I remember sitting home the night of my birthday, so it would have been, you know, when midnight hits, my birthday's over, Mother's Day begins.

And I remember sitting there next to my phone, I was just crying.

My husband said to me, what are you doing? And I said, I'm waiting for my mom to call.

I actually was saying out loud, Mom, please call me. There's only a couple of minutes left in my day.

And this is my day. The call never came.

And then I began to panic thinking, what's going to happen when I forget what her voice sounds like.

And I knew that someday that day's going to come. And I'm not going to remember what she sounds like.

I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.

I'm Anna Sige Nikolasi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of investigation discoveries, true conviction.

And this is Anatomy of Murph.

Today's story holds a special meaning for us here at AOM because it came from one of you, a listener.

I'm an avid fan of Anatomy of Murther and I've always been so impressed with the way you approach things. You're very respectful.

Basically, Shelley had us from hello. I spoke with Shelley Dennis for our story today.

And when I say that, it's because when she reached out, it is to trust all of us with her own story.

I've never reached out to anybody before to say, hey, this might be interesting to you. I know it's interesting to me because they were my parents.

Maybe there's something good that can come out of it.

We've always said that we are so fortunate that families put their trust in us to tell these stories.

And that just reinforces that I believe what we set out to do, which personally makes it all worthwhile.

And this story is so, so personal to Shelley because it is about her mother.

My mom was my best friend. Her name is Rosemary Dennis. She was one of 20 children.

She was child number four. Having 20 children in a household is probably, I would think, one of the most chaotic things that could ever happen to a family.

As she grew up with those 19 other siblings, ultimately she landed up in an orphanage.

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