It is a fascinating, true-life cold case story. The dust had long settled on the murder of a 17-year-old who vanished one humid summer night in Florida in 1979. Her skeletal remains, shuffled between labs and storage, sat unidentified and unburied for 45 years until a chain of coincidences occurred that would finally bring her home. The remarkable story begins two years ago at Millennium Cremation Service in Vero Beach, Florida, when funeral director Rachel Delashmutt got a call about the skeletal remains of a murdered girl.

“Dorothy May Strickland … No family to collect, no family to order a death certificate,” Delashmutt said. “We were instructed to hold on for 120 days to the cremated remains and then scatter at sea.”

But Delashmutt hesitated.

“Something inside of me just said, ‘Ther

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