In October of 2019, 22-year-old Linda Griffin disappeared without a trace after a party in Everett.

Only four years later, in the basement of a private house 12 mi from the city, the new owners broke an abnormal concrete patch, a sealed cavity opened up under the layer of stone, and for years, it held the answer to a question that everyone thought was hopeless.

On October 12th, 2019, the port city of Everett, Washington, was engulfed in a dense autumn fog that came from the Puet Sound.

The humidity was so high that the light from street lamps blurred into pale yellow spots, and the air, warmed to only 50° F, felt heavy and clammy.

For 22-year-old Linda Griffin, this evening was supposed to be a brief pause between endless hours of design and work shifts.

Linda was a fourthyear architecture student at the University of Washington, and her professors often mentioned her almost supernatural attention to detail.

She saw the world through the prism of structural integrity and functionality, which made her drawings exemplary and her character unwavering and pragmatic.

In addition to her academic success, she had an atypical part-time job as a consultant at Northstar Supply, a building material store.

Linda’s colleagues recalled that she could spend hours discussing with professional contractors the advantages of certain brands of rebar or the chemical composition of quick setting concrete.

On that Saturday, she looked like a person in complete control of her life.

She wore a navy blue sweater, practical jeans, and her unchanged engagement ring with a fine engraving, a gift from her boyfriend, Chris.

Saturday’s party was held in a rented house in the Port Gardener neighborhood, an old two-story mansion that towered over the waterfront.

There were about 30 people inside, mostly students and young professionals.

Linda had come there with Chris, who worked as a construction worker, and often shared with her plans for their future together.

However, it was these plans that became the spark for the conflict.

According to one of the witnesses who was standing near the terrace at in the evening, the couple was having a tense discussion.

Chris wanted to move to another state after graduation while Linda insisted on a career in Everett.

The witness noted that the girl looked tired from the argument.

She asked for the time several times and finally turned around abruptly as she left the house.

Around 23 hours and 30 minutes, Linda finally decided to leave.

Her friends suggested calling a taxi as the walk to her apartment was about 2 and 1/2 miles through not the darkest but gloomy industrial neighborhoods.

However, according to witnesses, she just waved them off, saying she needed to clear her head.

Her lonely figure was last seen on a surveillance camera near Marine View Drive at 23 hours and 42 minutes.

The grainy footage showed her walking confidently toward the railroad tracks where the fog was at its thickest.

After that moment, her digital and physical trail was cut off.

The alarm went off on October 13th, a Sunday.

Linda was a person of iron discipline who never missed the family breakfast at .

When her phone was still out of reach at , her father, a former rescue worker, immediately contacted the Snowomish County Sheriff’s Office.

He knew that every minute counted in this weather.

At in the morning, police officially launched the search using 60 volunteers and specially trained search dogs.

Investigative teams focused on the shoreline and forest park, a large forested area of more than 140 acres that bordered her route.

The dogs were able to pick up the scent near the intersection where the girl was captured by the camera, but because of the dampness and fog, the trail broke off exactly 300 ft from the entrance to the railroad crossing.

Divers dove into the icy water of the bay, surveying each marina, but visibility underwater was less than 3 ft due to the silt, making the operation almost hopeless.

Helicopters with thermal imagers circled the city all night on October 14th, but Everett’s industrial zones remained cold and mute.

Chris, who was one of the first to be questioned, looked shattered.

He recounted their argument in detail, admitting that he stayed at the party for another hour, hoping Linda would return or call.

Investigators found no suspicious traces on his clothes or in his car, and his presence in the house over the next hour was confirmed by more than a dozen witnesses.

By the end of the first week of the investigation, detective Mark Warren was forced to conclude not a single clue, not a single personal item or sign of a struggle was found within a 10-mi radius.

Linda Griffin had simply vanished, leaving behind only an unfinished project on her desk, and four years of agonizing suspense for those who waited for her.

The city gradually began to see this story as one of those tragedies that are forever hidden under a layer of coastal sand and fog.

Exactly four years have passed since Linda Griffin’s name first appeared in Washington State criminal records.

During this time, the city of Everett has experienced dozens of other events, and the files on the case of [music] the architectural students disappearance have become covered with a thick layer of dust in the sheriff’s office archives.

However, the silence surrounding this mystery was only illusory.

