Mr. Ballin

It looked like his mom hadn't even woke up yet, which was weird for a Saturday morning.

So he went to ask his older sister, Candace, if she knew where their mom was.

But Candace said she hadn't seen her, so Brandon and Candace both went down the hallway to their mother's bedroom.

They knocked on the door, and when she didn't answer, Brandon pushed the door open and looked inside.

And what he saw made him gasp in horror.

The bedroom was covered in blood, but the bedroom was also empty.

His mom wasn't in there.

Later that same morning, Detective Brad Faust pulled up outside of a house in the suburbs of Tucson.

He was there to investigate a mother's apparent kidnapping from her own home.

Faust was actually feeling a bit frustrated to be called out to yet another case like this when he was already juggling so many others.

1995 had proven to be the deadliest year in Tucson's history.

There had already been nearly a hundred murders just that year, and the Pima County Sheriff's Office was swamped.

But as far as anyone knew at this point, this was not a murder, it was a kidnapping.

You know, all Faust had been told was that Bonnie Sanborn was missing, and her kids had called 911 after seeing that and also seeing all the blood in her bedroom.

So Faust was holding out hope here that this was actually nothing that serious, and that they would find Bonnie relatively quickly and she'd be okay.

He got out of his car and he saw that officers had already taped off the house.

There was a young boy and girl sitting out on the front curb, looking terrified and visibly distraught.

And Faust also noticed that there was blood on both of their shirts.

And so he figured that they must be Bonnie's kids, the ones who had made the 911 call.

And he made a mental note that he would need to talk to them later.