In 2017 Estella was throwing out some old papers when she came upon that 27-year-old envelope. Inside was the certificate. She called out to Johnny: “This is what I got for putting an innocent person in jail for life.” 

She was 75 now. For a generation she had suppressed the shame, the guilt. She had gone through a lot in that time. She’d become more engaged in the world around her. She had seen her children and grandchildren become active citizens. Most important, she’d become more assertive. “I found that you have more power if you talk,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong if you say what you think.” 

She knew how hard it was to take a stand. She knew how hard it was to do the right thing. And now she was going to do it. 

Her own research and collaborative spirit continue to push the boundaries of forensic entomology. In a paper published in June 2023 in the scientific journal Insects, she and her co-authors outlined protocols for best practices in bug-based crime-solving—for example, routinely obtaining temperature readings from meteorological stations near crime scenes, to accurately factor weather considerations into analyses, and inspecting soil surrounding a corpse for insects rather than strictly on the body itself. In another study, also published in Insects, in July, she and her colleagues wrapped cotton and other common fabrics around 99 stillborn piglets, to simulate human remains, and examined how blowflies, carrion beetles and other unsavory beings ate through the clothing over several weeks. The results showed that bugs can modify existing cuts and tears in fabric or even introduce new cuts and tears that investigators could easily assume are caused by bullets or knives; the paper illustrated how easily police and medical examiners might be led astray by assumptions about analyses that don’t incorporate cutting-edge research about bugs. And in September, she was a co-author of another study, published in the journal Forensic Sciences and produced in cooperation with police in India, that showed how studying ant activity and resultant bloodstain patterns can provide clues about the circumstances surrounding a person’s death, including whether the body has been moved.

Everyone in a bank job has a specific role. A SIM swapping gang is no different. SIM swapping is the technique used by hackers to seize control of a target’s phone number, and by extension, their digital life and finances. The theft starts with a “Searcher,” who breaks into a person’s email account, perhaps by using software to churn through a mass of potential passwords or buying the login credentials from another hacker. Then, acting as the hacker equivalent of a bank robber casing the joint, the Searcher rummages through the target’s inbox. They’re looking for any sign that this person owns a good amount of cryptocurrency. An email showing their Bitcoin balance; maybe a receipt from when the person previously sold some of their cryptocurrency for cash. Anything that would signal this target is worth pushing to the next step.

Once the Searcher gets a hit, they prepare to cover the gang’s tracks. They configure the inbox to hide incoming emails from the target’s Bitcoin exchange. If seen, these may warn the target something is wrong—’we’ve detected unusual activity on your account.’ By automatically deleting or archiving those, the Searcher knocks out the security cameras in the bank lobby.

It was easy to keep the women apart. They occupied different worlds within Toronto. Dixon attended high-society balls and charity galas. She travelled broadly and often. Balgobin—whom he always contacted using a burner phone or through ­Snapchat—had modest means and ambitions. She lived in a studio apartment near the Rogers Centre and worked with society’s elderly and most vulnerable. She brought snacks to Konashewych’s office down the street on her breaks. She was dutiful, eager to please. Over time, her position at the OPGT, where she oversaw the ongoing care of clients and their financial decisions, would prove surprisingly lucrative.

That Sommerfeld didn’t have a will or documented next of kin wasn’t unusual—many OPGT clients don’t. But it is rare for someone with substantial assets, and he had an $834,000 estate. A 2018 audit of the agency found that just six per cent of its clients had assets of more than $100,000. That made Sommerfeld a member of a very small group. His medical care and financial decisions would be entrusted to the most senior client representatives at the agency, each overseeing anywhere from 80 to 100 cases at a time. In January of 2017, a new public servant took over the caseload that included Sommerfeld’s estate: Adellene Balgobin.

Cops love a good code name, and by the fall of 2022 the investigation in Tulsa had one: Operation Heavy Metal. In the Riverside precinct, officers began to joke that Kansas Core had never taken a day off, he was so obsessed. Someone posted a printout featuring a meme in which a wild-looking Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia stands before a wall crowded with papers and lines, cigarette in hand. “Larceny from a vehicle?” they’d typed in. “You mean the greatest criminal conspiracy ever devised.”

