Nancy McGivern finds a saint's relic keeps turning over on her comatose son's pillow, defying explanation.
This episode presents three unsolved holiday-themed mysteries involving alleged miracles, a murder, and a kidnapping. Host Robert Stack narrates reenactments featuring family members and police officials.
The first story details the 1982 illness of seven-year-old Chucky McGivern, who fell into a coma from Reye's syndrome. His parents, Nancy and Chuck, pinned a relic of St. John Neumann to his pillow, which they found repeatedly turned face down. Chucky's father saw an unidentified boy in the hospital waiting room, and a priest, Father Robert Roncase, felt compelled to administer last rites. Chucky awoke and described a dream featuring a boy who was his "best friend," later identified from a portrait as a young St. John Neumann. The second segment covers the 1988 murder of Neil Jennings in Odessa, Texas, focusing on his drifter employee, Bill Roberts (real name Bill Blackwell). Witnesses describe Roberts acting suspiciously with Jennings' truck, and a store clerk named Saul reported hearing gunshots. Police found Jennings' beaten, shot, and burned body, believing Roberts committed the murder to steal the truck before vanishing. The third story follows the 1986 disappearance of nine-year-old Navajo girl Anthonette Cayedito from Gallup, New Mexico. A year later, a brief phone call to police was believed to be her voice, and a 1990 restaurant sighting in Carson City, Nevada, involved a hidden plea for help. Her younger sister Wendy later recalled the kidnapper identifying himself as "Uncle Joe" at the door.
A surprising claim is that Chucky McGivern recovered with unprecedented speed, leaving doctors astonished. The episode suggests a potential supernatural connection through the St. John Neumann relic and the boy in Chucky's dream. In the murder case, the mystery partly hinges on the victim's whereabouts between Friday night and Sunday, when his body was discovered. For Anthonette Cayedito, a Navajo medicine woman performed a crystal ritual, claiming the girl was alive, held by threats, and possibly had a child, which detectives found consistent with their investigation. The final tale describes a Florida couple, Gene and Russell Johnson, who fed a hungry stranger in 1985 and then received anonymous $500 Christmas checks for five years.
They speculate the stranger may have been an angel or their benefactor. The episode presents these accounts without providing definitive solutions, emphasizing the mystery. The tone is narrative and dramatic, blending reenactments with firsthand interviews to create a suspenseful, emotional atmosphere. It adopts a classic mystery-show style, presenting each case as an intriguing puzzle. This episode would appeal to viewers who enjoy unsolved true crime, stories of unexplained phenomena, and heartwarming holiday mysteries. Listeners seeking strictly factual, resolved cases or skeptical analyses of supernatural claims might prefer to skip it.
