How my first attempt failed My First Idea on How to Investigate — and How It Fell Apart I went into this investigation with naïve confidence. The plan seemed simple: drive to Sumter, pull the local records, and start piecing together the truth. A newspaper clipping here, a police report there — maybe even a quick stop in Columbia to grab the death certificate. Straightforward. Sensible. But I hadn’t yet learned the most important rule of this story: we were stepping into a hi