Editor's note: It's the second-longest story This Land ever produced, and also the wildest. Michael Mason, Chris Sandel, and Lee Roy Chapman uncover Oklahoma's own Breaking Bad-style saga of drugs, violence, and scientific experimentation, originally published in the July 2013 issue. Buckle up.
He stood naked by the roadside with a blanket draped around his hips, feebly reaching out for the glimmering cars as they passed in the morning light. He was almost too hideous to look at: Purple and black tracks streaked across his frail limbs, and his hollow eyes peered out from a pale, gray head shaved bald, eyebrows and all. Brandon Andres Green was not from hell, not exactly. He was from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
Over the course of the past six days, Green had been tied up in a Tulsa hotel room, where his mind was loaded with powerful psychoactives and his body ravaged. He was then driven 500 miles south and abandoned in a Texas field at night. Green had crawled through the darkness, the occasional moan of a distant car his only guide. Every few feet, he collapsed from exhaustion. By morning, he reached the road. He grasped at fistfuls of air, hoping that someone might notice him.
It was 8:11 a.m. when Patrolman Neal Mora of the Texas City Police Department passed. He wasn’t quite sure what he saw. He turned around, pulled over to the shoulder, then stepped out of his patrol car and approached the man cautiously.