On a quiet evening in September 2006, something horrifying happened in the small village of Khairlanji. By morning, four members of a single family were gone — and the village was silent. At first, the story seemed unclear, almost deliberately so. But as details slowly surfaced, the crime revealed something far darker than a simple act of violence. What happened in Khairlanji wasn’t just brutal — it exposed wounds that ran deep within Indian society, and sparked outrage that would shake an entire state. This is the story of the Khairlanji Massacre.

It's 10 p.m. on May 16, 2012, and Havelock Town pulses with the electric hum of Colombo's nightlife, a cold breeze from the Indian Ocean fans across Sri Lanka’s capital city. Inside El Greco nightclub, Wasim Thajudeen, 27 and built like the rugby captain he is—broad shoulders and an easy smile—holds court at a corner booth. The clock ticks 11:30 p.m. "Gotta bounce, lads," he says to his friends. Hugs ripple through the crew; a chorus of "Drive safe!" and "Text when you're wheels-down!" fades as he weaves out in his black BMW X5. Nothing about that night appears unusual. There are no warnings, no raised alarms, nothing that suggests it will end any differently from countless other nights in Colombo. But something happens that night. Wasim never makes it to the airport the next morning. He never boards his flight. He never leaves the city. This is the story of Sri Lanka’s golden boy, a national rugby star. This is the story of Wasim Thajudeen.

On an October night in 1974, Stanford University was quiet in the way elite campuses often are after dark—orderly, confident, almost untouchable. Students slept behind locked doors, bells stood silent, and the church at the center of campus felt like the safest place imaginable. Inside that church, a young woman sought nothing more than solitude, reflection, and rest. And by morning, she was dead. What investigators found was disturbing, ritualistic, and completely at odds with the image Stanford projected to the world. There were no signs of forced entry, no clear suspect, and no immediate explanation for how violence had entered a sacred space so easily. Questions remained for decades, until one development—long after most had stopped looking—changed everything. This is the story of that one pristine university church, that one night, and that one woman locked behind its doors who never made it out alive. This is the story of Arlis Perry.

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