Long before there was a Susan Smith or a Casey Anthony, there was Alice Crimmins. When the New York housewife called the police to report her two young children missing in the summer of 1965, the focus was on her custody battle with her estranged husband and the children’s father, Edmund Crimmins.

When it came out that Alice had been having sex with multiple men and that she was less than ideal as a mother, the case became a media circus. With two trials filled with bombshell testimony and courtroom theatrics, Alice got years of attention and seemed to dodge punishment. In all of the craziness, the lives of little Missy and Eddie Crimmins seemed to take a backseat. But it is the memories of the two children which will stay with us and all of those who followed the case, because what happened to them is, truly, unthinkable.