All this time, the answer to the main question was hidden 12 mi to the north in the countryside near the town of Mary’sville.

In October of 2023, a small one-story house on the outskirts of Mary’sville changed hands.

A new couple who purchased the property at auction plan to completely renovate the building, starting with the foundation and basement.

[music] The house built in the middle of the last century had low ceilings and heavy stagnant air that was saturated with the smells of dampness and old wood.

On October 11th, 2023 at in the morning, a construction crew began dismantling the old wooden shelving in the basement.

The basement was typical of the area.

concrete floor, rough stone walls, and a few narrow windows near the ceiling through which the autumn sun barely penetrated.

One of the workers, a man named Thomas, later told detectives that a strange detail immediately caught his attention.

In the far corner of the basement, right where the heaviest shelves used to stand, the concrete floor had an abnormal bump.

It was a patch about 3x 6 ft that was slightly different in color and texture from the main pore.

It looked fresher, although it was also covered with a layer of dirt.

When Thomas tried to level the surface with a jackhammer, he felt that the concrete gave way too easily.

At 45 minutes in the morning, the tool fell into the void.

According to the workers, the sound of the impact changed from dull to echoing.

When they cleared the debris, they saw the edge of a black construction film that was extremely dense and hermetically wrapped.

At first, the construction workers thought they had found an old cash or pipes.

But when one of them cut through the plastic, the basement was filled with a specific sweet smell that could not be confused with anything else.

A task force and forensic experts immediately arrived at the scene.

The area around the house was cordoned off with yellow tape and construction work was suspended indefinitely.

Inside the cavity about 2 ft below the floor level were human remains.

Thanks to the specific microclimate of the basement, constant low temperature and complete lack of oxygen inside the film.

The body was preserved in a condition that allowed for an initial examination without lengthy laboratory manipulations.

Forensic experts worked in the basement for more than 8 hours.

Every centimeter of concrete around the body was sifted through fine saves.

Next to the body, in the folds of the film, they found a plastic card.

It was a University of Washington student ID card [music] in the name of Linda Griffin.

The photo on the document, although slightly faded by moisture, was still clear.

The same girl they had been looking for four years ago.

However, the final piece of evidence that left the detectives breathless was the white gold wedding ring on the victim’s hand.

The delicate engraving on the inside matched the description given by Linda’s parents in October 2019.

On October 14th, 2023, the Snomish County Medical Examiner’s Office issued an official report.

The identification was made by comparing dental records and the probability of a match was 99.9%.

Experts noted that the method of hiding the body was professional.

The use of airtight film and a specific concrete mix indicated that whoever did it had a clear idea of how to prevent rapid decomposition and the spread of odor.

The discovery came as a real shock to Mary’sville residents.

No one could have imagined that a quiet house in the countryside had served for years as a tomb for a girl whose photo was seen daily on polls.

And in the news, investigators began to reconstruct the history of the house’s ownership.

It turned out that over the past 4 years, the property had been rented out several times, but most of the time it was empty or undergoing sluggish repairs.

The cavity under the concrete became a mute witness to the cruel methodology.

Now, Detective Mark Warren has a new, much more difficult task to find out who had access to the basement in October 2019 and how Linda Griffin got from a noisy party in Everett to this concrete trap under old shelving.

Hope for an accident has finally disappeared, giving way to the cold certainty that this was a carefully planned murder.

The discovery in the basement of a Mary’sville home instantly changed the status of Linda Griffin’s case from a missing person’s search to a premeditated murder investigation.

The investigation was led by Detective Mark Warren, a veteran of the Snowomish County Sheriff’s Office, known for his meticulous attention to technical detail.

Warren, who had seen hundreds of crime scenes in his time, was struck by the methodical way in which the body had been hidden.

This was no haphazard burial in the woods or attempt to get rid of evidence in the water.

This was an engineered approach designed to ensure decades of silence.

Detective Warren immediately focused on 24year-old Chris, the dead girl’s boyfriend.

His name had appeared in the case file in 2019, but investigators had no body and therefore no direct evidence of the crime.

Now the situation had changed radically.

Chris was a construction worker by trade, and his specialization was perfectly suited to hiding the remains.

Pouring concrete in the basement of an existing building is a complex process that requires knowledge of proportions and understanding of how the soil behaves under foundations and skills in working with sealed materials.

