Without reservation, she opened the door. Without hesitation, she hopped into the car, adjusting the skirt of her summer-weight navy blue suit to keep it unwrinkled as she sat down. And just like that, 19-year-old Frances Cochran jumped into the void. On July 17, 1941, in Lynn, Massachusetts, attractive nineteen-year-old Frances Cochran stepped off a commuter bus and into a mysterious black automobile. Three days later, police discovered her mutilated body in a Salem lover's lane. Her murder made national headlines on the eve of WWII. Investigators checked twelve thousand cars and interviewed almost two thousand witnesses. They scrutinized a "Peeping Tom" men's club.

Despite leads that spanned the continent, decades passed and the killer was never caught. Like a poisonous vine, the death of Frances Cochran is tangled with other unsolved murders, including the 1947 Los Angeles Black Dahlia case. As local author Rob Fitzgibbon reveals, it is also a story shrouded in "the Salem Factor," the odd and inexplicable coincidences that occur in an area notorious for witchcraft and hauntings.