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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from John Railey’s latest true-crime book, The Carolinian Murder at Nags Head: The Janet Siclari Story. See note at bottom for information about his signings in Manteo on June 6 and June 7.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, August 28, 1993, thirty-five-year-old Janet Siclari walked out to the beach in front of the venerable Carolinian hotel at Nags Head to smoke one last cigarette before calling it a night after partying with friends. Janet’s body was found on the beach in front of the hotel a few hours later, not long past daybreak.

Her corpse, raped and throat slashed, was curled into a fetal position, facing north, toward her New Jersey home. The sea and winds were still calm, but Hurricane Emily was slowly moving in and hit the beach the following Tuesday night, destroying what was left of the crime scene and, with a mandatory evacuation order in place, giving witnesses and even, perhaps, the killer, license to flee.

Janet, a nice, beautiful Catholic girl, met an evil few of us locals had ever encountered. An investigator with the Nags Head Police Department and another with the State Bureau of Investigation prevailed after a long journey to justice, thanks to their hard work and advances in DNA testing that were happening as the case unfurled. The lawmen’s story is intriguing and powerful. So is that of the defense attorneys for the man charged in the case. In trying to save their client’s life, they pointed the finger at an early suspect in the case and battled talented prosecutors. It was straight out of Matlock, the popular network TV series of the time that starred Manteo’s Andy Griffith as that iconic defense attorney.

In the last minutes of her life, Janet smoked a Marlboro Light, buried her suntanned toes in the sand and stared out at the Atlantic. The moon, coasting between clouds, was hitting full, on the eve of a rare Blue Moon. The temperature was mild, having dropped several degrees after the sun-kissed fun that Janet and her friends had shared frolicking on the beach the day before in front of the Carolinian. Janet must have loved looking at that mysterious, majestic sea. It’s so comforting, so soothing to sit on the beach on a calm time like Janet’s last one, that Saturday predawn, just listening to the waves softly lapping the sand, the sea oats standing tall, and thinking about the past and present, parallel time in a region where some locals still speak in that cool Old English accent.

Janet was alone, just loving her ocean, dreaming her dreams. There is a universality and camaraderie among those who love the sea. Janet’s first love was the Jersey shore, but she, like so many others, loved the Outer Banks for its relative lack of heavy commercialization. But the Outer Banks was rapidly changing in 1993, with developers buying up many of the old cottages and hotels, bulldozing those sweethearts and squatting garish McMansions in their place as old-line families, after quarreling among some, surrendered to the lure of big money and sold out.

But the Banks were still beautiful.

Janet knew the beauty of the beach but little of its violence, much less of the few killers who rarely roamed the sand. A shadow descended over her. Janet was trusting, believing in basic good, maybe first trying to talk to the stranger. Then he attacked her. She stood just under five feet tall and weighed just ninety-two pounds.

But she fought back, having once said she’d rather die than be raped. The killer prevailed. He ruined her, then took her voice, slitting her throat so bad he left her voiceless, cutting her jugular and her larynx cords, then slinking off and leaving her dying on the beach. Janet, an ultrasound technician, wasn’t giving up. She grabbed the shorts the killer had torn off her and held them to her throat, trying to stop the bleeding, curling up and facing north, her lifeblood spilling out in the sand she loved. She might have tried to cry out for help, but the killer’s cut had rendered her silent. Others would rise to speak for her.

John Railey, raileyjb@gmail.com, will be at Downtown Books in Manteo from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on June 6 and at the Downtown Books tent from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 7, Dare Day.

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