The GTA 5 letter scraps are fifty pieces of a confession to a murder committed in 1975. Put them together and the game hands you the killer’s name and a mission where you decide what happens to him. Here is how the hunt works and the two things that make it far less tedious than the location lists suggest.
The two things that make this hunt easier
Start here, because both are missing from most guides and both change the experience completely.
The scraps make a sound. Get close and you hear paper rustling. It is quiet, so the practical advice is to turn the music off while hunting, at which point you stop needing to look at the ground.
Chop can find them. Playing as Franklin with the dog along gives you a second detector that reacts to nearby pieces.
Together they turn the hunt from a visual search into an audio one. A player following the sound covers ground far faster than one squinting at every alley.
What the letter actually is
Leonora Johnson was murdered in 1975. Her body was found beside the Land Act Dam after an anonymous tip to the police.
The confession was written afterwards, addressed to a man named David Richards, and torn into fifty pieces scattered across Los Santos and Blaine County. Each scrap you collect adds a fragment of the text.
What makes this collectible different from the spaceship parts is that the pieces mean something. You can read the letter as it reassembles, and the tone of it changes as more of the confession comes together.
What you get for all fifty
Three things, and only one of them is a trophy.
The achievement. Called A Mystery, Solved, awarded on the final scrap.
Progress toward 100 percent completion, which matters because completion is what unlocks three of the four UFO sightings, listed in our walkthrough of GTA 5 UFO locations.
A mission. The final scrap reveals the killer’s location and unlocks a Strangers and Freaks mission for Franklin called A Starlet in Vinewood.
That last one is the actual reward. The collectible hunt is the setup, the mission is the payoff, and unlike most collectibles in this game it ends with a decision rather than a vehicle.
The mission at the end
Once the letter is complete, you know who wrote it, and the game sends Franklin to find him.
There is a decision at the end of that encounter, and if you care about the rating, the requirement for gold is straightforward: the killer has to die.
Worth knowing in advance, because players who let him go for story reasons often discover afterwards that they closed the mission at a lower rating and have to replay it.
What the confession says as it builds
The text arrives out of order, which is part of what makes the hunt work as a story rather than a checklist.
Early on you get fragments that could mean anything: half sentences, a name, a reference to a night in 1975. Nothing connects.
Somewhere past the halfway point the tone shifts. Enough of the letter exists for the sequence of events to emerge, and the writer stops sounding evasive and starts sounding like someone explaining himself.
By the last few pieces you already know roughly what happened, and the remaining scraps fill in the details you would rather not have. That is the reason to read as you go instead of collecting fifty and opening it once at the end.
Running the hunt efficiently
- Turn the radio off. The rustling cue is useless under music.
- Play as Franklin, bring Chop. Two detectors beat one.
- Work district by district rather than following a numbered list across the map.
- Do it alongside the other collectible hunt. The routes overlap heavily.
- Check the stats menu for your count instead of guessing.
The overlap in point four is worth taking seriously. Both sets cover the same map, so collecting one while ignoring the other means driving every road twice. The other set is covered in our guide to GTA 5 spaceship parts.
Where they hide
| Type of place | Why it is awkward |
|---|---|
| alleys and back lots | the paper blends into rubbish and debris |
| rooftops | need a route up, sometimes a helicopter |
| beaches and coastline | large open areas with few landmarks |
| farm buildings and sheds | easy to walk past the entrance entirely |
| under bridges and overpasses | dark, and the sound is your only clue |
Compared with the glowing spaceship parts, these are genuinely hard to see. A scrap of paper on the ground looks like scenery, which is exactly why the audio cue matters so much.
Why this hunt is better than it sounds
Fifty collectibles is a lot of walking, and on paper this is the same chore as any other collectible set. In practice it is the best one in the game for one reason: it tells a story while you do it.
Each piece adds text. The confession becomes gradually more specific, more uncomfortable and more revealing, and by the time you are in the thirties you actually want to know how it ends.
That is a rare thing in open world collectibles. Most of them are counters. This one is a slow reveal, and the mission at the end gives the whole exercise a conclusion.
The dam, and why the location matters
The body was found beside the Land Act Dam, which is a real place on the map you can drive to at any point in the game.
Going there is not required and unlocks nothing. It is worth doing anyway, because the collectible hunt is otherwise abstract: fifty pieces of paper and a name. Standing at the location gives the story a place.
It also fits neatly into the hunt itself. The dam sits in the north of the map, close to several scrap locations and to the route people take through the countryside, so the detour costs almost nothing.
Common mistakes
- Hunting with music on. Removes the single most useful tool you have.
- Playing as the wrong character. Without Franklin you lose Chop’s help entirely.
- Following a list in order. Guarantees crossing the map repeatedly.
- Ignoring the letter text. Reading it is most of the reward.
- Rushing the final mission. The decision at the end affects your rating.
Doing it on a second playthrough
Collectibles do not carry over between save files, so anyone starting again faces the same fifty pieces.
The difference is that you already know how the letter ends, which removes the one thing that made the first hunt interesting. On a replay the honest advice is to treat it purely as a completion task and run it as efficiently as possible.
That means district by district, radio off, Chop along, and both collectible sets at once. Done that way it is a couple of focused sessions rather than a slow reveal spread across a playthrough.
How long it takes
Realistically two or three sessions if you work by district, longer if you follow a list across the whole map.
Nothing expires and nothing is missable, so the hunt can sit half finished for as long as you like. The only thing waiting at the end is the mission, and it will still be there.
If you are moving around the map anyway, a helicopter shortens the countryside sections considerably, and where to find one is covered in our walkthrough of airports in GTA 5.
Where this sits among the game’s collectibles
GTA 5 has several collectible sets and they are not equally worth your time.
The letter scraps and the spaceship parts are the two large ones, fifty pieces each, and both are required for full completion. The letters are harder to spot and better written. The parts are easier to see and end in a vehicle.
Everything else is smaller, easier and less interesting. If you only intend to finish one large set, this is the one to do, because it is the only collectible in the game that ends with a story rather than a number going up.
Frequently asked questions about GTA 5 letter scraps
How many letter scraps are in GTA 5?
Fifty, scattered across Los Santos and Blaine County.
What do the letter scraps unlock?
The achievement A Mystery, Solved, progress toward 100 percent completion, and the Strangers and Freaks mission A Starlet in Vinewood.
Who was Leonora Johnson?
A woman murdered in 1975, whose body was found beside the Land Act Dam after an anonymous tip to the police.
How do I find scraps more easily?
Turn the radio off and listen for rustling paper, and play as Franklin with Chop, who reacts to nearby pieces.
Are any of them missable?
No. They stay where they are until collected, so the hunt can be paused indefinitely.
What happens in the final mission?
Franklin confronts the person who wrote the confession, and there is a decision at the end. Killing him is what the gold rating requires.
Should I collect these or the spaceship parts first?
Do both at once. The routes overlap, and doing them separately means covering the same map twice.
Last updated: September 2026
