Chapter 16 — What They Found

The state investigators secured her document archives, then a search warrant for her home.

They did not lead with kidnapping charges; they led with systematic record tampering and document forgery, because those could be proven with paper alone, without resting the whole case on the testimony of a traumatized child or a grieving father.

A dozen state troopers went into her house early one Tuesday morning.

What they found in her basement proved this tragedy reached far beyond my family.