“Why?” Nate said.
“Why what?”
“Why would you want a bag full of bags? Or a box full of boxes?”
“It’s environmentally friendly,” Carson replied.
“How?”
“Because you get the boxes so you don’t have to buy them. Same as the bags.”
“Isn’t it worse to send people a bunch of boxes they don’t need and then have them get rid of some of them? Especially when you add all the packaging, and the transport and everything?”
“It’s about convenience as well,” Carson said.
“How is it convenient to get a bunch of boxes or bags?”
“People like it,” Carson said, though more quietly. “We have over four hundred thousand subscribers. Anyway . . . we should get started.”
Nate happily chomped off half a slice of pizza in one bite as Carson gestured them over to the beanbags and sofas in the center of the room. Stevie, Janelle, and Nate moved over, Nate taking a pizza box with him. Carson picked up a remote control. The lights dimmed gently and there was a soft whirring noise as a massive screen unfurled from the ceiling.
A title slide appeared on the screen.
THE BOX IN THE WOODS MURDERS,
JULY 6–7, 1978
“It’s important to set a sense of this town, this camp, at this time, because these murders are very much of a time and a place. . . .”
Stevie could tell at once that Carson had written this line in advance and was proud of it. He was testing out his podcast script, for sure.
“The 1970s were a different era. For example, information and communication were more limited . . .”
“Well, yeah,” Nate said. “That’s why their slasher films work. No one knows anything and no one can call for help.”
“Right,” Carson said. “And the lack of communication impacted safety. This is a time when everything was loose. Your comings and goings couldn’t be tracked. Everything relied more on word of mouth and who knew what. The world was smaller. The camp was an extension of the high school and the town—a closed loop. Everyone knew everyone. Which brings us to . . .”
BARLOW CORNERS
This slide featured a photo that Stevie had seen several times now; it was the image that pretty much every book or article or documentary on the case included. It was a color photo with a sepia tint, the colors washed out and overly bright at the same time. A group of people stood in front of an equestrian statue decked out in red, white, and blue bunting. Most of the people in the group were middle-aged. The men all wore Bermuda shorts with belts. The women wore dresses or pants that they would have referred to as “slacks.”
“So this,” Carson said, “was a picture taken at the Bicentennial, in 1976, two years before the murders. The town built and dedicated a statue to the town founder, John Barlow, a minor Revolutionary War hero. A local photographer took the picture and submitted it to Life magazine, and it ran in a special commemorative edition. There are a few people in this photo associated with the case. It says a lot about the town—a small place, all American, everyone knows everyone. And pretty much everyone was connected in some way to . . . ”
THE VICTIMS
“We’ll start with the basics,” Carson said. “The four victims. All recent graduates of Liberty High. All residents of Barlow Corners. All four worked at the camp. This is Eric Wilde. . . .”
He brought up a picture of a boy with wildly curly light-colored hair and a goofy grin.
“Eighteen years old. Son of the town librarian and a teacher at Liberty. Generally well-liked but could get into trouble. Diane McClure . . .”
A tough-looking redheaded girl with a thin smile and a freckled face appeared on the screen.
“Daughter of the owners of the town diner, the Dairy Duchess. Academically unremarkable. Liked rock music and having fun. Your basic seventies teenager. She was girlfriend to this guy, Todd Cooper.”
Fashions come and go, but jawlines are eternal. Todd Cooper had a good one, if a big one. His face was almost square. He had medium-length hair, in a seventies-style feathered cut. There was a thin, wry smile on his lips. His face exuded confidence—arrogance, even.
“Son of the mayor. Football captain. And a lot of trouble. More on him later. The real outlier of the group was . . .”
A photo of a girl came up. It was hard to say what made her seem different from the rest. The photo was the same quality, and her raven hair was in long seventies-style wings. She had big brown eyes, and a sincere smile. There was something about her, something in the way she looked at the camera. There was a bright spark there, something that connected to Stevie viscerally.
“. . . Sabrina Abbott, the town good girl, daughter of a dentist. Top student at Liberty High. Volunteered at the library every week, reading to little kids. It’s one of the enduring mysteries that surrounds this case—why did the town good girl go with three of the bad seeds to a drug buy in the woods? But let’s get to it. . . .”
THE MURDERS
“Here are the undisputed facts. On the night of July sixth, Sabrina, Eric, Todd, and Diane left the camp somewhere around eleven at night in Todd’s Jeep. They went to the woods to pick up the weekly pot delivery. Eric Wilde was the dealer at camp. Todd and Diane were a couple, and Sabrina Abbott was along for the ride, for whatever reason. The next morning, one of the campers found Eric Wilde, facedown on a dirt path through the woods that led to the theater and archery range. He had been struck on the head and stabbed six times. Five of the wounds were fatal.”
He brought up a black-and-white photo of the scene, taken from a short distance. There was a sheet over the body on the dirt path, and a group of police officers standing around it, conferring with one another.
“The camp quickly figured out that the other three were missing, so the police rode out to try to find them. The Jeep was parked alongside the road. They found the campsite. . . .”
He brought up a picture of the campsite—a smoldering fire, a blanket, a camping lantern, a plastic tray with something all over it, some sodas, a backpack.
“No sign of a struggle,” Carson said. “It looks like they simply left the site. The police searched the area and found an old hunting blind. When they opened it up, well, that was the box in the woods. Pictures of the bodies aren’t available to the public, just a description. Here’s a diagram. . . .”
A creepy drawing of three featureless bodies in a rectangle, with dots and dashes to mark wounds and bindings. Stevie had seen these kinds of drawings before, but they always unnerved her.
“The bodies were arranged in the box neatly. Diane and Sabrina were facing one way, and Todd was turned the other, his head between the girls’ feet. Todd and Diane both had massive head wounds, like Eric. Then they were each stabbed multiple times—Todd had sixteen stab wounds, and Diane had nine. Sabrina was the only one without a head wound. She was stabbed twenty-one times and had defensive marks on her hands, so she was probably facing her killer. The evidence suggested they were killed at the campsite and then moved to the box. The killer bound their legs and wrists in red nylon cord. There was a single word written in white paint on the inside of the box’s lid . . .”
He pulled up the most famous photo from the case, one of the only crime scene photos that had been made available to the public—the word SURPRISE painted in rough, blocky letters. It was so comically ghoulish it seemed like it couldn’t be real.