Just days before the men's basketball medal round, members of a Palestinian group called Black September kidnapped 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team. During the abduction and a subsequent failed rescue attempt, all 11 were murdered and one German police officer killed.

"You're at the Olympics," said NBA analyst Doug Collins, who played for the 1972 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team. "You never think you'd be faced with that kind of tragedy."

The U.S. team got a close look at it all the morning of the abduction. The team was staying in the Olympic village dorm right next to where the Israelis were being held.

Walking to practice that morning of Sept. 5, 1972, U.S. teammates Collins and Ed Ratleff saw, 250 feet away, men wearing stocking caps with machine guns.

"That was kind of freaky because there was nothing on TV," said Kathy, who was Doug's fiancee at the time. "We were in the middle of all that and didn't even know it. We didn't know how bad it was. The whole experience was a lot more than we had bargained for. And I experienced all of that with Doug."

After the news came out that all 11 had been murdered, no one knew if the Olympics would continue. Kathy attended the memorial service with the U.S. team, sharing the grief, fear and uncertainty with the Olympic and Munich communities.

Kathy was in Munich because Doug's father, Paul, had decided to skip the trip overseas. Kathy, like Doug also a student at Illinois State, decided to go and flew in with the U.S. gymnastics team.

The day before she arrived, Doug had befriended the wife of an officer while practicing at the U.S. Army base in Munich. Upon hearing that Kathy was scheduled to stay outside of the city, the woman insisted that Kathy stay with her husband and three daughters on the base.

The officer turned out to be the head of intelligence at the base.

"He knew everything that was going on with the terrorists and the rescue attempt but couldn't talk about it," Kathy said. "It blew me away because we had been to the Olympic village and seen the terrorists. But [the officer's] wife said, 'I hope you don't mind. We were so worried for you that we had you followed.' I was like, 'Oh my God!' "

Kathy said she never considered going home after the event that became known as the Munich Massacre.

"To be honest, we didn't realize the magnitude," she said. "Just looking back, my kids ask me, 'Mom weren't you so freaked out?' And I say no because we didn't know what was going on. ... And I didn't have any fear because I knew I was being watched."

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