Warren began by thoroughly researching Chris’s background and professional activities at the time of Linda’s disappearance.

In the work logs of one of Everett’s large construction companies, the detective found evidence that in October of 2019, Chris worked on several sites in the Mary’sville area.

One of the construction sites was just 3 mi from the house where Linda was found 4 years later.

This meant that the guy not only knew the area, but he navigated it professionally, understanding which houses were empty or where repairs were underway.

The testimonies of friends and participants of that last party in Port Gardner also added dark colors to [music] the portrait of the suspect.

According to eyewitnesses, the quarrel between Linda and Chris was not just a momentary misunderstanding.

On October 11th, the day before she disappeared, Chris was seen in a local bar where he was talking to a friend about Linda’s stubbornness and her unwillingness to comply with his plans.

One of the witnesses later mentioned in the report that Chris seemed obsessed with controlling the girl’s life.

His professional knowledge of how to make something invisible under a layer of stone now looked to the investigators like the perfect murder weapon.

Detective Warren ordered a re-examination of the concrete patch from the basement.

Forensic analysis showed that the work had been done with extreme care.

The concrete had been compacted [music] so that there were no air pockets that could lead to cracks.

and as a result the release of decomposition odors.

This manipulation required a concrete vibrator or at least a professional understanding of the process.

Chris, who worked with these tools on a daily basis, had the necessary competencies to perfection.

Warren also noticed that Chris was one of the few people who knew Linda’s exact work schedule and habits.

He knew she would walk home, knew her route along the railroad tracks, and most importantly had a vehicle capable [music] of carrying heavy bags of cement, and a body.

A police report from 2019 stated that Chris’s white pickup truck was inspected.

But because there was no body and no visible traces of blood, he was released.

Now, Warren realized that if the body had been wrapped in several layers of professional plastic before it was put in the car, there might not have been any biological traces in the body.

The shadow of suspicion grew thicker as Warren learned about Chris’s financial situation at the time.

The guy had debts and was trying to access Linda’s savings, as she mentioned in a personal correspondence with her friend 2 weeks before the tragedy.

The motive looked classic.

A combination of personal resentment, desire for control, and material gain.

For the detective, the picture was clear.

A professional builder uses his skills to create the perfect hiding place for his victim in a place he knows well from his work.

On October 20th, 2023, Mark Warren signed an order to reintrogate Chris.

The detective was confident that the suspect’s nerves had given out over the past four years.

And now that the concrete in Mary’sville was talking, Chris would not be able to hide behind generalities.

Every detail from the pouring method to the geographical proximity of the work sites indicated that the killer was very close to Linda that fateful night.

The case, which once seemed hopeless, now rested on a solid foundation of suspicion and the professional logic of a detective who did not believe in coincidence.

On October 22nd, 2023, the interrogation room of the Snowomish County Sheriff’s Office was filled with a heavy, almost physically palpable tension.

In front of them on the metal table was a thick folder with forensic reports on the Mary’sville discovery.

Chris kept his hands clasped together and his fingers were visibly trembling.

For the first two hours of the interrogation, he repeated the old version of events from 2019.

But when Warren laid out on the table photos of the concrete patch that became Linda’s grave, the young man gave up.

According to the interrogation protocol, Chris began to speak in a quiet, intermittent voice.

He admitted that for 4 years he had been hiding the truth, not because of guilt over the murder, but because of a deep sense of shame and fear of the consequences of his uncontrollable behavior.

According to him, after Linda turned around and left the party at and 30 minutes, he felt an unbearable rage.

Instead of catching up with her or driving home, he got into his pickup truck and headed to the outskirts of town to a place called the Iron Anchor.

It was a gloomy bar near the docks where sailors and port night shift workers usually gathered.

At 0 hours and 15 minutes on October 13th, 2019, Chris entered the establishment.

According to the bartender, who later testified to Warren, the guy looked like a stretched string and immediately ordered a double shot of strong whiskey.

Half an hour later, alcohol and resentment toward Linda made for an explosive mix.

Chris got into a verbal altercation with a group of sailors sitting at a neighboring table.

The conflict quickly escalated into a fight.

During the fight, Chris, who had considerable physical strength, grabbed a heavy wooden chair and threw it toward his opponents.

The chair flew past and shattered a huge mirror above the bar and an expensive plasma TV broadcasting sports news.

