It was a cold December night in 1972 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A 38-year old widowed mother of 10 named Jean McConville was with her children in their apartment in the Divis Flats, a labyrinthine public housing project that one critic described a "slum in the sky."
There was a knock at the door and a gang of masked intruders burst in. They ordered Jean to put on her coat and began pulling her out of the apartment. The children went nuts, screaming and grabbing.
Oddly, not one of McConville's neighbors in the overcrowded projects stepped into the hallway to see what all the noise was about. As she was hustled into a waiting van, McConville's last words to one of her older sons was, "Watch the children until I come back."
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