Left in the Snow

In the last week of December 2010, a snow-covered car sat unnoticed in an urgent care parking lot in Arnold, Missouri. Inside was the body of 26-year-old Jessica Eberhardt, missing for eight days.

Left in the Snow tells the story of what is publicly known about Jessica Eberhardt's disappearance and death: the ordinary December evening that preceded it, her family's desperate search, the historic Midwest snowstorm that helped keep her car hidden in plain sight through Christmas, and the two people ultimately convicted of abandoning her body rather than reporting her death.

This is a small case by true crime standards - one that received only modest news coverage at the time, and whose resolution required going beyond news archives into Missouri's own court records to confirm. This book does exactly that, tracing the case through to its conclusion: four-year sentences for both defendants. Along the way, it places Jessica Eberhardt's story in the context of a much larger and well-documented pattern: the thousands of Americans each year who die of overdoses at private gatherings, and the bystanders who - out of fear, panic, or some calculation about legal consequences - choose concealment over calling for help. Drawing on contemporaneous news reporting, Missouri court records, state law, and public health research on overdose bystander behavior, this book is a careful, honest account of one young mother's story, and of a pattern that continues to repeat across the country.