Bloodlines and Bad Decisions

  The Girl in the Hollow: The Unsolved Mystery of Evelyn Hartley In a small Wisconsin town in 1953, a teenager vanished while doing something completely ordinary—babysitting. Evelyn Hartley was only 15 years old, a straight-A student, and the daughter of a college professor. She wasn’t the type to run away. She didn’t have enemies. But on October 24th, 1953, she disappeared without a trace—and the silence surrounding her case has echoed for decades. This is a story about a locked house, a pair of missing shoes, and a mystery that’s haunted La Crosse for over 70 years. A Babysitter, A Quiet Night, and Then—Nothing It was homecoming night. Evelyn couldn’t go to the game because she had agreed to babysit for the Rasmussens, a local couple who needed someone to watch their 20-month-old daughter. The Rasmussens left around 6:30 p.m., and Evelyn’s father, Richard Hartley, called her at 8:30 to check in. She didn’t answer. By 9:30, uneasy and unable to get her on the phone, he drove...

When the Granger family name was whispered in New England’s wealthiest circles, it conjured images of sprawling estates, silk dinner jackets, and old money that came with old secrets. But nobody guessed just how deep — and how deadly — those secrets went. At the center of it all was Nathaniel Granger III , a handsome heir who, by day, was the charming face of the family’s shipping empire. By night? He was a ghost slipping through alleyways, hiding a double life that would explode in scandal and murder. The Golden Boy with Shadows in His Eyes Nathaniel was everything a Granger heir was supposed to be: Ivy League educated, devastatingly charismatic, and generous — at least in public. But those close to him saw the cracks. The late-night calls, the sudden trips, the whispers behind locked doors in the Granger mansion. He didn’t just have one mistress — he had a second apartment in the city where he kept an entirely separate life: a woman named Vivian Cross , a nightclub singer who kn...

They say you can’t choose your family — but you can choose what you do with the truth. Welcome to Bloodlines and Bad Decisions , a true crime blog that dives deep into the tangled mess of bad blood, buried secrets, and choices that echo through generations. Here, we’ll unravel stories that remind us how a single moment — a careless lie, a jealous rage, a desperate betrayal — can turn an ordinary family into a headline. Each week, I’ll bring you tales of murders that were decades in the making, unsolved mysteries that haunt entire bloodlines, and scandals so shocking they could only come from the people closest to us. Some of these stories are well-known; others you may never have heard before. All of them remind us that monsters aren’t always strangers — sometimes they share our last name. Why true crime? Because every crime is a puzzle — but when family is involved, it’s a labyrinth. I’ve always been fascinated by the “why” behind the “who.” What makes a parent snap? A sibling betr...