A group of four CIA officials sat in a cramped office in a building called Quarters Eye, part of the CIA's complex of buildings then situated on the Capitol's Mall area. The officials had been unexpectedly summoned to meet by predawn telephone calls from on-duty CIA security officer Bernard Doran. A former Atomic Energy Commission security officer, Doran had received an earlier call at about 4 a.m. from Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, chief of the CIA's Chemical Branch. Gottlieb told Doran that there had been "an incident in a hotel in New York City involving a death" that required "immediate priority attention." Gottlieb explained that CIA employee Robert V. Lashbrook, assistant chief of the Chemical Branch, had been in the room when the incident occurred and was now awaiting further instructions.

After speaking with Gottlieb, Doran immediately telephoned his superior, Sheffield Edwards, CIA director of Security, and informed him "an Agency employee assigned to an eyes-only project at Camp Detrick, Frederick, Md., had dived through a window at the Statler Hotel in New York City." Detectives from the 14th Precinct were investigating. Said Doran, "The subject's name was Frank Olson."

Edwards, a former high-ranking Army intelligence officer, ordered Doran to summon Dr. Gottlieb and his superior, Dr. Willis Gibbons, chief of the CIA's Technical Services Section, to meet him as soon as possible in Gottlieb's Quarters Eye office. Once everyone was there and Edwards had been thoroughly briefed on the incident, he instructed Dr. Gottlieb to tell Lashbrook to vacate the hotel room in which the incident had occurred and "to take another room at the Statler and await a later phone call from us." Said Edwards, "Tell him to talk to nobody until we get someone there with him."

On a freezing cold March 19, 2004, night at 11:20 p.m., 17-year old Brianna Maitland clocked out of her job at the historic Black Lantern Inn in Montgomery Center, Vermont.

Maitland had to get up early the next morning for her second job as a waitress in nearby St. Albans. Business at the Black Lantern had been bustling that night, and earlier that day she had spent several hours shopping with her mother Kellie. She was tired, she told fellow workers, and couldn't stay for an after-closing dinner.

Less than two hours later, her car was spotted a mile from the inn, backed into the clapboard siding of an abandoned, roadside farmhouse. The vehicle, with its headlights still on, was empty except for two un-cashed paychecks and personal items on the front seat. Brianna Maitland had vanished.

Five weeks earlier, and 90 miles south of Montgomery Center, on a cold, snowy Feb. 9 evening at about 7:20 p.m., Maura Murray, a 21-year old University of Massachusetts student, drove her car into a snow bank on a sharp curve on Route 112 near Haverhill, N.H..

Within a few minutes, a school bus driven by Butch Atwood stopped alongside Murray's vehicle. Atwood, who told reporters he is a former police officer, asked Murray if she was okay and if she wanted him to alert local police. Murray, according to Atwood, said that she was fine and that she had already used her cell phone to call AAA for assistance.

Still concerned, Atwood continued up the road to his house, only about 100 yards away, and, once inside, telephoned police to report the accident. About 10 minutes later, a Haverhill police officer, and then a New Hampshire State Police trooper, arrived on the scene. Maura Murray's car was empty and she had vanished.

The still unsolved disappearances of Brianna Maitland and Maura Murray have caused widespread feelings of insecurity among women throughout New Hampshire and Vermont, and have renewed fears that a serial killer may be on the loose.

The disappearances have served to shatter the long-standing reputations of the two states as geographically safe and tranquil havens from the ills of urban America. Both disappearances also have created deep concerns about law enforcement response procedures, as well as friction between the families of both missing women and the New Hampshire and Vermont State Police departments.

Often overlooked in the chronology of Lee Harvey Oswald's early years is that when he was 12 years old he lived in New York City for a period of about eighteen months, in 1952-1954. Astute readers will also recognize these as critical years in the development and operation of the CIA's MK/ULTRA safe house in the city's Greenwich Village, operated by Federal Bureau Narcotics agent and covert CIA consultant George Hunter White. The first-floor safe house was located at the corner of Bedford and Barrow streets. According to a 1978 CIA document, "an elusive Frenchman who was engaged in the import-export business" owned the two-story, brick apartment house, just a short walk away from Chumley's, one of agent White's favorite watering holes and perhaps a primary reason for its selection. The building that housed the safe house was torn down several decades ago, but Chumley's, with all its ambiance and ghosts, is still there.

Marguerite Oswald and Lee moved to New York City from Texas in early August 1952. For several weeks, Lee and Marguerite lived in a small, fifth-floor apartment located at 325 East 92nd Street, Brooklyn. The cramped unit was shared with Lee's half-brother John Edward Pic, his 18-year old wife Margaret, and their newborn child. Pic's mother-in-law, Mary Fuhrman, a Hungarian immigrant, owned the triplex building that housed the apartment, and while away from the city for about eight weeks she allowed Margaret's family use of the space. Marguerite Oswald enrolled Lee in a private school, the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran School in the Bronx. Within days, Lee became chronically truant. After Marguerite learned that he had skipped nearly two weeks of classes, she placed him in a public school.