S1E7: Lost in the Dark

Summary

Blood Trails, Ep. 7: Lost in the Dark

Podcast: Blood Trails by MeatEater
Host: Jordan Sillars
Release Date: December 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

Main Theme:
Episode 7, "Lost in the Dark," investigates the 2012 death of 35-year-old Georgia hunter Jeff Gebhart, whose body was discovered stabbed 18 times in a remote wildlife management area. Journalist Jordan Sillars navigates a bewildering case where the evidence both points to homicide and, impossibly, suicide. The episode explores the dark intersection of wilderness, crime, and the unimaginable depths of the human mind.

Purpose:
To unravel the perplexing circumstances surrounding Jeff's death, examine the official investigation, and grapple with unresolved questions—while highlighting the unique complexities when crime and tragedy occur far from civilization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Incident: Unexpected and Inexplicable

• Sillars opens by reflecting on how the wilderness is both thrilling and unpredictable, setting up the story of Gebhart's mysterious death ([01:40]).
• Jeff Gebhart, a healthy and experienced hunter, was found dead in the Georgia woods. The details—stab wounds, no signs of robbery, and few clues—leave family, investigators, and loved ones searching for answers.

"Since Jeff Gebhart was found dead in the woods of Northwest Georgia, family, friends and investigators have been trying to explain exactly what happened to the healthy 35 year old hunter. All have failed."
— Jordan Sillars ([01:40])

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2. Timeline and Recounting the Events

The Friendship and the Hunt ([02:53]-[11:13])

• Jeff and Dave Smith, fellow hunters and friends, planned a trip to Clarks Hill WMA (a dense, remote area) for an early-season deer hunt.
• The first evening, Jeff gets lost but returns safely with help; next day, they run errands instead of hunting—a detail that struck Sillars as odd.
• On their final evening, Jeff becomes lost again after parting from Dave in the woods.

"If it sounds a little unusual that a 35 year old man could get so turned around trying to get out of an area he just walked into a few hours before, well, it is."
— Jordan Sillars ([09:55])

Night of the Death ([12:58]-[16:18])

• Jeff calls Dave, stressed and "almost hysterical," saying he can't find his way out. Dave directs him to fire rifle shots to help locate him, but Jeff fails to emerge.
• After several failed attempts to find him, Dave calls 911. Game wardens and, soon after, aerial search teams, quickly spot a flashlight on the lakeshore and discover Jeff’s body ([04:02]-[15:04]).

Crime Scene ([16:27]-[38:39])

• Jeff is found lying on his back, hands folded, rifle and gear cast off nearby, a folding knife under him.
• 18 stab wounds, mostly shallow but three deep enough to pierce the heart.
• No defensive wounds, no blood except beneath the body, and only Jeff’s footprints at the scene.

"There was an area that was all very marshy, and you could see all of his footprints. ... There was only his footprint."
— Charla Perdue, forensic scientist ([31:49])

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3. Suspicions, Theories, & Evidence Review

Investigators Focus on Dave Smith ([17:45]-[27:27])

• Dave is the most logical suspect—first to call for help, knew where Jeff hunted, and owned many knives.
• Intense interviews, including inquiries about their relationship, possible altercations, and motives (including romantic involvement—awkwardly but methodically probed).
• No forensic evidence links Dave (blood, footprints, timeline established by other hunters' corroboration) to Jeff’s death ([46:21]-[47:07]).

"The person that killed him knew him. Isn't that right? And that person is you?

No, sir, I did not kill him. I do not know anything about it."
— Agent Tony Williamson and Dave Smith ([25:52]-[25:59])

Forensics and Crime Scene Oddities ([31:06]-[38:39])

• No evidence of struggle, no unknown footprints, only Jeff's DNA on the knife.
• Lack of defensive wounds and the placement and depth of most stabs suggest the wounds may not have been delivered by another person.

"If somebody is attacking another person with a knife, ... you'll find wounds on the hands, on the forearms. There were no real defensive wounds that were noted."
— Special Agent Wendell Goodman ([33:19])

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4. Autopsy and Shift in Theory: Suicide?

The Medical Examiner's Conclusion ([36:19]-[38:39])

• Most wounds superficial; only three penetrated the heart—all at the same angle, all accessible for a right-handed person (Jeff was right-handed).
• Only Jeff’s DNA on knife. No evidence he was attacked or tried to defend himself.

“If someone is stabbing someone, you’re going to be thrashing about, so your stabs will be all at different angles. His were all at one particular angle.”
— Charla Perdue ([37:21])

Investigators' Difficult Decision ([39:08]-[47:21])

• Ruling of suicide based almost solely on physical evidence, not motive or history.
• Family, friends, and fellow Catholics deeply resistant—stressing both Jeff’s access to a rifle, his devout faith, and the peculiarity (and rarity) of suicide by self-stabbing.

"When a guy that has a loaded rifle toting it through the woods, are you actually gonna pull out your knife and kill yourself? ... isn't it easier just to put a bullet through yourself?"
— Russell Cornell ([39:21])

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5. Struggling with the Explanation

Expert and Family Doubts ([42:24]-[44:13])

• Forensic psychologist Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky finds the theory that Jeff staged a homicide for religious reasons "pretty sophisticated" and hard to accept. He notes that people in acute crisis rarely act with such calculation ([42:52]).
• Both family and Catholic acquaintances contend this is "not possible," citing both faith and practicalities (knife wounds, lack of suicidal signs).

"If it was a suicide, it's one of the oddest suicides I've ever seen or heard of, for sure."
— Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky ([53:38])

• Charlotte Perdue, though reviewing on behalf of the family, supports the suicide theory—based purely on forensic evidence and absence of any sign of another assailant ([45:12]).

The “Death Hunt” and Unsettling Pattern ([56:14]-[56:41])

• Game warden Matt Garthright notes a freakish pattern of deaths during this annual hunt—though usually natural causes (heart attacks), not suspicious violence.

"This particular hunt happens every year, and for several years, there's been a death on this hunt."
— Sgt. Matt Garthright ([56:14])

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6. Mental Health, The Unknowable Motive, and Open Questions

Mental Health Questions ([49:36]-[55:55])

• No documented mental health problems, suicidal ideation, or explanations from loved ones. No evidence of a suicide note.
• However, as Sillars notes, some suicides happen with no warning to family and friends. Dr. Kalchevsky and Charla Perdue both caution that some signals may be missed or unspoken.
• Theories about a psychotic break or panic from being lost are floated but found wanting by experts.

"You just don't walk through the woods and then 10 minutes later have a psychotic break and kill yourself. ... If this indeed was a suicide, this was definitely not impulsive."
— Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky ([54:42])

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7. Resolution—If You Can Call It That

Officially Closed, But Emotionally Unsettled ([47:41]-[59:33])

• District attorney’s review and a grand jury rule Jeff’s death a suicide.
• Family remains unconvinced. Russell Cornell rallies for the case to remain open and opposed to the ruling.

