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By all accounts, Monday, May 1, started as a beautiful morning. Clear skies. Cool. The gusting wind out of the northwest, not uncommon for a central Illinois landscape covered by vast farm fields and little else, was the only sign of what was to come. Around 10:50 a.m., Jim and Pam Dawson were about 30 miles from their home in Hillsboro, heading north on Interstate 55 to a Springfield funeral . ....
Matt Zinchuk was worried. In three decades, his mom rarely missed a piano lesson. And yet, on that Monday evening in May, with students waiting at the family’s Champaign home, Amy Zinchuk and her husband Michael were nowhere to be found. He called his sister, Elizabeth, in suburban St. Louis. “Hey, did mom and dad leave yet?” Elizabeth started to panic. After their weekend visit, her parents . ....