A cat-loving and recently divorced young woman dipping her toes back in the dating game is beaten and strangled in a brutal and unusual way; investigators dive into the murky world of online dating to hunt a killer who could be ready to strike again.

In 1979 in Irvine, CA, detectives performing a welfare check discover the badly beaten body of a single young woman left bizarrely staged on her bed; fear in the community grows amid a rash of nearby murders until police are handed a break when a fresh look at old evidence points to the killer.