In my very first crime column, my introduction, I opened with a line about rummaging through my desk and finding all sorts of strange items I had collected while covering mayhem over the years. One was a dusty video titled: "John Doe in Steamer Trunk."

That was back in August last year.

On Friday, I was reading through our list of upcoming stories and noticed that our federal court reporter, Tricia Bishop, was writing a story for today's paper on a body in a steamer trunk. There just aren't many bodies found in steamer trunks anymore, so I dug through my desk, found the tape and handed it to Tricia.

Sure enough, my old steamer trunk was her new steamer trunk (her detailed story is here). Jack Watkins was in the trunk, stuffed there, federal prosecutors say, after being killed by his then-girlfriend who bilked him out of his savings, killed him and then left the trunk in Northern Virginia. Police found it quickly, but it took many years to identify Watkins.

Today, jurors are set to deliberate the fate of the suspect, Nancy Siegel, who says Watkins was depressed and took his own life. The tape I had found and referenced back in August was from a November 2001 Unsolved Mysteries, which aired 13 months before Watkins' body was identified.