Behind the Yellow Tape: On the Road With Some of America's Hardest Working Crime Scene Investigators Read Online Free PDF Page B

the bottom of the ravines. But that’s not the only thing disposed of on the mountain. Trash pits dot the vast landscape, filled to the brim with all sorts of interesting items: refrigerators, old toys, couches, cribs, mattresses, box springs—you name it and it’s there. Coincidentally, on the day Matt and Jeff were searching for Kelly, they happened upon the still-smoldering remains of a box spring, completely charred down to the metal springs. They had noted previously that Blair had recently removed the camper shell from his truck, as if to haul something large. Maybe he’d hauled off that bed he claimed to have never had? One year later, we could still see the remains of the box spring farther down in the trash heap.
    We all climbed back into our ATVs, moving toward our final destination—the site where Kelly Sellers had been found. By now, more than four hours into our mountain adventure, our asses were beginning to ache. Jeff, an avid four-wheeler enthusiast, told us that he’s raced around trails for eight hours or so, only to go home with his kidneys sore and pissing blood. Matt and Jeff ran all over the mountain for days. It might sound like fun, but it’s not. It will absolutely wear you out.

    Co-author Amy Welch looking at the remains of a burned mattress.
HALLCOX & WELCH, LLC
     
    With nothing more tangible to go on, they started their search for Kelly from the visible truck tracks leading away from Blair’s house. Unfortunately, those tracks soon disappeared, mingling with the thousands of other hunting tracks that led in the same direction. At one point, they even brought Humphries on the trail with them, hoping he could show them where he and Blair had gone four-wheeling, thinking it might lead to where Kelly was buried. But after he led them all over the woods on tons of trails—and, for all they knew, on a wild-goose chase—they took him back and continued the search on their own. After hours and hours of searching, the two reluctantly stopped for the night, getting the only real sleep they had had in nearly seventy-two hours.
    The next morning, a call came in to the sheriff’s department with a potential lead, claiming that someone had seen Kelly in a Knoxville homeless shelter thirty miles away. Even though they knew it was probably erroneous, Detective Matt Cubberley had to check it out. Ultimately, as expected, a dead end, it made for a late start in the day’s search for Kelly. Once they finally got back to the mountain, Detective Jeff McCarter, who had been all over the mountain hunting and four-wheeling numerous times before, decided to take a trail he was familiar with. By sheer happenstance, while on that trail they ran across another set of tracks that looked similar to those left around Blair’s house. They followed the tracks until they reached a curve in the road that had a big dead tree lying across it, preventing them from going forward. They could tell by the tracks that a truck had stopped and made hesitation marks near the tree, but with nightfall looming and rain beginning to beat down on them, they were forced into another tough decision and had to leave the mountain while they still could. The paths were becoming treacherous as the mountain mud began to slide down the trails. And nighttime on the mountain is completely dark, with no city lights around. Finding Kelly in these conditions would be impossible. They decided that they would pick up the trail again in the morning, beginning their search at this spot.
    With each passing day, Kelly’s mother had become more and more frustrated that her little girl had not been found. She demanded to be let out on the mountain to help with the search. But with Blair out there, still running around armed and considered very dangerous, for her own safety they just couldn’t let her. Despite these warnings, however, she and two of Kelly’s uncles threw caution to the wind and decided to take their chances and go out to look for Kelly