Rebekah never knew her mother, Aviva. A year after Rebekah's birth, Aviva abandoned Rebekah and her father to return to the Hasidic world she came from.
As Rebekah digs deeper into the life of Rivka Mendelssohn, the murder victim, the more similarities with Aviva Rebekah she sees.
Married to the much older owner of the scrap yard, Rivka had four children, one of whom had recently died. She reportedly had been making visits to a house on Coney Island designed to help members of the tightly knit, rigidly observant Hasidic community explore life outside the community. There were rumors as well that she was involved in an extra-marital affair.
