Dana Ewell, the only immediate Ewell family member still alive, had called a neighbor earlier that day. Dana was at Santa Clara University. He was worried, he said, about his sister, mother and father. He hadn't heard from them in a few days. It was strange. He was two-and-a-half hours away from Fresno and couldn't, obviously, just pop in to see what was going on. So he wanted his neighbor to go over and have a look.
"I went to the home," Jesse Knapp testified in court years later, "at [Dana's] request. I got a telephone call from him."
"Do you have a key?" Dana had asked Knapp, according to court testimony.
Knapp said he didn't.
The maid.
In the front yard some time later, by the door, Knapp met up with one of the housekeepers, who did have a key.
But when she opened the door, to her surprise, the alarm didn't go off.