Close to Home

11:35 p.m. July 12

A press conference is scheduled for midnight in the Logan Square shopping center a quarter mile from our house. Surely, the news won’t be good. Police and FBI have been turning over the earth at a farm just two miles down the road since Monday, looking for the bodies of four young men, all seemingly unconnected, who recently went missing in this bucolic corner of Bucks County, Pa.

There could not be a more peaceful setting anywhere, rolling hills, long stretches of green pastures with grazing horses and the stone houses for which Pennsylvania is known. Yet, you sense something very bad has happened to four young people in this community where people routinely leave their doors unlocked and children’s voices echo in the summer night.

For the last three days on my way to work I drove past the news trucks camped out across from the farm on Route 202, creating a surreal overlay. Tonight, a vigil is also planned for the young men, as the investigation continues under flood lights. A person of interest whose family owns the farm in question was taken into custody, released and subsequently arrested.

One can only imagine what their families are going through.  Maybe, just maybe, there is hope.

12:15 a.m. July 13

Barb and I drove over to the press conference. A small crowd of 75 or so people including news media were present when the Bucks County DA broke the heartbreaking news. One body had been recovered in a 12 ½ foot grave at the farm and identified as 19-year-old Dean Finocchiaro. A second body yet to be identified was recovered, and two others remain missing.

A reporter asked if one man could dig that large of a hole. Another questioned how the two individuals whose remains had been found died. The news was all the more surreal, being delivered right in our own backyard. We teach our kids the world can be a dangerous place, and that they need to be mindful. It is a lesson that, sadly, needs to continually be reinforced. Even in the bucolic rolling hills of Bucks County, where tragedy has struck close to home.