The bar owner, a man named Frank, [music] was not in favor of formal proceedings with the police, as his establishment had a mixed reputation.

Instead, he used his own system of justice.

According to Frank’s words recorded in Detective Warren’s report, two bouncers tackled Chris at 0 hours and 30 minutes.

The owner gave him an ultimatum.

Either he calls the cops and Chris gets jail time for property damage and assault, or he stays locked up until he pays for the damage.

Chris was dragged into a back room in the basement of the bar, a small windowless room filled with boxes of empty bottles.

The door was locked with a heavy bolt.

Chris spent the entire night in that room.

Only around in the morning was he allowed to use the phone to call his friends.

At in the morning, three of his construction worker friends drove up to the Iron Anchor and handed Frank $7,000 in cash, the amount they had raised secretly from his family to get their friend out of trouble.

Only after receiving the money did Frank open the door and let Chris out.

Detective Warren immediately went to the Iron Anchor to check out this story.

Although four years had passed, Frank remembered that night clearly, as the $7,000 was the largest compensation he had ever received.

The bartender also confirmed the time.

Chris was in the back room under surveillance from 0 hours and 30 minutes to in the morning on October 13th, 2019.

There was even an entry in the facility’s log book about the replacement of a mirror dated the following Monday.

This testimony created an insurmountable obstacle to the version of Chris’s guilt.

If Linda Griffin had disappeared around midnight and Chris had been locked in a basement on the other side of town with armed bouncers since 0 hours and 30 minutes, he could not physically have kidnapped her, transported her 12 mi to Mary’sville, and performed the complex concrete work that required at least several hours of silence and concentration.

The iron anchor alibi was ironclad, literally Chris, whom Warren had considered the prime suspect.

now looked like just a scared young man who through his own stupidity [music] had missed an opportunity to help search for his beloved in the crucial first hours.

When Chris was released from the sheriff’s office, Detective Warren returned to his office.

He erased Chris’s name from the list of priority suspects.

This meant that the killer was someone else, someone who had been operating in the shadows while Linda’s boyfriend was locked up in the basement of the bar.

The investigation was back to square one, and now Warren had to look for a lead where Linda felt safest at her workplace among the bags of cement and construction [music] tools.

After Chris’s alibi was officially confirmed by the testimony of the owner of the Iron Anchor Bar, Detective Mark Warren realized that the key to solving Linda Griffin’s murder lay not in her personal relationships, but in her professional environment.

The burial in Mary’sville was too well done to be accidental.

It required not only strength but also specific knowledge of materials that is usually available only to construction industry professionals.

At the end of October 2023, Warren returned to the place where Linda spent much of her time, a large building material store called Northstar Supply.

The store was located in an industrial area of Everett, occupying a huge hanger filled with the smell of fresh wood, cold metal, and dry cement dust.

The detective began by thoroughly analyzing the results of forensic and technical examinations of samples taken from the basement of the Mary’sville home.

Forensic scientists at the state crime lab found that the concrete used to fill the cavity with the body was not the usual mix from the nearest supermarket.

It contained a rare chemical additive, a curing accelerator designed specifically to work in extremely wet conditions or during prolonged rainstorms.

According to the store manager who worked there back in 2019, this additive was rarely ordered.

It was much more expensive than its standard counterparts, and only experienced contractors used it for specific foundation work in coastal areas.

Warren gained access to the digital sales archives for October 2019.

He spent hours looking through the transaction lists, searching for item matches.

It turned out that during that fateful month, only four regular customers had purchased this particular type of additive along with large quantities of concrete.

The second even more compelling piece of evidence was the construction film in which Linda’s body was wrapped.

It was a roll of heavyduty industrial-grade polyethylene used to waterproof foundations.

Forensics experts were able to recover a fragment of the factory label with a batch number from the remains of the packaging.

Warren compared this number with Northstar supplies invoices.

The result was stunning.

The shipment of this film arrived at the store’s warehouse on September 28, 2019, exactly 14 days before the girl’s disappearance.

This meant that the tools used to conceal the crime were purchased at the very store where Linda worked and at the very time when she was on shift.

The investigation suggested that the killer could have been a customer whom the girl served [music] personally.

Linda was known for her professionalism, often helping customers calculate the required amount of materials and select specific components for their projects.

