In October 2014, a school trip to White Rock Mountain in Arkansas turned into a nightmare. Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Kelly and her history teacher, Curtis Baker, vanished into the woods without a trace. For three months, the public assumed the worst. But the truth, hidden in a remote cave, was far more sinister than anyone imagined. … Read more
In the quiet countryside of Somerset, England, Katherine Wells-Burr seemed to have everything worth protecting. Born on August 18, 1989, in Chard, she grew up with her sister Leanne under the care of her parents, Jane and Phil. Bright, humorous, and ambitious, Katherine earned a first-class degree in business management from Bath Spa University in … Read more
In late November 2016, with the official search all but over, three volunteers from the Mountainfinders group were combing a remote area north of the Alum Cave Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains. Around 3:00 in the afternoon, one of them, Ben Carter, heard a strange sound through the dense rhododendrons: a faint, ragged breathing … Read more
Around three o’clock in the afternoon on July 3, 1863, roughly 12,500 Confederate infantrymen stepped out of the woods along Seminary Ridge and began marching eastward across the open fields of Pennsylvania. Nearly three-quarters of a mile ahead, Cemetery Ridge rose behind fences, cannons, stone walls, and the waiting Union soldiers. The attackers could see … Read more
Nearly thirty years after the murder of Mandy Stavik, the man accused of killing her was on the verge of trial. The pandemic of silence that had hung over the small town of Acme, Washington, since 1989 was about to break. On the day after Thanksgiving in that year, eighteen-year-old Mandy, home from her first … Read more
On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer sat on his horse on a ridge above the Little Bighorn River and made a decision that would end 210 lives, including his own, within the hour. He had already divided his regiment into three separate columns, ignored his scouts, and overruled his officers. Now he … Read more
In the autumn of 1944, in a German military communications workshop somewhere behind the Western Front, a captured American radio lay on a workbench. It had arrived with an American prisoner of war and a map case, brought in by a patrol that had gone out three nights earlier. The device was the size and … Read more
On October 1, 1946, judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France delivered their verdicts in Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice against the leading figures of Nazi Germany. Most of the accused were present in the courtroom, but one seat remained empty. The man who should have been there had vanished during the … Read more
On Christmas Eve 1895, behind massive iron gates in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, George Vanderbilt opened the doors of Biltmore House for the first time. The home he presented to his family and friends was unlike anything that had ever been built in America. It contained 250 rooms, nearly twice as many … Read more
Tu es le raté de la famille, a dit mon frère. Pas de femme, pas d’enfants, pas d’héritage. Papa a éclaté de rire. Maman a ajouté : Au moins, ton frère est devenu un vrai homme. J’ai souri et j’ai répondu : C’est mignon. Tu veux que j’arrête de payer la maison de ton vrai … Read more