Welcome to Shaker Heights, Episode 5, The Crucible.

Flitting, floating, falling on the ground.

I freeze on children's eyelashes and blur their altered vision of the world.

They see a different earth than I, of candy and playgrounds and eternal smiles.

I see the truth.

Cold, bare trees, stripped of life and hard ground.

That poem was written by a 16-year-old girl named Lisa Pruitt, not long before she was

stabbed, 21 times, and left for dead behind her boyfriend's house in Shaker Heights, Ohio,

in September of 1990.

In the hours after her murder, a small group of close friends gathered away from their

parents, away from the police, and made up their minds that the person who committed this

crime was the weird kid in school, the kid who wore Metallica t-shirts.

Kevin Young.

One by one they went to police and pointed the finger at Kevin.

Although there was not one piece of evidence linking Kevin to the crime scene, regardless

of the fact that he had an alibi, the small town police were taken by the children's

stories, and they decided Kevin Young was their best suspect.

A tragedy was playing out in real time just outside of Cleveland, and the name of that

tragedy was the Crucible.

On September 26, 1990, several detectives from Shaker Heights traveled to Ohio State University,

where Kevin Young was beginning his freshman year.

Because of what happens next, Kevin Young's life will be quite short.

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