Archie Wood

> *"A monster from his first breath to his last. That's all I can really say."* **— Sheriff Michael Vincenti of Atkins County**
>
>

## Biographical information

### Alias(es)

The *Tri-County Butcher* (before 1989)
The *Lakeview Skinner* (after 1989)

## Personal information

### Parents

Robert Wood (father), Ellie Samson (mother)

### Religious affiliation

**Publicly:** Roman Catholic
**Secretly:**  Bishops of the Styx

**Archie Wood** (born **Archer Nathaniel Wood**, also known later as the **Lakeview Skinner**) was a notable serial killer, rapist, and purported member of a Satanic cult known as the Bishops of the Styx. Having also been known as the perpetrator of the 1989 "Hell's Staircase" Incident, Archie became eponymous with the resurgence of Satanic panics across the United States in the early 1990s, and gave Atkins County a reputation as the stalking ground of an iconic serial killer. His crimes were ultimately the boiling point for years of mental trauma that he had went through following an official FBI investigation - however, the Preternatural Investigation Branch also unearthed his solicitation of the abnormal and the true reason behind his murder-suicide in 1989.

By the time of *Welcome to Cedarcrest,* Archie has been dead for nearly a decade. Nevertheless, his crimes still hold significant sway over the minds of many in Atkins County. The most heinous and disturbing of his motives have been hidden from the public by the PIB, and as a result his public image is nothing more than a deranged Satanic serial killer. However, the influences of his deeds and his involvement with the Bishops of the Styx has led to an increase in anomalous activity within the county - and as a result set in the motion the plot of the story.

## Early life

Archie was born to Robert and Elizabeth "Ellie" Samson on the 3rd of February, 1950, in Albany, New York - his birth was concurrent with the death of his mother due to her anemia being compounded alongside a complicated delivery. The death of Ellie was levied entirely onto Archie by his father, who was already previously stewed deep in an alcoholic addiction following his service in the Second World War over fifteen years prior. After her death, her memory was ingrained into Archie's mind not as a lost mother, but instead as a figure he was better off without by Robert.

Being raised by a single and abusive father, Archie quickly grew accustomed to violence and anger as being something concurrent to life itself, thus teaching him at a young age to become impulsive, emotionally uncontrollable around others, and to develop a penchant for inflicting pain. During his adolescent years, Archie grew accustomed to torturing the animals kept on his father's farm in Atkins County while Robert was away. Being caught red-handed sometime in 1966 violating one of the dairy cows on the farm with a cattle prod by his own father, he was forced out and sent to live with his grandmother, Annabelle, in the township of Cedarcrest.

Interviews with locals that frequented Cedarcrest's respective Catholic church recall a particular incident that involved Archie getting into an altercation with one of the younger churchgoers following Sunday services in 1967, leading to his brief detainment before having been letting go after the victim decided not to press any charges on the minor.

### Life with Annabelle and imprisonment

After this incident in 1967, Archie dropped out of high school and lived entirely secluded on his grandmother's farm, only having the most basic of social contact with the outside world through ferrying goods to the local farmer's market on a seasonal basis. Not much is known about the man as he grew up from 1968 onward, but in 1981 he was arrested outside of Albany after entering a vicious argument that turned physical at a bar on the outskirts of the city. He was charged with second degree assault and was imprisoned with a sentence of four years until 1985; the FBI have subsequently concluded that his stay in the Albany County Corrections Facility was the time that Archie first came into contact with someone from the Bishops of the Styx. However, investigations into both the corrections officers and inmates serving within the prison during this time frame have not yielded any concrete leads as to who may have been the source of influence for Wood. Annabelle's death in 1984, however, seemed to be the spark for the powderkeg that was to come, as Archie now effectively had free reign in the property.

## First murders

### 1985 Longbay Reservoir case

Wood's first foray into spilling human blood began with the review of the **1985 Longbay Reservoir Case**, where the body of a 31 year old male was found on the shores of the Longbay Reservoir in northern Cedarcrest, hidden within a mess of reeds. The man, identified as sixty-four year old Gavin McDougall, was found repeatedly gouged at the abdomen to lower chest area and died as a result of subsequent exsanguination. Coroners also found an unknown symbol carved into the lower left side of McDougall's back, which did not match any known religious symbol.

