Some YouTube channels didn’t just stop uploading—they vanished for reasons that remain disturbing, mysterious, or unexplained. Here are the stories behind some of the internet’s most unsettling abandoned channels.
#YouTube #Mystery #Disturbing #Creepy #InternetMysteries #Unsolved #DarkWeb #YouTubeMysteries #TrueMystery #ScaryStories
#YouTube #Mystery #Disturbing #Creepy #InternetMysteries #Unsolved #DarkWeb #YouTubeMysteries #TrueMystery #ScaryStories
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00:00Alexander Dean was a 24-year-old aspiring bodybuilder living in Belgium who spent nearly
00:04two years documenting his fitness journey on YouTube. His channel was small, with most videos
00:09only reaching a few hundred views, but the goal behind it was clear. Alex wanted to build a career
00:14around bodybuilding. So, like many fitness creators, he uploaded workout routines, training sessions,
00:20physique updates, and dieting content. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about him or
00:26his channel. There were no public controversies or viral moments, and nothing to suggest it would
00:32one day become connected to one of Belgium's most disturbing criminal cases. One upload, however,
00:37stood out from the rest. In a video titled, Alex Dean Rant, Daily Thoughts, Future, uploaded on July
00:4420th, 2017, he discussed his plans for the future. In it, he discussed his life ahead, mentioning that
00:50his plan A was bodybuilding, but he also had a plan B, which, in his words, didn't look pretty.
00:57So, yeah, right now, I'm just not sure what to do with everything, you know?
01:07Like, normally, I would not have a plan B. This is my plan A, you know, the store and everything,
01:15and bodybuilding. But, you always gotta have plan B. But my plan B does not look pretty. So...
01:27A few users noticed him to be unusually down and expressed support in the comments.
01:32But after that exchange, the channel carried on as usual. Alex uploaded two new videos the very next
01:37day. However, this was followed by silence. At the time, there was little to no reason for anyone
01:42to think something was wrong. Alex wasn't a full-time creator, and the channel had less than
01:46200 subscribers, so taking a break was in no way unusual. Moreover, even some of the biggest creators
01:52sometimes disappear for weeks without ever explaining why. But what almost no one knew was
01:57that in the early hours of July 22nd, Alex had uploaded another video to YouTube separate from
02:02his usual training content. He was visibly distressed, talking about a girl he had recently broken up
02:06with. An 18-year-old named Mylise DeComp. The video has since been taken down, but at the time,
02:12sitting on a channel with a very small audience, it went virtually unnoticed. Alex and Mylise had
02:17been together for around a year and a half. But by the summer of 2017, their relationship had come to
02:23an end. And Alex struggled to accept the breakup. After several unsuccessful attempts to convince Mylise
02:29to come back, he began to spiral. He started following Mylise everywhere. He showed up at her workplace,
02:35lurked around her family's property, and confronted her at her neighbor's house.
02:39Mylise's parents reported all of this to police multiple times, including calls to emergency
02:43services. Two investigations were opened into his behavior, but Alex was never once taken into
02:49custody. When Alex's attempts failed to move Mylise, his desperation turned into a dangerous obsession.
02:55On July 24th, 2017, Alex traveled to the home of a 39-year-old amateur photographer named
03:01Yerun Verstra. Yerun had taken suggestive photos of Mylise in the past, and Alexander had been unable
03:07to let it go. He later claimed he believed the photographer had physically harmed her,
03:11though the court would ultimately question whether that was true or whether the whole
03:14thing came down to jealousy. Alex broke into Yerun's home and waited for him to return.
03:19When Yerun arrived that evening, Alex ambushed him, held him captive for hours,
03:24and ultimately killed him. Yerun's body was discovered the following morning by a colleague.
03:28By then, Alex had already fled the scene, leaving behind no evidence that could connect him to the
03:33murder. The next day, on July 25th, Mylise came home to her family's house and noticed a shadow
03:39moving inside. She'd been through this enough times to know what it meant. She hid in the bushes
03:43outside and called her mother, who was away on a trip, and told her she was certain Alex had broken
03:47into the house again. Unable to get there herself, her mother asked Mylise's grandparents,
03:52who lived nearby, to go to the house. When the three of them went inside, they found Alex already
03:56waiting. At gunpoint, he forced them to sit at the table before making a chilling declaration.
