Lancaster’s Holiday Horror: The Murder of Christy Mirack
If you’ve ever visited Lancaster, Pennsylvania, or if you’re familiar with the town, then you probably associate it with its sprawling farmland and quaint Amish community. Lancaster is, indeed, a beautiful place. I grew up there, though I was a suburbanite.
It’s hard to imagine that anything bad could happen in an idyllic place so steeped in the Christian faith, but Lancaster is not immune to things like murder. After all, in 2006 a crazed gunman shot 10 Amish children in a one-room schoolhouse, killing 6. This is known as the West Nickel Mines School Shooting.
However, the first time I realized that Lancaster wasn’t as quaint and innocent as I thought was in December 1992. I was in middle school at the time. A few days before Christmas, a young, pretty, and popular elementary school teacher living on the opposite end of town was brutally raped and murdered in her condo before leaving for work. It threw sleepy little Lancaster into a state of shock and mourning.
For almost 26 years, the case remained unsolved. But thanks to DNA and modern genealogy science, the murderer was finally caught, and Lancastrians were as shocked by who…
