Dave said the knocking made him panic because he thought I’d already called the police. I opened the garage door and he was standing there crying harder than I’ve seen since his mother died.
He kept saying, “I didn’t kill her.”
We sat in lawn chairs until almost two in the morning while he told me the rest.
According to Dave, Jenny got into his truck after the party because she was drunk and upset with her boyfriend. They drove around for a while near the lake arguing because she kept demanding he take her home but also saying she didn’t want her parents seeing her like that. Dave admitted he’d been drinking too and eventually pulled onto an old service road near the water to calm her down.
That’s where things went bad.
Another truck pulled up behind them. Two older guys from a nearby town. Dave knew one of them casually through construction work. He said the men started yelling that Jenny’s father had been searching for her already. Jenny got scared and ran from Dave’s truck toward the trees beside the lake road.
One of the men chased after her.
Dave swore he heard Jenny screaming a few minutes later but got terrified because he’d been drinking underage and thought everybody would blame him for bringing her there. So he drove away.
I asked why he stayed quiet for thirty years if he thought those men hurt her.
That’s when he told me one of them eventually became a deputy sheriff in Erie County.
The next morning I called Dave and told him we needed to go to the police together now, not “someday.” He agreed after a long silence.
By noon he stopped answering his phone.
Around four that afternoon a state trooper knocked on my front door asking if I’d heard from Dave since early morning because his truck had been found abandoned near Evangola State Park with the driver door still open and the keys sitting on the front tire.