Lauren Spierer was at a crossroads in her life in spring 2011, struggling with drugs and whether to work through a turbulent relationship with her boyfriend.
The night of June 2, the 20-year-old Indiana University sophomore headed to a student party without him, never to be seen again.
She would have turned 35 last month.
On a frigid snowy Saturday, January 17, her mother Charlene, hunkered down in the same home where Lauren and her older sister grew up in New York, sat at a computer to type a heartbreaking message to her missing daughter.
'You are desperately missed,' the now 71-year-old mom wrote. 'You are eternally loved. You will always be in our hearts. Today. Especially today. You should be here on this your 35th birthday. You should be here.'
Had Lauren made it safely home that night in her Midwest college town, one could imagine her family joining together last month to sing her a joyous happy birthday.
Loren would lean in, blow out the candles on the carrot cake her proud mother baked and maybe be joined by children of her own who'd stick their fingers in the cream cheese frosting.
Two days later the celebration would continue with Lauren getting together with old college friends to watch the IU football team win their first-ever national championship.
Instead, Lauren's birthday served as just another gut-wrenching reminder of time passed - 5,342 days since Charlene and her husband Rob received the devastating phone call that their daughter was missing.
Nearly 15 years later, Charlene, now a grandmother to her other daughter's children, posted this latest message on the family's Facebook page, along with an old picture of herself with arms wrapped around her smiley little girl, her eyes closed as she kissed her daughter's cheeks.
The page has 93,000 followers from around the country who've shared in the family's suffering and offered words of support all these years.
At home with my own wife and children in Washington, D.C., I teared up when I saw Charlene's post, wishing I could offer comfort.
If fate had not snatched her away, she would now be 35 years old - but her parents still haven't filed paperwork to officially declare her dead.
My wife knows how much this family means to me, which is why she's allowed me to devote years reporting on the case and even use part of my parental leave chasing down leads.
I released College Girl, Missing, my book on the case, on the 13th anniversary of Lauren's disappearance, bringing readers into the night in excruciating detail and showing how she ended up at the doorstep of a group of wealthy, well-connected young men.
She'd left her shoes and cell phone in a bar. She was so intoxicated she could barely stand. Her eye was blackening from repeated falls to the pavement.
Rather than calling for help, one of the young men, Corey Rossman, carried her up to his place.
His friend Jay Rosenbaum, two doors down, was the last person to report seeing her alive, giving varying accounts of her walking out of his townhouse shortly after 4 a.m.
College Girl, Missing became an instant New York Times bestseller. For me, there was no more tense moment than when Charlene told me she'd read it.
'I can't say it wasn't difficult to read because it was,' she later wrote on Facebook. 'Most things we knew. Some things we did not. We are still fiercely protective of Lauren.'
I first crossed paths with Charlene and her husband Rob on the streets of Bloomington just days after the disappearance. They were trapped in their worst nightmare. I was an aggressive reporter digging up disturbing details about their daughter's chaotic night for their hometown paper in Westchester, New York.
As the police investigation went cold, we grew close. The family would later entrust me with the private investigative files they'd amassed.
I spent weeks scouring the records before I began to branch out, following up with witnesses and identifying new ones who hadn't been questioned.
I returned to ground zero in Bloomington to retrace Lauren's steps with fresh eyes. I couldn't get past the lobby with police who were continuing to seal their files. I later door knocked some of the officers who participated in the investigation.
That's when I made some more progress. One officer, now retired, shared his suspicion about the young men who became 'persons of interest' in the case. He mentioned a curious video showing one of them, Rossman, appearing to make a phone call around 3 a.m., as Lauren was slumped on a curb. This was shortly before he carried her up to his townhouse.
I got my hands on Rossman's cell phone records and identified the teenage girl he called - a confidante from back home in Massachusetts.
I later confronted that now young woman. Then I reached out to Rossman and Rosenbaum, who'd secretly been following my progress and ultimately decided to speak out.
I came up short in my mission to break the case but shed new light on the events surrounding Lauren's disappearance. When College Girl, Missing came out in May 2024, it achieved one goal - returning the case to the spotlight.
I began my book tour with a humbling experience in Bloomington meeting with members of the community who packed a local bookstore to hear me speak. Many had participated in the search and shared their continued heartbreak for the family and deep desire to see this case solved.
Days later, Bloomington police long criticized for soft peddling the investigation released a statement welcoming the book's publication and hoping the new attention would generate fresh tips.
The book also stirred up emotions from people whose lives have been impacted by Lauren's disappearance.
The mother of one of the 'persons of interest' lashed out, sending me a video of her setting fire to a copy of my book and then tossing it in her fireplace.
Another young man, who dated Lauren in high school, reached out to share that she was his first true love and that the book evoked strong feelings he'd struggled to process since her loss.
I've also been flooded with messages from people who never knew Lauren but related to her experience as well as true crime sleuths who read and reread the book reaching out with follow-up questions. I invite some people to call me wanting to hear their takes perhaps dispel myths and sharpen my thinking.
Others share intel they'd found on people connected to the case and their associates including social media threads from the period Lauren went missing.
Most comments ended with the same refrain - that I should keep pushing for information.
Now even as I hold down a full-time job with the Daily Mail exclusives team I still lose sleep thinking of new avenues I want to pursue.
Meanwhile I accept nearly all interview requests I get wanting to keep the case in the present.
That's why while working an assignment in Seattle on the 14th anniversary last June I pulled over to the side of the highway to take a video call from a TV station in Indiana.
The interviewer put me on the spot with an uncomfortable question reading a message Charlene had just posted on social media:
'Even as this year marks the day, I am anticipating next year, the 15th year,' she wrote. 'That's how quickly these days pass, one folding into the next, one year folding into the next. It has been a very long 14 years. At times unbearable, at other times hopeful. Never any resolution,' she wrote.
'The not knowing what happened on June 3, the not knowing where Lauren's remains are, the lack of any kind of closure is devasting, exhausting, endless.'
The interviewer told me the mom sounded like she was losing faith. I certainly don't speak for Lauren's family, but the parents hadn't given an interview in years. So I muddled through an answer.
'They may sound like they're losing hope, but I know they're not,' I replied. 'One of the lines they put in there is they're speaking out because they want to remind the individuals who are responsible that they're never going to give up until they have answers.'
And then came last month's post - an eternally loving mother living our worst fears, sending a message into the abyss, addressed to her daughter but read by followers who pray for her but, mercifully, can only imagine what she's truly going through.