Twin Girls Vanished in the Mountains, 11 Months Later a Drone Captures This… | HO

Rocky Ridge, Colorado — The Landry family’s weekend escape into the wilds of Rocky Ridge National Forest was meant to be a digital detox—a simple retreat from the noise of suburban life. Mark and Elise Landry, both in their late 30s, had chosen a remote mountain cabin for themselves and their identical twin daughters, Lily and Sky, age 10. The first day was picture-perfect: hiking, campfire stories, and marshmallows under a starry sky. But by sunrise on the second morning, the family’s world had unraveled. The girls’ bunk was empty. No laughter, no footsteps, no trace.

Within hours, the forest was crawling with search teams, dogs, and helicopters. Trails were swept, streams checked, and every cabin within miles alerted. Yet Lily and Sky Landry had vanished without a sound. “No footprints, no clothing, not even a broken twig,” recalled Park Ranger Tim Harris, who led the initial search. “It was like they’d been erased.” The only clue—a hiker reported hearing faint laughter around 5:00 a.m., then silence.

Days turned to weeks. National headlines faded. The search ended. The Landrys returned home with a hole in their lives where hope used to be. The case went cold—until 11 months later, when a college student’s drone captured something that would change everything.

The Break in the Case

Aiden Knox, a 21-year-old tech intern, was field-testing a prototype drone for a wildlife project in a neighboring county. Flying over a remote ravine, Knox hoped to catch footage of elk herds. Instead, what he found was far more disturbing: two small figures, thin and ragged, moving strangely through the trees. When Knox reviewed the footage that night, his hands trembled. The figures’ size, posture, and tangled hair were unmistakable—Lily and Sky Landry.

Knox spent the night combing missing persons databases, matching the girls’ faces and clothes—faded yellow hoodie, pink pajama top—to news photos from nearly a year before. By morning, he was at the sheriff’s office with his laptop. At first, deputies were skeptical, but the footage spoke for itself. Within hours, investigators from both counties were plotting coordinates and cross-referencing terrain maps. The area where the drone had flown—Dead Timber Hollow—was so rugged and remote, it had never been searched.

The Rescue

A special recovery team was assembled. Helicopters were useless under thick forest canopy; the team would go in on foot, armed with ropes, infrared drones, and motion sensors. As the search began, Mark and Elise Landry were shown the drone footage. Elise collapsed, whispering, “That’s my girls.” Mark simply stared, white-knuckled and silent.

Two days later, at dawn, a thermal drone picked up two human-sized heat signatures beneath a rock overhang. The rescue team hiked in, battling brutal terrain and cold mist. At midday, they found a makeshift shelter of sticks and branches. Huddled inside were two small figures, skin pale, hair matted, clothes threadbare. “Lily? Sky?” a rescuer called. One girl lifted her head. “I’m Lily,” she whispered. Her sister, Sky, only stared, silent tears on her cheeks.

Paramedics rushed in. The girls were weak but alive, suffering from exposure and malnutrition—but there was something else. Near the shelter was a weathered backpack not listed in the original missing persons inventory. Inside: canned goods, a utility knife, a flashlight with working batteries. Someone else had been there.

The Mystery Deepens

A search of the area revealed a second, adult-sized campsite: a tarp, a fire ring, and a hand-carved wooden figure of a little girl with braids. Whoever had been there had watched the twins—and helped them survive. When asked how they’d lived so long, Lily’s answer chilled the rescue team: “We weren’t alone.”

Medical staff noted defensive wounds on both girls, but also signs of deliberate rationing—someone had been feeding them, just enough to keep them alive. The name on the backpack, “R. Cullen,” matched no missing persons report. But an old ranger logbook from nine years earlier listed a Russell Cullen, a dismissed forest ranger with a history of mental health issues and a sealed file involving inappropriate behavior toward a minor.

A further sweep uncovered a hidden game trail leading to an abandoned mine. Inside: dozens of wooden carvings—twin girls, some missing limbs, arranged in pairs. The walls were lined with children’s names, initials, and a cot with cryptic, rambling notes. One read: “The mountains took my daughters. Now they’ve given me new ones. These ones listen. These ones stay.”

Trauma and Testimony

Back at St. Luke’s Pediatric Trauma Center, Lily and Sky began to recover. But their trauma was deep. Lily spoke in rehearsed phrases: “We made a shelter. We found food.” When pressed, she whispered, “He said we had to be quiet or the mountains would wake up.” Sky was mute, clinging to her sister.

Detectives traced “R. Cullen” to a foreclosed property outside Gunnison. In the basement, behind a wall of firewood, was a soundproof room lined with insulation and child-height scratch marks. Polaroids showed Lily and Sky sitting on a stone floor, hands folded, a shadow looming behind them.

But the most chilling detail emerged from Lily’s nightmares. “He wore a mask made of bark. He smelled like smoke and old pennies. He said I was the older one, so I had to learn first.” Sky, when she finally spoke, revealed more: “There was a boy. He had a scar on his eyebrow. His name was Tommy. One day he wasn’t there anymore. The man said Tommy didn’t listen.”

A Larger Network

Investigators soon realized this was not an isolated case. A 1991 arrest in Arizona linked Russell Cullen to child endangerment; another man, Henry Vassler, was listed as a co-worker. When Vassler was apprehended near the cabin, he claimed, “I helped them. I left them food. I never touched them. I’m not a monster. But I wasn’t going to let them go, either.”

But Lily and Sky remembered more. “We heard someone walking around at night. But it wasn’t him. Not the man in the coat. Someone else. A woman, sometimes singing, sometimes crying.” Drone footage soon captured seven heat signatures in a remote gulch—six children, one adult, a woman wrapped in rags, standing unnaturally still.

The children scattered before authorities arrived, leaving only footprints and a half-eaten can of beans. On a cave wall, a crude symbol was drawn: a circle with six spokes, one crossed out.

The Search Continues

Lily’s drawings and flashbacks painted a picture of captivity and confusion. “She wasn’t mean,” Lily said of the woman. “But she didn’t want us to leave. She told us the forest chose us.” Sky had been separated after falling ill. “She had to go somewhere safe,” Lily recalled, “but I never saw her again.”

Authorities believe the children were moved between multiple hideouts, and that Lily and Sky may have been only the latest in a string of abductions stretching back more than a decade. The woman, known only as “Lena,” remains at large, along with as many as five other missing children.

Aftermath

Two weeks after her rescue, Lily was discharged from the hospital. Elise Landry held her daughter’s hand as they stepped into the sunlight. “Do you think Sky is looking at the same sun right now?” Lily asked. Elise squeezed her hand. “I do.”

Somewhere deep in the mountains, a drone’s infrared lens swept the treeline. Lena was still out there—and so was Sky.