Today, we go to a small rural town in upstate New York.

Tucked into the rolling hills of Dryden, the town was founded in 1797 on land that was once part of the Central New York Military Tract — territory taken from the Onondaga and Cayuga Nations and later granted to veterans of the Revolutionary War.

Some people like to frame that kind of history as the beginning of a curse, taking land from the Native Americans, But Dryden didn’t grow out of tragedy — it grew into a quiet, hardworking community. Over the decades, it became the kind of place families moved to for stability. By 1936, the town had its first official high school, Dryden High School — a sign that the town was putting down roots.

For generations, Dryden felt safe. The kind of safe where doors stayed unlocked. Where kids walked home from school. Where everybody knew everybody.

Life moved in an easy, predictable rhythm… until 1989.

That’s when the town’s sense of security began to crack.

I’m not going to dive deep into every case from that period today — this episode is about the two young cheerleaders. But it’s important to understand the backdrop. Because what happened to them didn’t land in a vacuum. It landed in a town that, in just a few short years, would be forced to face more loss than most communities see in a lifetime.

We’ll come back to some of those other stories another time.