TRUCK DRIVER Vanished on the Road — His Truck Was Found OPEN with CLAW MARKS on It…
On 27th October 1988, at half midnight, a Freightlininer truck with a refrigerated trailer stopped on an unlit country road 60 km southeast of Willox, Arizona. At the wheel was Raymond Hill, a 43-year-old truck driver from El Paso with 15 years of experience. He was transporting frozen goods from Tucson to Los Cruus, a standard route he had been driving for years.
It was a routine night shift on Interstate 10, heading east through New Mexico. 10 minutes before communication was lost, he tuned into his company’s radio frequency and informed dispatcher Kevin Brewer that he had pulled off the main road. The reason was an unusual light he had noticed a mile ahead. Brower later showed investigators the recording.
Hill’s voice sounded surprised but not alarmed. He said the light was not like the headlights of an oncoming car. It was more like a bright flash that would not go out. He decided to drive closer to see if anything had happened. After that, the signal was lost. Brower tried to call Hill three more times over the next 20 minutes.
Interference. Silence. At 3:00 in the morning, he called the Coochis County Sheriff’s Highway Patrol. They told him they would start a search at dawn. There was no point in searching the back roads at night. The radius was too large. When dawn broke, the patrol began searching the roads in the San Simon Plateau area.
This is an isolated stretch of desert between Interstate 10 and the New Mexico border. The hills are covered with dry scrub and yucka, and there are sandstone outcrops in places. Few people turn off here. There’s no reason to. The nearest settlement is 20 km away, a couple of houses on a farm. Around 7 in the morning, one of the officers, David Larson, spotted a truck on the side of a dirt road.
24 km from Interstate 10. The vehicle was stationary. The engine turned off. The key in the ignition. The driver’s door was open. Not wide open, but not closed all the way, as if someone had gotten out and not had time to close it. Larsson walked closer and saw scratches. On the side panel of the cab, there were four deep grooves running parallel to each other.
The metal wasn’t just scratched. It was dented as if something sharp had been dragged across it with great force. Each groove was about 30 cm long. Larson photographed the damage and looked inside the cab. There were blood stains on the driver’s seat. Not much, just a few drops on the upholstery and traces on the steering wheel.
The amount was consistent with a nose bleed or a superficial wound. There were no signs of a struggle inside the cab. The sleeping area was in order and Hill’s belongings were on the shelf, a travel bag, a thermos, and a map. Raymond Hill had disappeared. Larson called for backup and the crime scene investigators. 40 minutes later, five officers and two specialists from the sheriff’s department were working at the scene.
They began examining the area around the truck. On the ground next to the open door were Hill shoe prints, standard size 43 work boots. The tracks led from the cab straight into the desert to the northeast. The ground here was dry and clay, retaining footprints well. The officers followed the trail.
About 18 m from the truck, they stopped. The tracks ended. They stopped in the middle of an open space where there was nothing. No rocks, no bushes, no cars. It was as if the man had taken his last step and vanished into thin air. One of the detectives, Thomas Reeves, crouched down and began photographing the ground.
He noticed strange prints next to Hill’s bootprints. They were shallow but clear, elongated in shape, with three visible toes or claws fanning out. Each print was about 18 to 20 cm long. Reeves made plaster casts of the two clearest prints. The prints were next to the bootprints but did not overlap them. They ran parallel as if someone or something had been moving alongside hill, but these prints also stopped after 18 m.
They disappeared as suddenly as the human footprints. An inspection of the truck showed that the cargo was untouched. The seal on the trailer doors was intact and the lock was closed. Nothing was missing from inside the cab. The documents were in place. The money was in the glove compartment and personal belongings were there.
The only thing that was missing was the CB radio. It had been torn from its mount. The wires hung broken as if someone had yanked the device out with a sharp jerk. The radio itself was gone. It seemed strange. If it had been robbers, they would have taken the money or the cargo. If it had been an animal attack, why tear out the radio? The officers couldn’t explain this detail.
During the day, the sheriff’s office organized a large-scale search. Volunteers, local farmers, and officers from neighboring counties were called in. They searched the area within an 8 km radius of the truck. They looked for a body, signs of a struggle, and belongings. Nothing. The desert was silent. On the second day, a service dog was brought in.
A sheep dog named Rex picked up the scent from the cab, walked the same 18 m, and stopped. She sat down on the ground and refused to move. The handler tried to get her to continue, but the dog did not respond. She just stared into the desert, whimpered, and refused to go any further. The handler, a search and rescue veteran named Greg Maddox, later told his colleagues that dogs behave this way when they sense something dangerous, not the smell of blood, not the smell of a predator, something else, an instinctive fear of something unknown. He did not insist on
continuing. Hill’s family, his wife Linda, and two children were notified 24 hours after the truck was found. Linda gave an interview to the local newspaper, The Tucson Daily Star, on 5 November. She said that Raymond never deviated from his route without reason. He was a disciplined driver who knew the roads better than the maps.