04:01I did it yesterday, I'm doing it again today. Only later would investigators realize he was
04:06confessing to Yerun's murder in real time. What followed was a tense, drawn-out conversation at
04:11the table. Mylise's grandfather told him to leave his granddaughter alone, and that no one needed to
04:16get hurt. Throughout this time, Mylise's mother had been calling the house repeatedly. At one point,
04:21she reached the landline, and Alex picked up. She told him the police were on their way. She also
04:26called a neighbor to check on the house, but Alex slammed the door in his face, and the neighbor
04:29ran to call the police. Shortly after that call, Alex attacked. Unfortunately, by the time police
04:35arrived, Alex had already fled the scene, leaving behind Mylise and her grandparents, lifeless on the
04:41floor. A man who, just days earlier, had been known only to a handful of people as a small-time
04:47fitness YouTuber, was now the most wanted suspect in one of Belgium's most disturbing criminal cases.
04:52A nationwide manhunt was launched, and the next day he was arrested at a supermarket.
04:57As the investigators pieced together the previous two days, it became increasingly clear that Alex
05:01had been planning this depraved crime for several days. In a text conversation with a friend sent
05:06before the murders, he had written that he was about to do the dumbest thing he'd ever done,
05:11and described ending Mylise's life as a way of protecting her, saying he'd rather
05:15protect her forever by hurting her once. Looking back, his sudden disappearance from his YouTube
05:20channel wasn't a break. It was the point where his obsession and insanity, which he hinted at in
05:25Plan B, moved off-camera and into real life. In May 2022, nearly five years after the murders,
05:31a Belgian jury found Alexander Dean guilty of murdering Jeroen Verstra, Mylise De Komp,
05:37and her grandparents. He was sentenced to life in prison. Yet, his YouTube channel was never taken
05:42down, and to this date, his videos are available online as an unsettling record of a young man's
05:47descent from ambition into obsession, with one upload where he publicly confessed his intentions
05:53days before committing the horrific crimes.
05:58On February 20th, 2019, a teenager from Uckfield in England named Mark Williams made a YouTube channel
06:05to document his love for parkour and urban exploration. Although the channel started as
06:09Rooftop Legends, then changed to Rooftube, Mark eventually settled on the name Displace.
06:15In his initial videos, Mark was accompanied by his younger brother, as they visited different
06:19sites in the area. And even from those first uploads, two things are immediately clear.
06:24One was that this wasn't a harmless hobby. Whether he was scaling rooftops or being chased
06:29off by security guards, every upload showed that what Mark was doing carried real risk.
06:34Yes, you must be calling the police. Straight up there, run!
06:40No! Alright!
06:42The other was that Mark genuinely loved what he was doing. The effort he put into filming,
06:47editing, and documenting each adventure made it obvious that this was something he was deeply
06:51passionate about. By it, Mark was also a teenager who wanted more than anything to find people he could
06:56fit in with. Years later, his mother would describe him as someone who craved friendship and was far
07:01too trusting of the people around him. This detail would eventually become one of the most heartbreaking
07:05parts of his story. When his younger brother gradually stepped away from the channel, Mark's
07:10uploads grew inconsistent, and slowly, his regular posting schedule fell apart. Then, on November 1st,
07:162020, Mark uploaded a video titled Displace is Returning, explaining that he'd bought an action
07:21cam to film properly, and was committing to a regular schedule again.
07:25I promise you, Displace is coming back. I'm getting a new action cam. I'm getting a new action cam.
07:32And, uh, I'm gonna hit some serious videos. Not like the ones I used to do before, I mean proper
07:37ones.
07:38I'm just getting myself back in shape again. Especially during the night as well, no one can see me up
07:45here.
