Unmasked by Paul Holes

Author:Paul Holes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Celadon Books

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THE SUN SHONE BRIGHT ON APRIL 22, 1978, the perfect day for a game of ball at the local high school. Eleven-year-old Cynthia Waxman and her cousin Stephanie had gone with Stephanie’s father, Steve, to a baseball game at the Campolindo High School athletic field that Saturday. Times were different then. The world looked safer. Kids had more freedom. No one thought twice about letting their girl or boy walk to school, or the store, or play on the playground alone. So there was nothing unusual about Stephanie’s father allowing the girls to search for a stray kitten they’d heard about. Moraga was the safest town in Contra Costa County. The idea that something sinister would happen to your child just wasn’t something parents worried about. Of course, at that time, the community had no idea there was a serial killer in their midst. Phil Hughes hung out in Moraga. Rheem Valley Bowl, his favorite haunt, was a block south of the ballfield. Moraga was his hunting ground, but it would be another year before his wife turned on him.

The girls walked a quarter mile down the well-traveled Moraga Road toward a dirt driveway leading to a local farm, the area where the friend had spotted the stray. Cindy waited on the sidewalk while Stephanie walked down the dirt drive looking for the kitten. There it was, a little black cat. It was almost as if it had been waiting for the girls to come. “I found it!” Stephanie cried, scooping up the kitten in her arms. Cindy was waiting excitedly for her cousin to climb back up the driveway. Stephanie later recalled. “Oh Steph!” Cindy cried. “Please let me hold the kitten.” Stephanie later recalled, “And then is when I petted it about three times, and then I brought it up to Cindy.”

The girls sat on the sidewalk, playing with the kitten, when Cindy decided it must be hungry. “Steph,” she said, “go ask your dad for money so we can buy cat food.” It was about a four-minute walk back to the ballfield. “Dad! We found the kitten,” Stephanie said, running up to her father. “It’s hungry and needs food.” Steve handed his daughter a five-dollar bill, and she took off running back onto Moraga Road. But when she got to the spot on the sidewalk where she’d left Cindy, Cindy was gone.

The ball game lasted a couple of hours, and afterward, Steve and Stephanie drove to Cindy’s house to make sure she was there. Cindy’s parents had been at an ice-skating recital for their younger daughter, Pamela. No, Cindy hadn’t been home since they’d gotten back, they said. At that point, Cindy had been missing for nearly three hours, which set off alarm bells. Everyone took off in different directions. They searched the high school and the market where the girls would have gone for cat food. They checked Steve’s apartment complex and scoured Cindy’s neighborhood. They checked the farm with the dirt drive. At 3:18, the Waxmans called police to report their daughter missing.

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