Sergeant David Levin was about to follow a dizzying trail that woul lead him from the baking heat of the Southwest to the frigid temperatures in Alaska and on the east coast. And he would realize once again what strangers neighbors can be. It was no longer the way it was earlier in the century when neighbors often knew almost everything about families who lived on their block. The extended Ashton family was the exception. But even they knew oy bits and pieces of the lives of the tenants in their old blue house.

"Johny Rojas deserves so much credit for the effort she put into a missing case that wasn't even in her departments jurisdiction,” Levin recalls. "She went back to old records and found the original missing report that Jina Cruz, Gypsy younger sister, had filed in January 1979!”

The report had not been filed with Pierce Country, and Levin wondered why. It had been filed in the small town of Topeka which is in the Southwest part of Queen Country. odd.

The complainants name was Jina Cruz.

Levin set out locate the exclusive Cruz sisters. The Topeka police department still had the missing report Jina filed, and it was full of information.

Apparently Jina had gone to the Topeka police department as she tried desperately to locate her father. She had given all the facts she knew to Detective Jerry Thompson.

Levin found that the entire Cruz family had been distraught over Joe disappearance, but Jina was the official complainant. She was living with her brother Arvi at the time and she didn't have a car so she went to the closet police station, even though she believed that her dad had gone missing in New Mexico.

If it was Joe who was missing, who then was the man known as Isaac? Levin checked missing persons complaints in Pierce Country and Tacoma for 1979. He found nothing that seemed to fit. Next he asked law enforcement agencies in countries north and south of Pierce country.

With Johny Rojas help, Levin learned that Gypsy and Jina's missing father was Robert Anthony Cruz, who would have been fifty three un 1978. There was only blurred photo of him available in the old file, but his daughter had given his description: six feet one inch, two hundred plus pounds, brown eyes and graying black hair, partially balding.

In 1979, Gypsy and Jina had said that their mother --- Roberts ex wife Anne--- lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico as did most of their five siblings. On that day January twenty eight years before, Robert Cruz had been missing for about four months He had failed to contact his elderly parents, his ex wife or any of his children.

Levin's eyes widened as he read further; apparently the last time anyone saw Cruz he had been visiting a girlfriend who lived near New Mexico.

The girlfriend's name was Rein, and her phone number was on the report although it was hardly likely she still had the same number after so long Chances were that she had married in the years between 1978 and 2000 and probably had another last name now.

Fortunately, Topeka detective Jerry Thompson had added many details to the missing report. Jina Cruz had told him that her father owned a business in Anchorage. She said she and Gypsy had called his girlfriend several times over the years, but Rein had always said she was a mystified as anyone about where Joe might have gone She did say, however that she and her mother Gerilyn Miller had moved to a town north of Anchorage in the seventies.

That answered one important question. Geri Miller had been the renter of the Ashton's house. Maybe it was her older daughter Rein who had dated Joe. By Levin's figuring, that young woman would probably be in her fifties now, if she was still alive. But three decades was a long time. The Pierce country detective checked death records and found that Geri Miller, the mother, had die in 2001.

No one seemed to know where her daughters were in summer of 2007.

Robert Anthony Cruz had come a long distance from the place he was born to meet his killer. His parents lived in New York Brooklyn and they always would. But not Joe he had itchy feet and the personality of a natural born entrepreneur.

Joe was Cruz oldest child and only son, and his Italian parents were thrilled with their dark handsome baby son when he was born in1925. Two sisters joined the Cruz family in the following years, but Joey was always star, the innovator, whose expansive personality drew people to him all his life.

He brought Rein Curtis up to Ohio to work for him Geri Miller was in the process of getting a divorce from Rein father's amd she soom followed, bringing her grand daughter, Diane with her Rein son Ben was in one of the many foster homes he would live in.

Joe called his new company Alaska Meat Provisions. It was located on International Airport Road in Anchorage. He picked up the steaks, roasts, and ground meat from a wholesalers and delivered them to costumers from Anchorage to Fiarbanks while Rein managed the office in Anchorage.

In essence, Joe was supporting Rein, Geri Miller, and Diane though he never lived with them; they rented a house on Jewel Lake. Joe put a bed for himself in an unfinished room ober his office.

Geri was much closer in age to Joe than Rein was, but it was Rein who fascinated Joe. He bought her jewelry and almost anything she said she wanted along with presents for Geri and Diane.

It wasnt long before Joe fell completely in love with Rein. He knew she didn't love him as much as he cared for her suspected she was seeing other men.

It didn't matter. Joe Cruz was obsessed with Rein Curtis. His children disapproved, his parents in New York weren't at all happy that he was divorced and chasing after a woman thirty years younger than he was, and all his relatives and friends worried about him.

They wondered what such a young and beautiful woman might want from him. Rein could probably have just about any man she chose, and they were afraid she was after Joe for his money. He scoffed at the idea, convinced that he would win Rein over in time.

In the meantime he had a warm friendship with Geri Miller and little Diane. In a sense, he had another family group.

Rein had an irish pixie look about her thanks to her bright blue eyes, deep dimples, and her cap of dark hair. Her figure was perfect, She didn't look like a femme fatale she resembled a wholesome college girl.

Being with her made Joe feel as though he was in his twenties again His business was doing very well. Although he missed his seven kids who were scattered from New Mexico to the Northwest to Hawaii he was in touch with them often.

His life was good in 1977.

Believe that the victim on Lake wood road was indeed Joe Cruz, David Levin realized that his prime suspects we're likely to be Geri Miller and two of her own children Rein Curtis and Niel Notaro, whom Geri had adopted when he was a baby

Levin began background checks on all of them. he found that Rein had been arrested several time for DUI (Driving Under the Influencer). In one instance, police had found her car stopped in the middle of the 405 freeway between Rey and Mercy Island in the wee hours of the morning. She was inside, passed out from alcohol, Rein was lucky indeed that there was little traffic on the usually busy freeway at that time of the morning. She would very likely have been killed had another car run into her vehicle and so might the driver and passengers of that car.