07:46He also mentioned that the reason he'd been away was that he'd applied to become a police community
07:50support officer and had been rejected. True to his word, Mark started posting consistently. At times,
08:08sometimes posting 4 or 5 videos a week. As the channel gained some momentum and built a small
08:13audience, some viewers started watching him regularly, and even wrote in to suggest where
08:17he should explore next. Among those admirers was 19-year-old Lewis Ashdown. Lewis shared Mark's
08:23love of parkour and filming, and commented under one of Mark's videos that he was from the same
08:27area and would love to meet up and film together sometime. That day came on the 9th of December,
08:312020, when Mark posted a video exploring Uckfield's water treatment plan, joined, for the first time,
08:37by Lewis. The two got along immediately, and from that point on, Lewis became a regular in Mark's videos.
08:53By it, not long after, Mark took another break from the channel. He explained why in a live stream,
08:58saying he was feeling discouraged. I am not sure where my channel is going to go. I don't know if
09:04I'm going to keep doing these videos, I don't know if I'm going to be doing different videos,
09:07or whether I'm going to stop completely. At this point in time, I don't know.
09:11I've been trained to get my SIA license over the past couple of weeks, and I can't really risk that.
09:19But I'm not sure at the moment. I need to talk with Lewis some more, work something out.
09:25However, during this stream, Lewis joined, under the username AdmiralUnknown1499,
09:31and started pushing Mark to keep going, throwing out ideas for future videos, and suggesting new
09:35spots to film. Upon seeing these comments, Mark visibly lit up, and started talking about what
09:40they were going to film together. Over the next month, Mark uploaded two more videos,
09:44walking around more abandoned sites with Lewis, and laughing together. What Mark didn't know at the
09:48time, was that these two clips would be the last he'd ever film. On May 29th, 2021,
09:53he had planned to meet up with Lewis to discuss a few ideas for the future. But when he found
09:58out
09:58that Mark had brought his younger brother along, Lewis said he didn't feel comfortable and didn't
10:02show up. He later convinced Mark to meet him alone in a different area. The two ended up drinking
10:07together, and even though Mark rarely drank, Lewis kept pushing him to have more. At 11.30pm,
10:13Mark called his aunt to say he was on his way home. She could hear Lewis in the background,
10:17telling her he'd make sure Mark got back safe. But Mark never made it home. And when several hours
10:22passed, with no word from either of them, their families reported them both missing.
10:26For a small town like Uckfield, two people vanishing at the same time was almost unheard of.
10:31The first assumption was that they'd gone exploring somewhere dangerous and gotten hurt.
10:36Being what they were into, it wasn't hard to imagine them climbing something they shouldn't have.
10:40Or maybe they just had too much to drink in the woods and couldn't find their way back.
10:43But when investigators went to Lewis' house,
10:45they found bloodied clothing stuffed inside a wardrobe. Forensics confirmed the blood was Mark's.
10:51This instantly turned the missing person case into a potential murder investigation.
10:56Lewis was eventually found at a friend's house. That same friend told the officers that Lewis had
11:01already confessed to him about taking Mark's life. In the days after the attack,
11:05Lewis turned up drunk and admitted he had done something terrible. He then pulled out his phone
11:09and played a series of clips he'd filmed while committing the gruesome act. Officers recovered a total
11:14of seven clips from Lewis' phone. They were filmed over roughly an hour and were so disturbing that
11:19the court later ruled the footage too harrowing to be shown. But that left everyone with a single
11:24question. Why did Lewis decide to take his friend's life? The easiest explanation was that the night
11:29just went wrong. Mark almost never drank and he'd spent hours in the woods getting heavily intoxicated
11:34with someone he trusted. And considering how easily alcohol can turn an ordinary evening between
11:39two young men into something ugly, it's not hard to imagine how a simple argument or
11:43a shove could have escalated into real violence before it spiraled out of control. By the issue
11:48with this theory is that Lewis had specifically made sure Mark met him alone, which made the attack
11:53look less like a sudden drunken argument and more like something he may have been planning for some
11:57time. There was also the question of jealousy. Over the previous months, Lewis had worked his way
12:02from a stranger in the comments to a regular in nearly every video Mark made. By it, it was always
12:07Mark's name on the channel, Mark's audience, and Mark that people were watching for. So it doesn't take a lot
12:12of thinking to imagine resentment festering beneath that on-camera friendship. Both these theories
12:17were reasonable to some extent, and both at the very least gave the killing something that resembled
12:21a reason. By it, both turned out to be wrong. Because Lewis later told people that Mark quote,
12:27annoyed him and deserved to be killed. He said he felt good doing it and didn't want to stop.
12:33The judge who sentenced him said we may never fully understand why he did it. Lewis pleaded guilty to
12:37murder in 2021 and was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 27 years. At sentencing, Mark's
12:44mother told the court that all her son ever wanted was a friend, and that he was too trusting of
12:48the
12:48people around him. That trust is what cost him his life. To this day, his channel is exactly as he
12:54left
12:54it. And all the videos with Lewis still show the same sense of friendship. Only now, viewers know what
12:59Lewis' intentions had been the whole time. In April 2013, 31-year-old Jared Miller created a YouTube
13:09channel to keep what was essentially a digital diary. Most of the uploads were of Jared filming
13:14his two cats, Leonardo and Oreo, as they played with each other.
13:18Look at them. They're so cute. You guys are so cute. What you doing?
13:25Quiet, the longer you watch, the more you realize something is seriously wrong with this channel.
13:29Because, in between these cat videos, Jared would suddenly drift into long and at times
13:34disturbing rants about the government. For example, in a video titled, Oreo, Leonardo and Drones,
13:40he randomly started talking about a conspiracy theory magazine and how the government was spying on people.
13:44All right. Check this out. This is quite disturbing. It says drones. Are they watching you?
13:56This is a whole magazine on drones. Whole magazine about it. No ads. All about drones.
14:16So are they watching you? Probably. I mean, they're already wiretapping your phones. You know,
14:22watching your Facebook and everything. And they're probably watching this video of me right now. I
14:27don't care. Congrats. At the time, Jared already had a long history of feeling trapped by authority.
14:32He had been arrested repeatedly over the years, with charges connected to guns, drugs, and assault. By the
14:37time he was posting these videos, he was on house arrest for selling illegal substances,
14:41confined inside his apartment with nowhere to go. And this apartment happened to sit directly
14:46across from the county courthouse, which became a strange fixation for him.
14:51Here's my front window here. I'm going to look out my front window.
15:02And you look a little closer. There you go. Right in the middle of that frame.
15:09That is the courthouse. It's a beautiful building. Even though it is a monument to authoritarianism.
15:20You gotta go get your marriage license. You gotta go get gun permits. Whatever it is. You have to go
15:26down
15:26to that big stone structure monument to tyranny. And submit. Crawling and groveling on your hands and knees.
15:37Oh, give me permission to do this. Give me permission to do that.
15:42To any viewer randomly finding this video back in 2013, it may have sounded like just another
15:47obscure anti-government rambling buried somewhere on YouTube. But when you watch these uploads
15:52together, they start to feel like a record of Jared's thoughts tightening around him. In July 2013,
15:56he posted a series of videos of him speaking directly to his wife, Amanda Miller, while also
16:01crying about how much he missed her as he served his time. But even in that emotional state,
16:06his obsession found its way back in, as he blamed the misery in his life on what he called the
16:10New
16:10World Order. Once his sentence was over, Jared and Amanda left their home in Indiana and headed west
16:15in early 2014. They first settled in Las Vegas, where they tried to make money by dressing as
16:20characters for tourists. Amanda performed as Harley Quinn, while Jared often dressed up as the Joker.
16:26Jared would also use the same Joker costume to make more videos for his YouTube channel.
16:38In the video, Jared pretended to run for president, promising his viewers total and utter tyranny,
16:43while treating the destruction of the country like a campaign platform.
17:05He grinned through the whole thing and called it tyranny on a madman scale, selling mass violence as if it
17:10were a joke his audience was in on. Though the video was meant to be satire, no one watching at
17:14the time
17:14realized it also foreshadowed the horrific things these beliefs would eventually push Jared to do.
17:19And in April of 2014, he finally found a place where those beliefs seemed to have a purpose.
17:24He and Amanda traveled to the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada, where armed protesters had gathered
17:29against the federal government over a long-running land dispute. For Jared, this looked like the
17:33beginning of the revolution he'd been waiting for. But even there, surrounded by armed anti-government
17:38protesters, Jared and Amanda stood out for the wrong reasons. Before long, they were asked to leave,
17:43because their views were considered too radical, even by people who had already taken up arms
17:47against federal authority. So, they returned to Las Vegas, with nowhere left for their anger to go.