Gavin McDougall was originally a resident of Burnettville, which is a hamlet situated north of the Lakeview Inn and Resort. He worked at the Reginald Horse Tracks as its sole administrator, and his disappearance from work on July 5th of that year seemed to coincide with the recovering of his body a month later on August 7th.

At this time, the Atkins County Sheriff's Office could not sufficiently compile a criminal profile of the potential offender, and in turn relegated the answer to the problem as a general county-wide warning about the crime. However, Wood's involvement with this murder was his first foray into collecting "blood-marks" as taught to him from his time in Albany County Corrections, and McDougall had simply served as the test-bed.

### 1985 disappearance of Lauren Castaneda

In late November of 1985, it was forwarded to the Atkins County Sheriff's Office from the New York City Police Department that a girl from New York City, Lauren Castaneda, had gone missing somewhere in Atkins County along the freeway of NY-143 while using a bus from Greyhound Lines inbound to Syracuse, which took such a highway as a detour after roads to Albany became blocked by snow. The bus had apparently stopped from intense snowstorms at the Texaco near Pinecreek, and an unknown man had broken into the vehicle armed with a pistol in accordance to driver and passenger testimonies. This man, whose face was hidden by a jacket hood and ski mask underneath, proceeded to drag Castaneda out of the bus at gunpoint before disappearing with her into the woods southwest of the Texaco gas station. Deputies responding to the situation arrived much later due to the snowstorm, and any trail that could have been left had been hidden by the snow and wind.

Wood being the perpetrator of Castaneda's disappearance was not uncovered until the FBI took possession of his journals following the 1989 incident. According to one of the journals, he abducted Castaneda as a practice for what would become his most grotesque modus operandi - skinning. She was brought north to the recently abandoned property of the Lakeview Inn & Resort, where she was dragged to a maintenance shed and "defiled" prior to being executed by a slit throat. After she died from exsanguination similar to McDougall, Wood used the slit throat as a beginning point for skinning the rest of her body below the neck, and directly carved into her lower left back muscles the same symbol found on McDougall's body months earlier.

Castaneda's body was never found, as Wood never specified in the journals where he put her remains. It is speculated, however, that her bones were among the many found in the shed or sprinkled throughout the Lakeview resort property after 1989.

## 1986 NY-143 and I-87 murders

### January: Catelyn Stewart and Joseph Claymore

On New Year's Day, a forty-two year old woman by the name of Catelyn Stewart was abducted from a rest stop along Interstate 87, near the junction with NY-143 in Ravena, New York. Witnesses say that she was being "carried" to a grey sedan stopped near the rest stop, which did not belong to Catelyn. Witnesses also confirm the presence of a man, later identified as thirty year old Joseph Claymore, who tried to intervene in the abduction by charging the unknown kidnapper with a tire iron retrieved from the trunk of Claymore's car. However, Claymore was shot and later died from his wounds that tore his aorta; the bullets had been fired from a 9mm caliber handgun.

Catelyn's body was not found outside of the counties of either Atkins and Albany; instead, she was discovered floating in the southerly portions of Schoharie Creek in Montgomery County. Her body was partially skinned with the exception of the skin on her legs and genital areas, and the coroner's inspection of the body revealed the same symbol that appeared on McDougall was carved into her lower back. When this was found by the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, their communication with the Atkins and Albany counties in addition to the New York State Police lead to the induction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the formation of a case surrounding a serial murderer.

### February: Jane Doe, FBI begins formal investigation

An unidentified women's corpse was found by a teenage couple deep within the southerly extent of Edward State Forest that laid north of route NY-143 in Atkins County during Valentine's Day, February 14th. The two teenagers, who traveled in the forest originally for "intimate relations", had been alarmed by the "stench of death" emanating from within. The boyfriend, Kyle Dawkins, ventured into the woods and told police that he had found "a girl hanging upside down by ropes between two trees... her guts spilling from her stomach to the floor". Although there is no direct evidence linking this specific crime to Wood (mainly due to a lack of the symbols seen in other killings), the ritualistic notations found in one of the books Wood possessed detailed a ritual that would open a *portal* to the unseen under the shadow of dying life - that being spilled blood and flesh.

