This was unusual; O’Grady was a responsible student and worker who kept in close contact with family and friends. She left all her belongings behind, including her cat, and didn’t pick up her paycheck. Her car was found several days later near her workplace, locked and undisturbed.

Police investigated her boyfriend, Christopher Edwards. His room contained a lot of blood – O’Grady’s blood – that had been hidden. A shovel and bloody garden shears were in his car, along with bloody towels and paint supplies he’d bought the night O’Grady vanished. The dirt on the shovel matched river silt. Blood was also found on two swords, one with both O’Grady’s and Edwards’s blood.

Police believed Edwards killed O’Grady, possibly because she told him she was pregnant (he was already having a baby with another woman). He was arrested, tried, and convicted of second-degree murder, receiving a sentence of 100 years to life in prison. Even though he claimed innocence and refused to reveal O’Grady’s body, his conviction was upheld in court.

There was a later complication. A crime lab director, David Kofoed, who worked on O’Grady’s case, was later convicted of planting evidence in a different case. Edwards’s lawyers tried to use this to get his conviction overturned, but they failed because there was no proof Kofoed tampered with evidence in *O’Grady’s* case.

O’Grady’s body has never been found, but all evidence strongly suggests she was murdered by her boyfriend. A memorial service was held for her in 2006.