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The Binge. There are a lot of lawns in Bergen County, New Jersey, where I grew up.

Riding your bike around in the summertime, you see yard after yard of pristine green,

running up to houses edged by flower beds.

On the surface, everything is manicured and perfect.

Everything is manicured and perfect. Everything is okay. Always has been, always will be.

But underground, the roots of these lawns run deep, stretching down like fingers into the dark. Bergen County has a history that I never knew, until I grabbed a blade of grass and started

to pull.

It's the morning of July 15, 1969.

A 13-year-old boy is riding his bike home from a baseball game in Saddlebrook, New Jersey.

He takes a shortcut through St Mary's Cemetery, pedaling past its headstones.

And then he notices something on the other side of the chain link fence,

lying in the tall grass. The young girl was on her side, half clothed.

She was covered in bruises and cuts, beaten and strangled.

There was a red mark around her neck from the chain of her crucifix, and someone had left a bloody

handprint on her leg.

...