The FBI officially took control of all cases related to the newfound "*Tri-County Butcher*" by this time, as the precedented rise in murders and kidnappings in the Atkins, Albany, and Montgomery counties were becoming concerning to the New York state government and federal law enforcement jurisdictions in the north. Evidence collected from the Catelyn Stewart murder showed that the corpse had been defiled in a similar manner to Castaneda, indicating necrophilic activity, and compounding this with the ritualistic overtones of the murders had prompted the FBI to begin considering that these cases were being either inspired by the rising Satanic Panic or were more deeper and sinister in origin.

### May: Close call with authorities

On May 3rd, the Atkins County Sheriff Office received a 911 call from a woman by the name of Sharlene O'Hannon, who dialed for police from somewhere on NY-143 between the townships of Cedarcrest and Longhampton. She screamed to the dispatcher regarding how her home had been broken into, her husband and son had been murdered, and how she had been kidnapped from her home in Longhampton. Deputies and state police immediately converged on her position and began a wide search of the entire NY-143 route, but did not find what she had mentioned - a hooded man with a ski mask wielding a handgun, in addition to *another* dark figure that had loomed in the treeline as the former escaped.

Sharlene's escape involved fleeing from the trunk that she had been forced into and rolling along the road, to which the abducter had sped off to avoid being seen. However, as she stumbled on the empty road for help while dialing for 911 on the phone she still had, Sharlene noticed that someone was standing in the treeline, and despite her cries for help, had simply stood in place before disappearing into the woods as she approached.

Authorities confirmed from Sharlene's testimony that the suspect vehicle was a grey sedan, which matched the incident in January involved the Steward and Claymore homicide case. The murder of Sharlene's husband and son in addition to the nature of her abduction gave the FBI the effective confirmation that the serial killer had a procedure of particularly maiming women, but for reasons unknown beyond engraving symbols into them while defiling their corpses.

While the police and FBI were not able to figure out what the figure in the woods was, they now had more evidence to compile as to the identity of the Butcher. Sharlene gave the description of a man that stood near six feet in height with an above-average musculature and green eyes, with his voice being described as "monotone". The nine millimeter pistol used in the murders was not the only weapon according to Sharlene, for the man also had a fire-axe in his backseat in addition to an unknown long gun.

A burnt sedan was found hidden some ways away in the property of Wood in 1989, giving further credence to his past crimes. This sedan was not used again following May of 1986, however, and all further abductions and killings became more calculated in nature as a result while Wood purportedly switched to using a stolen 1976 Chevrolet Chevette after the murder of deputy Marshall John in July.

### July: Deputy Marshall John

Deputy Marshall John of the Atkins County Sheriff's Office was at Marco's Grocer in Ashleighville on July 4th at 5:32 P.M, off-duty and collecting groceries to bring back to his family in Cedarcrest proper for a celebration of the holiday. However, soon after he left the store, he had seen a grey sedan parked nearby and approached it due to earlier reports of such a vehicle being involved in the various heinous crimes of the past months. Marco stated to the FBI that he saw the deputy talking to a white man, with the former having his arm go to his revolver slowly over time. After this happened, he saw the white man run to the car as John raised his revolver and shouted. A few seconds later in time and the deputy was hit with two 5.56mm rounds to the left side of the chest, one to the right side of the chest, and one to the lower abdomen as the man returned from his car with a long gun. The grey sedan sped off soon after, and Marco emerged from his shop to render what aid he could to John. The deputy was declared dead at 5:48 when the first responders arrived; this was due to hemopneumothorax of both lungs that lead to suffocation compounded with blood loss.

