Along the banks of the Ohio River, the city of Marietta is a kind of place where everybody knows everybody.

It has historic brick streets, riverfront views, and weekend gatherings at local bars create the feeling of a tight-knit community.

Just across the river, Interstate 77 cuts through the Appalachian Hills of West Virginia,

a stretch of highway that's usually nothing more than a quiet route for truck drivers

and late-night travelers heading north.

In November of 2011, the air was turning sharp as the cold set in.

The trees became bare, and in the early morning hours, when the rest of the world was sleeping,

the interstate became eerily still, lit only by the headlights and the hum of passing semi-trax.

On November 19th, just before 4 a.m., that silence was shattered by a frantic 911 call.

A driver reported a car sitting against a guardrail along I-77 north. The lights were on. It was

empty, and something didn't feel right. Minutes later, another call came in, confirming a badly mangled body laying in the roadway.

First responders raced to the scene, and what they found would be the beginning of a lasting mystery in the Marietta community,

surrounded by years of speculation that still goes on today, dividing a community, and leaving one family

fighting for a clear understanding for more than a decade. There was a crash report, phone records,

witness statements, forensic testing, heaps of information that could have led to a solid

conclusion.

But when you put all the details together, it becomes really hard to tie this incident with a neat bow and name it an accident.

We want to thank Gavin Fish, a journalist and champion for victims of violent crimes, and also their families for providing the complete case files from Jaliyah's story through

his Patreon so that we can report on the original case information. He sits on the board of a

nonprofit that focuses on female cold cases in the United States, and he has worked tirelessly

to request and provide every scrap of evidence from Jaliyah's case.

Gavin has done incredible work, reporting on cases like Heather Turner and Ellen Greenberg.

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