Strange Harvest

In 1993, a young woman is found dismembered in the forests of San Bernardino. Detectives Kirby and Taylor begin tracing a pattern, but at first the murders are treated as separate incidents. The brutal discovery sets the tone for a decades-long case against Mr. Shiny.

In 1993, a bedridden elderly man is bludgeoned and stabbed to death in his retirement facility. The scene hints at brutality and ritualistic elements that will resonate later in the investigation. This early murder broadens the scope of the killer’s reach.

The third victim, Noah Lafone, is abducted and found murdered in a bog, with his liver removed. The bizarre mutilation deepens the sense of ritual and cruelty behind the crimes. The case remains loosely connected to the earlier murders as investigators search for a pattern.

In 2013, the Sheridan family is bound at the dining room table and exsanguinated via femoral artery cuts. Their blood is used to paint a strange symbol on the vaulted ceiling. The crime tightens the focus on a ritualistic killer.

A young woman is murdered in her home, and her boyfriend Glen is burned on the face with a blowtorch. The attacks demonstrate the killer’s reach and willingness to mutilate victims to terrorize survivors. The violence escalates the investigation’s urgency.

Another male victim is found in an abandoned swimming pool, half-filled with water and leeches. He slowly bleeds out over days as barbed wire around the pool edges prevents escape. The scene underscores the killer’s patient, ritualistic cruelty.

Kirby and Taylor trace online contact to public Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, where a homeless man reports a close encounter with the killer. The killer was driving a stolen van, and its owner, Victor Shamaz, becomes a prime suspect after claiming a masked thief stole it. This sequence widens the hunt and points to a mobile killer.

The detectives locate Leslie Sykes at a house he has rented for a year. A blood-painted symbol identical to the Sheridan scene is etched above the front door, linking the cases. The house becomes a primary location for pursuit and discovery.

Sykes taunts police with letters invoking Kaliban and occult imagery. The team learns that, during a twenty-year absence from California, he traveled to Jerusalem and through the Middle East and Europe studying ancient sites and occult practices. The letters reveal a calculated, ritualistic mindset behind the killings.

Victoria Macenroe is shot in her home and survives, with her blood used to draw the same symbol on the bedroom wall. Sykes later infiltrates the hospital posing as a nurse and kills Victoria by adding drain cleaner to her transfusion bag. The hospital sequence shows the killer’s audacious and methodical infiltration.

Sykes murders a doughnut shop employee, removing his heart as part of the ritual pattern. The brutal act expands the killer’s repertoire and further unsettles the community. Investigators sense a calculated, symbol-driven campaign behind the violence.

A storage unit rented by Sykes yields organs from multiple victims, occult-like books, and a statue of a leech-like creature. The discovery cements the sense that the murders are planned around a ritualistic mythology. For detectives, the collection provides crucial physical evidence.

Sykes murders a young couple and abducts their infant son, intending to burn the child to death in a ritual during a planetary alignment. Kirby and Taylor confront him in the San Bernardino National Forest and fatally shoot him as the ritual unfolds. A strange light appears in the sky, leaving witnesses unsettled.

Investigators learn that Sykes believed his spree was tied to an 800-year planetary alignment. A letter mailed two days before his death hints he would return in 800 years to complete his mission. The revelation frames the killings as part of a cyclic, occult prophecy rather than a single-life spree.

In a post-credits moment, Kirby is seen reviewing footage on his cell phone while searching for the cave where Sykes claimed to have had a spiritual experience. The end leaves the question of belief versus superstition unresolved as investigators close the case.