mac, the father of three daughters and a son, asked the couple to understand his situation. i said, listen, i said, i m going to do everything i can, but i m kind of limited to what i can do, because of my workload that i have now. linda was great. she even said i ll do anything. i ve got secretarial skills, i can help you file, type up things, do this and do that, just so i could spend more time dealing with her family s case. linda zarzycki, the stepmother, would go to the eastpointe police station on her lunch hour to pore through the case files. she d suggest theories to mac. and he d say, yep, he thought of that too but kept running into brick walls. he couldn t seem to make progress. but in 2004, the brick wall was about to start crumbling because a new player, a completely unlikely partner for the veteran detective, had talked herself on to the case. she wasn t even a cop, she was a 23-year-old college intern with
a law enforcement consulting firm in chicago where mac had taken courses on how to interrogate criminals. immediately, the young intern was fascinated by cindy s case file. she picked it off her boss desk when he wasn t looking. i ve since admitted it to my boss, i read the file, and it really was contagious. i took that file home with me almost every single night and just kept rereading it. jen leibow, was at the time, an undergrad studying for a communications degree. she quickly became obsessed with suburban detroit teenager who disappeared when she, herself, was only 4. and then i brought it up to my bosses and they allowed me to call mac and see if, you know, i can be an extra set of hands for him. anything he needed. you know, as a new investigator, i could learn from him, but i could also help him out. and the phone relationship would remain for the next 2 1/2 years. mac, back in eastpointe, doing the shoe-leather investigating, as he had time for, and jen
bridge. how surreal it was for mac when he got to the scene, he remembered back to what the psychic had said. he was amazed that the area was so much as the psychic had described it. one of the first things that popped into my head was when we first got out there, you know, the bridge. the banks of the river. the field of flowers. it was unbelievable. the tranquility of the river and woods on that july day in 2008 was in stark contrast to what the searchers hoped they d find there, the burial site of cindy zarzycki. art ream had dug a grave site in what turned out to be a floodplain. maybe all trace of cindy had been washed away. cadaver dogs didn t find anything. we weren t exactly sure where it was. i knew she was there. but it was still trying to find a needle in a haystack. you know? so mac got permission to spring ream from prison to narrow down the search. he lumbered in convict s chains
the buckle. only one was found. the other, apparently swept away. her shoes are what did it for me. i had gotten a pair for christmas and cindy had desperately wanted them. and she nagged her grandmother for the shoes and she finally broke down and got her the shoes. the tapes. cindy always carried around her tapes, her music. for her older sister, connie, the mix tape cassettes taken from cindy s purse, coming months before a dna match from the lab, was all the confirmation she needed. had the tapes been a birthday present for her boyfriend, scott? connie says she and cindy gave away mixed tapes as gifts all the time. we would pick their favorite songs or something that had meaning to us, to show how much we cared for that person. but there was one item from the grave that no one in cindy s family could remember. a gold necklace with a charm on it. an anchor. found it around her neck area. and her family didn t know what to make of that?
by the killer. she s down by the river, she s 25 feet to the west of the bridge. how surreal it was for mac when he got to the scene, he remembered back to what the psychic had said. he was amazed that the area was so much as the psychic had described it. one of the first things that popped into my head was when we first got out there, you know, the bridge. the banks of the river. the field of flowers. it was unbelievable. the tranquility of the river and woods on that july day in 2008 was in stark contrast to what the searchers hoped they d find there, the burial site of cindy zarzycki. art ream had dug a grave site in what turned out to be a floodplain. maybe all trace of cindy had been washed away. cadaver dogs didn t find anything. we weren t exactly sure where it was. i knew she was there. but it was still trying to find a needle in a haystack. so mac got permission to