Lawrence Howard Groves, 40, disappeared from his Lakeville, Indiana bungalow after a late-night phone call on January 12, 2003. He told the friend on the line that someone he knew was banging at the door and that he would call back in twenty minutes; that callback never came. Family reported him missing on January 28 when his antique business went untended and repeated visits to his locked home turned up no sign of him.

In June 2003 a neighbor alerted Derl Bennett, owner of the bungalow, after noticing a strong odor and many flies. Inside a hidden trap door beneath a rug and desk, a crawl space held Groves’ decomposing body. Advanced decomposition prevented a definitive cause of death, but investigators reported evidence of a struggle: blood and hair not belonging to Groves were present in the crawl space.

A man known to Groves, later seen selling items from Groves’ collection in Michigan, was questioned and gave a DNA sample. In 2006 the FBI crime lab reported the sample did not match the scene evidence, and the case went cold. Did anyone in the community recognize trucks coming to the property that winter or see unfamiliar people moving antiques after January 2003?