She did not believe that he could have walked away or gotten into trouble due to his own carelessness. Dispatcher Kevin Brewer confirmed that Hill was an experienced truck driver. In 15 years of work, he had never had a serious accident or missed a schedule. He didn’t drink and drive or use drugs. His last medical exam was clear.
Brower also told investigators that Hill had mentioned several times over the past 2 years that he had seen strange things on his night runs through southern Arizona. Once he said he saw lights over the desert that moved illogically, hovering, changing direction, abruptly. Another time he said that at one of the stops he heard sounds similar to an animal’s cry, but higher and more drawn out.
Brewer did not attach any significance to this. Sheriff’s deputies questioned residents. A couple of farmers from nearby houses said they had noticed strange lights over the San Simon Plateau in the last few weeks. One of them, Jose Morales, claimed that on 23rd October, 4 days before Hill’s disappearance, he saw a bright flash in the sky above the area.
It lasted a few seconds, then faded away. Morales thought it was a meteor. Another resident, Carl Jenkins, an elderly ranch owner, said he had lost three cows in the past two months. They were found at the edge of his property 3 kilometers from his home. The bodies were damaged, deep wounds on their sides and necks, but not the kind left by coyotes or cougars.
Jenkins described the scars as deeper and cleaner, as if they had been made with a large, sharp instrument. The veterinarian who examined one of the carcasses was unable to determine what kind of animal had done this. Investigators recorded this testimony, but did not directly link it to Hill’s disappearance.
Officially, the case was treated as a missing person, possibly related to a wild animal attack. However, one of the officers involved in the search, David Larson, noticed a detail that the others had missed. He returned to the site where the truck was found 3 days after the initial inspection. He brought a tape measure and a camera with him.
He measured the distance between the strange footprints and compared them to the stride length of an average person. The distance between the footprints was about 120 130 cm. This is more than an average human, but less than a large four-legged animal such as a cougar. Larson photographed one of the casts made by Reeves.
Three fingers fanned out with long claws. The shape of the print did not match any animal he knew. He showed the photos to Dr. Mark Ellis, a biologist at the University of Arizona, who specializes in the fauna of the southwest. Ellis studied the pictures and said that the prince did not belong to any local species.
Coyotes, cougars, lynxes, bears, they all leave tracks of a completely different shape. Three clawed toes of this length are not characteristic of predators or large birds. Ellis suggested that it might be an imprint of some object, not a real footprint. Perhaps someone had deliberately left them to confuse the investigation, but Lson disagreed.
The tracks were too naturally positioned, too clearly imprinted in the ground. No one would waste time creating such prints in the middle of the desert at night. On 8th of November, 12 days after Hill’s disappearance, a local farmer named Raul Gonzalez reported to the sheriff’s office that he had found a jacket and boots about 80 km south of where the truck was found, closer to the Mexican border.
The items were lying by an old dirt road that was hardly used anymore. The jacket was torn in several places and had blood stains on it. The boots were standing nearby, neatly placed with the laces tied. Officers arrived at the scene and took the items for examination. Blood tests showed that it was Raymond Hill’s blood.
The blood type matched and DNA confirmed it. But why were his belongings so far away? If he left on foot, how did he walk 80 km through the desert in 12 days? And why did he take off his shoes? Experts found no signs of forced removal of clothing. The jacket was torn, but not as if it had been attacked, more like it had been caught on barbed wire or sharp branches.
The boots were clean inside with no signs of prolonged wear. The case reached a dead end. The sheriff’s office continued the search for another two weeks, but there were no results. The body was not found. No witnesses came forward. The case was officially closed as a missing person case with suspicion of an attack by an unknown animal.
The Hill family received insurance money, but his wife continued to insist on continuing the search. Linda Hill hired a private investigator in early December. He was former Tucson police officer Jack Turner, who specialized in cold cases. Turner began his own investigation. He interviewed everyone connected with the case and studied reports, photographs, and records.
He noticed a detail that the official investigators had overlooked. On 27th October, the night Hill disappeared. The Graham County Sheriff’s Office adjacent to Coochis County received a report from a highway patrol officer. An officer named Michael Hendrickx reported that at around 2:00 a.m. he saw a strange light over the San Simon Plateau.
