Linda Zapata

I definitely suspected foul play.

The receptionist came back and said, Linda, there's two police officers here to talk to you.

And he said, we're here because we reopened the case on your mom.

My gut dropped out.

Her immediate words were simply the fact of, is my mom alive or dead?

Every night during this investigation, I woke up every night.

My main goal was to get the truth out.

I wanted the truth out of what happened to my mom.

When Jean Zapata vanished from her home in Madison, Wisconsin in 1976, she left behind her daughter Linda, two other children, a lot of friends, and a mystery that would take more than 30 years to solve.

I spent my whole life from age 11 telling people when they asked, my mom abandoned me.

Linda only knew what her father told her on the day her mother disappeared.

She was just 11 years old.

At age 11, when my dad said she took off because she was stressed out, it was cemented in my head she took off and she's raising another family somewhere.

Jean's best friend, Peggy Weakley, never believed that Jean would simply abandon her life in Madison.

She could not have walked out on her children because of the way she was raised.

It was just too deeply ingrained in her to take care of those kids, to be a mom.

A lifetime of nagging questions and haunting memories would bring Peggy and Linda together.

The friend who grew up with Jean Zapata.

She'd probably still be slender.

And the daughter who grew up without her.