In July of 2018, 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts went on a run in her small hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. Something she’d done countless times before. But this time, she didn’t come home.

What followed was a search unlike anything this town had ever seen. Neighbors combed the fields. Reporters camped out at the local diner. And as the weeks stretched on without answers, the questions only grew louder: How does someone vanish without a trace in a town this small? Who could have seen something and stayed silent?

Today, we’re digging into the first chapter of Mollie’s story, a case that began as a missing persons search and grew into something bigger: an investigation that transformed a town and captured the attention of a nation.

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