Kara Beth Borden & David Ludwig

Thanksgiving

Lititz, PA - November came gently this year to Lancaster County where the few remaining Pennsylvania Dutch farms rub shoulders with the vanguard of suburban sprawl edging west from Philadelphia, 60 miles away.

Unlike years past, there were no angry winds ripping across the undulating flatlands, no ominous clouds lowering above the stands of old black walnut trees.

It was cool, to be sure, though not oppressively so, and with the advent of Thanksgiving and the holidays beyond, there was plenty of promise in the air. Certainly that was true at the Borden house. Michael and Cathryn Borden had much to be thankful for. Their eldest son, James, had promised to bring his new girlfriend to the house for Thanksgiving Dinner, and the Bordens were even more grateful that their second son, Justin, had recently returned home safely from deployment in Iraq.

The Borden Family

Good, solid, devoutly religious people, Michael, a Sunday school teacher and elder at his church, and his wife, a woman who had used her degree in education to educate her own children, always seemed to understand how blessed they had been, family friends would later say. Theirs was a home deeply rooted in faith — that was the way they had raised James and Justin — and is the way they were raising their three younger children, 11-year-old David, 15-year-old Katelyn and 14-year-old Kara.

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1. Thanksgiving
2. Cause for Concern
3. Bloody Sunday
4. On the Run
5. Silence and Suspicion
6. Enthralled
7. A Darker Picture Emerges
8. Dark Fantasies
9. Prayers for the Dead
10. David Ludwig Psych Profile
11. Kara Borden Psych Profile
12. Full Borden / Ludwig Coverage