"Somebody is guilty of this crime that they've done to this man, Jeff, and it needs to be opened. ..."
— Russell Cornell ([48:36])

• Both the host and investigators express empathy for the family and acknowledge that the truth may never be fully illuminated.

"It's possible the GBI missed something or is hiding something, but that's not really what I'm talking about. Even if we acknowledge that Jeff stabbed himself 18 times, we still don't know why."
— Jordan Sillars ([58:13])

• The final word is one of ambiguity and an uneasy sense that, despite science and thorough reporting, some stories remain essentially unsolvable.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Unsolvable Mysteries:
  "The only person who really knows the answers is the one person who can't answer them."
  — Charla Perdue ([59:22])

• On the Need for Closure:
  "Everybody just wants some form of resolve. And in these types of cases you don't always get it."
  — Special Agent Wendell Goodman ([59:02])

• The Initial Call for Help:
  "He said he was in tall grass and I thought he was saying something about a fence, and then he said something about mud."
  — Dave Smith ([13:30])

• On the Scene's Inexplicability:
  "It just, it. It defied forensic sense."
  — Charla Perdue ([31:26])

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Major Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------| | 01:40 | Warning/disclaimer & episode premise | | 02:31 | Interview clips: Investigators speak to Dave | | 03:12 | Jeff’s call for help and details of getting lost | | 04:02 | Discovery of Jeff’s body | | 04:42 | Confirmation this was a homicide (initially) | | 07:01 | Dave’s relationship with Jeff and background | | 11:02 | Jeff and Dave’s routine before the incident | | 13:10 | Audio from phone calls—Jeff lost and stressed | | 16:27 | Sergeant Garthright: processing the body/scene | | 19:05 | Investigators ask Dave about knives | | 23:07 | Relationship/motive questions for Dave | | 31:06 | Crime scene analysis with Charla Perdue | | 36:19 | Autopsy and shift to suicide theory | | 39:08 | Reactions: family and religious beliefs | | 42:52 | Dr. Kalchevsky on suicide plausibility | | 46:21 | Timeline/vindication for Dave; case is closed | | 49:36 | No mental health history, possible explanations | | 53:54 | The “Death Hunt” pattern | | 58:13 | Final reflections—no good answers | | 59:22 | Closing words from Charla and Goodman |

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Tone

• Serious, respectful, analytical.
• Jordan Sillars maintains a forensic, investigative style rooted in compassion, skepticism, and honesty.
• Insights from experts and affected individuals bring both emotional weight and clinical perspective.

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Summary Takeaway

"Lost in the Dark" lays out a haunting case in which neither official findings nor alternative explanations can bring true resolution. Through gripping narrative journalism, Sillars spotlights how the wild can become a stage for the most baffling acts—and reminds listeners that for some questions, especially when it comes to the mind and the wilderness, there may be no final answers.

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Blood Trails encourages those struggling with mental health to reach out for help. Crisis lines and resources are shared in the episode.

Transcript

[Jordan Sillers]

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[Jordan Sillers]

This episode contains graphic descriptions of crime scene details. It also deals with suicide. Listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It's free, confidential and available 24. 7. Encountering the unexpected and inexplicable is one of the reasons we venture into the wild. You never know what's going to happen on a hunt or a hike. You might see something you've never seen before or something you can't quite explain. Since Jeff Gebhart was found dead in the woods of Northwest Georgia, family, friends and investigators have been trying to explain exactly what happened to the healthy 35 year old hunter. All have failed.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Do you have any knowledge of his death or how he died?

[Dave Smith]

No sir, I sure don't. I can look you in the eye and tell you I sure don't. I'm telling you everything that I know. Honestly, I know nothing about it. I was just trying to help him.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

And I believe that.

[Dave Smith]

I believe that I don't know anybody that would want to hurt him.

[Jordan Sillers]

That's Dave Smith. Dave and Jeff had met A couple years prior, and they'd struck up an instant friendship. Both loved hunting, and In September of 2012, they traveled to the Clarks Hill wildlife management area to participate in a special rifle hunt for deer. Three days in, the trip turned from a hunt to a nightmare.

[Dave Smith]

I hear the two horn shots, and I'm still blowing the horn. And I told him, I said, well, I'm going to go get somebody and we'll come and help look for you. And so we come back out here, and they think they know about where he's at. So we ride the roads. We ride that two or three times, and we never did see him on the road anywhere. And that's when I called 91 1.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

You told me earlier today that he sounded very not scared, but he was, like, stressed out, and you were, like, hysterical.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff had called Dave to tell him he was lost and couldn't find his way back to the road. He fired his rifle to help Dave locate him, and then nothing. Jeff stopped answering his phone. And when game wardens arrived, they didn't let Dave venture into the dark Georgia pines to look for his friend.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

The helicopter. Within about 20 minutes of being there, they spotted a flashlight on the shore on the lakeshore and some grass. Quickly thereafter, they located the body. They tried to hover. There was an area they could hover down pretty close. They tried to hover over him to get a response, and he was unresponsive.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff's body was found lying on his back. His hands had been folded across his chest. His rifle and hunting pack were a short distance away, and a folding pocket knife was found underneath his body. When investigators arrived at the scene and took a closer look, they saw the stab wounds, 18 in total, most centered around Jeff's heart.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Let me explain something to you real quick, okay? Jeff was murdered. This was no accident. This was no suicide. This man was murdered. No question about it. Okay. No doubt. We know. And he was. Like I said, this was a murder. This was nothing else.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, that certainly seemed to be the case. No one gets accidentally stabbed 18 times. Whatever happened in the hours between when Jeff hung up and when his body was found was violent and intentional.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

I mean, Jeff was your friend, right? And, you know, from everything you told me, you guys had a good, strong friendship.

[Dave Smith]

Yes, sir.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

And, you know, I can tell you're upset over this, right?

[Dave Smith]

Yes. I mean, it really. It bothered me when I knew he was lost and especially when the deputy got there and he didn't want anybody going in the woods because I was wanting somebody to go look, you know, and it's really bothered me, especially today.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Once I found out what happened to.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff on that warm September night is as disturbing and perplexing today as it was during Dave's tearful interview with law enforcement. Maybe Jeff met a stranger who was bent on violence. Maybe he saw something he shouldn't have seen. Or an unknown enemy used the isolation of the woods to settle old scores. Or maybe Jeff succumbed to something even darker and more bizarre than the ill will of another human. I'm Jordan Sillers, and this is Blood Trails Lost in the Dark, Part one Nightmare. Dave and Jeff had met about two years prior at Chambers Slaughterhouse where they both worked in Blairsville, Georgia.

[Dave Smith]

We got along great. I first met him, he came to work where I was working at. He was a hunter and I was a hunter. So, I mean, we, we hit it off and we started turkey hunting the first year and then deer season came along. We started deer hunting and then we had started hunting again this deer season.

