The bottom line to this case was that people could have done something and they didn't.

I've got Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.

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

And this is Anatomy of Murth.

When I saw today's case on the AOM interview list, I just thought to myself,

oh no, I remember that one well.

You know, cases grab us for different reasons and beyond the what of this one, it is definitely the where.

As the case recovery today developed, I was a reporter at the NBC station here in New York City

and the story did receive intense media coverage.

It took place in Suffolk County, which is on Long Island in New York, which is where I grew up.

And I think when things like this happen close to home, they impact us differently.

My name is Douglas Mercer, Suffolk County New York homicide school.

It was Mother's Day 1996.

Detective Douglas Mercer was celebrating the day as he normally did, which was cooking for his mom and his wife, his mother-in-law.

But today, those plans would dramatically change.

So we got cooled out to this person who was missing and then we picked it up.

Then there was another family, the Scarabellies, who had different plans for that Mother's Day.

Victor and his wife, Charlene, had four children.

Each of the kids was doing their own thing that day while the parents had gone up to Rhode Island.

That house up there. So they wanted to open the house up for the summer.

So they did, and they were going to celebrate Mother's Day when they came home.

When they came back home around midnight, their youngest daughter, Kristen, who was 16 years old, wasn't home.

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