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StrangeOutdoors.com 2/3/24 StrangeOutdoors.com 2/3/24

The shocking and tragic story of the Vance family’s attempt at off-grid living in Colorado

Rebecca Vance and Christine Vance — Rebecca Vance, second left, and Christine Vance, second from right

Rebecca Vance, Christine Vance and Talon Vance. Remains found July 9, 2023, close to Gold Creek Campground, Gunnison National Forest, Colorado.

Revised June 2024

In early August 2022, the Vance family embarked on an audacious journey to escape the modern world, choosing to live "off-grid" in the untamed wilderness of Colorado. Armed with little more than optimism and a few YouTube survival videos, they aimed to create a new life far removed from society. But what began as a quest for freedom turned into a nightmare of tragic proportions.

By the time the unforgiving winter descended, their dream had become a desperate struggle against the elements. Poor preparation, illness, and a string of misfortunes sealed their fate. Months later, their remains were discovered just 150 feet from the Gold Creek Campground, eerily preserved in a state of partial mummification.

The sight was shocking—nature's brutal reminder of its indifference to human ambition. Their bodies, weathered and desiccated, told a grim story of starvation, cold, and relentless suffering. This heart-wrenching story starkly underscores the lethal dangers of attempting winter survival in the North American wilderness without adequate preparation and experience.

The tragic demise of the Vance family is a chilling reminder of the harsh realities of living off-grid. In their bid to escape modern life, they ventured into a wilderness that demands respect and readiness, where any lapse in preparation can turn dreams of freedom into a fatal ordeal. The wilderness is beautiful, but it is also merciless, and for the unprepared, it can swiftly become a death sentence.

The Vance’s off-grid attempt in the Gunnison National Forest.

Christine Vance, 41, Rebecca “Becky” Vance, 42, and Rebecca's 13-year-old son, Talon, headed into the Gunnison National Forest in Colorado to attempt to start a new off-grid lifestyle.

According to their stepsister Trevala Jara, Becky convinced her sister Christine to leave her life in Colorado Springs and move to the wilderness with her and her son despite having little survival skills. Travala said, “At first, Christine didn’t want to go, but she changed her mind. She felt they had a better chance at living if she went with them. And she didn’t want our sister and nephew to be alone.”

Rebecca was a single mother and reportedly a loner and introvert. Exasperated by the state of the world after the COVID-19 pandemic, she wanted to leave it all behind, even though she was not an outdoors person and did not hike in the wilderness or go camping. Her stepmother said she didn’t trust anyone, including the government. Christine was more comfortable outdoors and outgoing but often did whatever Becky said.

Rebecca's 13-year-old son, Talon, was home-schooled and a math wizard. Before going off the grid, he was afraid to go but wanted to be with his mother.

Trevala said she and her husband begged her stepsisters to abandon their plans, but Becky refused without any preparation apart from watching some YouTube videos by survival experts. She told CBS Colorado that she offered them their mountain property, "It's pretty much off the grid. There's no cell phone connection, no water, no electricity. We had an RV up there with a generator. And we begged them just to use our property.” But the sisters turned down the offer. Jara said she tried everything short of kidnapping to keep them from leaving, but nothing worked.

The three of them left in early August 2022 for the Colorado wilderness. Becky refused to say where they were headed; that was the last time they were seen alive.

Who were Becky and Christina Vance?

Becky and Christine Vance lived together in Colorado Springs in the Windmill Apartments, a modest complex with a heated outdoor pool.

The sisters had lived together their entire lives except twice, each lasting less than a year, when one tried to move out. Becky was born in 1980, and her sister was born in 1982, but Christine’s friends (Becky didn’t have friends) considered their relationship to be like that of twins, with Becky being the more dominant of the two. Both inherited their mother’s thick black hair, dark skin and eyes, though Becky was thinner and taller.

When Becky was five and Christine was three, their mother, Son Yup Kaskewicz, left their father, taking them with her. Son Yup had emigrated from Korea as a teenager and was like Becky, quiet and careful. She saved her money and gambled occasionally at the casino in Cripple Creek. She wished Becky would go out sometimes and make some friends.

Seven years later, their mother remarried, and the girls got a stepsister, Trevala, two years younger than Christine.

Becky earned perfect grades at school but rarely spoke to anyone but her close family. At first, Trevala found her reserved style intimidating and described, “Just the mysterious privateness of her. She gave off this aura: ‘I’m not going to talk to you until I trust you. You better not be on my bad side. If you were on Becky’s bad side, you were on it for a while.”

