20/20: Season 2016, Episode 18

2016 - 18: Footprints in the Snow

It was a bitter cold evening in April 2013 when sisters Samantha and Gianna Rucki ran away from their Lakeville, Minnesota, home. They left without their shoes or coats and disappeared into the night. But oddly, there was no manhunt to find them, no Amber Alert was issued and there were no police press conferences to provide updates after they went missing. The girls were found almost three years later, alive, healthy and living at a therapeutic horse farm less than three hours away from their family home. Now their mother, who denies having any involvement in their disappearance, is facing felony charges, and the circumstances of how and why these two teen girls vanished is a mystery beginning to unfold.