He was driving on Interstate 10 and noticed a bright flash off the road. The light was white with a very intense blue tint. Hrix decided it was an accident or a fire and wanted to pull off the highway to check it out. But after a few seconds, the light went out. Turner found Hrix and spoke to him personally.
Hrix confirmed his words. He added that at that moment he did not have time to deviate from his route. He was escorting a transport with a detainee. He relayed the information by radio, but was told that other patrols had not reported anything similar. Turner began to compare times.
Hill last made contact at 12:40 a.m. Hendrick saw the flash at 2:00 a.m. An hour and 20 minutes passed between these events. enough time for Hill to drive closer to the light source, get out of the cab, and collide with something. Turner returned to the site where the truck had been found. He searched the area within a 3 km radius, looking for something the others might have missed.
On the third day, he stumbled upon a strange discovery. A mile and a half northeast of where hills tracks ended on the slope of a small hill, Turner found a patch of scorched earth. It was a circle about 4 m in diameter. The ground was charred and the vegetation was burned entirely, but there were no signs of a fire or explosion.
The edges of the circle were smooth, as if someone had burned the area with a concentrated heat source. Turner photographed the discovery and took soil samples. He took them to a private company’s laboratory in Phoenix. Analysis showed that the temperature of the impact on the soil was very high, over a,000° C, but no traces of combustible substances or chemicals were found.
Turner called Lson and told him about the discovery. Lson came to the site and examined the burned area. He agreed that it looked unusual, but he could not give an official explanation. The case was closed and was not reopened. Turner did not stop there. He understood that the official investigation had reached a dead end, but the details did not add up to a normal disappearance.
There were too many oddities. the torn out radio, the traces of unknown origin, the burned area of land a mile away from the truck. He decided to dig deeper. In mid December, Turner contacted Kevin Brower, the dispatcher at the company where Hill worked. He asked to listen to all of Hill’s radio communications from the 3 months before his disappearance.
Brower gave him access to the archives. Turner spent two days listening. Most of the conversations were standard coordinates, arrival times, cargo status, but in the September recordings, he found several fragments that caught his attention. On 19th of September, around 11 p.m., Hill came on the air and reported seeing a group of lights over the desert west of Interstate 10 near the town of Benson.
He described them as three bright points moving in sync. Brewer asked if they were airplanes. Hill replied that the lights were moving too slowly for aircraft and too low. A minute later, he added that the lights had changed direction abruptly and disappeared behind the hills. Brewer recorded this as an observation but did not attach any significance to it.
On 28th September, Hill again mentioned strange sounds. He stopped at a gas station near the town of Wilcox and told Brewer that he had heard something unusual when he got out of the cab. The sound was like a high-pitched squeal or scream, but drawn out, almost mechanical. Hill said it definitely wasn’t an animal, too loud and too long.
Brewer joked that it was a coyote. Hill did not respond. Turner printed out these records and compared the dates with Hill’s root map. All mentions of strange phenomena concerned one area, southeastern Arizona, specifically Coochis and Graham counties around the San Simon Plateau. Hill often drove through this area and it was there that he disappeared.
Turner decided to talk to residents who might have seen something similar. He drove to the town of Wilcox and began questioning people in bars, gas stations, and stores. Most didn’t know anything specific, but several people mentioned an old man named Walter King who lived on the outskirts of town and raised goats.
Turner found King’s house 2 days later. The old man agreed to talk. He was 76 years old and had lived in the area his entire life. King said that for the past 5 years he had been noticing strange things in the desert. Lights that appeared at night and moved erratically. The sounds of animal cries could not explain that.
Several times he had found his goats dead at the edge of his property. The wounds on their bodies were deep, but not the kind left by predators. King also mentioned that a few years ago, he saw something strange with his own eyes. It was the summer of 1996, he went out at night to check on the pen. The goats were restless, bleeding non-stop.
When he approached the fence, he saw a silhouette at the edge of his property about 50 m away. The creature was standing on two legs, but it was short, about a meter and 20 cm tall. Its arms were long and disproportionate to its body. Its head was elongated with no distinct features in the darkness. King turned on his flashlight and shone it on the creature. It turned around.
Its eyes reflected the light bright yellow. The beast made a short sharp sound like a click and disappeared into the darkness. It moved in jerks very quickly. King did not follow it. In the morning, he found footprints by the fence, the same as Turner had described, three toes fanning out, long claws.
King said he told the sheriff about it, but they didn’t believe him. They decided it was an animal, possibly a coyote or a stray dog. King didn’t insist. But since then, he never goes out at night without his gun. Turner recorded King’s testimony and asked him to show him where he had seen the creature. They drove to the site. The tracks had faded over the two years, but King accurately indicated the direction in which the beast had gone, east, toward the San Simon Plateau.
