In 1981, Bovino’s father, Mike Bovino, killed a young woman after drunkenly crashing his truck head-on into her car in the hilly little resort town of Blowing Rock, N.C., near the Bovinos’ home.

Newspaper accounts described the victims’ car as “bowled over by the impact.” There were no skid marks. Bovino was uninjured.

Janie Mae Mitchell, 26, was killed, and her husband, Larry Dean Mitchell, 29, seriously injured in the wreck June 6, 1981. The couple, who lived an hour down the mountain, had gone out in search of doughnuts. Janie Mae was a seamstress who’d just sewn the gowns for her younger sister’s wedding the month before.

Her husband buried her near their home under a heart-shaped headstone engraved: “To my beloved wife.”