Alex Kotlowitz

On this one August day in 1979, Carla Dimkoff learned something which shaped the rest of her life and the life of a complete stranger.

And the thing about it is, it took 26 years for her to realize that.

At the time, Carla was 19 years old.

She was living in a trailer home in the small town of White Cloud, Michigan, when her father, James Keller, who lived in Tennessee, showed up unannounced driving a motor home.

Her father was a bit of a vagabond, someone who lived on the edge.

So this surprise visit wasn't all that unusual.

Carla was kind of at loose ends herself.

She'd been raising a daughter alone, and the day her father arrived, Carla had gotten married to a man she'd met just a week before.

Her father gave them $20 as a wedding gift and wished them well.

Then they went their separate ways for the evening.

Carla and her new husband got home around 2 a.m., but her father was still out.

He stayed out most of the night.

Even stranger was what he was doing in the driveway.

He was repairing the side view mirror on his motorhome.

It wasn't just that Carla's father was a drifter.

That makes him seem benign.

He was, by Carla's recollection, a violent man.

Carla remembers once she was slurping while eating spaghetti, and he hurled the table on its side.

But it was much worse than that.

When Carla turned 11, her mother told her that her father had molested a young girl.