"Byron Case and his girlfriend, Kelly Moffett, were just teenagers, in autumn of 1997, when their close friends Anastasia WitbolsFeugen and Justin Bruton, another young couple, died suddenly and brutally. The four were out as a group one evening when, as often happened, Anastasia and Justin got into a heated argument about their on-again, off-again romance. Early the next morning, Anastasia’s body was found in an area cemetery by a sheriff’s deputy on patrol. Her once-pretty face had been marred by a powerful pointblank gunshot. Anastasia’s body was not identified for hours, but by the time it was, Justin had already taken drastic steps: his corpse was discovered two days later, behind an abandoned warehouse in a neighboring state. He’d put a shotgun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

With no bullet, no weapon, no DNA, no established time of death, and voluntary statements by Byron and Kelly—the last people to see Anastasia and Justin alive—that were consistent with the facts, the case remained open for years. Investigators strongly suspected a murder-suicide plot; none of Anastasia’s survivors was ever considered a suspect.

How, then, did a sudden accusation by the troubled Kelly Moffett, three years later, when Byron finally severed ties with her, spark a fire of injustice that would burn away his freedom forever? And how do Anastasia’s open eyes, a little-regarded document left on Justin’s computer, and a sanitary napkin all fit together to show that Byron is innocent?"