With the death of a law enforcement officer in an encounter with the supposed serial killer, the case now had gone nationwide. At this point, Wood effectively abandoned his own property save for returning to burn his sedan deep in the property's woods in addition to retrieving firearms and tools. From late 1986 until 1989, he lived out of the abandoned Lakeview Inn and Resort as the FBI, national news networks, and general law enforcement swarmed into the county.

## Evasion of authorities; preparation for the Descent

### Late 1986

Following the torching of his prior vehicle, Wood began his preparations to begin the ritual known as the Descent to Paradise through his impromptu residence in the Lakeview Inn. With the formal induction of the FBI into studying his activities and the increased law enforcement presence in the county, Wood decided that he had to shift his modus operandi once more and expand his "hunting grounds". Using a Chevrolet Chevette stolen in Longhampton with swapped plates, his horizons grew to include all of Western New York.

#### First abduction

Brianna Heath was a fourteen year old girl from the city of Albany who had disappeared during a walk home from school on the third of October. Having not seen her arrive for over an hour her mother immediately moved to call the Albany police department, and county-wide searches were subsequently issued within Albany County and the nearby Rensselaer County. Witnesses had reported seeing a girl enter a sedan somewhere along New Scotland Avenue, and it could not be determined from any further evidence if this was voluntary or forced. The search would eventually become fruitless after a few weeks, and was phased out into a general statewide alert as the kidnappings continued.

The first abduction, occurring only a few months after the fatal shooting of deputy John, had begun what would evolve into a three-year along abduction spree perpetrated by Wood against various women across the states of New York and New Jersey. However, the first few abductions were not linked to Wood until the eventual uncovering of the vehicle's description, the physical description of the perpetrator, and the ultimate reason behind the abductions in late 1989.

#### Second abduction

Marissa Costello, at twenty years old, was a diner waitress that worked in the village of Cherry Valley in Otsego County; her disappearance was noted by her father, Johnathan Costello, after she failed to come home several hours into the early morning of October 20th. The Otsego County Sheriff's Office opened a missing person's case at the behest of Johnathan, and eventually subsumed the case into a new case set being constructed by the FBI after federal agents noted a connection between the Costello and Heath case.

#### Third abduction

The third abduction would be the one that forced the FBI to acknowledge the re-emergence of the Tri-County Butcher, who had disappeared months prior, and thus start a second phase of federal investigation and law enforcement pressure. A forty year old woman by the name of Kathleen McKee was spotted by several witnesses running from a "hooded man" on a road near the borders between the Atkins and Albany counties, with several 911 calls being made from local businesses affirming the ongoing scene. Deputies from both counties converged on the area and found an overturned car belonging to Kathleen having been left in a ditch, with trails of broken branches and footsteps that lead alongside the road and later into the nearby Lilith Creek State Forest confirming a foot chase. However, three individual trails were later identified by the FBI - one with evidence pointing towards Kathleen, one with evidence pointing towards the main perpetrator, and another that sported "large, strange circular steps". The leading authorities on the abduction cases could not determine if the latter was an unassociated animal or an accomplice of some kind due to the inability to determine what the steps truly were.

Kathleen's case and witness testimony informed the leaders of the investigation that the Tri-County Butcher may have returned, albeit with a new method of crime. It would not be until late November that the FBI in conjunction with several state and county law enforcement organizations formally announced such information to the public to "abate hysteria".

##### Beginning of the PIB intervention

By the time of Kathleen's abduction in October of 1986, the Preternatural Investigation Branch of the FBI had already begun analysis operations on the various cases present due to the clearly religious or otherwise esoteric intent present. However, when the FBI received field photographs of the three separate trails, PIB *Special Agent in Charge* (SAIC) Raymond Shepherd had ordered for a duplication of the photographic evidence from the field office in Albany. With his clearance, Shepherd moved to create a PIB task force independent of the existing FBI and police task forces; his force was specifically tasked with analyzing the case for the possibility of interference from anomalous sources.

