As a reporter, you see a lot of strange things. You witness the most dramatic and traumatic parts of other people's lives. You count on being able to control how it all affects you. But you never expect investigating someone else's past will lead you back into your own.

And that's exactly what happened to me, reporting on the case of Joe Shymanski, a Washington, D.C., photographer murdered in 2023. Covering this story took me back into some of the most familiar terrain of my life — my tiny, Pennsylvania hometown. But it also took me into unfamiliar territory: confronting someone I grew up with caught up in a murder case.

Heather Snyder, left, and "48 Hours" contributor Nikki Battiste in 1998, when Battiste crowned Snyder as her successor as homecoming queen at their Pennsylvania high sch

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