a mandatory life sentence. art ream had overplayed his hand. it took us 22 years to bring justice to her. but it was a bittersweet victory for the zarzyckis. they d lost their cindy and now they d lost their leverage with ream to get her remains back for a proper burial. and i told my wife, i said, we ll never know now. i probably would go to my own grave not knowing where she was. except for one thing. the zarzyckis still had detective mclaughlin on the case, and it wasn t over for him. coming up he says, ed, i m going to find cindy. the detective won t rest until he keeps his promise. when disappearance at the dairy queen continues.
that s the whole problem of this whole investigation. the initial strategy was to deal with him as though it were a given. everyone in that interview room knew ream had something to do with cindy s disappearance and now was the time to explain it all. if you could put closure to this thing right now today and help a family out if you think about it right now, if you you need some paper, i ll get you some paper you can write it down. i m not going to write it down. why not? my spelling s not that good. in that first interview, ream controlled the game, just as the psychological detectives had feared. mac suggested he could do himself some good by giving up the location of cindy s body. i can t make any promises, but the prosecutors, do the judges listen to me? of course they do. then the accusations took a harder edge. you ve got information that will tell me where this girl is, and you re not saying nothing. and i just think that s bull [ bleep ]. he just sits there
how d she talk about this person, art? she was just very, you know, very friendly with them. that was pretty much it. did she talk to this art at your house on the phone? yes. she called art to confirm the plans of the next day. cathy heard cindy tell the person on the phone that she d look for his white van between 10:00 and 11:00 the next morning. cindy told her girlfriend she had a birthday present for scott. she asked cathy to please come along with her. cathy said her mother wouldn t let her. when she was leaving my house, she turned around to me and she said, will you please just show up? just say you re going to be there. like a reassuring, like she needed someone to really truly be there, and i said i ll see what i can do and that was it. cindy called her other friend theresa sunday morning, same story. a surprise party for scott in pontiac, michigan. she was getting her ride at the dairy queen in a few minutes. she did ask me to go. and she knew right away when
coming because absolutely my mother didn t let me leave and go two feet down the block without someone going with me. but i think she really wanted to see scott and she would ve done just about anything maybe. it was truly amazing what they were telling me. it had taken more than 20 years, but police had finally stitched together a time line for what was certainly cindy s final weekend. the bait, a chance to be with the puppy love boyfriend scott, the boy s father waiting in his white van at the dairy queen. i remember him specifically saying to her on the phone, this was one of the conversations she told me about. that he didn t understand why ed zarzycki would ground her from walking home from the mall because it was no big deal. i think he was trying to make her feel comfortable with him. the story told by both girls, now adults, absolutely floored mac. various cops over the years, even mac had talked to them, but somehow didn t hear it or didn t extract it, or maybe it wasn
teenage runaway was as outdated as her old mix tapes. this was a murder investigation. and the detective s thinking followed two paths. could he make the boyfriend s father or others for the crime? and secondly, did he have any way of finding cindy s remains? as a sign of either how desperate mac was or how wide he was willing to throw his net, he paid a call on a psychic. the mystic had a strip mall storefront, sandwiched between a dry cleaner and a chicken joint. a cousin of cindy said she was weirded out when she heard him give a reading on the missing teenager at a party. mac figured he had nothing to lose. well, at this point, i ll try anything. the psychic told the cop he didn t have time for it, he had clients booked months in advance. i begged him. i said, hey, listen, let me just two minutes of your time. and so he took us in the back, sat us down, and he had the reading cards. they flipped over and he said