was a body placed in this closet. >> he told me that my mother, they found her in a wardrobe with a telephone cord tied around her neck and strangled. >> alma's jewelry and cliff's handguns were apparently stolen during the attack. investigators found two foreign fingerprints inside the home, one at the back door, the other on a sewing tray in the living room. in a search for suspects, a neighbor told police that he saw two men lurking around the mercks' home just a few days earlier. >> he kept an eye on them until he finally lost visual contact with them because of trees obstructing his view. and that was the last he saw of them. >> the mercks had no known enemies, and no one else in the neighborhood saw or heard anything unusual around the time of the murders. investigators hoped that either