The Day They Disappeared

Prologue

Amanda Steeley was 14 days away from being 12 when she went missing. It was a hot day in July when little Amanda went out for a bike ride with Lacey Smith who lived two houses down from the Steeley residence. Amanda was the youngest of six children. Her oldest brother, Robert Steeley, would be the first one to notice when Amanda did not return home by 9:30 and Mr. Steeley would be the one to call the police after searching the entire town for his daughter.

Lacey Smith was 13 when she went missing on the same day as Amanda. Lacey was a grade above Amanda and she had taken a liking to Amanda's older brother Nicholas who was also 13. She was an only child whose mother passed away years before and whose father liked to pour himself a little bit too much whiskey after a long day at work. Remnants of his worst nights could be found on Lacey's arms and face but nobody ever said a word. So when Lacey didn't come home nothing was said until a day after her dear friend Amanda had been reported as missing.

When it hit the headlines that two young girls seemingly disappeared into thin air, massive search parties formed and scanned every square inch of Pine Hollow, Pennsylvania for nearly two weeks without any luck.

On July 17, 1985, Amanda Steeley was found under a bridge right outside of Pine Hollow. Her body had already started to decompose in the summer heat. Her body had been pecked and gnawed at by the animals in the surrounding area and no evidence pointing to who could have committed such a horrific crime was found. Amanda was easily identified even despite the fact that she had been horribly beaten with an unidentified object from behind. Amanda's murderer ambushed her then moved her body from the site of the murder. The location of the murder was never discovered along with the murder weapon. Amanda was found in the same clothes she was wearing the day she disappeared. Everything seemed to be where it should be except for a small blue ribbon tied into a bow that she always wore in her hair. The little blue bow was confirmed to be tied into the little girl's beautiful blonde ringlets the day she went missing by her mother but when found the bow was nowhere to be seen. It was thought that the murderer took the bow as a sick souvenir of the murder he committed. No solid motivation for the murder could be determined. Amanda was just a child and she came from a much-loved family in town. Her parents were neither rich nor poor but they got along well with what God had given them. Although Amanda Steeley's tragic death was beyond heartbreaking for not only her family but the entire town as well, the only thing more heartbreaking was that her body had been discovered on her 12th birthday.

Exactly three weeks later a passerby spotted Lacey Smith's body in bushes in a secluded area about a mile away from where Amanda had been discovered. Lacey had been deceased for close to a month. A combination of heat and time had left Lacey's body in a state where she was difficult to be identified. Despite this, authorities on the scene concluded that the small corpse did, in fact, belong to 13-year-old Lacey Smith. Again, no evidence was found pointing to who could have committed the murder and no murder weapon was found. Lacey was also beaten from behind and her body had been moved from the site of the murder. Like Amanda, Lacey was missing something she never went without: an old gold chain with no charms that she wore as a bracelet. It was a gift left to her from a mother she never really knew. It was suspected that both girls had been killed at around the same time either by one killer who kept one girl apprehended while he bashed the other girl first or by two killers who each murdered one of the girls. The location of the murder was believed to be the same for both girls but this could not be confirmed seeing as the murder site had not been located. It was later found that both girls were likely beaten with the same object because a few bloody strands of red hair had been found in the wounds that Amanda had on the back of her head and neck.

The discovery of the bodies and the confirmation that these two young girls had been murdered sent the town into a frenzy. Aside from having the most basic profile of the murders, the police were running on little to no information. There were very few people in the small town that were secluded and nasty. The majority of that handful of people were just old drunks or hermit neighbors. The only suspect the police had was Lacey Smith's father, Charles. He was a drunk and a suspected abuser. In his younger years he was the captain of the football team and had the most beautiful girlfriends all throughout high school and college. After the loss of his job and right before the death of his wife, Charles began to spiral downhill. He became nothing more than a shadow of his former self. With all of this in mind and absolutely no other leads, the police brought in Charles Smith as their first and only suspect. He was interrogated for hours on end and was eventually found to likely not be the murderer of his only child and her friend. After his release from the interrogation, Charles went home, got stupidly intoxicated, sat on his daughter's pink polka dot bed, and shot himself in the head with a .38 caliber revolver. There was no suicide note left and nobody needed one to understand why he had taken his life. The old drunken bastard had no loving wife, no secure job, and his only daughter, only child, had been brutally murdered at 13 years old. The entire town held some sympathy for the poor man but not enough to show their support even in his death. Five people came to his funeral, all family, and ten came to see him lowered into his eternal resting place. The preacher could barely get through every bit about Charles going to Heaven and everybody knew his final destination was Hell. Even so, the town kept him in their prayers on Sunday mornings at church and before they went to bed every night.

Now the police were left with nothing. No DNA, no suspects, no leads, absolutely nothing. Lacey and Amanda remained victims without closure and their cases remained unsolved into the following year. The small, close-knit town soon kept their once loud prayers to themselves and slowly recovered from their losses. Life almost seemed to go back to normal, or as normal as it could be after such a horrific incident. Parents let their kids go outside again while they smoked from the comfort of their living rooms. On the outside it was like nothing had happened. On the inside though, a storm was just starting to brew and it was going to be the most horrific storm the town of Pine Hollow ever saw.