The three girls shared the basement of the Vance family home, a ranch house on a modest Colorado Springs street. After graduating from Mitchell High School, Becky and Christine kept living there, with Becky working at Sears and Christine at Taco Bell.

In their early 20s, both sisters worked at Atmel Corporation, a semiconductor manufacturing facility where working under the cloak of a mask and gown became normal for them.

Meagan Phillips, one of Christine’s girlfriends, worried about her as she constantly greeted her about her 205-pound weight, her attractiveness, her failure to stop smoking, and her treatment of others. Meagan would have to reassure her, “Like, ‘Dude, you’re such a good person. Wait, you’re so beautiful. Just let people love you.’”

Becky and Christine’s mother worked a few different jobs: in the commissary at an Air Force base, at a gas station, and in retail. Their stepfather, Edward Kaskewicz, stayed home. Then, their mother got cancer in 2006 and died in 2007. Becky took her death very hard and felt guilty she hadn’t spent more time with her and given her a grandchild.

Christine and becky vance — Becky and Christine Vance

The Vance sisters continued living with their stepfather. In 2008, Becky got pregnant. The father was Eric Burden, someone she had met at work with two children from a previous relationship. Becky was okay with his divided attention and told Eric she did not want him to be a partner and did not want to co-parent. Few people even knew Eric was the father of Becky’s baby, and she hadn’t even named him as the father on the birth certificate.

Eric lived with his parents and two young children: Ashton, aged two, and Emma, aged four. His mother, Marilyn, did daycare professionally. When the new baby, whom Becky named Talon, was an infant, Becky started dropping him off at the Burden home on her way to work. Marilyn found Becky’s vibe strange, but she could handle that, and she recalled, “At the beginning, she’d call and say, ‘You can have Talon this weekend if you want’”. Then Marilyn started asking if Talon could come over, not to be babysat, to be her grandson, as she had strong feelings about looking after him. She had already raised a son, Tracy, with cerebral palsy.

Talon and his half-brother, Ashton, shared a bedroom at the Burden house. He earned straight A’s at school and loved computers.

In 2018, Talon, Becky, Christine, Becky and Christine’s stepfather traveled to Disney World with Marilyn, Eric, and Eric’s other two children. They stayed in different areas of the park but managed to function as an extended family.

The following year, Becky and Christine’s stepfather died from liver failure, and in May 2020, Talon received his fifth-grade-graduation diploma through the window of his mom’s car, as the pandemic had closed his school.

In August 2020, Becky called Marilyn to tell her she’d quit her job, saying she would work from home. Trevala said, “I just think COVID is what broke the camel’s back. I mean, everybody felt this negativity — the politics, the economy, all of it. She became much more secretive. Much more secretive.”

She began reading online sites dedicated to conspiracies and off-grid living. The Survival Mom, run by Lisa Bedford, told readers, “Prep more. Worry less.” She said people could learn from her experience that you could “be proactive and prepare for emergencies by doing what moms have always done — taking charge and getting things done!”

Bedford said on her website that you just needed to work hard and be willing to cut ties, and Becky lapped it up. She told her readers that people make two major mistakes when preparing for “The End of the World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI).” Firstly, they wait for disaster to prepare for disaster, at which point it’s too late. Secondly, they share their plans. Tell one person, and he or she tells another person, and you’ll find yourself facing TEOTWAWKI needing to feed not just your family but also “the lonesome guy four doors down who suddenly craves foodstuffs he assumes you might have.” Or “your not-so-friendly garden variety drug-dependent thug.” Don’t do all this prep to protect your family only to attract predation and harm. “As distasteful as it sounds,” the Survival Mom wrote, “I’m afraid that will include crimes against female members in your household. They run the risk of being taken away by said gang members for their ‘entertainment,’ being molested, or raped.”

When Talon’s school reopened for in-person learning in January 2021, he didn’t attend. Becky didn’t allow social media and wouldn’t buy Talon a phone, but he had an iPad and an Xbox. He spent time out with his half-brother and half-sister at the Burden home. Sometimes, the boy who lived behind them or the three young girls who lived down the street came over, but Marilyn said, “That’s the only interaction he probably had with kids, which I thought was not good.”

Becky prohibited him from messaging other players on his gaming consoles and checked his accounts to ensure he complied.

