So if you feel comfortable, I'm ready to start recording.

Okay, I'm ready.

This is Karen Falasca. When I first met her, she told me a story, a story about the last time she saw her older sister, Denise.

I was just a star-high 13-year-old. Everything Denise did was just amazing to me. And I remember that night. Very, very clearly.

It was a hot summer night back in 1969. Karen was 13 and Denise was 15. They left home together to catch a bus.

We got to the corner, and she told me she had to go do something. She said, Don't follow me. And I said, Please stay with me.

Denise walked off into the night, and that's when Karen saw a car approaching, and she noticed the driver staring at her.

He was like the devil himself. He scared me. I saw him, and I stepped forward, and I made an aggressive move to get him away from me. And I always wondered if I just sent him straight to Denise.

This is your Metropolitan area report. The body of a teenage girl found strangled in Saddlebrooke, New Jersey, yesterday, was identified this morning as that of 15-year-old Denise Velasca of Closter, New Jersey.

Nobody knows what happened. She was murdered, and brutally murdered. The thought was some stranger, some psycho, killed her.

The police tried to solve Denise's murder, but that investigation went nowhere.

I was like, Well, we don't have any leads. We don't have any clues. And unless someone confesses, we're stomped. I said, Okay, if you're not going to do it, I'm going to do it.

For almost 50 Karen Falasca, searched for the man who murdered her sister. And then she got a little help from one of the least likely people I could ever imagine getting involved in a murder investigation. Me. Together, we talked to everyone who was involved with her sister's case.

We knew we had a sexual predator, a serial killer that was out there almost on a daily basis.

We learned everything we possibly could about the night Denise was killed. Oh, my Oh my God.

Oh, my God. The girl's going to be murdered.

And eventually, we even talked to the man who killed her.

I'm the only one that knew exactly what happened. You hear there's no such thing as the perfect murder. Well, that's not true.

Because I had a lot of perfect murders.

From Truth Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Denise Didn't Come Home. Coming October first to The Binge. Listen wherever you get your podcast.