It was a snowy, blustery November night in 1944 when two Hancock residents separately spotted something highly unusual, as they each drove home after spending the evening with friends. Seventeen-year-old Harvard Hodgkins, on his way home from a dance, saw them first. Then Hodgkins’ neighbor, 29-year-old Mary Forni, who was driving back from playing cards with friends, spotted them — two men, underdressed and carrying large suitcases, trudging through the snow along the side of the road.