The bodies of two sisters and a teenager were discovered in “mummified” conditions in a secluded Colorado campsite earlier this month, reports The Washington Post.
According to Trevala Jara (the stepsister), the decision to “live off the grid” came to Rebecca Vance,42, because of how her fears have “intensified” due to the state of the world. Her sister Christine Vance, 41, and the body of Rebecca’s 14-year-old son have also been identified.
“She didn’t like the way the world was going, and she thought it would be better if she and her son and Christine were alone, away from everybody,” Jara, 39, told The Washington Post. “She didn’t want the world’s influences to get to them. She really thought she was protecting her family.”
Rebecca didn’t say much to her family or friends as to where they were headed. Jara requested to be kept in the loop via postcards reports The New York Times. At first, Rebecca and her son were initially going, but according to Jara, Christine joined “because she thought that if she was with them, they had a better chance of surviving.”
According to the Colorado Sun,” they started camping in July 2022, a year before a hiker had found one of the bodies on July 9, about 1,000 feet from a site near the Gold Creek Campground, northeast of Gunnison.”
“It was a significantly harsh winter for us this year, and it always is here,” Gunnison County Coroner Michael Barnes said to the Colorado Sun, “but we did have more snow than we have had in the past couple of winters.”
Although the three bodies were partially mummified, they could still gather blood specimens for toxicology testing. Barnes suggests that “malnutrition and exposure to the elements” at the high altitude throughout the winter months likely contributed to their deaths.
