Volume 10

Sixteen-year-old Leanne Tiernan said goodbye to her best friend after a day of Christmas shopping in Leeds and took the unlit shortcut through Houghley Gill. Police searched 1,400 houses, drained three miles of canals, and questioned 140 men — and found no trace of her. Read the full story →

At 3:00 a.m. in Akron, Ohio, patrol officers found three emaciated, shoeless boys wandering the sidewalk, drinking from garden hoses and digging through trash cans. Over foot-long sandwiches — the best food they'd ever tasted — the brothers began to explain what their lives had been. Read the full story →

Ed and Minnie Maurin, in their eighties and famous for the Christmas luncheon at their Ethel, Washington tree-farm home, were missing when friends arrived to set up the 1985 party. Inside the locked house, bank statements lay scattered across the bathroom floor. Read the full story →

Failed stage hypnotist Martin Smith controlled every corner of Lianne's life — even after his crimes surfaced and the family fled Britain for Spain under false names. For her children, Rebecca and Daniel, the perfect holiday their mother promised would be their last. Read the full story →

Selling Girl Scout cookies door to door in Sabre Springs, California, Brenda van Dam and seven-year-old Danielle stopped at the immaculate home of wealthy neighbor David Westerfield — who bought cookies, showed off his kitchen, and mentioned his 'adult parties.' That weekend, Danielle vanished. Read the full story →

Nursing student Savanna Greywind, twenty-two and pregnant, lived with her close-knit family in a Fargo apartment building where neighbors rarely got past hello in the hallway. Then the woman from the third floor knocked on the Greywinds' door — and Savanna answered. Read the full story →

Alcohol carried Dee Casteel from executive secretary for Hialeah's mayor to waitress at a Florida IHOP owned by Art Venecia. When Venecia's younger lover, Alan Bryant, complained that he was sick of 'the old fuddy-duddy,' Dee was the one listening. Read the full story →

Eight-year-old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson pedaled her pink Christmas bicycle two blocks to mail a birthday card in Tucson, Arizona, in September 1984. Minutes later, her sister found the bike lying in the middle of the road — and no sign of Vicki. Read the full story →

Louise Porton had been an angry outsider since childhood near Birmingham, England; by eighteen she was openly selling sex and bragging about the money. Motherhood arrived in the form of two little daughters — and Louise came to see them as obstacles. Read the full story →

In September 1991, lawyer Ernest Brendel, his librarian wife Alice, and their eight-year-old daughter Emily vanished without a trace from Barrington, Rhode Island. Six weeks later, the sleepy town learned it had been living with a sociopath in its midst: Christopher Hightower. Read the full story →

Widowed cellist Janine Sutphen found late-life love with Rob Petrick, a churchgoing computer tinkerer she married within a year. When her devoted sons called in January 2003, Rob always had an answer: their mother was in bed, too depressed to talk. Read the full story →

Eighteen-year-old artist Ezra McCandless fell for Jason Mengel, a National Guard medic nearly twice her age — then came Alex Woodworth, the barista they both knew from Racy's coffee shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The triangle could not hold. Read the full story →