Within hours, the investigation officially begins at the Purcell home, and Hays and West speak to the neighbors.

Detectives Wayne Hays and Roland West are shooting rats in an empty lot and driving around when they get a call for a missing persons case on Shoepick Lane.

This initial search occurs before 9 p.m., if later testimony about the teens at the tower is to be believed, as Tom sees them and also spots Brett Woodard on the road.

After sunset that same day, with the children not yet home, Tom Purcell drives around the small town of West Finger to look for them.

Junius places his body in the cave while Isabel runs off with Julie. Isabel has “other plans,” according to Junius, a struggle ensues, and Will dies when he hits his head on a rock.

Isabel Hoyt and Junius Watts meet with the Purcell children to play hide-and-seek at Devil’s Den.

Minutes later, the kids are seen riding their bikes past Freddy Burns and a couple of his friends, who are on their way to a nearby tower where local kids hang out.

Their father Tom tells them to be home by 5:30 p.m. November 7: The day Steve McQueen died, Will and Julie Purcell leave their home around 4 p.m.

October 31: After befriending the Purcell children, Isabel Hoyt and Junius Watts follow them on Halloween, giving them the dolls that would later be found at the crime scene. At some point between this accident and 1980, Isabel Hoyt spots the Purcell family at a company event, becoming obsessed with the children. It is later determined that Officer Harris James would have worked the area of the accident at the time. She is then watched over by a man with one eye known as Mr.

Four months after they start dating, Lucy gets pregnant with their son, Will, and the couple quickly marries.ĭate unknown: Isabel Hoyt gets into a car accident that kills her husband and little girl. The time jumps can make True Detective difficult to follow, so we’re here to break it all out chronologically after each episode, presenting the key events of the Purcell case in the actual order they happened - so you can make sense of the narrative, and maybe even sniff out the killer’s identity alongside Hays.ĭate unknown: Tom Purcell (Scoot McNairy) meets Lucy (Mamie Gummer). True Detective’s third season is a story of obsession: Arkansas detective Wayne Hays (Mahershala Ali) spends decades investigating the crime that changed his life - the murder of a young boy and the disappearance of the boy’s sister - as the HBO drama slips between three separate time periods in 1980, 1990, and 2015.

True detective season 1 synopsis