Once I got there, he took Paul and I into another room. My father did. And, you know, he basically told us that our mother was gone and she was never coming back. From that moment, I believe that he had done something to her and that he was responsible for it. And that night, I mean, I just said that's not, you know, I said that's bullshit, is what I said.

And we, Paul and I went with my uncle to his place and we basically never came back.

That's Tom Wolfe, remembering a moment that changed everything.

At just 16 years old, he came home from basketball camp to learn his mother was gone,

and his father was already insisting rather coldly that she would never return.

The conversation was abrupt, unsettling, and left no room for hope.

But what's even more chilling is that it happened just a few days after Dolores went missing.

Why would a husband be so quick to declare that his wife was never coming back?

Why would he remove hope from his own children?

To try to understand that, we need to rewind three days.

To the morning of August 1, 1979, when a call from Anna Wolf, Dolores' only daughter

first hinted that something was wrong.

Word quickly began to circulate among Dolores' family that she was missing.

And no one knew why.

I'm Kyle Bonagura.

And I'm Adam Rittenberg.

This is the Unforgotten Season 3, Finding Dolores Wolf.

Episode 2, Afraid of the Dark.

When Adam and I started reporting this story in 2020, Anna was one of the only people not willing to be interviewed.

And we understood her hesitancy. It's asking a lot to discuss deeply personal memories with

strangers, let alone a family trauma with a pair of reporters. She declined through her brother Paul,

and we went along reporting the story. But as we learn more about the family and everything that happened, we we went along reporting the story.

...