### 1987

#### Fourth abduction

The fourth abduction would begin a chain reaction of paranoia throughout Central New York, as it was the first to involve a home invasion followed by a successful abduction, much unlike the precursor O'Hannon case. A twenty five year old woman that attended Syracuse University by the name of Angela Hooper was reported missing by classmates and professors alike after not appearing to all of her lectures throughout late January; it was initially assumed by the university that she had simply went away for winter break south, but the eventual call of authorities to her home revealed another story entirely.

The Syracuse Police Department forwarded evidence to the FBI pertaining to the home invasion; in the report, it detailed that a fight occurred within the apartment that Angela was residing within, with a forced entry that shattered the glass near the apartment window. Blood belonging to Angela had been found splattered along the ground near the front door and on the kitchen floor, but no blood was found outside of the apartment itself.

The most unnerving trait of the incident was that Angela's neighbors had not reported any sort of sounds coming from her apartment to the police, despite there being evidence of a struggle and injury. They claim that they had not heard anything during interviews, and when confronted with the evidence, showed visible shock.

#### Fifth abduction

Occurring only days after the fourth abduction into early February, an eighteen year old girl by the name of Tamara Sherman was kidnapped from her family's summer home on Lake Onondaga. A break-in was noted from the structure's back door, but no tracks were found leading to or away from the residence from a car or from a person.

#### Sixth abduction

The sixth abduction was speculated to have occurred within the confines of Atkins County, five miles south of Pinecreek within the great Black Swallowtail State Forest. A Jane Doe had been reported having asked about the local area by a gas station attendant at the Texaco along NY-143; she was never seen again. The FBI were able to connect this individual to the overall abductions through the geographic dispersion of the crimes and previous Jane Doe disappearances in the area having been affiliated with the ritualistic murder in the Edward State Forest earlier in February of 1986.

#### Seventh abduction

Johanna Carter, a thirty two year old hair stylist from New York City, disappeared in November of 1987 in circumstances similar to that of Lauren Castenada. According to her family, Carter was supposed to be travelling across upstate New York as a way to get to Buffalo, New York for a individual vacation. Her personal vehicle was found abandoned near the border between the Atkins and Albany counties; however, the peculiarities of this specific case arose when it was found that her car doors had all been locked, with the car having ran out of fuel. Nevertheless, foul play was already suspected, as strewn blood was found trailing for several meters in a northern direction about five meters off of the main road in accompaniment to a single set of "heavy" foot tracks.

### 1988

#### Eighth abduction

Emily Daywood, the sixteen year old daughter of pastor William Daywood of the Longhampton Baptist Church, disappeared on New Year's Day after staying over at a friend's house for the New Year celebrations. Despite the increased police and FBI presence throughout upstate New York during this time, the failure to prevent this kidnapping would lead to various levied criticisms on the FBI and sheriff's departments of Atkins County and various nearby counties. Even so, the actual details of Daywood's kidnapping were not released to the public, and were instead kept confidential to even most police and FBI personnel through PIB interference as a result of what was found.

A hole was found within the residence of Angelica Jasper, Daywood's friend, that originated from within the tiled wall of her first floor bathroom. This hole measured approximately three feet in width and began initially as a horizontal burrowing into the wall itself before veering ninety degrees downward, becoming a vertical tunnel that terminated just above the roof of the basement. Angelica and her parents affirmed to police that this hole had never been there before, and they independently assumed that someone had broken into their home and vandalized it as a means to somehow "escape" with Emily without being seen. However, police were quick to dismiss this, as the tools needed to make such a hole in such a short amount of time meant that Angelica, let alone her neighbors and parents, would have had to have heard the noises of such a tunnel being bored in the first place.

#### Ninth abduction

The ninth abduction was Gina Connolly, a sixty two year old widow living in the fringes of Onondaga County. Her initial lack of activity was reported on February 25th from concerned neighbors, who said that she had not left her house since the beginning of January - something that did not match with Gina's outgoing personality.

Police arriving to Gina's residence on a welfare check call reported a revolting smell, expecting a human corpse; upon entering, they found no signs of disturbances nor any people. However, Connolly's cat was found completely disfigured on a shelf within the kitchen, with blood pooling at the bottom of the shelf structure.