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a haunting legacy Unsolved murders take on a life of their own. What would be a closed chapterifthemysteryweresolvedbecomesthestuffofconspiracytheories, ghost stories, and legends. When the murder is particularly brutal, and the victim especially beautiful, the images continue to haunt, long after the deed is done. Almost eight decades later, the Frome story is still being told. On the seventy-fifthanniversary,StevenFinacomoftheBerkeleyHistoricalSociety wrote a column for the San Jose Mercury News, harking back to the tragedy that befell the Bay Area mother and daughter in 1938 and the coverage a local paper gave to it.372 Since then, the country has experienced incalculable loss, from World War II through the protracted war on terrorism, including the assassination of a president and hundreds of thousands of other individual murders. Despite the innumerable headlines from all the intervening history, the killing of Hazel and Nancy Frome continues to be covered in print publications and on the Internet. Occasionally, a curious soul who has read of the case will stop at Van Horn, Texas, to ask where the murders took place. There is no historical marker, no memorial there. Since the day the bodies were discovered, the interstate highway has been built. Motorists speeding by on the road east of town do not realize they have passed within a few feet of the death site. Yet, even those who have never heard of the Fromes may fall prey to the tricks the desert plays on the mind. The bleak terrain of the great Chihuahuan Desert, the largest on the North American continent, lends itself to myth and mystery. It is host to the eerie Marfa ghost lights, which have been seen by locals for generations. Old-timers prospecting for ore tell of seeing apparitions of the dreaded war chief Victorio, roaming the nearby Sierra Diablo foothills where his Apache band made its last stand. The extremes of climate give rise to strange phenomena. When the sun beats down and the ground heats up, the air currents create dust devils, swirling soil and sand across the land like dervishes. 308 fetch the devil On crisp spring nights, the desert is bathed in silver moon glow. A small zephyr can raise a single vortex, causing a tall, slender yucca plant to tremble and sway. Its pale, white blooms will seem to wave, while all that surrounds it stands perfectly still. A weary traveler, driving on that long stretch of highway, may see a fair-skinned woman beckoning from the roadside, a ghostly girl pleading to be rescued, as Nancy might have done, with her last breath, at this very place, on her last day. ...

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