This is about an unsolved mystery.

I love unsolved mysteries.
So long as they eventually get solved.
Otherwise I don't love them so much.

In 1992 a 12-year-old girl was found dead, face down in a ditch that ran through a park.

There are hundreds of similarly unfenced drains throughout the city.
This one was four metres deep. It was too wide to jump.

It rained hard that night.

A week went by and nobody came forward to claim the body, so the police released a photograph of the corpse, which ran on the front page of the daily paper.

Her mother saw it.

The kid had been a runaway.

And the case was closed. The coroner agreed with the police findings of accidental drowning.

But that didn't explain a number of things.

Like why her body was found naked from the waist up.
Why her track pants were inside out, and why there was suspicious bruising on her body.

The family refused to believe the verdict. And four years later, following political pressure, those unanswered questions eventually prompted an inquiry into the police handling of the case.

It established that the investigating officers did not spend enough time tracing her movements that night.

They did not carry out a detailed search of the park for evidence, especially for clothing. They failed to see that the missing clothes and marks on her body were signs of a possible molestation. She had abrasions on her neck as if someone had grabbed hold of her. They didn’t spend enough time tracing her movements that night.

Sure, she drowned. But just how “accidental” was it?

The case was reopened and listed as a possible homicide.

Disciplinary action was not taken against the officer in charge of the initial “investigation” as he had “left” the force by then.

The girl and her identical twin sister came from a poor, single-parent home. They were both runaways.

Because of this, they were placed into the care of their church minister.

Who then, allegedly, molested them.

Officers did not pursue this line of inquiry the first time around. By time the case was reopened, the church had “relocated” the minister and closed ranks around him.

And police did not have enough evidence to lay charges.

The case remains open and unsolved.

It inspired the following. It’s not quite a song, but it is slightly louder than a poem.

(Click HERE to listen/download)

Lyrics: