Trigger warning: it doesn’t get much creepier than the abandoned murder site hidden in the northwestern corner of Iowa. In all seriousness, read on with care, because the history of the abandoned murder site at Gitchie Manitou State Preserve in Lyon County, Iowa is not a tale for the faint of heart.

Perhaps the sordid story of Gitchie Manitou begins millennia ago with the formation of the oldest exposed rock in the entire state of Iowa -- stunning pink quartzite cliff outcrops dated at 1.6 billion years old.
John R / AllTrails
Perhaps it begins centuries ago with 17 conical mounds built by the Native Americans (the name "Gitchie Manitou" means "Great Spirit" in the Sioux language).
John R / AllTrails
Perhaps it begins with the stagecoaches that traversed this prairie in the 1880s or the rock quarry here at the turn of the century or the Conservation Corp workers who built a stone shelter in the 1930s (it's still here, just in ruins).
Mark Keller / AllTrails
Or perhaps, as most would claim, it begins just decades ago with four murders and a rape one November night in 1973.
John R / AllTrails

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Teenagers. That's all the five friends were when they came to Gitchie Manitou to hang out one mid-November night in 1973.
Faa Thipsutha / AllTrails
Little did they know that their night of fun would take a sudden, nightmarish turn when they were spotted by three trouble-making brothers, out looking to poach some deer.
Shelia Wakup / AllTrails
The Fryers, brothers in their twenties, decided to pose as police officers in an attempt to seize the group's marijuana.
Faa Thipsutha / AllTrails
The brothers began by open-firing their shotguns, wounding Stewart Baade, 18, and Michael Hadrath, 15, and killing Roger Essem, 17. The wounded boys and the two girls in the group, Dana Baaade, 14, and Sandra Cheskey, 13, were herded back to the Fryer brothers' vehicles.
One brother left with Sandra, the only teen to survive the night.
Faa Thipsutha / AllTrails
The other two brothers shot and killed Dana, Michael, and Stewart along a roadside in the Gitchie Manitou State Preserve before fleeing to rejoin their third brother and Sandra. Sandra was raped and then returned home, still believing these men were police officers busting her group for drug possession.

All three Fryer brothers have been brought to justice and are serving life sentences without parole in various Iowa prisons. And yet, balancing its horrific history is the endless prairie beauty, serene river, and stately rock outcrops that make this remote preserve an ironically peaceful place to explore.

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Gitchie Manitou State Preserve, 52141, Adams Ave, Larchwood, IA 51241, USA