It's just past midnight on Sept. 22, 1992.

Paulette Andrea pays her tab at Barney Google's, a neighborhood tavern on Washington Street in Worcester's Green Island neighborhood.

She hugs her friends at the bar goodbye and exits the front door, taking a right toward Harding Street and Ellsworth Street.

Paulette has about a 15-minute walk home to her apartment on Lawrence Street.

But she never makes it.

About four hours later, a passerby finds Paulette's body face down in a sandbox at a playground at Crompton Park.

She had been strangled to death.