Ruth is incapacitated with BZ and abandoned in the cave

Ruth Warnecki’s incapacitation in Winkel’s Cave becomes a crucial link between her survival and Erin Bushnell’s murder. A memory prompted by Ruth’s compass, followed by toxicology results, establishes that Ruth had BZ in her system—the same drug detected in Erin. The circumstances of Ruth’s removal from the cave are not definitively established, but Dillon Savich proposes that the killer may have found and carried her out rather than leaving her in Erin’s hidden chamber.

Memory and the Compass

While the group was in the cave, Dix Noble handed Ruth her compass and asked her to hold it. Dillon Savich encouraged her to think back to the last time she had held it. The object prompted a fragment of memory: Ruth recalled being terrified by an approaching sound, running away, and screaming. The episode gives the cave ordeal a specific remembered shape, but it does not establish exactly what Ruth encountered or how she became incapacitated.

The compass also connects Ruth’s present recollection to the period she cannot fully remember. Her response is a fragment rather than a complete account. The group does not press her to reconstruct more in the cave; Dillon Savich treats what she recalls as enough for the moment, and Lacey Sherlock urges them to leave so they can call for help.

Toxicology and the Link to Erin

Later, at Ruth’s home, Dixon Noble reports that the medical examiner tested what remained of her blood sample. The result was BZ, the same drug found in Erin Bushnell. Dixon explains that BZ affects perception and thought and can cause confusion, forgetfulness, and stupor. Those properties give the investigation a possible explanation for Ruth’s impaired state and for why her recollection is incomplete, without proving the precise effects she experienced at every point in the cave.

The comparison between the two samples is significant but not identical: Erin had more BZ in her system than Ruth. Dillon Savich interprets Ruth’s lower amount as a possible residue of the gas used on Erin. That is an investigative inference, not a direct account of how Ruth was exposed. The evidence establishes the shared drug and the difference in concentration; it does not identify the source of the BZ or establish who administered it.

Possible Removal and Survival

Dillon Savich offers a tentative reconstruction of what may have happened after Ruth was exposed. He suggests that the killer might have returned to check on Erin, found Ruth in the cave—perhaps unconscious or already injured—and taken her out. Savich also raises the possibility that the killer harmed Ruth during that encounter. The conversation does not resolve which, if any, of those details is correct.

Ruth’s survival stands in contrast to Erin’s death. Savich reasons that the killer may have regarded the chamber as Erin’s tomb, not Ruth’s, and may therefore have removed Ruth instead of leaving her beside Erin. This explanation is presented as a possibility, not as a confirmed motive. Separately, Savich observes that if Dix Noble had not found Ruth in his woods, investigators might have searched Winkel’s Cave extensively, with the investigation concentrated there because Ruth was an FBI agent. Her discovery outside the cave thus shaped how the case might otherwise have unfolded.

Investigative Significance

The event supplies two important but distinct pieces of the investigation: Ruth’s recovered memory places her in terror and flight within the cave, while the toxicology result links her exposure to the substance found in Erin. Together they make a drug-related explanation plausible and tie the two women’s ordeals more closely together. They do not, by themselves, reveal the perpetrator, the exact sequence of Ruth’s exposure and removal, or why she was spared. The gap between laboratory evidence and Savich’s cautious reconstruction preserves those questions as unresolved parts of the case.