[Jordan Sillers]

The recording you'll hear of Dave throughout this episode is from two interviews he gave to agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or gbi. Dave initially agreed to be interviewed for this podcast, but he backed out, telling me it would be too difficult to rehash what happened. Fortunately, I was able to obtain the case file from the GBI along with Dave's interviews with law enforcement. In the fall of 2012, Jeff and Dave had made plans to hunt whitetail in the Clarks Hill WMA, which is about 30 miles northwest of Augusta. It was a three hour drive from where the pair worked in Blairsville, but they were able to get tags for a special rifle hunt. The general rifle season wouldn't begin until October 20th, but the Clarks Hill WMA offered a rifle season in September to help manage the whitetail population. According to game warden Matt Garthright, it was packed.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

It's visited quite a good bit that particular weekend. They have an early rifle hunt, which gives hunters the right to come in there with a rifle and hunt early before the actual rifle season comes in. So a lot of people take advantage of that hunt.

[Jordan Sillers]

The pair arrived on Thursday, September 20, the day before the hunt opened. They planned to hunt out of portable treestands they brought with them. Jeff carried a Remington Model 710 bolt action rifle chambered in. 3006 Springfield, while Dave used a bolt action rifle chambered in. 270 Winchester. They didn't shoot anything the next morning, so they returned to the woods Friday evening. They'd set up their stands in separate Areas, but apparently not the right ones. They didn't see anything or at least didn't shoot anything. And Dave sent Jeff a text at 7:39pm that said walking back. But when Dave got back to the truck, Jeff wasn't there.

[Dave Smith]

Friday night when he got turned around, he shot.

[Jordan Sillers]

One time, Jeff had gotten lost trying to get out of the woods. He called Dave for help getting back to the road where they were supposed to meet at the truck and drive back to camp. He tried firing his rifle so Dave could locate his position and guide him out. But for reasons that remain unclear, he still wasn't able to find the road. As he trudged through the woods, he ran into another hunter named Romy Taylor. The reports indicate that Taylor had shot a hog and Jeff offered to help him butcher it. Taylor told investigators that Jeff was sweating, which wouldn't have been unusual given temps in the mid-70s. Taylor pointed him in the right direction and he eventually found the road.

[Dave Smith]

And that's when somebody coming down the road found him and picked him up and brought him down to the bath house and he walked on in. I'm pretty sure he said it was a guy and his wife and they were going down to use the shower and they gave him around down there and he walked to the camper from the shower house.

[Jordan Sillers]

If it sounds a little unusual that a 35 year old man could get so turned around trying to get out of an area he just walked into a few hours before, well, it is. But it's also worth pointing out that the Clarks Hill WMA is a dense mix of hardwood and pine shot through with the westernmost fingers of Clarks Hill Lake. Roads weave their way through the forest, but you might not know you were near a road even within 50 yards of it. These were also the days before ONX. And the case file indicates Jeff was carrying a Verizon Pantex cell phone, one of those devices with a sliding screen that reveals a keyboard. So even if he had service, that phone wouldn't have been much help getting out of the woods. Whatever the reason, Jeff got turned around. He eventually made his way back to camp. The pair had driven together in Dave's gold colored 2004 Dodge Ram and they towed a Jayco pop up camper for sleeping. They woke up the next morning, but instead of going hunting, they drove into the nearby town of Thompson. They stopped at a gas station to fill up the truck and then picked up a few essentials for hunting and the Georgia backcountry.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Did you buy anything?

[Dave Smith]

We bought some Thermal refills and we went across the road to the sausage place and bought some sausage.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Okay.

[Jordan Sillers]

It's unclear why the pair decided to skip one of only three morning hunts they'd have on this trip. Maybe they hadn't slept well the night before. Maybe they were getting eaten by mosquitoes or just didn't want to fight the orange army on on what would probably be the busiest morning. It might not be important, but it struck me as strange that they skipped the morning hunt rather than run their errands around lunchtime. Whatever the reason, they returned to their campsite and went back out at 4pm on Saturday, September 22nd.

[Dave Smith]

I dropped him off where he goes into his stand and I, I went like, I don't know, it's maybe a half a mile on past where I parked and go on the other side of the room.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dave sat in his stand until it got dark, but once again didn't shoot any deer. He got down, walked back out to his truck and drove to where he was supposed to meet Jeff along the road.

[Dave Smith]

Well, I see a flashlight coming up the road, so I think it's him. So I drive to it. Well, it's another guy. And he said he heard somebody hollering. And I said, well, I haven't heard anybody. He said, well, they were just right down there.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dave gave the hunter a ride back to his truck, which is when he ran into two more hunters who said they'd seen Jeff in the woods.

[Dave Smith]

And the other two guys that were there said that they had walked in on him. They saw him sitting in his treestand. And then I went back there and I see it and he called me and I didn't have no phone service, but when I got phone service, it said I had a voicemail.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff had gotten lost again trying to find the road, so he asked Dave to sound the truck horn to try to help him determine the right direction in the dark. Dave says this would have been about 8:15 in the evening.

[Dave Smith]

And I blowed the horn and he couldn't, I don't reckon he could hear it. So he called back and said he was going to shoot, so he shot twice.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Did you hear those shots?

[Dave Smith]

I heard the shots. It sounded like they were 4 or 500 yards in front of the truck.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dave had cell phone service by this point, so he was finally able to get Jeff on the phone. As you already heard, he later told investigators that his friends sounded stressed out, almost hysterical as he tried to describe where he was.

[Dave Smith]

He said he was in tall grass and I thought he was saying something about a fence, and then he said something about mud.

[Jordan Sillers]

Rather than wander through the woods in the dark, hoping to find Jeff, Dave and a few fellow hunters decided the best strategy would be to drive the roads and honk their horns. If you look at this WMA on onx, you'll see a network of dirt roads that extend through the woods like a web. Since they knew the approximate area Jeff had been hunting, they figured it wouldn't take him long to pop out on one of those roads. But Dave said they made two or three passes up and down the road, and Jeff still hadn't appeared. He'd also stopped answering his phone, and Dave was worried his friend might be in more serious trouble, so he called 91 1. The first officer to arrive on the scene was Corporal Mark Patterson with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The second officer was Sergeant Matt Garthright.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

They had done an initial search of the area. This area is bordered by roads and the lake, so it was a pretty contained area. Should have been easy to search and locate the hunter. If he was lost and still in good shape, just walking around, it should have been easy to locate him. So he'd done that initially. Then when that didn't pan out, we started thinking that something's wrong with him. You know, either had a medical issue or he's had a hunting accident.

