Investigators this week descended upon a property on Summer Street in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, as part of an ongoing search for the remains of victims of convicted child serial killer Lewis Lent Jr., who is currently serving a life sentence without parole. The operation, reported on Tuesday by NBC Boston, sadly did not turn up new evidence related to the decades-old crimes.

Lent, a former handyman from North Adams, has a grim track record. He was convicted for the 1990 abduction and murder of 12-year-old Jimmy Bernardo and the 1993 murder of 12-year-old Sara Ann Wood. He also confessed to having killed 16-year-old James Lusher in 1992. Despite these confessions and a multi-agency effort to bring closure to these cases, the resting places of Wood and Lusher have yet to be uncovered. Sources say the property has been previously searched to no avail, a detail highlighted by Boston.com.

Lent's history suggests a pattern of preying on children, leading to a wider suspicion of his involvement in a number of other child kidnapping cases. His 2013 claim that Lusher’s remains were discarded in a pond near Becket, Massachusetts, prompted an extensive search that failed to turn up evidence, deepening the frustration and agony for families still seeking answers.

The collaborative search effort by Massachusetts and New York State Police is part of a resolute push to solve these harrowing cold cases. “Law enforcement bodies are in regular communication regarding the unsolved crimes to have allegedly been committed by Lewis Lent,” said a spokesperson for the Berkshire District Attorney's Office, aiming to eventually "bring justice for the children who remain missing and will continue to investigate all leads until their cases have been solved," as they told NBC Boston. This reiterates the unyielding commitment of law enforcement to bring an end, and some solace, to this decades-long tragedy.