17:52By then, Jared had spent more than a year recording himself framing the government
17:55as an enemy and fantasizing about some sort of revolution. And on the morning of June 8th,
18:002014, they tried to force that fantasy into existence. Jared and Amanda put on tactical gear,
18:06filled duffel bags with weaponry, and walked into Assisi's Pizza on North Nellis Boulevard,
18:11where two Metro officers, Alan Beck and Igor Soldo, were eating lunch. At around 11.30am,
18:17they passed the officers' table, turned back, and before they even had a chance to react, lost their
18:22lives. And to carry this revolution forward, the couple crossed the street to a nearby Walmart,
18:27where they threatened people to leave. By it, a shopper named Joseph Wilcox moved toward Jared to
18:31try and stop him. Unfortunately, Joseph didn't realize Amanda was behind him, and she took his life
18:36before he could intervene. Minutes later, two teams of officers arrived at the scene and blocked all
18:41the exits. As they entered the building, Jared and Amanda would begin to fight back. However,
18:46they were outnumbered and outmaneuvered as the officers pushed them into a small corner.
18:50The standoff lasted almost 24 minutes before Jared lost his life. Amanda was also found to have
18:55suffered a similar fate. By it, even after all this, investigators still didn't fully understand
19:00what Jared and Amanda had been trying to achieve. That part only became clear when officers searched their
19:05apartment and found a detailed plan to ambush a courthouse, take it by force, and wreak havoc on
19:10the officials inside. And suddenly, Jared's old video about the courthouse outside his window felt
19:15less like a meaningless rant and more like a blueprint he'd been filming in plain sight. The tyranny
19:20he promised in Joker makeup as a joke turned out to be more real than anyone watching earlier could
19:25have imagined. So, while the attack ended inside a Walmart, the warning signs had been sitting on his
19:29YouTube channel for more than a year, slowly building toward a horrific tragedy that took three
19:34innocent lives.
19:39Mitchell Dang was a 25-year-old woman from Norcross, a quiet suburb just outside Atlanta, Georgia.
19:44She was born into a Vietnamese family and still lived at home with her parents and two sisters.
19:49After finishing high school, Mitchell worked several different jobs before eventually becoming a lash
19:53technician at a local boutique. Outside of work, she also had a small self-titled YouTube channel,
19:59which would end up being watched for the most unsettling reasons.
20:02Most of her videos were about makeup, online shopping, vacations, and occasionally vlogs from
20:08her everyday life. It was just Mitchell documenting small pieces of her life and sharing it with her
20:13small audience. So, on Saturday, August 26, 2023, when she posted a vlog about getting ready for a
20:19concert in Alley Cat Atlanta, there was nothing about it that seemed out of the ordinary.
20:24Sure, and then I'm wearing a black miniskirt. I'm just going to go and dance my heart away.
20:32She was showing off her outfit and looking forward to having a good time, but unfortunately,
20:36this wouldn't be the case. After having dinner with her family, she left home and drove into downtown
20:42Atlanta, only to never come back home. At first, when she hadn't returned by the next morning,
20:46her family wasn't particularly worried. She was 25 years old. It was a Sunday,
20:51and crashing at a friend's place after a late night out wasn't unusual for her.
20:55By it, when Monday came and went with no word, her family started fearing the worst.
20:59And, a couple of days later, that fear was answered by a police visit. Because,
21:04on Wednesday morning, someone else had found Mitchell first. At around 7am on Wednesday,
21:09August 30th, a parking attendant was cleaning a downtown garage when he noticed a foul smell
21:13drifting through the structure. He followed it toward one of the stairwells, and hidden deep
21:18beneath the stairs, he found the remains of a young woman. He called the police immediately,
21:22but it was difficult to identify her right away. The only thing they had to work with was a small
21:27detail on her right wrist, a wristband from Alley Cat Atlanta. This helped officers identify the
21:32victim as Mitchell, who had been missing since the night of the concert. By it, identifying Mitchell only
21:37made the scene more confusing. Officers couldn't find her car anywhere inside that garage,
21:41so they now had to figure out why she ended up in a building she had no clear reason to
21:45be in.