Eric worried about his son’s isolation. He asked Talon if he wanted to start playing soccer again. Talon didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either. When Marilyn asked Becky if they should sign him up, she said he didn’t want to. Christine voiced concerns - How would Talon lead a good adult life if he never learned social skills?

Then, in the fall of 2021, Christine called Trevala. “You would never guess what Becky wants to do, she wants to live off the grid.”

Christine didn’t want Becky to go, and she didn’t want her to go by herself, and she certainly didn’t want Becky to take Talon without another adult.

At the beginning of 2022, Becky signed a contract for 15 more months at the Windmill Apartments, as the extended term meant their rent wouldn’t go up. She lost 14 pounds, which seemed to make her happy, but by June, she had joined Becky in talking about leaving to move into the wilderness. She told Trevala that she really should look into Schwab, Prince Charles’s Great Reset, and the New World Order, and also stop taking any medications because that’s how the government gets the biosensors inside you. Neither Vance sister would tell Trevala or Tom where they planned to go.

Trevala argued that now was not the time to leave. Life felt hard, yes, but you go on. If Becky and Christine insisted on heading off, they should have waited until things were terrible. Like, Trevala said, after “there’s a whole bunch of people with guns in front of your yard or, you know, a friggin’ comet came down.”

Tom, who worked as a trucker and had a Native American heritage, understood his sisters-in-law’s point of view. He knew plenty of people who wanted to escape society, including his biker friends, “I believe Becky was more worried about someone coming and finding them and forcing them back. Of Becky’s mindset, “The world is going to pieces. I’m going to survive and get a head start on it. Be unseen. Not be a prisoner of this decaying world.”

Tom’s argument to Becky and Christine was the same as Trevala’s: There’s no rush. What was so different about now? The apocalypse always seems to be coming. “The end of the world in my lifetime has come five times,” Tom said. “You wake up the next day.” The few details Becky and Christine shared about their off-grid preparation alarmed him and Trevala. Becky “would be like, ‘Well, I just bought new boots,’” Trevala told me. “I was like, ‘Okay, that’s all good. But what if you get a hole in your boots?’” Christine would answer, “Well, hopefully, by then, we know how to make boots out of the land.”

Christine told her co-workers, “I’m quitting my job and moving.” She didn’t say more. Her friend, Quenten Jackson, felt unnerved that Christine wasn’t taking her phone, but maybe that was part of a self-reinvention strategy. He asked if he could stay in touch through Becky. Christine said no.

Quenten sensed that Christine wanted people to ask questions, “like, ‘Why are you leaving? Where are you going? What are you doing?’” he told me. “But then she was always saying, ‘But I can’t say anything.’” By their last conversation, Quenten said, “I was like, ‘Oh, okay, well, I guess I hope I hear from you at some point in the future.’”

The night before they left, Christine texted Meagan: “ I’m moving. I’m gonna go with Rebecca. And that’s all I have to say about it.”

Becky sent a final text to someone she knew, “They really want to merge man with machine, and I refuse to let them do that to me or my son … I don’t know when all of this will happen, but I think it’s important for people to get out while they still can. 💐🌹🌺🌹💐”

On August 1, 2022, at 11 am, Becky and Talon headed for the Burden home. Marilyn was in the backyard. “Initially, I thought she said, ‘Can Talon stay?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’” Marilyn recalled. “Then she said, ‘We have to move to be safe.’” Becky handed Marilyn a small plastic storage box. Inside were three T-shirts Talon had outgrown, school photos, a stuffed animal from a recent trip to the Colorado Springs aquarium, and a flowerpot with a footprint he’d made for Mother’s Day. Becky said they were moving to West Virginia to be near her father. Marilyn couldn’t understand why. In the 13 years she’d known Becky, Becky had never mentioned her dad. Did Talon have everything he’d need? Was Becky going to bring his iPad? Becky said no: There’s not very good internet where we're going. What about their stuff? Well, we just took what we could take. Where’s the cat? They gave it to Trevala’s neighbor.

Christine didn’t come inside. She stood by the Hyundai. Just before Marilyn hugged Talon goodbye outside the front door at the top of the stairs, Becky whispered to her, “He doesn’t know anything.” Marilyn thought, Okay, and neither do I.

The fateful trip to Colorado

The Vance family drove from Colorado Springs to Gunnison in their Hyundai for about three and a half hours and headed for the Gold Creek Campground at 9,990 feet.