Operation Heavy Metal now involved not just Homeland Security Investigations, but the IRS, the FBI and dozens of local police departments. Between manpower and geographic reach, some of Staggs’ veteran colleagues reckoned Camp 2 had launched the Tulsa PD’s largest investigation. By chance, law enforcement agents in California had been working a completely independent case involving buyers, which had also led them to DG. The investigations merged into one, soon becoming so unwieldy that agents had to gather in Philadelphia for three days to coordinate the endgame.

On the morning of Nov. 2, Jeremy Jones was in his office at JT Auto, next to Curtis Cores on Highway 51. “I was getting a cup of coffee,” he says. “I look out the window and something caught my eye—it was like a SWAT team. There’s a tank. There’s guys with assault rifles and military gear.” His first instinct was that Curtis had been secretly dealing drugs or guns. When he wandered out to talk to the cops and found out it was in fact the catalytic converter business they were taking down, “it did seem like a little overkill.”

One Thursday last November, the town center’s streets and benches were mostly empty at midday, its fountain dry; it was unclear whether the nearby restaurants and clothing stores were closed temporarily or for good. Yet construction was everywhere: a new church, new home additions, new roads. El Porvenir’s hardware store was the busiest spot in town.

“You shouldn’t go asking questions about El Pedernal,” a customer at the hardware store told The Chronicle’s journalists.

In the Comm there are the people who order the violence for whatever reason, and then the people willing to provide it as a service. I found various Telegram channels run by groups offering their IRL violence services. One called Bricksquad offers to throw bricks at a target building. It also advertised services in which they would shoot a house or car; commit an armed robbery; stab someone; “jumping (multiple people)”; and “beating (singular person).”

As months passed with no progress on the case, Louis began trying to solve the crime himself. Late at night he would chat on Discord with 13 of his AFOL friends from around the world: gamers, students, chess players, professionals. Acting as Lego detectives, they crafted a list of suspects and pored over it for motivations and clues. Maybe it had been an avid collector who prized Louis’ Clone Scout Walker so much he was willing to break in to get it? Or perhaps a member of the Polish Lego gang suspected of robbing French toy stores was now targeting Lego influencers? They scoured websites in the lucrative Lego secondary market — Brick Link, Brick Economy, Brick Picker — searching for serial numbers that matched the stolen sets and checked garage sales around Paris. “It’s very exhausting,” Louis says, “because you have thousands and thousands and thousands of sellers.”

They found nothing. But they did reach one conclusion: This was not just a crime about money. The thieves left behind other valuables in Louis’ house, and the destruction of his builds seemed too violent, too targeted. The smashed sets, the dismembered Minifigs: It felt more like a massacre than a burglary. This, Louis and his fellow sleuths decided, was a crime of passion. As Jehan Mesbah, one of Louis’ friends, tells me, “This had to be about vengeance.”

Even now—years later—Orlando still hears rumors about what may have been concealed in the truck’s cargo, including guns or even up to $2 million in cash hidden inside pieces of furniture. If that much money had gone missing, though, Orlando doesn’t think he’d be alive—or that he’d have been able to negotiate his release for such a comparatively small sum. While his kidnappers originally asked for $15,000, Orlando says he negotiated it down to $7,000 by telling his captors they could keep the school bus he’d driven down to sell in Guatemala. Only in retrospect does it appear that some outside factor—perhaps his family’s calls to local Guatemalan police—saved him from a shallow, unmarked grave.

Here is one of the most striking revelations from the Calkins documents: One day in 2001, almost 14 years into his law-enforcement career, Calkins stopped making arrests. That August, he took a man to jail on a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery. The records show that from then on, through almost three more years of road patrol, Calkins never arrested anyone again. He wrote almost 400 incident reports without delivering anyone else to jail.

Here’s why this could be relevant to the disappearances of Santos and Williams: Both men were unlicensed or uninsured drivers and could have — perhaps should have — been arrested. Calkins did not take either man to jail.