This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable for all ages.

Listener discretion is advised.

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Call or text 988 or chat with someone at 988 lifeline.org. Those outside of the U.S.

reach out to someone at your local crisis center or hotline.

Please do not suffer in silence.

Blake Taps sit at the northern edge of Pierce County, Washington, just east of the city of

Bonnie Lake.

It's a quiet residential area, a kind of place where people settle down because they want

a little space and a little distance from the noise of Tacoma in Seattle to the north.

The houses along 9th Street east, near the Lake's North Shore, are spaced out and unassuming.

It's the sort of neighborhood where people know when something is off, but where, for years, the thing that was actually off,

sat undiscovered in a yard debris container on a vacant lot.

On August 28, 2019, a construction crew arrived at a property on 9th Street East to clear

and tear down a dilapidated trailer that had been abandoned for years.

The lot was vacant.

The structure was coming down.

It was, by all appearances, routine demolition work.

An excavator operator working the site noticed a blue yard waste bin on the property.

It was sealed shut, screwed closed in fact, which is not how yard waste bins typically come.

When the operator managed to open it, he found

a blanket inside, shaped unmistakably like a human body and held together with duct tape. Of

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