urgent. If the suspects succeeded in emptying the warehouse, years of investigation could be jeopardized and the physical proof linking the fraud to the homicides might vanish forever.
The order was given, organize an immediate tactical operation. The mobilization was swift and overwhelming. FBI tactical teams supported by state police SWAT units converged on the industrial park south of Seattle. The area was quietly secured, the perimeter locked down. The element of surprise was critical. Vancamp and Pastasternac believed they were operating under the cover of darkness, hidden in the anonymity of the industrial area. They had no idea they were surrounded.
The warehouse was a large imposing structure constructed of corrugated metal with few windows and multiple access points. The surveillance team provided real-time updates on the activity inside. The sounds of machinery moving indicated the suspects were actively engaged in loading the panel truck. The tactical plan was finalized.
The teams would execute a dynamic entry, breaching multiple access points simultaneously to overwhelm the suspects and prevent any escape or destruction of evidence. The tension was electric. The teams stacked up outside the doors, weapons drawn, ready to execute the breach. The command was given. execute.
The silence of the industrial park was shattered by the sound of breaching charges exploding. The main personnel door was blown off its hinges. Simultaneously, the rolling doors of the loading dock were forced open. Tactical teams flooded into the warehouse, their movements precise and coordinated.
The interior of the warehouse was vast, dimly lit, and filled with rows of heavy industrial machinery. The air was thick with the smell of grease and dust. The entry achieved complete surprise. Oswin Vancamp and Jory Pastnac were caught completely offguard. Vancamp was standing near a makeshift office in the corner of the warehouse holding a clipboard supervising the loading operation. When the breach occurred, he froze, stunned by the sudden chaos.
Pasternac was operating a forklift, attempting to load a large piece of machinery onto the panel truck parked at the loading dock. His reaction was instinctive and aggressive. As the tactical team swarmed the warehouse, Pasternac slammed the forklift into reverse, attempting to use the heavy machine to block the access point and create a barricade.
He swung the forklift around, the metal fork scraping against the concrete floor, aiming to impede the advance of the tactical team. The standoff was tense but brief. The tactical officers, armed with assault rifles and trained for close quarters combat, quickly outmaneuvered the cumbersome forklift. They surrounded Pasternac, ordering him to shut down the machine and surrender.
Pastnac, realizing the futility of resistance, raised his hands. He was forcibly removed from the forklift and subdued on the concrete floor. Meanwhile, Vancamp, recovering from the initial shock, made a desperate attempt to flee.
He bolted toward the side office, perhaps hoping to access a hidden exit or destroy incriminating documents. He didn’t make it far. He was intercepted by a second tactical team that had breached the side entrance. He was apprehended before he could reach the office door. Both men were arrested and secured. The warehouse was declared secure. The scene inside the warehouse was overwhelming. It was a graveyard of lost machinery.
Rows upon rows of industrial equipment, excavators, bulldozers, specialized manufacturing tools filled the vast space. Each piece of machinery represented a fraudulent insurance claim, a piece of the multi-million dollar puzzle. Investigators began the meticulous process of documenting the evidence.
They cross-referenced the serial numbers of the machinery against the insurance claims filed by Vancamp Industries. The match rate was nearly 100%. The physical proof of the fraud was undeniable. Among the rows of machinery, investigators identified several pieces of equipment that Roric Kugman had personally maintained. Equipment that had been reported stolen years before his murder.
The connection between the fraud and Rooric’s knowledge was cemented. Oswin Vancamp remained arrogant and defiant. Secured in handcuffs, he immediately demanded his lawyers, denying all allegations and claiming the entire operation was a misunderstanding, a clerical error in inventory management. He seemed convinced that his wealth and influence would shield him from the consequences.
Jory Pasternac, however, presented a different demeanor. He was isolated from Vancamp, taken to a separate interrogation room. Pasternac was the muscle, the enforcer, but he wasn’t the mastermind. He was facing a mountain of evidence, and the weight of the situation was crashing down on him. The interrogation of Pastor Knack was intense and strategic.
