It's April 1980 in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Manchester is a mill city, stitched together by the Merrimack River.

The red brick factories stretch long and low against a gray sky.

It's the kind of place where the river air clings to your clothes,

and the buildings seem to hum with the memories

of machines that haven't run in years.

Brick and river air, old mill blocks carved into apartments, windows that rattle in the wind.

On the west side of town, just a few blocks from the river, the buildings sit close together,

like they're huddling against the cold.

The building at 289 Merrimack Street is one of them, a modest, three-story, New England-style,

multi-family home with white clapboard siding.

And inside, it's quiet, not silent, just muffled.

Pipes ticking, a refrigerator humming. The building seems to be waiting.

Around 1.15 a.m., headlights sweep across the building as a car eases into a parking space.

Judith Ron and her boyfriend step out and head toward the front door of the building.

The stairwell is dark, not dim, completely dark.

They climb the stairs anyway, feeling their way up toward the third floor.

Investigators would later discover that all of the light bulbs in the stairwell had been

unscrewed. And before they even step foot inside the apartment, she can feel it. Something is off.

The front door opens easily, too easily too easily inside the air feels wrong shifted the back door is wide open

and in the bedroom there's a girl asleep in her daughter's bed a friend who had been over earlier that night

but her daughter is not there.

...