Overview

Before dawn on September 18, 1966, an intruder slipped through a scored pane of glass into a gated mansion on the North Shore of Lake Michigan. Within fifteen minutes, twenty-one-year-old campaign aide Valerie Jean Percy lay dying in her bed and the barefoot stranger had vanished. Overnight, a quiet shoreline street in Kenilworth, Illinois became the scene of one of America's most haunting true crime stories, unfolding inside the home of a rising political family. Windward, the Percy estate, showed no sign of forced entry from the street. Down at the lake-facing music room, however, a surgical home invasion had begun: cut glass lifted cleanly from a French door, light footfalls on tile, then silence on the stairs. By sunrise, the evidence trail was stark but fragmentary-bare footprints in the sand, a single black glove in the grass, bloody palm prints on the banister, and a serrated bayonet pulled from the shallows. Decades of interviews and lab work never turned that forensic evidence into an arrest. Instead, this 1966 Cold Case remained an officially open unsolved murder, its twenty thousand pages of police records locked behind court orders and redactions. This book steps into that gap between what happened and what has been withheld. Moving hour by hour through the night of the attack, it follows the break in the glass, the flashlight that blinded the only eyewitness, and the fifteen-minute window in which a life ended and a killer escaped. From there, the narrative widens into the investigation itself: the early canvass of Kenilworth, the handoff to state and federal agencies, and the years when the case seemed to drift into obituary columns and anniversary stories. It then traces the modern fight over access-Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, televised investigative reports, and judges deciding whether nearly twenty thousand pages of records should remain sealed in the name of an ""ongoing"" inquiry. Fifteen minutes of violence, fifty-nine years of secrecy. Guided by a calm, investigative voice, the story centers Valerie herself-her life at Cornell, her role on her father's campaign, her close bond with her twin sister-before returning again and again to the small, stubborn details that still refuse to fit neatly into any single theory. Each chapter functions like a case file: establishing a timeline, examining witness accounts, and asking what can be responsibly concluded from what we have. ""This book contains no images-only cinematic narrative written in the style of a detective-investigator."" This Book Is For Readers Who... Want a narrative that reads like an organized case file you can actually follow from first break to final page. Are drawn to investigations that balance empathy for victims with hard questions for law enforcement and the courts. Appreciate slow-burn suspense built from timelines, transcripts, maps, and physical details rather than jump scares. Are curious how law, politics, and family legacy collide when a young woman is killed in the middle of a Senate campaign. Perfect For Fans Of... Gregg Olsen Michelle McNamara - I'll Be Gone in the Dark Truman Capote - In Cold Blood Ann Rule - The Stranger Beside Me and other case-driven narratives John Berendt - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Nearly six decades later, the glass has been replaced, the campaign is long over, and most of the people at the center of the story are gone. What remains are footprints in records, echoes in court opinions, and a case that still officially refuses to die. Read now and walk the shoreline between evidence and silence.

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