In 1995, police in California received an anonymous letter which identified a pair of severed hands

as those of a Navy pilot who had been murdered. The letter described the murder in gruesome detail.

Investigators searched for some clue to the identity of the author and the killer.

San Diego, the second largest city in California, is the second largest city in California, its bay is one of the finest natural harbors in the world,

and is home to one of the largest naval bases in the country.

In 1994, workers at the San Diego Fibers Corporation were sifting through some cardboard in a recycling bin.

They made a gruesome discovery.

Two human hands. First, I wasn't sure that this was legitimate.

I thought, you know, a pair of human hands found in dumpsters seemed a little bit strange.

And we collected evidence as if it was a normal homicide with a complete body.

This was a little bit different because all we had were hands.

X-ray showed degenerative damage of the joints

consistent with an individual over age 60,

and the size of the fingers and knuckles indicated

they were men's hands. The right hand had one distinctive feature. The thumbnail was missing.

Detectives checked local hospitals and morgues to see if they had a body of an elderly man

without hands.

On the other side of town, Mary Meade and Terry Holland were beginning to worry.

They hadn't seen their father Don Hardin in more than a week.

And I called everybody that I could possibly get a hold of.

Have you seen him? Have you heard from him? Nobody had hurt anything. So that's at the point where I really got scared because I thought, where would he have

gone? It's very hard to explain. You go through scared and then almost in anger and then worry.

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