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eucatastrophe. The opposite of catastrophe, and all the more important because it’s even rarer.
Someone had used blue chalk to draw a hopscotch grid on the sidewalk. Instead of the usual sequential numbering of one to ten, the person had drawn the number three inside each of the blocks.
She stepped aside then, giving me a clear look behind her. In the center of the front porch, inches away from the Albrights’ MARYLAND IS FOR CRABS doormat, someone had drawn a sad face in blue chalk. Right underneath it were three numbers: 666.
Sixteen-year-old Cassidy Burch
After a brief search, police discovered the body of Cassidy Burch at 2:27 a.m.
My eyes moved to the lower right-hand corner of the poster, focusing on a small image sandwiched between a heart broken in two by a jagged crack running down the center and a sad face with an exaggerated frown. The image was crudely drawn, but crystal clear in its depiction: a miniature hopscotch grid. Inside each of the squares was the number three.
someone had drawn a small replica, maybe four inches high, of the sign found hanging on the telephone pole outside of the Robinson house. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DOG? was crammed into the space at the top of the sign and CALL 4444 was scrawled along the bottom. In between was a cartoony image of a dog with a big, toothy grin on its face.
I stared at the car’s front bumper, inches from Madeline’s right foot, where the killer had used a strip of clear tape to affix five shiny pennies to the surface of the poster.
the killer had drawn a fat pumpkin with a crooked grin—and six triangular eyes. It looked obscene.
The woman who had taken the photographs at the bottom of my driveway had been facing in the direction of the man wearing the mask. Depending on how wide she’d framed her photos, there was a decent chance the man would be visible in the background. All Detective Harper had to do now was find out who the Incredible Hulk and Superman were.
fifty-four-year-old Joshua Gallagher into custody, charging him with the 1988 murders of four Edgewood, Maryland, teenagers, including his younger sister, Natasha.
Two years ago, to the northwest in Juniata County, the body of a seventeen-year-old girl with long blond hair was found strangled to death. The victim, Sheila Rafferty, had what resembled a single bite mark on her left shoulder, but the coroner couldn’t be certain because the girl had been in the river for so long. Fishermen had stumbled upon her body in shallow water along the rocky banks of the Susquehanna.
He admits all of it, and then some. The four Edgewood girls in 1988, including his own sister, and three others—one in 2001 in western Maryland, and two more in 2006 and 2018 in Pennsylvania. And the police believe there are even more.
According to a 2009 study conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, nearly 16 percent of American serial killers were adopted as children, while adoptees represent only 2 percent of the general population.
