You are listening to the Already Gone podcast, sharing stories of the missing, the murdered, the mysterious, and the lost.

There are some stories that are so awful, so horrifying that they're hard to look at.

The crime itself was so cruel and so senseless that it's hard to linger in that space

for too long.

Crimes that sound like an urban legend, but they're real. The loss and the grief and the destruction, it's tangible.

This isn't some whispered story.

Today we're going to one of those places, one of the darkest pages in Michigan's history,

a case involving the destruction of two families at the hands of one troubled man.

Come with me to the spring of 1982 when the mere existence of Mary Jane Paulson,

a happily married mother of three girls, drove one man to do the unthinkable.

Allendale Township is a suburb of Grand Rapids, situated about a dozen miles to the west, between

Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan. In 1982, it was very much a small town. The 1980 census

showed a population of 6,000 people. It was a community where people

knew each other, either from seeing one another at church or the local hardware store,

or perhaps you attended the same school function held at the township's only public school,

a kindergarten through 12th grade building where all the kids were educated,

unless they went to the nearby parochial school. The Paulson family, dad Bob, mom Mary Jane,

and their three daughters, Cindy, 18, Carla 13, and Casey, the youngest, was eight. They lived on a big piece of property,

several acres in size, in a renovated farmhouse. Bob, who worked as a sales representative,

enjoyed working on the house in his spare time, and he spent many hours and many dollars

making improvements to the home.

The family also enjoyed their in-ground swimming pool.

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