On a May evening in 1979, an eighteen-year-old woman went car shopping with her dad. Afterward, he dropped her off at her apartment, and the two went through their usual routine. She went inside first, did a quick safety walk-through, and then came back outside to let her father know everything was okay and he was good to head home. It would be the last time he saw his daughter.

The next morning, her roommate returned to the apartment to pick her up for work. Instead, she found her roommate missing and a disturbing scene left behind. Months would pass before a pair of men doing target practice made a discovery that ended any remaining hope that she might still be out there somewhere. In the decades since, the investigation has gone down a number of different paths, including false confessions and possible connections to other murders in the area.

But when you strip all of that away and go back to the earliest days of the investigation, there are details that seem much more significant with the benefit of hindsight. And they leave you with one question: did investigators have the answer in front of them from the very beginning?

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Source Material:
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/crime/unsolved-39-years-after-a-local-teens-violent-death-police-continue-investigating/77-516740341
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72943520/debra_lynn-o'quinn
https://projectcoldcase.org/victim-detail/debra-oquinn-438/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florida-times-union-foul-play-feared/203095237/
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https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florida-times-union-debras-dad-asks/203141648/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florida-times-union-long-search-over/203142291/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florida-times-union-body-found-22/203142489/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florida-times-union-hunt-gets-underw/203394585/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florida-times-union-hunt-begins-fir/203394805/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/jacksonville-journal-drifter-charged-in/203395082/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-florida-times-union-more-serial-kill/203395274/

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