The investigators laid out the case against him piece by piece. the overwhelming evidence of the fraud, the positive identification by Tieran Klugman as his attacker, the surveillance footage from the warehouse. He was facing decades in prison for fraud and assault. And then they introduced the homicide charges. They connected the fraud to the murders of Rooric and Deline Kugman.
They presented the evidence of the wood chipper, the identification of Rooric’s partial remains, and the grim reality that the rest of their bodies were still missing. They made it clear that Vancamp would likely sacrifice Pasternac to save himself.
Faced with the prospect of life imprisonment for double homicide, Pasternac realized his leverage was gone. His loyalty to Vancamp evaporated. He was looking at a future behind bars and the only way out was through cooperation. He requested a deal. He agreed to confess everything. The confession began. a detailed account of the conspiracy, the fraud, and the brutal murders that had haunted the wilderness of the North Cascades for four long years.
The mystery of what happened to Rooric and Delphine Kugman was finally about to be solved. In the sterile environment of the interrogation room, Jory Pasternac detailed the events of 2015, providing the final horrifying answers to the mystery of the Kluggman’s disappearance. His confession laid bare the cold calculation and brutal execution that stemmed from Oswin Vancamp’s desperate attempt to protect his criminal enterprise.
Pastor Knack confirmed that Rooric Kugman had discovered the insurance fraud. As the lead technician, Rooric had noticed the discrepancies in the machinery logs and confronted Vancamp. Vancamp’s reaction was immediate and decisive. He fired Rooric on the spot, but he knew firing him wasn’t enough. He needed to ensure his silence.
Vancamp offered Rooric a payoff, $50,000 in cash, the withdrawal Tieran had discovered. The money came with a threat. If Rooric ever exposed the fraud, his family would be harmed. Rooric, terrified of Vancamp and recognizing the danger he was in, accepted the money and agreed to remain silent. However, Vancamp panicked. Despite Rooric’s agreement, he became convinced that Rooric would eventually expose him.
He ordered Pastor Knack to help him eliminate the threat permanently. They began stalking the Cluggmans, waiting for an opportunity. When they learned the couple was planning a camping trip to the North Cascades, they followed them to the park, tracking them to their campsite at Thunder Creek.
Late that night, under the cover of darkness, they ambushed and murdered Rooric and Delphine at the campsite. Pastor Knack confessed that they transported the bodies from the campsite in their truck, desperate to get away from the park. They drove several hours to a remote dilapidated warehouse Vancamp owned through a Shell company, an older location used in the early days of the fraud operation. Inside the warehouse, they engaged in a gruesome task.
Using industrial saws and axes stored at the site, they dismembered the bodies. They meticulously separated the heads, hands, and feet, the parts crucial for identification. Vancamp then directed the disposal of the main bodies. They drove the torsos and limbs to an abandoned collapsed mineshaft deep in the Cascade Foothills, dumping them into a creasse so deep Pastor Knack believed they would never be found.
Pastor Knack was then tasked with disposing of the identifying parts separately. He drove alone, navigating the remote logging roads, looking for a suitable spot. It was then he stumbled upon the wood chipper, rusted and seemingly abandoned by a longgone logging crew. Seeing an opportunity for a more permanent solution than burial, Pastor Knack managed to get the old engine running.
He spent the rest of the night processing the partial remains through the machine, believing the mechanical destruction would erase their identities forever. He then abandoned the chipper where he found it, confident the crime was untraceable. Pastor Knack’s confession confirmed Deline’s fate alongside Roorics, though the majority of their remains were never recovered from the mineshaft.
In late 2020, despite maintaining his innocence and hiring a high-powered legal team, the evidence against Oswin Vancamp was overwhelming. He was found guilty of two counts of firstdegree murder and massive fraud, receiving life imprisonment without parole. Jory Pasternac, in exchange for his testimony, received a reduced sentence, but would still spend decades behind bars.