[Jordan Sillers]

They requested air support from the Georgia State Patrol, which sent a helicopter to search the area. Within about 20 minutes. They found Jeff.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

Yes. They radioed and told us that they had located him, that he was unresponsive, and they actually directed us into him. So me and Corporal Patterson and a deputy went to him, and when we got to him, he was laid on his back. His legs were straight out, and his arms were crossed his chest, and it was apparent that he was deceased.

[Jordan Sillers]

Hunting accidents and heart attacks are the first things that come to mind in a situation like this.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

Yeah, that was definitely going through my mind. There was a reported shot heard around dusk, dark, which would have been a good time for somebody to mistake a hunter for game in that time frame there. So, yeah, that was a possibility.

[Jordan Sillers]

However, it quickly became clear that they were dealing with something far more sinister.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

There was some blood on his clothing, but nothing that looked like a gunshot wound. There was scenarios running through your head, and it didn't. It wasn't adding up. So we knew something was off. And his gun and some hunting supplies were probably, I don't know, 50 yards from him in. In some tall grass. So, yeah, things wouldn't. Wasn't Adding up, we knew something was off.

[Jordan Sillers]

Sergeant Garthright called the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to help process the scene. And he stayed with Jeff's body all night until the sun came up. The next morning, when daylight came, the.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

GBI and our critical reconstruction team came in, and we were able to go observe the body and get a better understanding of what may have took place. And while looking at the body, I said, we noticed blood on his clothing. And when we kind of rolled him up, we found a knife just right up under his right side. And that was the weapon that was. That was used.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff's body had been stabbed 18 times, 17 in the chest and one in the abdomen. Later, examination confirmed the cause of death to be blood loss from the three wounds that had penetrated his heart. Not long after, on September 25th, Wilkes County Sheriff Mark Moore told the Augusta Chronicle that they were investigating Jeff's death as a homicide. Here's Special Agent Wendell Goodman with the gbi, speaking to Dave the day after Jeff died.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

The only thing I can tell you, I mean, we've. We've seen the body and the way this crime was committed, it was not. Somebody just happened upon him, and it was quick and over with. I mean, this is somebody that was angry, somebody that was upset.

[Jordan Sillers]

Finding that somebody would be the aim of the investigation that followed, and it started with Jeff's friend and hunting partner, David Smith. Part two, Dave. The number of stab wounds and Jeff's call for help strongly indicated foul play. And Agent Goodman and his colleagues at the GBI said submitted search warrants based on the probable cause that a murder had been committed. One of those search warrants was sent to Verizon Wireless, and it asked for the text messages and call logs of Dave Smith as Jeff's close friend and the only person he knew in the area. Dave was the first person investigators looked at as a potential suspect. Here's Agent Goodman, who took the lead on the investigation for the gbi.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Anytime there is a death, you're looking for people initially that are closed, close to that person, they're going to be your best source of information. But obviously, you would circle that person in as potentially being included, just because out of everyone that would have been in the area, you know, they're the only person that would have had a connection to the victim.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dave was also the only person who knew the approximate location where Jeff had placed his tree stand. And as he admitted to investigators, he was a big knife guy.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Now, I know you told me you had a lot of knives, and there were some that we took I saw like, a Leatherman with, like, a handsaw, small hands.

[Dave Smith]

Probably used for turning limbs.

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

Yeah.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

And then you had a few knives that looked maybe like you used to clean some deer or something. And then there were a few fixed handle knives. You have stag going. That's yours?

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, a guy gave me that for Christmas, and I just stuck it in a glove box of the front.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

And then I guess there was another buck knife, right?

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, I'm one of these. A butt knife is my brand of knife. So when I go into the pawn shop or something like that, if they have one at a reasonable price, on is mine.

[Jordan Sillers]

Investigators found two Browning knives, two unidentified fixed blade knives, and a buck knife in a black sheath in Dave's pack truck and camper. According to the case file, all of these knives were collected as as evidence. Investigators believed that Jeff had been killed by the bloody Kershaw folding knife found under his body, and they were keen to find out who that knife belonged to.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Does that look familiar?

[Dave Smith]

I really couldn't say.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Have you ever seen this, though?

[Dave Smith]

No, I've never saw that knife, because I do remember the one he had last year. I had a serrated blade on the end.

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

Okay.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

And this looks like straight edge. Do you have any folding knives?

[Dave Smith]

No, I do not own a folding knife. Everything I have are fixed blade.

[Jordan Sillers]

Of course, it's a little hard to believe that someone with a penchant for knives wouldn't own any folders. Dave's adamant denial here is also a little suspicious in and of itself. Investigators hadn't told him how Jeff died or that a bloody folding knife was found at the scene. How did Dave know to make exactly the right denial? And in this situation, either it's an innocent coincidence and he really had strong opinions about folding knives, or he knew how Jeff died because he was there. GBI agents were apparently thinking the same thing. Here's Agent Tony Williamson.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

This wasn't a random killing. This wasn't somebody that happened to be down there at dark, after dark and killed him. That ain't happened. That ain't happened. And I'm gonna be straight up with you. And I want you to be straight up with me.

[Dave Smith]

I'm gonna be.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Something happened. Something happened in those woods. And I think you know what happened.

[Dave Smith]

No, sir. I sure do not know what happened.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dave had the opportunity to kill Jeff alone. With him in the woods, with access to so many knives, he also had the means. What Agents Goodman and Williamson were trying to determine was whether he had a motive.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

You guys haven't had Any type of disagreements?

[Dave Smith]

No, sir. We. We've got along good from ever since we met each other. You know, something where you just click with you, you make friends and he was. He was one of those types of.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

People see the kind of guy to.

[Dave Smith]

Pick a fight if you made him mad. Yes.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Are you guys ever getting like.

[Dave Smith]

We never got it.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

You know, you could have. Y' all could have come upon each other down in the woods. Okay. And he. He could have been pissed at you because, you know, he got lost and he was mad and you had to defend yourself. I don't know.

[Dave Smith]

I. I never. I never saw him. All I did was talk to him on the phone.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dave denied killing Jeff in anger or self defense, but there are many reasons for murder. Sex, for example.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Have you ever known any women that he dated?

[Dave Smith]

No, I've never known him dating a woman. Up there where we live at, they've always been in. In Florida, where he used to live or. I heard him mention one, one last summer in Atlanta.

[Jordan Sillers]

Investigators wondered whether Dave and Jeff had fought over a woman, but Dave denied having a steady girlfriend. There were texts on Dave's phone between him and a woman named Tracy, but Dave said they'd been set up by someone else and had never actually met. But when Dave mentioned that Jeff had been given a ride to the camp bath house by another hunter, it sent investigators down another line of inquiry related to matters of the heart.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Now, I know you said earlier that a guy had picked up Jeff and they went to the showers. Was Jeff involved at all with that guy?

[Dave Smith]

Not. Not that I'm aware of. He was.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

I mean, do you see where I'm going?

[Dave Smith]

Right. Yeah, it was.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

You haven't had any type of relationship, type involvement?

