One weekend in September 2002, Kim's sister brought her three sons — ages 3, 5 and 8 — to stay with them for a few days. Before her nephews left to return home, Kim says the 5-year-old asked her, "Are the cops going to come take that dead body out of Chase's closet?"

"It was sort of a random question," she says. "I didn't know where that came from."

The following Tuesday, Kim, an assistant principal at China Grove Elementary School, says she and the children heard a "thump, thump, thump, boom, boom, glass-breaking noise."

Casiann says she was on the third floor and ran downstairs, meeting KatiEarl running up from the first floor. They found what they believe was the cause of that noise in KatiEarl's second-floor bedroom: a picture of a ballerina, the glass broken, lying in the middle of the floor with ballet trophies sitting up around it in a circle.

KatiEarl's soccer trophies, however, were on the other side of the room, she says, most of them turned on their sides. more....