The mutilation of Karina seemed far too utilitarian. It’s widely thought that she was cut in two not in some sadistic ritual, but to get rid of any DNA evidence left in her lower cavities after a sexual assault. Her upper half was placed in two plastic bags and disposed of with the trash. Other than the strangulation marks around the neck, the 48-pound torso contained no bruises, no defensive wounds. Her murderer was not looking to make a statement. Once he (not likely a she) had had his way with Karina, he just wanted her to disappear. It was a Boston crime: do the deed, then get back to work and pretend it didn’t happen.

Dahlia’s murderer was from Hollywood (via hell). His demons led him not only to commit the act itself, but to present the post-mortem: he (not likely a she, although there have been female suspects over the years) displayed her two naked halves on a patch of grass and weeds in the expanding suburbs of Los Angeles. (“Look what I did!”) Her right breast was missing a chunk of flesh. Her left breast was missing entirely. Her mouth was sliced open at the corners, making her look like a precursor to Batman’s Joker. A diamond shaped incision was located on her thigh (later revealed to be the spot where Dahlia hid her rose tattoo). Her head was sliced and battered beyond recognition — so much so that newspapers actually retouched her face (as well as painted a blanket over her naked body) for the gentle readers of the morning edition.

And while Karina’s killer vanished, Dahlia’s stuck around, taunting the police with letters and eventually mailing them the contents of Dahlia’s missing purse.

She was placed in the Dover household of Frank Rapp, a commercial photographer, and artist Susan Nichter, and charged with caring for their two children. (Both refuse to speak to the media while the murder investigation is ongoing.)

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Before her death, Karina had written a letter to a friend complaining about the housework that came with her new job. “There is always so much cleaning and I think I am stressed all the time. So this is not exactly what I thought it would be.”

But Cinderella’s weekends were free. And she had a place to crash in the city — a loft apartment on A Street in the South End that Rapp used during the week as a studio. There were drinks (thanks to a fake ID), dancing, and “The Macarena.”

When Sladjana Dobricic, a nanny from Serbia working in Boston, went missing in September of 2002, Middlesex DA Martha Coakley was quick to point out to the Globe that Dobricic was “a bookworm, not a party-type au pair,” consciously or not damning that party-girl nanny Karina who had died six years earlier.

On the night of Summer Solstice, Karina and three friends went to Club Zanzibar.

At around 3 am, she found herself in the Alley, the strip that connects various bars off Boylston. She thought her friends had left her. Turns out, they hadn’t. But Karina was so wasted she’d lost contact with them: after passing out in the bathroom and coming to enough to go outside, she tried to get back into the club after closing, but the bouncer refused. So Karina created her own club in the Alley — drunk, singing and dancing around with a panhandler.

She also had a conversation with Herb Whitten, a 49-year-old man from Andover who would drive to the city on weekends with his Great Pyrenees, man and dog both wearing Superman T-shirts as a device to pick up women.

Her walk back to the loft on A Street would have taken her through the Combat Zone. On the Boston Police Department (BPD) Web site, they claim Karina was caught on security cameras near the Store 24 on Mass Ave near the Berklee campus (a stone’s throw from where she was dumped). But a source close to the case once told me that that tape simply doesn’t exist. The Alley at 3 am — that’s the last time anyone, other than her killer, saw her alive.

The day after her body was found, the BPD located Karina’s panhandler on Kingston Street. Whitten, the man dressed as Superman, lawyered up. He had gotten a speeding ticket driving back to Andover early that morning, giving him a fairly tight alibi. He killed himself a year later. They also interviewed John Zewizz, frontman for the industrial/goth/erotica band Sleep Chamber, who lived two blocks from the dumpster where Karina’s body was found; a cop Karina may have been dating; and her employers. All turned up nothing.