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

No, sir.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

With Jeff?

[Dave Smith]

Almost.

[Jordan Sillers]

Agents Goodman and Williamson returned to this line of questioning several times throughout the interview. It might seem awkward or insensitive, but it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. Neither 30 something man seemed to have a steady girlfriend and a secret homosexual relationship would be exactly the kind of fraught, potentially explosive situation that could lead to a violent disagreement.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Let me ask you something. I want you to be straight up with me. He's gay, isn't he?

[Dave Smith]

I have no idea.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Is he a homosexual?

[Dave Smith]

I have no idea.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

I mean, I don't hold that against anybody.

[Dave Smith]

I'm just saying remaining in movies against me, so I don't know. He's never talked about being with another guy.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Let me ask you this. And it's just, you know, we have to ask all kind of questions, but.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

You Know.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Are you a homosexual?

[Dave Smith]

No, sir, I'm not. I'm not going to judge somebody for doing it.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Have you ever been physically involved with Jeff?

[Dave Smith]

No, I have never been physically involved with a guy.

[Jordan Sillers]

Dave sticks to his guns as the interview progresses, but it's clear the agents are baffled. It's hard to imagine a stranger finding Jeff in the woods and stabbing him to death. But the only person who knew the victim is adamant that he didn't kill his friend, and he doesn't know who did.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Man's lost. Who in the hell would kill him?

[Dave Smith]

I have no idea.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Think about it. Put yourself in our shoes. I mean, we're just trying to find out what happened, right? I mean, last time I checked, there weren't any wild men down there.

[Jordan Sillers]

They speculate that maybe someone killed Jeff as part of a robbery. But none of Jeff's hunting gear appeared to have been stolen, including his rifle, and he still had his wallet in his pocket.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Who is gonna hunt somebody in the woods, especially down there? That's some thick. He's a grown man, and he got lost. Who is going to be in those woods?

[Dave Smith]

Who.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Who would.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

Who would be in those woods that would do something like that?

[Dave Smith]

See, I have no idea.

[Agent Tony Williamson]

The person that killed him knew him. Isn't that right? And that person is you?

[Dave Smith]

No, sir, I did not kill him. I do not know anything about it.

[Jordan Sillers]

The agents really give Dave the third degree in this interview. And if he's innocent, it's hard not to feel sorry for the guy. He just lost his friend, and he doesn't have a lawyer in the room. His camper and truck have been searched, and his property has been seized as part of a homicide investigation. But as Agent Goodman told me, while Dave didn't do anything that made him look overly suspicious, they had to take a hard look to make sure he was telling the truth.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

You know, he is the most connected person to Mr. Gebhart. Obviously not immediately aware of what true nature of their relationship is, because neither person was actually from the area. No one in the area knew them. They were visiting specifically for this hunt. You know, so we really didn't have that much to go off, aside from, you know, those initial contacts with. With Mr. Smith. There may be some interviews that we conducted that may seem a little bit, you know, adversarial because we're trying to get a reaction and trying to get an understanding of what somebody's stance is on a certain topic or, you know, whether they may or may not have been involved or whether, you know, there was anything tumultuous that may have gone on that's, you know, under the surface that nobody's aware of. So, I mean, all of those things may have come up here and there, you know, even in interactions with Mr. Smith, but it was more so to try to get to the truth.

[Jordan Sillers]

The truth in this case turned out to be strange, stranger than either of the agents anticipated. What started as a homicide investigation morphed into something more perplexing and difficult to explain than a lover's quarrel or a robbery gone wrong. As Agent Goodman and others followed the evidence, it led them to the fringes of psychology, the Roman Catholic Church, and what Sergeant Garthright called the death hunt. That's next on blood trails.

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[Jordan Sillers]

Part 3 the crime scene with Dave sticking to his story and no other likely suspects, GBI investigators turned to the physical evidence they had gathered thus far. But if they thought it was hard to explain how Jeff met a murderer in the woods, they struggled even more to account for what they found at the crime scene.

[Charlotte Perdue]

It just, it. It defied forensic sense.

[Jordan Sillers]

That's Charla Perdue, a forensic scientist with Florida State University. She reviewed Jeff's case for an independent organization that takes a second look at cold cases. She told me it was easy to see Jeff's trail through the still damp lake bed. But investigators couldn't find signs of anyone other than Jeff.

[Charlotte Perdue]

There was an area that was all very marshy, and you could see all of his footprints. And then you saw where he, like, threw down his rifle, he threw down his flashlight. So he's basically leaving like a little mini trail. There was a water bottle, but there was only his footprint.

[Jordan Sillers]

Detectives confirmed that the boot prints on the damp ground matched Jeff's, but they didn't find anyone else's. The scene also didn't match what you'd expect to see after a knife fight.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Mr. Gebhart himself was a fairly large man. If you take your average person that's really in a struggle, in a fight, the scene is going to look brutal. Normally, if it's going to be like a sharp force instrument that's being used, you're going to have blood kind of, I guess, for lack of better terms, it's going to be everywhere. And in this instance, there was not that initially you really couldn't even tell what had happened until you began to peel back some of the layers that Mr. Gebhart was wearing.

[Jordan Sillers]

The only blood at the crime scene was pooled directly under Jeff's torso. But even this gave investigators pause.

[Charlotte Perdue]

All the blood ran backward, so you can tell that he was laying down at the time. So someone would have literally had to be on top of him if they did it. He had no drugs or anything in his system, so he would have been laying completely still and not fighting, which would have been very unusual.

[Jordan Sillers]

This theory that Jeff was lying still as he was being stabbed was supported by another strange fact. Jeff didn't appear to have any defensive wounds anywhere on his body.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Well, normally if there's a physical altercation, you're going to have some type of defensive wounds. So if somebody is attacking another person with a knife, normally the person being attacked may put up their forearms or their hands in front of them to try to block the knife. They may reach for the knife and, you know, depending on how they might be reaching or they're strong or weak hand, you might find some wounds on the hands, on the forearms. There were no real defensive wounds that were noted. I believe there might have been a small cut like in the webbing of his hand, but it's not abnormal for somebody that carries a knife, you know, to have that type of cut. And I don't think it was anything that I would really categorize, especially based on the overall scene, as a defensive wound.

[Jordan Sillers]

The wound on his hand also appeared to be older, and investigators theorized it was was likely sustained during his daily tasks at the meat processor. He also had some superficial abrasions on his neck, but these were light enough that they could be explained by the rifle sling or the climbing harness he was wearing. Further testing also confirmed the investigators theory about that folding Kershaw knife found underneath his body.

[Charlotte Perdue]

They also did DNA tests on the knife that was found next to his body, and it was only his DNA. They also did DNA testing on all the knives that were found in the camper, and they determined that they did not have any, I guess, that were specific to human. So the blood type was obviously an animal of some sort.

