In 2012, 23-year-old Asha Baduri set off alone into Utah’s Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest seeking the solitude she had long craved. She was careful, almost obsessive in her planning, with detailed maps, GPS coordinates, gear lists, and contingency plans. Her father, Kalin, trusted her preparation but insisted on one agreement: she would send him a simple text every three days that read, “All good.”
On the third day, no message came. By the fourth, Kalin’s worry became dread as his calls went unanswered. The last photo he had of her showed her smiling on a wooden bridge, wearing a purple shirt with her canary-yellow sleeping bag strapped to her pack. What had once been a proud snapshot of adventure became a haunting piece of evidence. Police were called, and search and rescue teams quickly mobilized. Asha’s locked car was discovered at the trailhead, untouched, but no trace of her could be found. Helicopters scoured the forest for her bright shirt or her yellow sleeping bag, yet the wilderness gave up nothing. No footprints, no broken branches, no campsite. It was as if she had stepped into the trees and disappeared.
Weeks went by, and eventually the official search was called off. For Kalin, grief consumed his life; Asha’s room remained preserved as she had left it, her scent still clinging to her belongings, and maps were still pinned to the wall. He phoned the sheriff’s office relentlessly, but as months passed and years ticked by, his hope gave way to resignation. By 2014, the case was officially cold, another unsolved disappearance lost to the vast American wilderness.
Detective Miles Corbin eventually took over her file. He was known for spotting patterns, and something about Asha’s case gnawed at him. She was too meticulous to simply vanish. Digging deeper, he uncovered her activity on a niche hiking forum where she had exchanged messages with a user named Karen Wraith, who promoted a chilling idea of “ghost hiking”—erasing all traces, living invisibly in the wild. In private messages, Wraith encouraged Asha to “become invisible.”
His last message to her read, “The Uintas are a good place to practice becoming a ghost. I can show you paths not on any map.” Corbin traced the account to a university student in Australia, eccentric but harmless, who had never set foot in Utah. The lead collapsed, and silence returned. Six years later, in June 2018, the silence was broken when Tyler Sims, a teenager fishing on Silus Lake—miles from any of Asha’s planned routes—noticed something yellow beneath the water. Peering closer, he saw an oblong bundle wrapped in chains and wire, eerily human-shaped. Authorities pulled it out and discovered it was Asha’s yellow sleeping bag, but inside was not her.
Instead, it contained the decomposed body of a young man later identified as 24-year-old Milo Radic, who had gone missing from Phoenix, Arizona, during the same week Asha disappeared. Suddenly two cold cases had collided in the most unsettling way possible. Investigators were no longer just asking where Asha was—they needed to know how her sleeping bag had become the shroud for a murdered stranger. Detective Gene Hackett took over the case and uncovered a clue missed years earlier: a torn business card from the “Starlight Motor Inn” found among Asha’s belongings. The motel, located on a lonely Utah highway, sat almost exactly between where both Asha’s and Milo’s cars had been discovered.
A search of the motel’s old records revealed a “John Smith” checking into Room 7 with Milo’s silver sedan on September 23, 2012. After tracking down former employees, investigators located Beatrice Row, a cleaner who remembered a young couple—Asha and Milo—staying there. But she also recalled a third man, older and intimidating, coming and going from the room. She remembered a violent argument, a heavy thud, and seeing Asha, hollow-eyed and terrified, being forced into Milo’s car by the older man in the early morning hours. Investigators dug into Milo’s past and uncovered that beneath his carefree hiker image he was working as a courier, moving stolen goods for someone dangerous.
Phone records revealed a burner number that shadowed his travels, which was traced to a criminal named Dante Voss, a man with a long history of violence. His description matched Beatrice’s memory. Authorities eventually found Voss living under an alias in Boise, Idaho. In interrogation, he initially remained cold and uncooperative, but when presented with the evidence—the phone records, the motel ledger, the witness testimony—he cracked. He admitted Milo had been his mule but wanted to quit. He killed Milo in rage, forcing Asha to help clean up and wrap the body in her sleeping bag before dumping it in Silus Lake.
Voss confessed to sexually assaulting Asha and then driving her into the Nevada desert where he killed her and buried her in a shallow grave. He even drew a map for investigators, and days later, Asha’s remains were located under a cluster of rocks, her purple hiking shirt still visible after six years. Voss was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault, sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. For Kalin, the verdict was small comfort. He finally brought his daughter home for a proper burial, closing a chapter that had tormented him for six years.
What had begun as a story of independence and courage ended in horror, but at least the truth was finally known. Asha’s story became a warning about the dangers even the most careful hiker cannot anticipate. Though her journey had been meant to celebrate solitude and preparation, it was undone by the cruelty of a stranger. In the end, her father’s love and the persistence of detectives ensured she was not forgotten. Sometimes the only peace left comes not from rescue, but from finally knowing the truth.
