Red Dead Redemption 2 is full of mysteries and Easter eggs for the player to uncover, but there's one mystery that might be among the most disturbing in any Rockstar game. Players have only just begun to unravel it in full, and it has connections to other missions in the game as well as real-world events.
The Red Dead Redemption 2 mystery is a masterclass in environmental storytelling that reminds players just how detailed the game's world is. As the narrative unravels, the developers reference horrifying real-world events while still providing an in-game explanation for keen-eyed players looking to solve one of the most chilling mysteries in Red Dead.
The Blackwater Athletics Team
This Red Dead 2 mystery begins with a newspaper clipping. The Blackwater Ledger No. 69 mentions that a local sports team, the Blackwater Athletics team, has recently gone missing. It reads:
Members of the Blackwater Athletic Club are still missing and their friends and family are excited by the gravest fears. They were last seen leaving the north edge of town for a group athletics run and, although the most thorough search has been made for them, they cannot be found. Certain facts around their disappearance have given cause for suspicion. The affair has created a sensation in Blackwater and the surrounding community. They had departed on a run and had intended to return the same evening.
Their friends are making a diligent search and police in neighboring areas have been notified. At first, there were rumors they had been kidnapped by Indians, however, this appears to be false as no tribes have engaged in theft of livestock or kidnapping in some years. The Blackwater Athletics team were training for a competitive meet next month and were expected to take top honors in fencing, wrestling, and baseball.
It isn’t hard for the player to uncover the unfortunate team’s fates. The bodies of 10 men, as well as some dismembered limbs, can be found in a mass grave to the west of the town, just to the south of the “L” in West Elizabeth as written on the game’s map. It's close to where players can also find the legendary buck in Red Dead 2.
The players are all identifiable by their uniforms. Though there are ten bodies, none of them have missing limbs. The limbs left on a pile of dirt by the grave spell out a "B", presumably for Blackwater Athletics. The people of Blackwater suspected a Native American attack though this is dismissed by the Blackwater Ledger article, and like the mystery of the hermit's map in Red Dead, the truth is stranger than fiction.
The Real-Life Connection
Some fans speculated that the Blackwater Athletics Team could have been killed by the Skinner Brothers, who are behind many of the most brutal tragedies in Red Dead 2. The Skinner Brothers are an in-game faction that captures and tortures animals and human beings alike. However, none of the bodies in the mass grave appear to have been tortured, though two of them have bags that have been placed over their heads which clown faces have been drawn onto.
Charles Smith says that the Skinner Brothers didn’t arrive in Tall Trees, West Elizabeth until around 1905, however, which means they likely were not there when the Blackwater Athletics team went missing. The truth behind the Easter egg, however, is more disturbing than any in-game resolution.
The murder of the Blackwater Athletics Team is a reference the real-life Los Maniceros massacre, during which twelve members of a Colombian amateur football team were kidnapped, with only one surviving. The sole survivor claimed that the rest of the group had been killed by the National Liberation Army of Colombia, though to this day no motive has been uncovered. This Red Dead reference is made clear because the leader of the National Liberation Army is referred to as El Payaso – the clown. This explains the clown masks put on the bodies of two of the victims.
Edmund Lowry Jr.
There is an in-game explanation for the murders as well. The player can find 3 more mutilated dead bodies in Red Dead 2 as part of the American Dreams stranger mission, next to graffiti like “look on my works” and “behold”. If they do so, they’ll find all three pieces of a map that lead to the basement of Edmund Lowry Jr. beneath Lucky's Cabin. In the basement are articles about the various victims of the serial killer. Three of the articles confirm Lowry was killing people in the West Elizabeth region around when the Blackwater team went missing.
His basement is one of the creepiest locations in Red Dead 2. Players can find another “B” formed from human arms and legs like the one at the scene of the Blackwater Athletics team’s murder. Though the Blackwater victims aren’t as badly mutilated as the others the player can find in-game, some of the articles about Lowry’s victims show that sometimes he merely drowned them.
If the player interacts with his knife they will be captured by Lowry himself, and will have to fight him off to avoid the same grizzly fate. If they try and return him to the Sheriff’s office, he will attack the Sheriff and the player will have to shoot him, meaning players may never know how he managed to take down an entire athletics team. With no stab wounds or bullet holes, it is possible he poisoned their water or something similar, but like the Red Dead 2 Tumbleweed mystery, fans will likely have their own theories.
This is quite possibly one of the most grizzly details in Red Dead Redemption 2, as not only does it make the game world itself more threatening but it references horrifying real-world events without a clear resolution. Though the exact story of what happened, as in real life, has not been proved, the murder of the Blackwater Athletics team is a chilling detail sure to keep many Red Dead fans up at night.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is out now for the PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.