We recorded any details we remembered from the case—the cemetery, the lucky arrest of Orlov in Queens, and of course the events that led to the discovery and death of Rudra Sarkar and his laboratory of terror.

Finding Tracy Anne wasn’t much of a challenge for the FBI. She grew up in Menasha, Wisconsin, a little town on Lake Winnebago. She was not-too-cleverly “hiding out” there with her mother and father. One amusing little tidbit. The Town of Menasha is located right next to a little town called Neenah.

Yep, it’s pronounced exactly the way you think it is.

The greatest tragedies of Sarkar and Orlov’s living nightmare was of course the awful harm done to the innocent babies and their parents. No doubt about that. The case goes down in medical history as one of the most bizarre, and certainly one of the most horrid.

But there was one other personal tragedy. Orlov and Sarkar had bullied and threatened Nina incessantly. Orlov had forced her into her role—he even admitted that to the police. Nina Kozlova truly had wanted to escape from the gang, and she found only one way to do that.

The NYPD found her dead in the bathroom of a Days Inn hotel in the Bronx. Nina had shot herself in the heart.

If Leon Blumenthal had not asked Social Services to arrange a funeral for Nina, she would have been buried on Hart Island, New York City’s potter’s field. Social Services even found a Russian Orthodox priest to preside over the graveside ceremony.

Blumenthal thought we should attend the service. And so he and I did. To my way of thinking, it was a perfect day for the funeral of a sad Ukrainian woman. The weather wasn’t quite rainy, but it wasn’t quite clear. A warm mist showed up on a warm day to make everything even warmer and more humid. The sky was a flat blanket of gray—no clouds, no light, nothing but gray.

The only bright spot in the entire area was the Russian priest, an old man with a very long white beard. His religious vestments were bright red and white with long threads of gold running through. He held a golden crucifix with a golden image of the dying Christ on the cross. The priest was the only ray of lightness, brightness, and sunshine on that dead and dreary day.

“I’ll wait a few more minutes,” the priest said to Blumenthal and me. “Then I must leave. I have other commitments.”

The priest spoke to us because, sadly, we were the only people at the service. Two cemetery workers stood smoking at a respectful distance from our tiny group. I assumed that once the ceremony was over these two guys would put Nina in the ground and cover her with dirt. And that would be that.

“I’ll begin,” said the priest.