AS Frank Scaramuzzi and Jeremiah Johnston dug ditches deep in the woods, they didn't know that the muddy holes would soon be their own graves.

But twisted murderer Gregory Cook knew his two friends had dirt on him which could land him back in prison, and he wasn't going to take any chances.

Cook led the two men into the woods on the pretence they were looking for their female friend who had mysteriously vanished.

But he pulled a pistol on them and told them that missing Shannon Sloan was already dead — and he'd brutally butchered her.

After forcing the petrified men to start digging he made them recite the Lord's Prayer, before shooting one in the head and another in the face.

Documentary The Wonderland Murders tells the story of twisted killer Cook, who cut the head off his first victim following a row about petty cash and then murdered again to cover his tracks.

Watery grave

In 2009, cops were called when two boys found a decomposed human hand in a pond near Elgin, Oregon, while they were fishing.

They located a green canvas bag and inside found another severed hand — and a human head.

The victim was 51-year-old Shannon Sloan, with police using her fingerprints to identify her.

They immediately suspected her boyfriend, Frank Scaramuzzi, of the sickening crime.

But he had disappeared without a trace, with both his family and police unable to find him.

The case only had a breakthrough when a bartender told cops Frank, his friend Jeremiah Johnston and Shannon used to drink together - along with a shady fourth character known only as "Greg".

A violent sex offender

Police soon found out Greg's surname and discovered his chilling criminal record.

One officer recalls: "Greg was a pretty bad guy – everything from drug crimes to assaults, burglary, car theft, he was a sex offender.

"He was an experienced hunter and fisherman. It just fit that he would know how to dismember Shannon Sloan."

With their new lead, police desperately searched for Greg.

But when his Jeep was pulled over soon after, a trooper found his terrified girlfriend, Rebecca, inside and not the killer.

She got out of the car and immediately burst into tears.

Rebecca said Greg had told her about murdering Shannon, apparently going into "gory detail, just to terrorise" her.

He then fled on foot, leaving Rebecca his car, along with a handwritten confession of the murder to give to police.

The 'flowery' confession

The sprawling "five or six-page" confession letter read like it had been intended as a work of art.

"It didn’t rhyme, but it was almost like he was trying to write a poem or something. It was written just really flowery," a detective says.

"In the letter he admitted to killing Shannon over a small amount of money."

Greg's note detailed how, on the day of the murder, he'd slapped Shannon and wouldn't let her out of his car because she owed him cash.

He knew if she went to the police with he'd be jailed because of his previous violent convictions - something he was desperate to avoid.

That's when he decided to kill her.

Greg wrote: "I assaulted her, I committed a kidnapping, so I’m committed at that point."

He also confessed killing Jeremiah and Frank because they knew Shannon had been with him on the day she went missing.

Greg even drew a map to lead police to their mangled remains.

As cops now knew for sure Greg was a triple murderer, a nationwide manhunt was launched.

'His eyes were pure black'

While on the run Greg met a woman, Linda May, in a launderette.

He asked if he could stay with her and Linda May said she had a campervan he could sleep in — but she wanted to be sure he was safe.

So Greg used her phone to call his own daughter, Stephanie, and handed the phone back to her.

Linda May jokingly asked Stephanie: "He's not a murderer or a rapist or anything, right?"

Stephanie laughed so as not to panic Linda May — knowing if she told her the truth about her dad, he would see it on her face.

But after the call ended, Stephanie immediately called the cops and told them where her evil father was.

Once inside the campervan with him, Linda May started to feel uneasy.

"I got close to him and I looked in his eyes, and I remember saying: 'Wow, I have never seen eyes as dark as yours,'" she recalls.

"They were almost like pure black."

It was then that Greg told Linda May that he was the FBI's most wanted killer.

'A violent, violent killing'

The next morning, a SWAT team descended on the campervan and got Linda May to safety while Greg was taken into custody.

Disturbing audio tapes from his police interviews hear him saying he'd led Shannon barefoot into the woods and had given her a piggy-back when her feet became sore.

Once they were deep among the trees, he claimed he strangled her to death by twisting rope around her neck.

But an officer at Shannon's autopsy said: "This woman was violently killed. She had stab wounds to her neck, her chest, her sternum.

"This was a violent, violent killing. Nothing like what Greg Cook described at all."

Explaining the moment he dismembered Shannon's body, Greg says: "I love to hunt, maybe because of the hunting I know where them joints are at if I wanted to cut that up cleanly."

Greg pleaded guilty to all three murders and was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences.

Recalling a conversation with the beast after he was caught, a detective says: "I asked him if we were to get him a hall pass and turned him loose for the day, would you kill again?

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"And he says: ‘Yeah, probably.’

"I said: ‘Why is that?’

"And he said: ‘As sick as it sounds, I enjoyed it.’"

The Wonderland Murders airs on Friday 26th July on Investigation Discovery, 10pm

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