[Jordan Sillers]

Whoever had done this to Jeff had left absolutely no trace of their presence. They had murdered the hunter without leaving blood on the knife, footprints in the ground, or belongings in the dirt. It was like one of those Sherlock Holmes cases where the perpetrator kills someone in a locked room, room without windows. It just didn't make any sense. Investigators wondered whether he'd been killed somewhere else and then dragged to the spot where he was found. But as any hunter knows who's dragged a dead animal through the woods, moving a body would have left impressions in the grass and dirt. None of the tall grass around Jeff's body had been disturbed apart from where he himself had walked in. And as I just mentioned, there wasn't any blood on the grass except right underneath Jeff's body. What's more, Jeff himself was 6 foot 2, 239 pounds. It would have taken an incredibly strong person to drag Jeff's body any distance at all. And there weren't any wheel marks at the scene either.

[Charlotte Perdue]

And there was no other indication that this grass had been mushed down anywhere else. Then it was like, well, maybe he was carried in. Well, that would have been very difficult because it was more than a half a mile into the woods, so that would have been a long way to carry him.

[Jordan Sillers]

None of this made any sense. And as you heard in Dave's interview with the gbi, investigators continued to treat Jeff's death as a homicide. But that started to change when the medical examiner sent his official autopsy report.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

I would say that everything that really began to fall into place would have been post autopsy, initially on the front end. You look at the number and, you know, they may make you think this person was involved in something horrific. Surely there had to be some type of, you know, violent interaction between one person and another. But once the medical examiner began to examine the wounds, the majority of them were actually fairly superficial, barely piercing, you know, the upper layers of skin and definitely nothing that would be fatal.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff had been stabbed 18 times, but many of those wounds hadn't gone much past the skin. This wasn't obvious to the death investigator on the scene, but the more thorough autopsy by the medical examiner in this case, a doctor named Daniel Brown, noted that only three of the wounds had been deep enough to reach his heart. What's more, all were angled left to right. If you're looking at his body, body.

[Charlotte Perdue]

From the front, if someone is stabbing someone, you're going to be thrashing about, so your stabs will be all at different angles. His were all at one particular angle.

[Jordan Sillers]

I reviewed some of the crime scene photos with Sharla, and she pointed out how Jeff's Right hand was covered in blood while his left hand was clean.

[Charlotte Perdue]

If you see here, this right hand is all bloody. This one is not. And there's even blood, like, embedded in. In the other crime scene photos. They have close up of his hand, and you can see the blood all the way down under his fingernails. While this hand is clean, there is.

[Jordan Sillers]

No reason why if Jeff was attacked, his right hand would be bloody while his left hand wouldn't be. The wounds themselves were also fairly clean, meaning it appeared like the knife slipped in and out without being jostled around. This would have been extremely unusual if Jeff had been stabbed by an assassination assailant. In that case, you can imagine him moving around to try to avoid being stabbed and the knife causing wider, more jagged cuts in his body. But these wounds weren't much wider than that Kershaw knife. There was one wound in his abdomen, but all the other wounds were clustered together on his chest.

[Charlotte Perdue]

They're all in an area that he could reach. They're all right handed, which Jeff was right handed, which we confirmed with his brother, that he was right handed.

[Jordan Sillers]

Taking all this evidence together, the blood on Jeff's hand, the location and angle of the stab wounds, and the absence of another person at the scene, investigators could only reach one conclusion. Jeff hadn't been murdered. He died by suicide. Part 4 doubts when the GBI announced their findings, you can imagine the reaction from the general public, not to mention Jeff's family.

[Russell Cornell]

I don't believe it was suicide in any way, shape or form.

[Jordan Sillers]

That's Russell Cornell. Russell didn't know Jeff personally, but he knows Jeff's family. And he's a member of the same Roman Catholic fraternity Jeff belonged to.

[Russell Cornell]

When a guy that has a loaded rifle toting it through the woods, are you actually gonna pull out your knife and kill yourself? With a knife, isn't it easier just to put a bullet through yourself?

[Jordan Sillers]

I've heard similar objections from pretty much everyone I've told about this case. Most people have been impacted by suicide in one way or another, but no one has ever heard of something like this. Why, as Russell asked, would someone stab themselves 18 times with a folding knife when they were carrying a rifle? It's a gruesome question, but it must be asked. Sharla has at least the beginnings of an explanation. And I should point out here that she was in no way connected to the GBI or. Or the original investigation. Families of victims ask the organization she works for to review cases if they believe law enforcement came to the wrong conclusion. That's what happened in this situation. So if anything, Sharla would have a bias against what the GBI determined. But she largely agrees. And she has one potential explanation.

[Charlotte Perdue]

Jeff was pretty religious and from the Catholic faith. He was very active in his church. He was a member of the Knights of Columbus, so he was practicing. And one of the suggestions was that maybe he possibly was trying to avoid it looking like a suicide.

[Jordan Sillers]

The Roman Catholic Church has long taught that suicide is a mortal sin. There are nuances to this, but I think I'm on safe ground when I say that if you're a Catholic and you commit suicide, if you're in serious danger of going to hell. The Church has softened this stance in recent decades, but many still hear stories about the Church denying Catholic burials to those who die by suicide. Russell, who is also Catholic, confirmed that the entire Gebhart family is devout, which is one of the reasons he doesn't believe Jeff killed himself.

[Russell Cornell]

I just don't believe a man would go on a hunting trip the way out there, especially a Catholic man, because, yes, there are some that have committed suicide, but that's one big thing that is a mortal sin to a Catholic. So most Catholics won't take their own life. I mean, that's my belief, and that's my feeling, and I'm. If you're close with God, why would you want to take your own life?

[Jordan Sillers]

But what if Jeff was mentally distressed and committed to ending his life? He wouldn't want his parents to be worried about the eternal state of his soul, and he'd want them to give him a proper Catholic burial. If he killed himself in a way that made it look like a homicide, he might save his parents that pain and give them hope that they'd see him again in the afterlife. This might also explain why Jeff called Dave for help getting out of the woods. If his plan was to make his death look like a homicide, a call for help just a few minutes prior would definitely move investigators in that direction. As Sharla noted in her report, the first time Jeff got lost may have actually been an initial attempt at suicide.

[Charlotte Perdue]

Getting lost might have been an attempt, or thinking he was going to, but then he changed his mind. For whatever reason.

[Jordan Sillers]

I ran this theory past Russell, and let's just say he wasn't impressed.

[Russell Cornell]

That's someone else's theory, someone else's opinion. I don't. I don't think. I mean, I just can't see someone doing that. Really, I can't.

