In an affidavit that reads like gothic fiction, investigators describe how a teen reunited with her birth mother last year on an isolated farm in Missouri — only to be tortured there, forced to crawl through hog pens and have salt rubbed in her wounds, and then finally murdered last month and burned in a fire pit.

Rebecca Ruud, 39, was arrested Monday by Ozark County sheriff’s deputies and charged, among other crimes, with the first-degree murder of Savannah Leckie, 16, whom she had given up for adoption at birth.

The baby had been taken in by a husband and wife in Minnesota, according to sheriff’s documents, and raised there nearly all her life. But Savannah’s adoptive parents eventually divorced, and by late 2016 the teen was having trouble getting along with her adoptive mother’s new boyfriend.

In November 2016, Ruud, who had been in casual contact with the girl for years, “agreed to take Savannah back and she was delivered to Ruud in Ozark County,” wrote a sheriff’s deputy, as he recounted all the things the girl would subsequently endure.

New family business

A truck driver and volunteer firefighter, Ruud lived on an 81-acre farm near Theodosia — close to the Arkansas border, miles from the nearest paved road.