There is no campground host and no overnight fee at this particular campground. It has six campsites, each with a picnic table and a fire ring.

On the Dryt a reviewer of the camp wrote, “Amazing hiking, camping, and fishing if you can make it to the lakes from the campgrounds. Atv 4x4 required to access lakes or a long hike. Well maintained several mile long dirt access road to campsite could be done in small campers. We tent camped in dispersed camping before the actual campground. Whole place to ourselves saw Elk, Deer. Only draw back to this site were the hawk sized mosquitoes.”

Heading northwest, you can take the South Lottis Trail or Lamphier Lake Trail into the Fossil Ridge Wilderness.

The Vance family might have stayed there for a night or two, exploring their surroundings, searching for a spot near their car to set up a permanent yet hidden camp. They found one by going first down a trail along the creek behind campsite No. 5, then across the water on a big log, through a stand of Douglas firs and a marsh of tall grass and into some open forest on higher ground.

Here, the sisters believed that Talon would not get corrupted or microchipped and would not grow up and leave.

Marilyn tried to reach the Vance sisters, leaving voicemails, but they didn’t get back to her. Nobody thought to file a missing-person report or to call Child Protective Services.

To filter parasites from the water, they brought two LifeStraws, products REI advertises as “ideal for backup filtration, emergency use, and ultralight treks”. Reviewers state that the straws can be damaged by freezing, though if they do freeze, “there will be no indication whether it is still safe to use; instead, you’ll just have to wait for the giardia to hit in a week or two.” If they did not use the LifeStraws properly or kept using them once those straws got damaged, they were likely to get giardiasis with intense stomach pain, chronic and severe diarrhea, an inability to absorb nutrients and malnutrition. The only way to treat it is for a doctor to prescribe the drug metronidazole (Flagyl).

Christine and Becky placed a tarp down under the tent but did not bring proper ground pads, essential for insulation and comfort, and instead, they relied on a blue quilt beneath their sleeping bags.

The family started building a shelter by cutting down two-to-three-inch-diameter tree trunks, sawing them into six-to-eight-foot lengths, and lashing them together next to a hole they dug in a hillside to form a sidewall and roof. The shelter was around four feet high, just tall enough to sit beneath.

In October, Becky, Christine, and Talon drove into Gunnison, 45 minutes away and called Becky and Christine’s father, Donald Vance, and asked him to wire them $500, which he agreed to do. They spent some of this at the Gunnison Walmart on a Solo Campfire Stove, food, batteries, matches, and toilet paper. They then returned to their camp without contacting the rest of their family or friends.

Snow started falling in late October, and in mid-November, temperatures were freezing.

On November 25, the United States Forest Service noted that a car had been abandoned in Gunnison National Forest “off FSR 771 (Gold Creek).” The incident report notes: “Searched area … UTL [unable to locate]. CSP Dispatch tried two phone numbers to both registered owners … Both disconnected. Attempting welfare check.” On November 28, the car was towed away. Marilyn kept trying to call Becky, but her phone was disconnected.

At some point, Christine cut her hair off for reasons unknown. It seems likely that Talon died first from illness or hypothermia. Becky and Christine moved his body close to the tent on the other side of the tree in the camp. Becky probably died next, and then Christine zipped herself up in her sleeping bag and waited for her inevitable death.

Remains found

At approximately 5.47 pm on July 9, 2023, Lt. Robert Summer was contacted by Sgt Wes Hesberger and advised that a hiker called C.J. Malcome had been with his family and noticed a gray nylon tent in the trees below Fossil Ridge. He walked over and found what he described to the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office as an old “squatters camp.” He also found he told the dispatcher there was “a Mummy laying in the camp.”

During the conversation, Summer advised Hersberger that he did not feel that response and locating the camp at the time was not a good option with darkness looming. Summer then contacted investigator Skye Wells, and like the other two men, he agreed a visit to the camp should be postponed to the next day, July 10, 2023.

Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office investigators and the coroner, Michael Barnes, drove to Quartz Creek Valley the following day. They crossed Gold Creek and found the camp. It was located approximately 150 yards due east of the Gold Creek campground at 38 39’16” N 106 34’14” W at an elevation of 10,100 feet.

A mummified body was found close to a nylon tent, later identified as Talon, described by the hiker the day before. The corpse wore two pairs of gray sweatpants and a black sweatshirt over a red undershirt with no socks or shoes. He had long black hair and was lying on his side in a fetal position, a green rosary around his neck.

