FIND FINGERTIPS

Fifty years ago this week, the town of Millstone awoke to a nightmare. On the night of August 19, 1975, the Ortega family of ten was slaughtered in their farmhouse on Willow Creek Road. Nine lives—parents and children alike—were taken in what investigators still describe as one of the most unsettling and unsolved cases in state history. Only one family member survived: Xavier Ortega, then just 32 years old and the third youngest of eight siblings. He had gone to bed early that night and awoke to screams and chaos. By the time police arrived, Xavier was discovered in a near-catatonic state, his face horrifically contorted in a way doctors could never fully explain. Over the years, specialists have called his condition a mix of trauma-induced muscular disorder and an unclassified neurological syndrome. Neighbors, however, always described it more simply: “His face twisted the night his family died, and it never untwisted again.” Today, Xavier is 82 years old. Frail but sharp-minded, he still lives in the same creaking house where the massacre took place. He refuses to move, saying it’s the only way to “stand watch over the ghosts.” His grandson, Danny Ortega, now 19, moved in with him last year after finishing high school. Together, they live quietly, tending the garden Xavier’s mother once kept and keeping the front porch light burning every night. “It’s not just a light for us,” Danny explained in an interview. “It’s for them. For the nine who didn’t make it out. Grandpa says if the light ever goes out, they’ll be forgotten. And we can’t let that happen.” The community, though changed by generations, has not forgotten either. Every year, a small group gathers at the town’s memorial statue bearing the names of the nine Ortega victims: Rafael, Marisol, Elena, Teresa, Hugo, Gabriel, Isabela, Lucía, and young Mateo, just 6 years old at the time of the murders. Despite decades of investigation, the case was never solved. Theories ranged from a home invasion gone wrong to ritualistic killings, but no clear evidence ever emerged. Some locals whisper darker possibilities—that Xavier himself was responsible, spared by some incomprehensible force. Police dismissed such claims, citing his lack of physical involvement, but suspicion has lingered in whispers over the years. For Xavier, the tragedy remains an open wound. He rarely speaks about the night itself, but in a rare moment of candor during this anniversary, he said softly: “They were taken from me in ways no man can describe. My face stayed the night they left. Twisted. Broken. To remind me every morning when I look in the mirror that I lived when they did not.” This week, as Millstone marks half a century since the Ortega murders, townsfolk will again gather by candlelight, many of them too young to remember the family at all. Still, the story of the Ortegas—and the strange, solitary figure who survived—continues to haunt every corner of this town. As Danny put it: “We carry their names. We carry their silence. And we’ll keep carrying it until answers come—if they ever do.”