Warren began to examine Linda’s visit logs and shift schedules.

One of Linda’s co-workers, who testified in November 2023, recalled that in the weeks before the girl’s disappearance, the same man often appeared in the store.

He was a professional contractor and always tried to get to Linda’s cash register, even if there was a line.

A colleague described these visits as intrusive.

The man would bombard her with technical questions that he clearly knew just to keep the conversation going.

Linda, for her part, maintained a strict professional distance, which, according to the witness, visibly irritated the buyer.

Analyzing the database, Warren discovered that the sale of the same batch of film and a rare supplement had been recorded in the system only a few times in the two weeks before October 12th.

He was looking for someone who had access to facilities in Mary’sville, had professional concrete skills, and had access to materials from Northstar Supply.

Each new detail from the store’s archives indicated that the killer was no casual passer by.

This was someone who had carefully studied Linda’s habits, knew her work schedule, and may have even consulted her about the materials that he later used to hide her body from the world for four long years.

Warren realized that he now needed to find documentary evidence of who had purchased these specific items in the days leading up to the tragedy.

The digital footprint in the warehouse database was the only witness the investigation could not intimidate or silence.

A detailed analysis of every transaction made through the store’s terminal in the first half of October 2019 was to be carried out in order to bring out of the shadows the name of the person who had turned construction knowledge [music] into a tool for committing a brutal crime.

At the end of October 2023, the investigation into the murder of Linda Griffin faced the main enemy of any investigator time.

The four years since the disappearance had erased most of the physical evidence.

The CCTV footage from gas stations and the streets of Everett had long since been overwritten, and witnesses memories had become foggy.

However, Detective Mark Warren knew that in today’s world, there is a witness who never forgets or makes mistakes, a digital inventory database.

It was this database that became the foundation for building a legal trap for the killer.

The first critical fact that was established through the examination was the unique factory serial number of the construction film batch.

The state crime lab confirmed that the role in which Linda’s body was hermetically wrapped belonged to a very narrow batch produced at a plant in Ohio.

After checking Northstar Supplies detailed sales records for October of 2019, Warren discovered an anomaly.

During the entire year, this specific type of heavyduty film had been sold to only one customer, Arthur Miller, a successful private contractor who specialized in complex foundations.

The second piece of evidence that pointed to the urgency of the offender’s actions, was the time of the transaction.

A digital database record showed a purchase made on October 13th, 2019 at exactly 12 in the morning.

This was just a few hours after Linda disappeared into the fog of Port Gardener.

Arthur Miller purchased three bags of quick setting concrete, five gallons of a special Everseal 7 brand of pigment to protect against moisture, and the same roll of labeled film to Warren.

The list looked like a kit for immediate preservation of the site.

The Sunday morning purchase immediately after the girl’s disappearance indicated that the killer had an urgent need for materials to hide evidence before the city woke up.

The third and decisive element was [music] access to the crime scene.

Detectives pulled up old building permits and architectural plans at Mary’sville City Hall.

It turned out that Arthur Miller was the contractor hired to overhaul the foundation [music] and drainage system in the same house where Linda’s remains were found 4 years later.

The owners of the estate were on a two-e vacation out of state at the time and according to the police report left Miller the keys to the house and full access [music] to the basement to perform the work.

The combination of these facts, a direct link between the rare materials on the victim’s body, the time of their acquisition, and the official contract to work in that particular basement, convinced the judge to sign a search warrant for Miller’s private property.

The search took place on October 24th, 2023.

The task force arrived at Miller’s [music] private garage located in a dreary industrial area along the Snowomish River.

It was an iron building that smelled of grease, cold concrete, and old wood.

In the far corner of the room, among heavy racks of pickup truck parts, detectives found a large toolbox.

Inside, under a layer of rags, was a heavy construction sledgehammer with a long handle.

At first glance, the tool looked clean, but modern forensic analysis using Luminol gave a shocking result.

When the lights were turned off in the garage and the reagent was applied, the metal surface of the sledgehammer began to glow bright blue.

The glow was particularly intense in the microscopic pores of the metal, and in the places where the handle was attached, luminol revealed blood residues.

But the most eerie discovery was waiting for the detectives in a dumpster behind the garage.

Among the old construction debris and pipe scraps lay Linda Griffin’s battered student bag.

