One month after Ware’s body was found, someone used a burner phone to call Ware’s home. Her mother had answered. She heard nothing but hard breathing. She insisted someone was on the line, refusing her demands to answer her questions. Investigators determined the call had been made from an untraceable phone and were unable to pinpoint the location. No other calls were ever made. An ex-boyfriend, who was solidly alibied and passed two polygraphs, had been ruled out.

Morrow moved to the second case, which began with a woman’s naked torso on its back in a shallow grave in a vacant wooded lot of a Detroit suburb. On June 23, 2013, a local community group cleaning up the neighborhood discovered the body of Tammi-Sue Bellow, age twenty-four. She was bound in the same way and with the same type of cord and knot used in the Ware case. Bellow had been sexually assaulted and her throat had been slashed with a serrated knife. She had worked part-time as a drugstore clerk while studying to become a nurse at college. Her bag was found intact at the scene, but her driver’s license and phone were missing.

The case was submitted to the FBI’s ViCAP system for comparison with others. Investigators discovered that a foot impression found in the mud at the Detroit crime scene matched one found at the Pittsburgh scene, linking the first two cases.

In the next case, a wooded trail appeared on Morrow’s screen. The display advanced to an empty field and the naked corpse of a white female, covered with a discarded rug.

On September 14, 2014, in Buffalo, NY, a group of birdwatchers found the body of Debra Lee Plager, a twenty-seven-year-old librarian. She’d been sexually assaulted, bound and strangled with the same type of cord and knot as in the previous cases. Plager’s wallet was found at the scene. Only her driver’s license and phone were missing. Plager’s ex-husband, known to have abused her, was questioned but ruled out as a suspect.

The fourth case file began with photos of an abandoned apartment complex and a rusted trash bin that contained a woman’s corpse. On May 19, 2015, in Chicago, two teenage boys, flying a drone that crashed into the bin, discovered the body of Nina Kaye Wilken, age thirty, a law student who’d been working in a bar. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled and bound with the same type of cord used in the other cases. Family members helped confirm her remains through dental records. Her purse was found with her, but again her phone and driver’s license were missing.