One night in the late spring of 1998, four soldiers from the Minot AFB in Minot, North Dakota, received weekend passes and decided to camp at nearby Lake Darling to fish and hopefully shoot a few of the geese that were passing north into Canada. The land was not challenging, the weather favorable, and the soldiers were well-trained and well-armed. Nothing should have gone wrong.
After the soldiers failed to return, military police and local law enforcement began a search of their last known location. They found nothing. It wasn't until three weeks later that another hunter, unable to control his bloodhound companion, let him loose, only to find him digging intently at a curiously cleared patch of ground. Fearing the worst, he dug just enough to find bloody cloth and rotting flesh. A dig was organized, revealing rotting geese carcasses and all of the soldiers' gear: their tents, weapons, and even their clothes. Their bodies, however, were never found.
Their friends and families agonized for years. What could have happened to these four individuals? Did one of them snap and murder the rest? Had they stumbled across something they shouldn't have, like a mobile drug operation, or a grow farm? Had they simply decided to shed their identities and start somewhere anew? Answers were not apparent, and the legend of the Minot Four seemed likely to be unresolved forever, aside from the usual rantings of conspiracy theorists.
It wasn't until 2017 that a clue arrived, in the form of a package that washed up on the shores of Geta, a village in the Solomon Islands. It contained a decades-old model of digital video camera featuring footage from an unknown date. The video on it was professionally produced and edited, and featured a wide variety of footage from cameras that appeared to have been covertly placed around buildings spread across a battlefield. Men and women, including footage of what were clearly two members of the Minot Four, albeit in much rougher shape than when they had vanished, were scrounging for weapons, avoiding explosions, and attempting to survive in vicious firefights across a tropical jungle island. The phone number that appeared near the end of the three-minute clip (for orders? reservations? referrals?) had long since been disconnected, but the logo that flashed for a single frame before the video ceased could not have made the purpose of the mysterious location more clear.
The Minot Four had made a trip to Murder Island.
The Minot Four are probably long-dead, but you can support your favorite Murder Island inductees here at Giant Bomb by pre-ordering this Murder Island t-shirt! This shirt will only be available via pre-order; once they're done and shipped out, we will not be making any more. Grab one now as we will cease taking orders on 7/10. Printing will take around ten business days, so these will likely begin being shipped in around a month! There are both Men's and Women's sizes!
Another recent addition to the Giant Bomb store is the Giant Bomb PopSocket! Do all kinds of crazy things with whatever device you stick it to! Nab one now!