A team of six from Western Search and Rescue and the Gunnison County coroner were called to the site to assist in investigating the scene.

They took forensic photos of the body and then unzipped the tent. Inside were two more bodies who were later confirmed as Becky and Christine. Becky was lying on top of a black sleeping bag, wearing a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants with no socks or shoes, just like Talon. A wooden cross and a survival whistle were around her neck. Christine was zipped up inside a blue sleeping bag, wearing gray sweatpants, a sweatshirt, long underwear, and a magenta beanie, and again, with no socks or shoes.

Barnes documented the scene and assisted in removing the bodies and placing them in body bags.

Trash was everywhere around the camp and piled around the bodies in the tent. A pile of dark, matted, eight-inch-long human hair gathered in a hair tie was found.

Items found in various bags and sacks included polypropylene cord, Solo camp stove, sunflower seeds, Emerald Oak lettuce seeds, Kentucky wonder-pole-bean seeds, long-reach matches, lighters, hand shears, a headlamp, a flashlight, a small shovel, a handsaw, two water-purification straws, cans filled with burnt twigs, Band-Aids, and a Swiss Army knife.

Backpacks of extra clothes containing hats, gloves, scarves, underwear and outerwear) were found in a dug out in the earth with a blue stuffed raccoon, a red ticket stub from Manitou Springs (a resort town outside Colorado Springs), a lightweight green towel, a laundry bag, a fishing pole and fishing tackle, Chapstick, Vaseline, empty water bottles, two pairs of light hiking boots, a pair of low-top Adidas sneakers and one Teva sandal.

There was a blue blanket with images of yellow fish used as a ground pad, keys to a Hyundai car and $35 in cash.

Plenty of evidence of food consumed was discovered, including Nature Valley Granola Bar wrappers, Clif Bars, and Rx Bars, instant Thai jasmine noodles wrapper, a 6-Pack of Shrimp Maruchan ramen, as well as various other flavours of ramen. There were also empty bottles of Mott’s apple and Simply Orange juice, empty cans of Vienna Sausages, Chunky Soup with Sirloin Burger, and Dinty Moore Stew.

Several pairs of soiled women’s underwear were found camp around the camp, and there was an insulated bag that seemed to be filled with urine. As well as the soiled discarded underwear, there was a large pile of human feces found 10 feet from the door of the tent, and there were several locations around the camp where someone had defecated.

There were booklets about foraging and survival, the Complete Apocrypha, a collection of ancient religious texts written after the Old Testament and before the New Testament, and the Magick Box of Choose Your Own Adventure Stories.

Books found at vance camp — Booklets about foraging and survival found at the camp

The Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office Offense/Incident Report, Complaint No. 2023-1181GSO, said, “The fact that the tent, that a simple nylon dome tent was standing leads this officer to consider that the victims may have been alive for a good portion of the winter and it is only a theories [sic] that they would have had to be knocking the snow accumulation off to keep the tent from collapsing … The choice they made of their camp location also indicates that the victims had little practical experience in the art of bush craft.”

On July 11, the Gunnison coroner started making calls and located Trevala. She did not know Eric’s last name, so it took the coroner two weeks to find him. He learned of Talon’s death from a friend who had seen a newspaper report.

Pictures of the Vance Camp

Autopsies

The Vance family’s autopsies were released on August 28, 2023, by Gunnison County Coroner Michael Barnes. The cause of death for them all was stated as malnutrition and hypothermia.

Becky’s autopsy stated, “The vena cavae are unremarkable … The epicardium of the heart is smooth and unremarkable … the great vessels arise in the usual manner.” She weighed 100 pounds, and Christine weighed only 96 pounds. Her autopsy noted “Wischnewski’s ulcers,” small erosions in the stomach that are a sign of hypothermia.

Talon’s corpse weighed only 40 pounds, “The body is that of a normally developed, thin male who appears appropriate for the reported age … There is marked autolysis” caused by decomposition. “The lungs are absent … The heart is absent … The brain is absent.”

The coroner estimated the three of them had died by late December, likely from starvation and freezing temperatures causing hypothermia. Carbon monoxide was not detected in their blood, which could have been caused by making a fire to stay warm in a confined space like a tent.

The family's attempt to go off-grid had gone tragically wrong, resulting in the death of all three in unimaginable circumstances.

Further viewing

The Missing Enigma: The Disturbing Case Of The "Mummified" Family In The Colorado Rockies

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