21:46Officers combed through hours of grainy surveillance footage from the area, and the one thing that
21:51finally let them pick Mitchell out of a crowd was the very outfit she'd modeled for her viewers just
21:55hours earlier, in her cheerful vlog on her channel. At some point after the show, Mitchell had gotten
22:00separated from her friends and was walking alone, struggling to find her car while she was visibly
22:04intoxicated. That's when a stranger approached her and offered to help. At first, she tried to wave him
22:09off. By it, the man kept following her and insisting that he could help, until eventually Mitchell
22:14allowed him to walk with her. According to official reports, he then led her toward the parking deck,
22:19where she was later found. Which possibly means he may have used the fact that Mitchell wasn't sober
22:24to make himself seem harmless long enough to get her somewhere isolated. And once they were inside the
22:28stairwell, he turned on her. Investigators later found that Mitchell's death was caused by acts of
22:33violence. Afterward, investigators used the same surveillance footage, along with transit records
22:38and other evidence, to identify the man as 24-year-old Jacavius Arnold and arrested him on
22:43September 22nd. But even after his arrest, they still didn't understand the full extent of what
22:48they were dealing with. According to police testimony, Jacavius admitted that Mitchell was not
22:52his first victim. He described approaching other vulnerable women at night, presenting himself as
22:57someone willing to help, before turning on them the moment they were isolated. Jacavius Arnold was
23:02later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. As for Mitchell's family, the video she had
23:07uploaded on her channel to share her excitement for a night of music became the last recorded memory of
23:11her life. Austin Harreff was a 19-year-old college student from Palm Beach County, Florida.
23:20On paper, his life seemed like it was moving in a fairly normal direction. He had graduated from Sun
23:25Coast High School, enrolled at Florida State University to study biology, and developed a growing interest in
23:30fitness and bodybuilding. Then, in March 2016, he launched a YouTube channel called AFrost,
23:36where he began uploading videos of his workouts and fitness journey. His first upload was a
23:40straightforward guide about dieting and weightlifting, aimed at anyone hoping to get in shape.
23:45Today, I'm going to be talking about fitness as a whole and the challenges it brings, okay?
23:54Even though the video was clearly amateurly filmed and edited, Austin came across as articulate,
24:00confident, and genuinely passionate about fitness.
24:02The most important supplements out there are definitely creatine for bulking, creatine, and protein.
24:10I mean, protein is important for anybody. And look at the nutrition labels. If they don't have it on
24:18there, enter it in yourself. You know, you got to stay dedicated if you want to be the best.
24:23Nothing in life that's easy is worth having.
24:28But that first video would end up being the most normal thing Austin Harreff ever posted.
24:33Almost immediately afterward, the channel took a completely different turn.
24:37Instead of continuing with simple workout advice, Austin started uploading rap music
24:41under the name Austin Frosty. At first, this could have been dismissed as a college student
24:46experimenting with music. But the more he uploaded, the harder it became to tell how much of it was
24:51supposed to be a joke. They had almost no sense of professionalism. By it, Austin kept posting them,
24:57with the seriousness of someone who seemed to believe he was creating something much bigger
25:00than it looked. When he eventually returned to making fitness videos, he was acting very different.
25:07Hello, fellow lifters. Um, today I'm going to talk about persistence.
25:13He no longer came across as the composed teenager from his first upload. His personality had become
25:18increasingly exaggerated, almost as if he were slipping into a character that grew stranger with
25:23every new video.
25:24All right, that's it for today, fellas and ladies and gentlemen. Uh, more, uh, dieting advice
25:30will be coming soon. Uh, hello bros. Uh, it's Austin Frosty, man. You gotta listen to the personal
25:39trainer's advice. But you gotta, you gotta find your way too, man. You gotta, you gotta learn for yourself.
25:45You can't, you can't just hope and pray that someone is just gonna...
25:50It was becoming impossible to tell whether Austin was performing a character or slowly losing himself
25:55to one. On their own, these moments could be brushed off as awkward attempts at humor.
