Much is made of the supernatural references in True Detective, especially True Detective Night Country, whose ‘ghost’ of Rust Cohle’s father was essential for locating the bodies of the missing scientists (and the trailer that gives the spoiler of a ‘night walker’ ). However, there are no less than three real facts that Issa López used to create her plot in Ennis, Alaska. Do you know each?

The murder of Annie Le… or K?

As we saw, the beef between Navarro (Kali Reis) and Danvers (Jodie Foster) began years earlier, when a local activist – Anne K – was brutally murdered. The culprit escaped and the two detectives disagreed about what and how happened to the young woman. With the disappearance of the scientists, they saw that there was a connection. Anne dated one of the men from the Tsalal Laboratory, curiously named Raymond Clark. And we will see the lack of subtlety.

The murders of young local Indian women are the subject of many articles, documentaries, and films set in Alaska, but the Anne who inspired the showrunner was miles away. Issa took it as a basis. the murder of Yale student Annie Marie Thu Le, which took place in 2009. Annie was killed while working on the university’s campus in Connecticut. Annie was just 24 years old and completing her doctorate in the Department of Pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine when she was last seen alive. In just 5 days she was going to get married, but she was found dead inside the building.

What confused the police at the time is that she was first missing and the footage showed her entering the building but never leaving. However, she had left her purse, cell phone, credit cards and money in her laboratory office and no one could find her: inside or outside the university. Bloody clothes had already been found above the roof of the building, which is monitored by around 75 security cameras, but there was no sign of Annie or who killed her. On Sunday, September 13, authorities discovered her body inside the wall of a laboratory in the basement where animals that are used for experiments and research are housed. Since it was impossible to get in and out without an identification card, the suspects had to be students, staff, or teachers.

Annie was strangled and days later police arrested laboratory technician Raymond J. Clark III, who admitted guilt and was sentenced to 44 years in prison.

In the series, Anne K is not a student at an Ivy League school and was stabbed 32 times, with her tongue being cut out. We just found out that she was dating the missing scientist Raymond Clark. Coincidence?

Russian trekkers are scared and frozen

The Tsalal scientists were found naked, terrified, frozen, and huddled far from the laboratory. The clue to what made them flee may lie in the real case of 1959 known as “Dyatlov Pass” in which nine Soviet trekkers died in the north of the Ural Mountains in circumstances that are still uncertain.

The group was experienced and led by Igor Dyatlov, having camped on the eastern slopes of Kholat Syakhl. During the night, something caused them to leave the tent and flee the camp, inadequately dressed for the heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures. The bodies were discovered frozen and did not help to elucidate the mystery. Six died from hypothermia, three from physical trauma, one of them with major damage to the skull, and two had severe chest trauma, with a fourth with a small crack in the skull as well.

The position of the bodies also confused Soviet authorities: four bodies were found lying in running water in a stream, three of them with damaged tissue, no eyes, one was missing a tongue and another had no eyebrows. It was only in 2019 that a new investigation began to consider that an avalanche led them to leave the camp and as a result, they died of hypothermia. There are still those who doubt the conclusion.

Disappearance on the high seas

In 1872, the vessel Mary Celeste was found adrift and abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean, near the Azores islands. She was seaworthy, provisioned, with partial sail, but without a lifeboat or crew. All her belongings were intact, but there was no soul to explain what happened. The last entry in the logbook was dated ten days before the ship was found and did not mention anything strange.

Authorities began to consider various possibilities of crime, from riots to pirate attacks or even fraud. None of them were proven so bizarre theories took place: was it a storm, waterspouts, a giant squid attack, or even something supernatural? Nobody knows.

With this information, can we decipher what happened to the scientists in True Detective? The clue is in the phrase “she was awake”.

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