Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Kolker Robert

Author:Kolker, Robert [Kolker, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime, Mystery, History, Adult, Biography
ISBN: 9780062183637
Amazon: 006218363X
Goodreads: 16248146
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2013-07-09T07:00:00+00:00

Families

I first met Missy Cann on the Monday after Easter, a little over four months after the body of her sister, Maureen, had been discovered along Ocean Parkway. We agreed to have lunch at a well-known lobster shack on a pier in New London, Connecticut, with a tranquil view of the Long Island Sound. That day, our goals had intersected. I was a writer, looking to learn more about the victims of a tragedy who seemed overlooked. She was there to make sure her sister’s case didn’t grow cold all over again.

Missy is more or less a twin of her older sister, though her eyes are brown, not green. As her children weaved around Missy’s legs beneath the picnic table, she went through the litany of tragedy that had followed her since Maureen disappeared. While the world was at Missy’s doorstep, she would not forget the four years when getting anyone to take the case seriously had seemed almost impossible. She would not forget the police in Norwich who had brushed off the first missing-persons claims because Maureen was working as an escort. She would not forget the two years it took even to get Maureen’s name onto the NamUs, the national registry of missing persons. In her soft, light voice, she talked about the two children Maureen left behind: the eleven-year-old girl, Caitlin, whom Missy saw on weekends; and the five-year-old boy, Aidan, whose father has kept out of contact with Maureen’s family. Aidan is the same age as one of Missy’s children and one of her brother’s, too. The fact that all the cousins can’t be together is yet another loss.

As she spoke, Missy seemed determined to list every misery afflicting her just to exorcise them all. She was building up to her family’s second great tragedy—Will’s death, two years after Maureen disappeared. Missy took to Facebook to post tribute videos of her sister and her brother as she found herself becoming obsessed with her sister’s case. She lost her job as a hostess at Mohegan Sun. She didn’t care. “I was like, ‘I can find another job, but I can’t find another sister.’ Going on with my life felt guilty.”

While, given the chance, she would shout from every rooftop to remind the world that they existed, there were others in Maureen’s family who didn’t appreciate the very public role she played, including her mother. Marie Ducharme’s position was clear: Her daughter’s life had been her own business, and nothing anyone said could change the fact that Maureen was gone, or correct the course of her life now that it was over. Missy and her mother didn’t talk much anymore. Missy had once worried that the world would forget her sister. But now her greatest fear, apart from the absence of justice, was that Maureen would be misunderstood. Missy was struggling to reclaim the narrative of Maureen’s life—to protect the best memories of her and perhaps soften the darker aspects of a woman who lived dangerously.

“I don’t like how they’re talking about her,” Missy said.

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