Turner returned to Tucson and began searching for other cases of disappearances or strange attacks in the area. He checked newspaper archives, police reports, and ambulance records. Over the past 10 years, there had been three reported disappearances in Coochis County, all within a 40 km radius of the San Simon Plateau.
The first was in 1992. A tourist from California named Brian Stone, 31 years old, went hiking in the desert and never returned. His tent was found 3 days later. It was torn apart, his belongings scattered. Nobody was found. The official version was an animal attack, possibly by a cougar. The second incident occurred in 1995.
A woman named Carol Davis, 48, was driving from Tucson to Los Cruus. Her car was found on the side of a dirt road 20 km from Interstate 10. The engine was running. The door was open, but the woman was gone. Her bag and documents were left in the back seat. There were no signs of a struggle. The body was never found.
The case was closed as a missing person. The third case was in 1997. A 16-year-old named Miguel Ramirez disappeared while fishing at a small pond 15 km from Wilcox. His fishing rods and backpack were found on the shore. The tracks led into the desert and ended after 20 m. The body was never found. Turner noticed a pattern.
All three cases occurred in the same area. All involved tracks that ended abruptly and all remained unsolved. He contacted the relatives of the missing persons. Miguel Ramirez’s mother, Maria, agreed to meet with him. She said that her son had gone fishing in the morning and was supposed to return in the evening.
When he didn’t show up, she called the sheriff. The search began the next day. His belongings were found quickly, but Miguel himself was nowhere to be seen. Maria said that residents told her that it was not safe to be in that part of the desert at night. They called the place cursed. She did not believe in superstitions, but after her son’s disappearance, she began to wonder.
Maria also mentioned that a few weeks before Miguel’s disappearance, dead cattle had been found in their area. Cows and goats with deep wounds on their necks and sides. One farmer told her that the wounds looked as if they had been inflicted by a very sharp instrument or the claws of a large predator. But there are no predators of that size in Arizona.
Turner asked Maria to show him where her son’s belongings had been found. She took him to a pond. It was a small pond that dried up in the summer, surrounded by low bushes and rocks. Turner walked around the area. There were no traces left, but he noticed a strange detail. One of the large rocks by the water had deep scratches on it.
three parallel grooves very similar to those left on Hill’s truck cab. He photographed the rock and returned to Tucson. Turner realized that he was not dealing with a series of random disappearances, but with something bigger. The creature Walter King had seen. Tracks that didn’t match any known animal. Wounds on livestock.
Broken trails of missing people. All the details pointed to one thing. Something was living in this area that shouldn’t officially be there. Turner began searching for information about cryptids in the southwestern United States. He found several references to a creature that locals call the desert wolf or dog man.
Descriptions varied, but the standard features were the same. Short bipedal with long front limbs and eyes that reflect light. The creature allegedly attacks animals and avoids humans, but in rare cases may attack lone travelers. Most sources were unreliable forums, amateur websites, hunter stories. But Turner found one serious mention in a report by a biologist named Dr.
Ela Cowan, who worked at the University of New Mexico in the 1980s. She investigated reports of strange tracks found in the desert on the border between Arizona and New Mexico. Cowan concluded that the tracks did not belong to any known species. She suggested that it could be an undescribed species of predator, possibly a relic.
Turner contacted the university but was told that Cowan had died in 1993. Her archives were kept in the university library. Turner traveled to Albuquerque and gained access to the documents. In Cowan’s archive, he found a folder with photographs of footprints collected between 1987 and 1989. Several of the pictures were identical to those found at the site of Hill’s disappearance, three toes, long claws, a distance of about 120 cm between prints.
Cowan also made a note. footprints found in an area where locals report attacks on livestock. No known animal matches the parameters. Turner copied the documents and returned to Arizona. He realized that the creature in question had been living in the area since at least the 1980s, perhaps longer.
It avoids contact but periodically attacks animals and in rare cases humans. Raymond Hill remains on the missing person’s list. His body was never found. His family buried an empty coffin in a cemetery in El Paso. The tombstone reads, “Loving husband and father, missing since October 27th, 1988. No one knows what really happened that night on the country road near the San Simon Plateau.
Perhaps Hill got out of the cab to look at the strange light. Maybe he encountered a creature defending its territory. Perhaps he tried to run away but didn’t make it. The tracks ended after 18 m. It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed him or something had carried him away so quickly that the tracks disappeared.
The desert keeps its secrets, and whatever dwells in its shadows has no intention of revealing them.
