mystery to mac. advanced computer research, searching missing persons websites, sifting myspace pages, hunting for cindy s old friends. along the way, she taught mac how to use e-mail. she s doing a lot of research, stuff that i don t have time to do. and she s helping me with that. jen s fascination with the psychology of the criminal mind brought her back time and again to some letters in the cindy case file. particularly letters from cindy s sisters that they had written to the police department just saying, please don t forget about this case. you know, this is my sister, this is a person. and there was a sense of injustice there that it looked like art ream was the one who did this to cindy, and has been sort of keeping the family psychologically hostage for all these years, you know, not know ing what happened to their daughter. art ream, the father of cindy s long-ago teenage boyfriend, scott, was behind bars for raping a young girl. in fact, mac had gone to jen s
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 well, she died a brutal death and she is dead.
imprisoned in the 70s for taking indecent liberties with a minor. that s tame-sounding legal language for what the victim, a hitchhiker, said he actually did abducted her, raped her in his car and then tossed her out the door. linda had two children with ream, scott and another boy. children thought the ex who were useful to ream s appetite when the boys became young teens. they attracted young girls and art liked having the young girls around. i think that was why he liked having scott there because he knew that girls would be attracted to him. and you know, he d have this chance to do whatever he wanted to do or whatever he thought he could get away with. he d entice them with alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, and he would be he d be their friend and he d be the cool dad around, you know. by 2007, with everything mac was learning about art ream, the theory that cindy was merely a teenage runaway was as outdated as her old mix tapes.
would have to have a strawberry sundae from the dairy queen. after the marriage broke up, there was no way alice thought she could raise the three children. she worked nights, was left with only a small house and had little money. ed got custody. cindy became the daughter she d see on weekends. she was the middle child and that s usually a child that tries really hard to please. on the saturday before she went missing, cindy dropped in on her mom, a visit allowed by her dad s grounding rules. they talked a little bit about her punishment from walking home from the distant mall. she was upset. but she knew she did wrong. but a mom with an extra sense about these things had a feeling something else was agitating her teenage daughter. and she had something on her mind. maybe it involved the new love of her life, a 14-year-old named scott. it was a very early-on crush. whatever it was, cindy didn t
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 t offered in the same way. despite his excitement, mac had one nagging question. was it true? i even asked them, wh