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Found Footage is Hoax, Cravens Declares
by RODMAN JENKINS
Staff Reporter
BURKITTSVILLE-Breaking a month-long media silence,
Sheriff Ron Cravens spoke directly to representatives of
local and national press yesterday, saying that he had
reluctantly come to the conclusion that the footage unearthed
last October by University of Maryland anthropology students was a hoax.
Authorities originally believed that footage to be a visual
record documenting what happened to three Montgomery
college students --Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard,
and Michael Williams - on an ill-fated trip into the Black
Hills Forest. But the footage, according to Sheriff Cravens,
contains "numerous inconsistencies' which make it clear
that the three students intended it, and its subsequent
discovery, as part of a hoax. He declined to elaborate on
those inconsistencies, or a possible motive for the students'
behavior.
Sheriff Cravens also expressed sympathy for the parents
of the missing students, adding that "whatever caused [the
students] to pull this kind of stunt, it in no way lessens the
anxiety that we all feel over their fate." In light of the new
evidence, Sheriff Cravens further announced, he was
temporarily suspending further work on the investigation.
"There's other business we have to tend to here, but
finding these kids remains high on our priority list".
Angela Donahue and Greg Williams, parents of missing
students Heather Donahue and Michael Williams,
immediately denounced the Sheriff's action. "They're
hoping we'll let them sweep this thing under the rug,
without making a sound, and that ain't gonna happen",
declared Williams. Donahue added "It's ridiculous to
even suggest my daughter's senior film thesis, which
she'd planned and researched for months, was part of
some elaborate deception". Donahue added that she'd
hired a private investigator at the beginning of the year
"whose work on the case will continue."
Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams
disappeared almost exactly one year ago.
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