Shadow of Truth (צל של אמת)

Mother, mother

Open the door

My whole body

Is shivering with cold

Mother, mother

Open the door

On my shoulder

There's an heavy burden

The night passed

The snow arrived

And ripped through my bones

My young, little girl

Sent a love letter

I get home,

walk in

and see that her backpack isn't there.

I call Tair,

Tair doesn't answer.

I look into the sink and see that Tair hasn't eaten.

I go through the rooms

and I realize that Tair didn't even come home.

I call Shmuel.

And burst into tears and tell him that Tair isn't answering her phone.

She told me, "Take a look around the school,

maybe you'll see her on the way..."

Of course it's already dark outside, pitch-black.

I call out to Tair among the bushes, rocks, boulders,

and...

I start to cry.

It's a sad situation.

I came home empty-handed.

Ilana calls me in tears.

"Do you know where's Tair?

Please tell her to pick up her phone."

I realized something was wrong

because every time we walked home we'd stop by Tair's house,

she'd call her mom first thing,

"Mom, I'm home. I'm okay."

She couldn't have just vanished, she was very responsible.

The first report was fairly...

...ordinary when it reached the precinct.

A missing girl,

not particularly worrisome signs.

Later, suspicions mounted

and we began to search on a local and regional level.

From here on,

everything just snowballed.

People started coming over,

phone calls from every direction,

from my sons' friends, from Shmuel's work,

everyone was out searching.

It was a very cold evening

and I went out with my coat.

Even brought some snacks to pass the time.

We decided to look around the school,

around the bushes, the fence.

We didn't find anything so I told the friends,

"Let's take a look inside the school."

NOFEY GOLAN HIGH SCHOOL

When you go into an unfamiliar building

and some of the rooms are dark, it's silent...

By then I had a strange feeling.

We went through one hallway, then another,

one classroom, then another,

until we reached...

the bathroom.

When we went into the bathroom there was no sign of anything.

It was spotless.

The first stall door, okay, the second door, okay,

the third door... locked.

My partner peeks through the door

and says, "Wow, there's something here!"

And that moment

I froze...

The place was quiet, you could hear a pin drop.

Then I crouched because I don't know what I'll see.

I saw a girl.

I knew it was her.

"Dad, they found Tair."

"She's unconscious."

Apparently that's what they told him.

But that very moment I told him, "Listen,

Tair is dead."

He comes in full-steam,

at a trot,

and I see him wrestling with the policemen.

Wow, it was horrible.

Hundreds of people came, kids, teenagers, grownups,

and the media, of course.

And they wouldn't let me in.

All we can say at this point

is that the body was discovered just 45 minutes ago.

No Passing

A police officer told some TV reporter

that the girl was found

with signs of brutal violence on her body.

There are signs of violence, no sign of rape, or things like that.

Shame on you.

We're her family, I'm her father.

Why didn't you tell us that our daughter was found?

Tell the family first.

Then his two sons came along,

Roy and Ohad.

I know the policemen could barely control Ohad.

They even wanted to inject him with a tranquilizer.

Then I get a call from Shmuel.

He asks me

an odd question,

"Who's at home with you?"

From that question

I understand that something...

isn't quite right.

Then he says, "Well, Tair is dead."

It was awful seeing her.

Ilana broke down.

Nobody could comfort her, she...

They sat her down on the couch.

And she's screaming,

"Cover my daughter, she's cold."

From this moment...

until almost

three weeks later

I remember nothing.

Ilana honey.

Hello, mama!

You didn't wake me up for the party?

She brought you a flower.

Through my career I've dealt with

204 murder cases.

This was the most horrifying sight.

You see

a young,

pretty,

fragile girl,

mutilated.

We have a girl

who was murdered in a school.

I knew it would turn into a public fiasco.

And we'll need to deliver answers quickly.

HORRIFIC MURDER AT SCHOOL

The children of Katzrin are afraid.

Are the murderer or murderers still at large?

The murderer is somewhere around here and we're scared.

They're afraid to go!

SCARED PARENTS

OUR CHILDREN ARE TRAUMATIZED

For two months

I could only sleep in my mom's room.

I wouldn't shower or go to the bathroom alone.

The school couldn't function.

Not to mention how it effected the whole town

and the entire region.

Katzrin is a very peaceful, pretty, quiet town in the Golan Heights,

surrounded by fields and rivers.

People walk around alone, kids go out to play.

The murder put an end to that.

It seemed like nobody really knew...

...how to deal with this kind of crisis.

From the kids, the parents, the teachers,

the police, the town, to us, the media,

we were dealing with such a thing for the first time.

How can you go to school

when your schoolmate was brutally murdered?

And the newspapers write that the murderers may be with you at recess.

FRIENDS

Public pressure was way out of proportion.

The whole plaza between the police station and the school

was full of mobile TV units.

Even when the government resigns you don't see so many reporters.

As commander of the northern region I was responsible not only for the investigation

but for daily life in Katzrin in general and the school in particular.

I made it very clear, I want the murderer in our hands within 24 hours.

So we paint the walls and search for fingerprints and take blood samples.

We take pictures of everything we sample, and move on from there.

We found no blood, no knife,

nothing that would shed light on the murder.

The investigation team has no leads.

They start to question everyone in the deceased's circle.

Her friends, her teachers,

the school employees, janitors,

to see if anything unusual happened in school that day.

The school is fenced off, with a guard at the gate, hundreds of people around,

there can't have been a murder without no one hearing or seeing. It's impossible.

The fourth day of the investigation of the murder of 13-year-old Tair Rada,

still no progress.

When I question Child X or Child Y,

each one tells a story,

that from his own perspective, is the most important thing in the world.

Tair and I were sitting here, she rummaged through my bag

and took out a box of chewing gum, she took two and gave me one.

He doesn't know if the information is worthless or valuable,

and we don't always know, either.

So we have to look into it.

Wow, there were lots of rumors after the murder.

People started saying it was a satanic cult.

SATANIC CULT

So we had no choice.

We started getting into this stuff,

including ambushes in cemeteries.

And we even caught people doing all sorts of rituals,