The little girl ran home. It was just a block.
It should have been safe.Just 10, Anna Palmer had been playing at a friend's house and wanted to be home when her mother got there.
It was a warm September evening, with the sun still shining and a group of men playing soccer in a school yard across the street.
Later, people would say she was smiling, that she didn't seem afraid.
She scampered along 300 East and turned up the driveway toward her home. In just 20 or 30 minutes, Mom would be there.
At that time of day, 300 East near 1600 South is full of cars.
Across the street at Whittier Elementary, parents were attending a kindergarten school event.
Such a normal day, in a normal neighborhood, where Anna Palmer did something little girls do every day across the Wasatch Front, across the country: They go one block from a friend's house to their home.
But Anna never made it inside.
Instead, she was attacked on the front porch of her home, stabbed viciously and repeatedly, and left to die.
It has been nearly a year since Sept. 10, 1998, when Nancy Palmer got home from work at 7:30 p.m. to make the horrific discovery of her daughter's murder.
Despite the time of day, despite the busy street, no one saw anything. At least no one who has been willing to come forward, despite the lure of an $11,000 reward and the promise of anonymity.
The past year has been one of frustration for the police officers who are closest to the case. It has been a year of unanswered questions, a year of tracking down information that hasn't panned out. It has also been a year where Anna has been with them throughout the duration of the investigation, never forgotten.
"There's not a day that goes by where someone on this floor doesn't think about the case, doesn't think about Anna," said Salt Lake homicide Sgt. Jerry Mendez.
"I don't think the community has forgotten either."
It was a bad case from the beginning.
No one likes a child homicide.
This one was particularly vicious.
The case also had those elements detectives dread. There are no apparent witnesses and no apparent motive.
With very little to go on, police dove into the investigation. The first 24 hours were critical.
Everyone hoped the case would be solved and solved quickly.
Their hopes were dashed.
The police unleashed an army of officers on the neighborhood to track down leads.
Mendez said he had everyone in the division -- all 59 detectives, community support personnel, civilian volunteers and patrol officers -- do a sweep of the neighborhood. They knocked on doors at homes and businesses from 1300 South to 1700 South, from 300 West to 700 East.
By Day 2 of the investigation, police had questioned 200 people and fielded more than 1,000 tips.
All that effort, all that information, added up to very little.
"It's hard, with no suspect description. Pretty soon we were into it weeks and weeks. You trench in and you go in for the long haul," said detective Mark Scharman.
Scharman, the case agent on Anna's homicide, said the investigation is by no means over.
"You take any lead as if it is the one and you run with it until you exclude it," Scharman said, adding he'd received another tip just a few days ago.
At the outset, the suspect pool was large.
Sex offenders who lived in the area. Parolees. Probationers. Drug houses. Transients. Troubled teenagers. Troubled male adults. Troubled female adults. The scrutiny was on everyone.
Thorston Beger was the first detective to get the case. He recalls the long hours spent determining if any of those people were viable suspects.
"We developed lots and lots of people we felt we needed to look at," Beger said.
"There are millions of types of people. It gives you a lot of places to look. That in and of itself is frustrating because you don't have any concrete answers."
Mendez said a lot of theories surround Anna's death. Police can't be sure, even now, if she was molested.
One theory is she startled a burglar, he panicked and grabbed hold of her. She screamed. He panicked more and killed her.
Another theory is that the slaying was a sex crime gone awry.
"Maybe he was going to take her someplace to sexually abuse her, she screams, and he kills her."
Police by the way, aren't convinced their killer is a man. They talk about their suspect in male terms, but with Anna's homicide, they're not making any assumptions.
"We can't presume anything," Mendez said.
Other theories emerged from the murder but were eliminated.
Mendez said the rumor surfaced Anna was killed by gang member as some sort of initiation rite.
"Kids don't kill kids to get into a gang," he said.
Other rumors suggested she died as the result of a drug hit or the Mafia.
Those have been discarded.
The frustration felt by Mendez and the others has not.
"Personally, we were devastated," Scharman said. "In the fact that you see what you have to see and you want someone to blame. You take a few minutes and appreciate your own kids."
Anna remains their motivator.
"It haunts you," Scharman said. "I see it plain as day. I've looked at the photographs a thousand times to see if I missed anything. I've gone back to that street and I've got back to that house . . . it's haunting."
Mendez goes by there every day.
For Beger, who worked the case for six months and has a daughter of his own, Anna will be part of his life forever.
"It affected me greatly from the beginning," Beger said. "It still does and it always will. Even when this case is solved, it will bother me. I got to know Anna quite well, posthumously, through her friends, schoolmates and family. Knowing her that way, she is someone I would have liked to have known in life. It's not something I'll ever forget."
Beger has worked for Salt Lake City police for nearly 10 years. This was the first time he'd ever seen that kind of violence done to a child.
"You look at case like Anna's and you wonder why. That's the biggest question. What in the hell could Anna Palmer ever do that would cause someone to do something like this? It is a question I still have."
It's the kind of case, he said, that leaves everyone feeling vulnerable.
"The totality of the circumstances, where it happened, when it happened, to whom it happened, all of those things -- it shows me that something this bizarre can happen anytime, anywhere."
To find answers, police sent everything they had about the homicide to Quantico, Va., to be "profiled" by the FBI.
The profilers just scratched their heads.
"It stumped them because of the brutality," Mendez said. "It's unusual to find these kind of injuries on a child. Usually, this kind of violence happens to an adult. They had nothing to compare it to."
Throughout the investigation, police have sought a man for questioning. They won't call him a suspect. He was seen with Anna the day prior to the homicide.
Despite repeated pleas, they've come up dry in being able to learn his identity.
At Whittier Elementary, where Anna was a student, the healing has started.
Her death is not something everyone talks about every day, but the memory of Anna creeps in at unexpected moments, reminding everyone of the horrific loss.
"We are very much a family here," said school principal Patti O'Keefe. "To have one of our children murdered brutally on her front porch, it felt like it was one of us. We had this sense that we were all there."
In the days and weeks and months after Anna's death, O'Keefe said the school community consoled each other. Teachers talked to teachers. Teachers talked to kids. Principals talked to kids and teachers helped administrators.
Because Anna's murder remains unsolved, O'Keefe likened into a lightning strike.
"It struck once and never struck again," she said. "We will never be the same. It can't be. Because you cannot undo what happened."
This school year is like any other at Whittier. Children laughing, playing, struggling over math. Teachers trying to shape lives.
There are those little moments, however, that remind them of the pain they never wanted to know.
Just the other day, O'Keefe said a little boy was lingering in the school after classes were out. O'Keefe talked to him, and he assured her he would be careful, adding, "Remember Anna."
"It is almost emblematic that her name has become that much of a flag. That in any kind of situation, all they need to do is remember Anna."