The Mysterious Disappearance and Murder of Camilla Lyman

That was where Charlie Allen had come in.

Charlie Allen

In hindsight, Allen was as troubled by the fact that it had taken so long for anyone to notice that Cam was missing as he was about anything else in the case. Throughout his career, Allen had tracked down scores of wealthy eccentrics who hadn't wanted to be located, but in so many of those cases, there had been people around, family members, retainers, lawyers, even trustees of old money accounts, who had kept close contact with the person Allen was looking for. In Cam's case, there was virtually none of that.

The way Allen saw it, "the trustees had done a good job managing her money, they did an extremely good job on that, but they hadn't done as a good a job keeping an eye on her."

"I mean, a lot of clients we've had over the years, they'll want to get together a couple times a year with the person for lunch just to find out what they're doing, find out how they're feeling, what they're up to," Allen said. "Are they happily married? Do they want to get married? What's going on with them?

"Sometimes they can see problems coming and either try to help, or speak to someone else in the family and just say, 'this person might need a little bit more attention.'"

But with Cam, nothing like that happened. He didn't really have to wonder why. The answer was simple. "Cam was eccentric," he said. "It was easy. She wasn't the type of person you wanted to go have lunch with."

But in time, her absence became noticeable and the staid bankers and lawyers who administered the family trust in Massachusetts also began to wonder what had become of her.

The truth was, though Cam Lyman had little direct contact with her far-flung family, she had always been damned punctual about signing and depositing the $75,000-a-year trust fund checks, and when lawyers realized that Lyman was no longer endorsing the checks — they were simply inscribed with an account number — they became very suspicious. Barry Mills, a lawyer who represented the family, became particularly suspicious.