Still inside were her drawing pencils and a notebook of architectural sketches.

The killer, despite his methodical approach to working with concrete, did not dare to throw these things away, leaving them in his garage as a kind of trophy.

This step was the final point in the prosecution’s case.

Professional materials, access to the site, and the victim’s personal belongings closed the legal trap around Arthur Miller.

Arthur Miller, the 40-year-old owner of a successful private construction company, never fit the classic image of a criminal hiding in the shadows.

In the business circles of Everett and Mary’sville, he was known as a man of his word, a charismatic leader, and an extremely energetic contractor.

He was a frequent guest at charity events, and had a reputation as a specialist.

However, behind this facade of success and confidence, was a personality with a painfully inflated ego, a man who took any obstacle in his path as a personal insult.

At the Northstar Supply Building Materials Store where Linda Griffin worked, Miller was not just a regular customer.

He was the very personification of obsession, which store employees mistook for mere courtship.

According to the former store manager, recorded in interrogation reports from 2023, Arthur Miller appeared at the Northstar supply hanger at least three or four times a week.

His visits strangely always coincided with Linda’s working hours.

One of the loaders named Jason recalled that Miller could walk for hours, that Miller would spend hours walking between rows of ceramic tiles or bags of cement just waiting for her to get free from another customer.

He would bring her expensive drinks from coffee shops, pay inappropriate compliments about her knowledge of architecture, and constantly try to turn the conversation from professional to personal.

Witnesses noted that he repeatedly invited her to business dinners at upscale restaurants in the city, claiming that he wanted to discuss her future career with his company.

Linda Griffin, being a pragmatic and professional girl, always kept Miller at arms length.

She was grateful for the attention to her knowledge, but never gave him hope for anything more.

A friend of Linda’s at the university later told Detective Warren that Linda felt some discomfort with Miller’s attention, but considered it just part of working with wealthy and powerful clients.

The girl openly told him about her relationship with Chris, showed him photos of their hikes together, and politely but steadfastly declined every invitation he made.

For Arthur Miller, who was used to his status and money opening any door, these constant rejections became a slow poison that eroded [music] his ego.

The night of October 13th, 2019 was the moment when Chance and pentup rage collided on an empty road.

Around midnight, Everett was covered in a fog so thick that the headlights of Miller’s pickup truck could barely penetrate the white wall on Marine View Drive.

The temperature had dropped to 48° F, and the moisture was soaking through his clothes in minutes.

Arthur was driving slowly toward his home when he noticed a lone figure on the side of the road.

Linda Griffin was walking at a brisk pace, her backpack slung over one shoulder and her face pale and upset after an argument with Chris.

Miller recognized her immediately.

For him, it looked like the perfect chance to become a hero who would save her from the cold and darkness.

According to the sheriff’s office’s technical reconstruction of the events, Miller pulled his heavy silver pickup truck to a stop at the curb.

He rolled down his window and offered to give her a ride to her apartment, emphasizing that it was extremely dangerous to walk along the railroad tracks in this fog.

Linda, who had known Miller for more than a year as a regular customer at the store, did not feel immediately threatened.

She was tired, irritated, and just wanted to get warm.

She got into the passenger seat, not knowing that this was her last voluntary step.

Once the pickup moved, the conversation inside quickly went beyond politeness.

Investigators assumed that Miller took her agreement to get in the car as a green light to proceed.

He again began to insist on meeting, claiming that Chris did not deserve a talented woman like her.

When Linda once again abruptly refused and demanded that he immediately stopped the car at the nearest intersection, Miller had an emotional breakdown.

The man who had spent years building an image of a successful contractor turned into a predator in an instant.

He locked the central locking.

The sound of metal clicking in the silence of the cabin was a signal of a trap.

Instead of turning toward the residential neighborhood, Miller turned the pickup north and headed toward Mary’sville.

At high speed, Linda tried to struggle.

She screamed and tried [music] to break the window, but Miller’s physical superiority and the enclosed space of the cab left her no chance.

He drove her to his work site, [music] the same old house where he had the keys to the basement and where the owners were hundreds of miles away.

there among the bags of cement and construction tools, Miller decided that if Linda didn’t belong to him in life, she would stay with him forever in another way.

Using a heavy construction sledgehammer that would later be found in his garage, he completed his terrible revenge for every no he had heard.