26:00By it, when you watch the videos in order, they start to feel like a visual presentation of a person
26:04whose thoughts were slowly starting to drift out of order. And what no one watching his videos at the
26:08time realized was that the changes appearing on camera were only a part of something far darker
26:13happening off screen. Around this same time, Austin's family and friends also began noticing
26:17that his personality was changing. By the summer of 2016, Austin was experiencing intense paranoia,
26:23unusual religious thoughts, and what he described as demons and monsters approaching him from the
26:28shadows. His search history also showed that, on some level, he seemed to understand something was
26:33wrong, as he looked up things like mania, hallucinations, and am I going crazy? And for a moment,
26:39it looked like Austin might be pulling himself back together. Because, on August 12th, 2016,
26:44he uploaded a video explaining that he no longer wanted to follow famous bodybuilders. Instead,
26:49he wanted to believe in himself.
26:52What's up, guys? I just want to let you know that I came to a realization of something.
27:02I no longer want to follow Arnold or any other bodybuilder. I want to follow myself, you know?
27:11I want to actually believe in myself. Not in… I want to learn from other things, other people,
27:20other bodybuilders and stuff. But, I just know that they're not me, you know? I know what's right for me.
27:30This was perhaps the first time since his original fitness video that Austin appeared grounded again.
27:35He sounded calmer, and he seemed more positive. But, in hindsight, that calm demeanor may have been the
27:40most alarming sign of all. Around this same period, Austin had told his family he believed he was
27:45like Jesus, and would one day be worshipped, and that he possessed superpowers. Looking back,
27:50the confidence he projected on camera no longer seemed like ordinary self-belief. It increasingly
27:55mirrored the grandiose belief that he was expressing in real life. And during that same week,
27:59his paranoia became impossible for his family to ignore. Austin told them evil forces were inside the
28:04house, and began sleeping near his sister because he believed he needed to protect her from whatever
28:09was coming. And, on August 15th, 2016, everything spiraled completely out of control. That evening,
28:15Austin went to dinner with his father at a restaurant in Jupiter, Florida. By it, he barely
28:20made it through being seated before something inside him seemed to snap. Unfortunately, by then,
28:25it was already too late. Shortly after, Austin returned to the restaurant, had an argument with
28:29his father, and fled a second time, frantically running off on foot. He later described being chased
28:34by a dark figure with a white face. At some point, he saw a light in the distance and sprinted
28:39toward
28:39it, believing it would save him. By it, in reality, that light was coming from the open garage of a
28:44home where 59-year-old John Stevens and 53-year-old Michelle Mishkin were relaxing for the evening.
28:50And as soon as he reached the garage, Austin attacked them, thrashing and biting in a way so
28:55violent and senseless that a neighbor, Jeff Fisher, came rushing over after hearing their screams.
28:59By it, when he tried to intervene, Austin attacked him as well. When the officers finally arrived at
29:04the scene, it took multiple deputies, a police dog, and an electric stun device to finally pull Austin
29:09away. John and Michelle lost their lives at the scene, while Jeff survived with serious injuries.
29:15At first, investigators assumed his behavior had been caused by some kind of hard drug. By it,
29:19the toxicology results didn't show anything like that. That finding became one of several reasons the
29:24case took an unexpected turn. Later, after years of evaluations, mental health experts concluded that
29:30Austin had suffered an acute psychotic episode and had no grasp of reality at the time of the attack.
29:35Looking back, the character as viewers thought they'd been watching him play in weeks before the
29:39incident was, in fact, an untreated illness surfacing in real time until it transformed into
29:44something completely inhumane. Austin was originally charged with two counts of first-degree murder,
29:49attempted first-degree murder, and burglary. By it, in 2022, six years after John and Michelle lost
29:55their lives, the court found Austin not guilty by reason of insanity and committed him to a secure
30:00mental health facility, where he'll remain until doctors and a judge determine he no longer poses a
30:04danger, which, for a case this infamous, may very well be never. And, as for Austin's channel,
30:10it still sits online, revealing the slow descent of a hopeful teenager into complete insanity over the
30:16course of a few short months.
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