Volume 15

Pre-med student Mark Kilroy and three childhood friends made their third annual spring-break trip to South Padre Island in March 1989. One night across the border in Matamoros, Mark stepped away from his friends — and vanished into something far darker than anyone imagined. Read the full story →

Chandler Halderson told everyone a story: a degree nearly finished, an IT job waiting, a move to Florida planned. When his parents, Bart and Krista, went silent at their home near Madison, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2021, detectives began pulling at the threads. Read the full story →

On Good Friday 2012, fifteen-year-old Don Steenkamp burst into the Griekwastad police station drenched in blood, telling officers he had found his parents and sister shot on the family farm. The question was what had really happened inside that farmhouse. Read the full story →

Amy Bishop grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts, forever in the shadow of her effortlessly brilliant younger brother, Seth. What happened between them one afternoon in 1986 would be ruled an accident — and stay buried for more than two decades. Read the full story →

Sasha Marsden of the quiet village of Staining, England, was known for spontaneous dance moves and an infectious sense of humor. In nearby Blackpool, a hotel job offer from a man named David Minto was waiting — an offer that concealed something monstrous. Read the full story →

Fifteen-year-old Lynda Mann took the Black Pad footpath to a babysitting job in Narborough, England, one November evening in 1983 and never came home. Solving her murder — and a second one nearby — would require a scientific technique no police force had ever used. Read the full story →

Donna Jones had everything but love: a civil-service career in Ottawa, her own home, and friends who adored her. Then she met Mark Hutt — and the sunny, bubbly Donna her friends knew slowly began to disappear. Read the full story →

Sabrina Kouider craved fame and glamour long before she and her partner Sam Medouni brought a shy French au pair named Sophie Lionnet into their London home to care for the children. Behind that front door, Sophie's life became a nightmare no one outside could see. Read the full story →

Bill Mowbray was Brownsville's flamboyant Cadillac king — lakeside mansion, beach condos, his face on TV commercials — and secretly drowning in debt. When a gunshot rang out in the couple's bedroom, the answer to what happened would hinge on chemical traces of blood. Read the full story →

After her bitter second divorce, Sandi Nieves gathered her daughters for a special slumber party, letting them fall asleep together in the kitchen of their California home. What the morning brought would put her at the center of one of the state's most disturbing trials. Read the full story →

Surveillance cameras in Plano, Texas, captured Christina Morris walking into a parking garage with acquaintance Enrique Arochi just before 4:00 a.m. Minutes later, only his car emerged — and Christina was never seen again. Read the full story →

Eighteen-year-old Kelsey Smith dashed into a Target in Overland Park, Kansas, on June 2, 2007, to grab a last-minute anniversary gift for her boyfriend. Store cameras recorded her leaving — and what happened in the seconds after she reached her car. Read the full story →

Six-year-old Faye Swetlik hopped off her school bus in Cayce, South Carolina, grabbed a snack, and went out to play in her own front yard. When her mother looked out the window at 4:15, her 'magical little fairy' was gone. Read the full story →