Camp Mystic is the subject of a criminal investigation that could lead to manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in connection with the deaths of 27 girls during catastrophic flooding in Texas last year, according to court records.
In search-warrant applications executed last week, investigators requested access to electronic communications belonging to the camp’s owners. They said the records could contain evidence of manslaughter, negligent homicide, child abandonment or other offenses.
No charges have been filed. A camp representative did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Texas Ranger Brant Johnston wrote in an affidavit that Camp Mystic lacked sufficient emergency plans, had not carried out emergency drills or training, and did not have enough adult counselors in some cabins.
Johnston said the camp’s owners also failed to move children from low-lying cabins, even after monitoring flood warnings issued late at night.
“Young campers cannot reasonably be expected to independently recognize a rapidly developing, life-threatening hazard or to organize and execute an evacuation absent direction from an adequate number of adult supervisors,” Johnston wrote.
He concluded that “Camp Mystic, LLC was aware of and consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death to the campers in their care.”
Twenty-five campers and two teenage counselors died at the Christian all-girls camp when the Guadalupe River surged over its banks before dawn on July 4, 2025.
Camp Mystic owner Richard Eastland was also killed in the flooding.
For generations, Camp Mystic had been a fixture of family summers. Girls attended the sleepaway camp to ride horses, canoe, fish and take part in Bible studies.
The camp did not reopen this year and has filed for bankruptcy reorganization.
Overall, the devastating flood killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the Guadalupe River, prompting questions about how the disaster unfolded.
Attorneys representing some victims’ families said they welcomed the search warrants but argued that investigators should not have needed them to obtain answers.
“For more than a year, families of the 27 angels killed at Camp Mystic have fought, begged, and pleaded with the Eastland family for accountability and answers,” Christina Yarnell and Brad Beckworth, attorneys for the family of victim Cile Steward, said in a written statement.
“Instead, the Eastlands have held hostage the information and answers owed to parents who deserve, more than anyone, to know the details surrounding their daughters’ final moments.”
Steward’s body has still not been found.
Johnston wrote that he had visited Camp Mystic several times and that he and other investigators had interviewed witnesses, flood survivors and people connected to the camp.
However, Johnston said several people, including members of the Eastland family and other senior camp officials, declined to be interviewed.
In the months since the flooding, members of the Eastland family and other camp leaders have testified in court and before the state Legislature. Camp director Edward Eastland also delivered a tearful apology.