Using his knowledge as a builder, he began preparing an airtight crypt, spending the next few hours while the town was just beginning to realize that the girl was missing.

Arthur Miller acted with cold methodicality, confident that a layer of concrete and professional [music] tape would forever bury not only Linda but also his own shame of rejection.

In early 2024, the courtroom of the Snowomish County Superior Court in Everett was the scene of the final act of a tragedy that had been going on for more than 4 years.

The air inside the room was heavy with anticipation [music] and tension that had been building since the first news of Linda Griffin’s disappearance hit the state.

The room was packed to capacity.

University of Washington professors in their gowns.

Architecture students who once shared classrooms with Linda and former colleagues from the hardware store sat in the front row holding hands with Linda’s parents and Chris, whose face had become carved in stone during the investigation.

>> [music] >> The trial against Arthur Miller was based on the ironclad logic of the evidence that Detective Mark Warren had been gathering bit by bit.

The first and most irrefutable step was the official confirmation of the victim’s identity.

Since the body had been under a layer of concrete for 4 years, visual identification was impossible.

Nevertheless, forensic experts used the standard and most accurate procedure comparing dental records.

The results of the examination announced in the courtroom confirmed that the remains found in the basement of the Mary’sville home belonged to 22-year-old Linda Griffin.

It was scientific confirmation that the hope that her parents had cherished for 48 months had finally faded.

The main blow to Miller’s defense came from the results of the DNA examination.

Despite the fact that the killer believed his tools were clean, modern technology proved otherwise.

Molecular genetics experts provided a report according to which microscopic blood residues found in the metal pores of a heavy construction sledgehammer matched Linda’s genetic profile.

The chance of error was one in several billion.

When the prosecutor showed the jury a photograph of the murder weapon illuminated by blue phosphor in the darkness of the garage, the room fell dead silent.

The professional tool Miller used to build foundations became an instrument of destruction of human life.

The conclusion of pathologists completed the picture of cruelty.

Experts confirmed that the nature of the damage to the girl’s skull and bones was fully consistent with blows from a heavy blunt object of great mass.

The force of the blows was such that death occurred almost instantly.

In addition, Miller’s personal diary found during a search was presented at the trial.

Entries in it, dated October 2019, shocked the jury with their cold blood.

Miller described his feelings after Linda’s refusals, calling her rebellious and ungrateful.

His words about the final correction of her character became the key for the prosecution to understand the motive.

It was a murder caused by the wounded ego of a man who was used to complete power.

Arthur Miller sat in the dock without looking up.

His charisma, once mentioned by witnesses, had disappeared, giving way to the gray facelessness of a cornered criminal.

He refused to have the last word, which only increased the indignation of the audience.

It took the jury only 5 hours of deliberation to reach their verdict.

At 15 hours 45 minutes, the jury foreman announced the decision.

Guilty of premeditated murder in the first degree.

The judge’s sentence was as severe as possible.

Given the particular cynicism of the crime, the methodical way in which the body was hidden, and the lack of any remorse, Arthur Miller was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the right to appeal or parole.

This meant that he would never see daylight outside of prison walls.

For the Washington state justice system, this case was an example of how no layer of concrete can hide the truth forever.

The tragedy of Linda Griffin forever changed Everett.

The University of Washington, honoring the memory of its best student, established a named scholarship for talented architects who want to make a difference in the world.

The city government revised safety rules in coastal areas, installing additional lighting and security cameras along routes used by thousands of students every day.

But the biggest changes have taken place in the hearts of people.

Linda’s story is a stark reminder that danger does not always come from strangers in dark alleys.

Sometimes it hides behind the smile of a familiar client who believes that his desires are higher than someone else’s freedom and life.

2 weeks after the verdict was announced, a farewell ceremony was held at the Everett City Cemetery.

Under a gloomy gray sky reminiscent of that night four years ago, Linda and Chris’s parents were finally able to put an end to the endless agony of the unknown.

They erected a white marble monument on which was engraved a sketch of the building, Linda’s last project, which she never had time to complete.

As the first handfuls of earth fell on the coffin, the fog over the bay began to clear, revealing a view of the city she loved so much.

Linda Griffin finally returned home, leaving behind the memory of a girl who was not afraid to say no, and of a truth that, despite the thickness of the concrete slabs, eventually made its way to the Eight.