Discretion is advice.

This is a minute murder.

December

December 1957, two seven-year-old girls were outside in the neighborhood streets of Sycamore, Illinois, playing in the newly fallen snow.

They were best friends, Kathy Sigmund and Maria Ridolph.

But witnesses also placed a third, rather unusual, playmate with the two girls

that wintry evening. According to Kathy and other witnesses who saw the third mysterious figure,

the girls were already outside playing when a young man, maybe in his early 20s, approached them.

Despite the age gap, the three of them became fast friends,

especially when this young man, who introduced himself as Johnny, offered to give the

girl's piggyback rides.

At some point during the evening, Maria, an honor student in the second grade, was excited about

this new friend, so she wanted to rush home and grab one of her favorite toys so that she

could show it to him. Maria came back, toy in hand. But by then it had started snowing again,

and her best friend Kathy was getting cold. This time it was Kathy who left Maria

alone with Johnny, so that she could go home and get her mittens. But when she came back,

everything was completely different. The streets were empty, and both Maria and Johnny were gone.

Kathy walked over to Maria's house to try to find her friend, but Maria wasn't there either.

Not thinking that anything bad had actually happened at the time, Maria's parents first sent

out her 11-year-old brother to go and look for her, but when he came back empty-handed,

a full-blown manhunt was soon underway.

Her friends, family, and the police scoured the neighborhood, but there was a pit in Maria's

...