They went camping to escape the noise of the city. Four years later, the forest gave back something they never expected. In the summer of 2019, Evan and Marissa Cole vanished from their remote campsite in Washington’s Cascade Range. Their tent was found slashed open, food still on the picnic table, and their truck keys lying in the dirt.

For years, the case remained a mystery. No ransom note, no trace of foul play beyond the eerie, silent emptiness they left behind. Now, almost exactly 4 years after the couple disappeared, investigators say they have an answer. The case remains far from closed, but police say they have identified a person of interest and recovered some important evidence.

The first real break in the case since the couple’s disappearance. It was June 13th, 2019 when Evan and Marissa Cole drove out of Seattle for a long weekend of camping along the Skaggot River in the Cascade Foothills about 75 mi northeast of the city. They picked the spot because it was secluded, a rare find in a state where campgrounds book up months in advance.

The couple had been planning the trip for weeks, stocking up on supplies and checking the weather forecast. It was going to be perfect. a rare stretch of warm, dry weather in the typically gray and rainy Pacific Northwest. There were storm clouds on the horizon, but nothing that worried them. They arrived late in the day, but not too late to pitch their tent and start a fire before dark.

They spent the night talking, laughing around the fire, enjoying the solitude and the quiet. It was just what they needed. By morning, however, the storms rolled in, heavy rain and wind, and they hunkered down in their tent until it passed. But by midday, the clouds cleared and a brilliant blue sky peaked through the trees and the couple decided to take advantage of the break in the weather.

They took their two dogs for a walk along the river. What happened next is unknown, but sometime after the couple went for their walk, someone at a nearby campsite heard a scream in the forest. A woman’s scream. It was high-pitched and it carried across the valley. The witness told investigators she thought it sounded like someone had been hurt or bitten by a snake.

When she looked toward the Cole’s campsite, she saw a man running toward his truck. He was carrying a hatchet and yelling for his wife. Then he jumped into the truck and sped off. He returned a few minutes later without the hatchet and with him a woman who appeared distraught. She got into the passenger side and they drove away.

The witness didn’t think much of it until later that evening when she saw the couple’s tent lying slashed open along the riverbank, their dogs nowhere to be seen. When they didn’t hear from the couple that night or the next morning, their friends and family became worried. Evan was an emergency room doctor at a busy Seattle hospital.

He would never miss work without letting someone know. Marissa was a nurse. She would never miss a shift, and neither of them would ever leave the other behind. Friends began driving up to the remote campsite to look for them, posting on social media to spread the word. It wasn’t until Tuesday that anyone notified the police.

The lead investigator, Washington State Trooper Keith Liry, said that friends told him the couple had argued during the drive up to the campsite, but nothing serious, just a little domestic violence. That’s not unusual, Liry said, and not enough to make anyone think they wouldn’t show up at work on Tuesday. By the time officers reached the campsite on Wednesday, the scene was disturbing.

The couple’s silver Toyota Tacoma pickup truck was parked beside the river. Their tent lay ripped open on the ground, a hatchet leaning against its fly. Food was left on the picnic table, a halfeaten bag of chips, a box of oatmeal, a bottle of wine. The couple’s two dogs, a golden doodle, and a border collie were missing. Nearby, the officers found what appeared to be blood leading from the tent to the truck.

But it turned out to be deer blood, probably from an animal that had recently been hit by a car. But there was one piece of evidence that made no sense. A set of keys was lying in the dirt near the tent. The key fob still had the key card attached to it, the one you used to get into the hospital where Evan worked.

Why would he have left it behind? Did he know something terrible was coming? Had he planned to leave without his wife? As days turned into weeks, the investigation expanded. Officers searched the area for the couple’s dogs, but they were gone. Volunteers joined the search, combing through the thick underbrush along the riverbank. Divers searched the water.

Helicopters flew overhead. But Evan and Marissa Cole remained missing. On July, someone called the tip line set up by the police. They had been walking along the river on the afternoon of June 13th, they said when they saw a man standing beside the Cole’s truck. He was arguing with a woman who was sitting in the passenger seat.

The couple appeared upset and the man kept gesturing toward the tent in the river. Then the man ran into the woods and the woman followed him. The couple was gone by the time the caller returned to the spot later that evening. Police put out a public plea for information, hoping to jog someone’s memory.

Maybe someone had seen a couple matching the Kohl’s’s description in a bar in Darington, population 2400, the night before they disappeared. Maybe they had stopped for gas or groceries. Maybe someone had seen them walking along the highway. Anything. But the tips petered out and the case grew cold. There was little physical evidence to work with and no obvious suspects.

Friends and family refused to believe that the couple had abandoned their dogs, nor did they think the couple would run away together. They had no history of leaving their problems behind. Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t failing either. Evan’s sister, April Markham, told the press that Evan would never leave his wife and wouldn’t abandon his dogs.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “If there was a problem, he would have taken care of it. He would have done whatever it took to fix it.” The case sat at a standstill for 4 years until this past week when police announced a breakthrough. They hadn’t solved the case, but they had identified a person of interest, a man named Joshua West.

He has no criminal record, no history of violence. He’s a local contractor who owns a cabin a few miles from the crime scene. He was also the last person seen with the Kohl’s. A friend of Marissa’s had been scrolling through old social media posts and came across a picture of Marissa and Evan with Joshua at a mutual friend’s wedding in 2018.

She reached out to the friend to ask if he remembered anything about Joshua. Did he have a motive for wanting to hurt her friends? The friend didn’t remember anything out of the ordinary, but police said the information was helpful because it led them to Joshua’s cabin. There they found something crucial, something that tied the case to the missing couple in a very big way.

But what exactly they found, police are not saying. They did say it was a piece of forensic evidence that linked the person of interest directly to the crime scene. What that means, whether it’s DNA, fingerprints, or something else, only the police know. And now they’re asking for the public’s help.

If anyone knows anything about Joshua West, they say if anyone has seen him since June 2019 or has information about where he might be now, to come forward. The news of the break in the case brought a rush of emotions for the Cole family. It’s been a long time, said Evan’s brother, Aaron. But we’ve never given up hope.

We’ve always hoped that someday we’d get answers. This story will be followed. For more updates, subscribe to the