[Jordan Sillers]

I also consulted Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky, a forensic psychologist who you may Remember from episode three of this season. You'll hear more from him later in the episode. But he thought this plan sounded a little too elaborate for someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

In most of the cases that I've had where suicides occurred, people are at the point where living is so unbearable that they're going to take their own life. And they don't tailor their plan around how it will affect loved ones. They just carry it out. However, there are a few cases I've had. For example, this is a bit graphic, but I've seen a couple of cases over the years where people were going to take their life with a firearm and they decided to shoot themselves in the heart rather than in the face because they were thinking about a funeral. But that's as far as I seen it taken in my experience. Experience when people make that plan to take their own life, what you're talking about, trying to make it look like a homicide so that your parents won't be upset with you for taking your own life. That is pretty detailed and pretty sophisticated. And I would have a hard time accepting that that theory.

[Jordan Sillers]

Russell also isn't sure why. Even if Charlotte is right and Jeff used a knife to stage a homicide and he would stab himself 18 times.

[Russell Cornell]

Now I can't see him doing stabbing himself, I mean that many times. This is just a way. I really don't believe there's a possible way, human, possible way that you could kill yourself like that.

[Jordan Sillers]

This is another objection I've heard quite a bit. It seems like if for some reason you want to commit suicide with a knife while you're carrying a firearm, you try to get it over with. Jeff was a hunter. He worked in a meat processing facility. He was comfortable handling a knife and he knew how to kill something quickly. Why would he cause himself so much pain before finally hitting his heart? There is no great answer to this question, but we can glean some insight from the 2% of suicide victims who take their lives with a knife. It's a very uncommon way to kill yourself, but it does happen.

[Charlotte Perdue]

When someone is stabbing themselves, there's what we call hesitation marks. So many of the stabs are almost superficial. They call that like the testing. What can I tolerate? That's not unusual either, to see those, what they call the hesitation marks, where they are just kind of trying to figure out what can I tolerate? So the number isn't really strange.

[Jordan Sillers]

Charlotte explained that while three of the wounds were deep enough to pierce the heart, only one did enough damage to cause immediate death. The other two were what Sharla described as a nick. And I should point out here that we're not just relying on the original medical examiner's opinion. Sharla's team sent the photographs and information to three other doctors, and they all reached the same conclusion. As difficult as it was to believe, the crime scene and autopsy pointed to suicide. And that conclusion was even more appealing given the lack of probable suspects. Investigators spoke to Jeff's family and friends, and none of them reported Jeff having any enemies. And even if he did, that enemy would have had to know where he was hunting, find him in the woods, and stab him to death without leaving a single trace. One of those friends also confirmed to Agent Goodman that Jeff owned a folding Kershaw knife. No one else at the campground rose to suspicion, and Dave was also eliminated from contention. Dave had voicemails and call logs to prove he'd spoken to Jeff around 8:30pm and from that time forward, he was in the company of other hunters who'd helped him look for his friend.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Based on our understanding of when the calls began to be made and with interviews of people that would have been located at Holiday park during that time frame after he had gone missing, there were people that were there camping and hunting and or fishing themselves that actually wanted to join in the search for Mr. Gephardt, and that actually did to try to help locate him. So it's my understanding very early on, like when some of those calls came in, yeah, he's going to be in the company of other people there at the campground.

[Charlotte Perdue]

And we had, you know, a very accurate timeline because of the other hunters that also corroborated David's story that Jeff was calling on the phone, that he was very panicked, and that he kept saying he was lost.

[Jordan Sillers]

What's more, they weren't able to find his blood anywhere on Jeff's body or Jeff's blood anywhere on Dave's clothes. They searched his truck and his camper, confiscated his knives and equipment, and didn't find any reason to believe that Dave had killed his hunting buddy.

[Charlotte Perdue]

So these are the footprints that were found at the scene. But you can see this is David's boot, and it clearly does not match. And these were the only boot prints that were found at the scene. They also did not match to any of the boots that were in the camper because they also had additional pairs of shoes in the camper.

[Jordan Sillers]

With no suspects and a good deal of evidence pointing to suicide, investigators sent the case file to the Toombs Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, which convened a grand jury in August of 2013. They issued a decision agreeing with the GBI and the medical examiner. Jeff's death was ruled a suicide, and the case has been officially closed ever since. I don't know how Jeff's immediate family feels today. His brother Jason was open to being interviewed, but after a few emails back and forth, stopped responding to my messages. But I do know the family was at one point doubtful of the GBI's conclusion because they asked Sharla and her team to review the case in 2018.

[Charlotte Perdue]

I have not spoken to Jason since we gave our report. You know, we didn't find the conclusion that he. The family wanted.

[Jordan Sillers]

However, the family feels these days, it's safe to say that Russell isn't satisfied.

[Russell Cornell]

If it was my son, I'd want to know who killed him. Something like that, bizarre death, there's no way I'm gonna accept it. Well, he went out there with a real sharp buck knife, and he decided to cut himself all up and kill himself. Somebody is guilty of this crime that they've done to this man, Jeff, and it needs to be opened. It needs to be a case that is looked after. And until it is solved, whether you.

[Jordan Sillers]

Side with Russell or the GBI is up to you. But there's still one more question to ask, and it might be the most important question of all. Part 5 the darkness of the Mind. It would be easier, though no less tragic, if investigators determined that Jeff had a secret mental health issue. If he'd shown signs of depression or had some unresolved trauma in his past, maybe we could square away his actions and tie them up in a tidy box, but we can't.

[Charlotte Perdue]

No, he didn't have any mental health problems that we're aware of.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

I don't recall anyone ever communicating any potential cause as far as what may have led to Mr. Gebhart wanting to take his own life. So I would say no in that instance. I don't recall anyone saying anything that would correlate him to, you know, be prone to being suicidal, even just a.

[Jordan Sillers]

Few hours after the incident. Dave reiterated this in his interview with agents Goodman and Williamson.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

Do you think Jeff would want to hurt himself?

[Dave Smith]

Not that I know of. He never mentioned anything to me about hurting himself. But he was the type of person that would help anybody if they needed help. But I don't. I don't think he would hurt himself.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

You haven't seen any letters, notes? He didn't leave anything behind at the camp site.

[Jordan Sillers]

The Jason foundation reports that one in five individuals do not show any signs of depression before committing suicide. So it's possible Jeff was depressed and unstable and was able to hide it. Sharla also points out that even though the Gebharts never admitted their son had mental health issues, they may have been hiding or even repressing Jeff's troubled mind.

[Charlotte Perdue]

One of the things that we talk about in the report is, and we've seen this with other cold cases that we've done, is we've had people that have called and said, oh, my gosh, my son has killed himself. And then two months later, they're like, there's no way he would have killed himself. You're like, well, you're. You even told us so at some point you thought he might, because that's exactly what you said. And one of the things that the family kept saying was that he had an accident and they didn't start asking, well, who killed him or what happened or anything like that. So that was also part of what we thought might be unconscious things that people don't think about, that maybe he did have some issues that he had expressed.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff's silence about his mental health issues isn't proof that he didn't kill himself, but the way he did so suggests a level of emotional distress that would have been tough to hide.

