Mr. Ballin

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.

Then he walked through the front yard and went into the house.

And right away, a crime scene photographer greeted him and then led him down the hallway.

As he walked, Faust caught a glimpse of a family photo on the wall, which showed Bonnie and her husband and their three kids all smiling and looking like the perfect all-American family.

Before opening the door to Bonnie's bedroom, the photographer paused and warned the detective that there really was a lot of blood in here.