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

The amount of pain that's occurring. With stabbing yourself 17 times, you would have to be very motivated to take your own life. In other words, sometimes you'll see suicide attempts with stabbing where they stab themselves once, but it becomes overwhelming and they sort of back out of it halfway through the attempt. That's not that uncommon.

[Jordan Sillers]

That's Dr. Kalchevsky again. He says 17 stab wounds because I misstated the number when I spoke to him. The real number is 18, as per Sharlow's report. Dr. Kalchevsky works in a group psychology practice, so he hears about cases from the other doctors in his office as well as his own. He told me it's extremely uncommon for someone to commit suicide without showing any warning signs.

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

There's always something there once you dig a little bit below the surface. They interview people in the workplace, co workers. We had no idea. We had no idea. But usually people that are closer. When you dig a little deeper, you'll find some things that would be consistent with creating a plan and carrying it out to take your own life.

[Jordan Sillers]

Jeff's decision to take his life in such an inaccessible area is also inconsistent with suicide.

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

A lot of times when people make this plan to carry out taking their own life and they want to be Found a lot of them. Do they remain in a place where it's going to be easy to find them? Not wandering off into the woods carrying all your stuff? So so many things to me are contraintuitive to a person planning and carrying out a suicide that it. It just makes me ask so many more questions rather than being able to narrow in on one theory, as most likely. I'll tell you what, it's one of the oddest. If it was a suicide, it's one of the oddest suicides I've ever seen or heard of, for sure.

[Jordan Sillers]

Matt Garthright, one of the first game wardens on the scene, also mentioned a theory that makes a brief appearance in Sharla's report. Maybe rather than hatching an elaborate plan, plan to kill himself and make it look like a homicide. Jeff had some kind of mental break in the woods.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

The only, I guess you can call it a rumor that I heard was he was very scared of the dark and spiders. So being lost in the woods, if he did have that fear, could have resulted in him doing something that he would not usually have done. And that's my theory, of course. You know, he was lost in a thick grass area, it was dark, and that may have led to his decisions.

[Jordan Sillers]

It's tough to predict how someone will respond to extreme stress or fear. Dave reported that his friend sounded almost hysterical on the phone, so it's possible he was having some kind of episode. But while Dr. Kalchevi acknowledges that people can have psychotic breaks, that mental instability doesn't come out of nowhere.

[Dr. Jeff Kalchevsky]

You just don't walk through the woods and then 10 minutes later have a psychotic break and kill yourself. If you were going to have a psychotic break, there would be evidence before that. The second thing is the idea that someone has a psychotic break and immediately kills themselves in an elaborate way doesn't fit either. Because if you're talking about a psychotic break where you just kind of lose it and you kill yourself, now we're talking about an impulse of act. Well, if this indeed was a suicide, this was definitely not impulsive. 17 stab wounds, so that doesn't jive either. I think there's a lot of missing information here. And again, when I mentioned earlier, the idea of a psychological autopsy would be something very important in this case, if we really want to understand what happened. Trying to understand a person's frame of mind at the time of the incident and was from gathering all that data and all that information, was he in a frame of mind where he could have carried out taking his own life. And if we don't see that, then again, just because the wounds aren't consistent with what you normally see in a homicide doesn't mean a homicide did not occur.

[Jordan Sillers]

Of course, there is one other theory, if you can call it that, more like a tidbit of information, and you can do with it what you will. When I had finished asking Sergeant Garthright my list of questions, I asked if there was anything else he wanted to cover. Here's what he said.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

This particular hunt happens every year, and for several years, there's been a death on this hunt. So whether it be a heart attack or, you know, this situation here. So it was a few years there that this hunt was kind of strange, really.

[Jordan Sillers]

So on this wma, on this particular hunt, this early rifle hunt, people passed away for how many years in a row do you think?

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

I want to say three.

[Jordan Sillers]

And were the others also suspicious or mysterious or. You mentioned a heart attack.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

They were just. They were natural health issues. Like a heart attack.

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[Jordan Sillers]

That must have been weird for you to be called out there again, several years, like, what's going on with this hunt?

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

That's. That's exactly what we were thinking. Well, what's up with this hunt? You know, I kind of nicknamed the death hunt. But for the last couple years now, we hadn't had any issues. It stopped. But, yeah, there was just a couple years there that, you know, somebody dragging a deer out die of a heart attack or. Or going to a stand and, you know, had a heart attack. So it was.

[Jordan Sillers]

Yeah, that's. That's very strange.

[Sergeant Matt Garthright]

That's very strange.

[Jordan Sillers]

Part six. No good answers. Agent Goodman almost didn't talk to me about this case. He believes, without question, that Jeff committed suicide, and he doesn't want to cause the geb hearts more pain and confusion by casting doubt on that conclusion. Something true crime podcasts are pretty much always going to do.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

I, you know, always still think about them. I think about the time that I met with his father, and being a father myself, I could only, you know, begin to imagine what that's like having to deal with. So I would just want it to be said, you know, I always still think about the family, and, you know, I always want to be respectful. Anytime, you know, I've spoken about this to their feelings on the situation.

[Jordan Sillers]

I share that priority. But the fact is, this isn't a case that's ever going to feel closed. It's possible the GBI missed something or is hiding something, but that's not really what I'm talking about. Even if we acknowledge that Jeff stabbed himself 18 times, we still don't know why. We can speculate, but we'll never know for sure. And that's really the grit that gets stuck in the craw of this story. It's hard enough to explain why a young man would kill himself. It's another thing entirely to explain why he would do it with a pocket knife on a hunt after calling his friend for help and without showing any signs of depression. There's something we don't understand about this case and right now we don't have any good answers.

[Special Agent Wendell Goodman]

The open endedness of it. It can be a little anticlimactic and you never get that, that direct answer, you know, aside from physical evidence. And physical evidence isn't a talking person or the words of the person. And I think everybody just wants some form of resolve. And in these types of cases you don't always get it.

[Charlotte Perdue]

Like you said, it's all speculative. And one of the things we say in the report is that the only person who really knows the answers is the one person who can't answer them.

[Jordan Sillers]

Foreign thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. I want to encourage you, like we said at the top, to get help if you're feeling depressed or having thoughts of suicide. Hunters and anglers are often loners. We're independent and self sufficient but that sometimes means we don't like asking for help. Don't let the fear of embarrassment or vulnerability keep you from reaching out. You can call the Mental health crisis hotline at 988-to speak with a counselor. It's free and confidential and they're trained to talk about whatever you might be facing. As always, you can visit themateer.com bloodtrails to check out images related to this case. You can also send us an [e-mail] if you have feedback on this episode or know about another case you think we should cover. Big thanks to Special Agent Wendell Goodman, Charlotte Perdue, Russell Cornell and Dr. Jeff Kalchefsky. See you next time. Stay safe out there.

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