It was Sunday evening and for many in the quiet, residential North Ward Tamaqua neighborhood, a four-day Thanksgiving break was ending on a pleasant note.

Darkness had fallen and the night was mild and calm.

Suddenly, cries broke the stillness.

“Mom! Mom!” called out a plaintive voice from a Lafayette Street sidewalk.

Residents of the 200 block rushed out to find bloodied Diane Bailey, 43, crumpled to the sidewalk, a victim of multiple stab wounds.

A distraught younger woman stood nearby.

According to police reports, Diane Bailey had left the home after an argument with her husband, Robert B. Bailey, and had returned with her daughter, Kali Hile and Hile’s boyfriend.

Police and paramedics rushed to the scene.

But Diane, who’d married Robert, 52, last year, was pronounced dead.

Robert was quickly taken into custody a few blocks away — still carrying the alleged murder weapon.

“I’m the guy you’re looking for,” he told police, dropping the knife.

The brutal stabbing death stunned the community.

“I was shocked,” said Dr. Robert Jewells II on Monday, noting that the last fatal stabbing in Tamaqua likely was a high school tragedy in 1992.

Residents attempted to make sense of the violence by trying to understand more about the lives of two relative newcomers.

Out of state

Robert Bailey was a native of New Jersey. Diane, with her charming southern drawl, hailed from Sumter, South Carolina.

The two moved to Tamaqua a few years ago.

Robert was hired as a packer at Presto Products/Reynolds Packaging Group at Tidewood East Industrial Park in Hometown. He could be seen every day walking the Hometown Hill, an ambitious, 3-mile hike to his job.

Diane found employment as a server at the Tamaqua Diner.

The couple settled into a modest, wood-frame house built in 1900, part of a tight-knit area where the working-class houses once fronted a busy railroad connecting Tamaqua to Pottsville.

Now called Hegarty Avenue, the former rail bed pumped the pulse of the bustling railroad community for 100 years.

“I’ve been here 38 years and it was always a nice neighborhood,” said Ann Price, who lives with husband Dave just a few doors away from the Baileys.

Price said she and David never knew the Baileys.

“Years ago, I knew all of my neighbors. But now I know only about one-quarter of them,” Price said.

Indications were that all was going well for Robert and Diane.

In July 2016, the two married in an out-of-state ceremony.

“Things are going so great, both of us are working. We finally got away from the BS,” wrote Robert to Facebook friends.

But somewhere along the way, the tide turned.

Job loss

At one point, Diane left her job and temporarily returned south to deal with outstanding legal issues. In fact, there was a warrant out, but according to those who knew Diane, it was very minor.

“It was just a small thing. She was the most loving and caring person anybody could come across,” said Beverly Kutz of Tamaqua. Kutz said Diane’s warm personality was very popular with customers.

“We worked together for about a year. She loved everybody she came in contact with.”

Robert held down the fort at home during Diane’s short absence. But things eventually changed for him as well.

He left his job in Hometown and was hired in Tamaqua, working for a short time in the grocery department of Boyer’s Market.

Co-worker Justin Stephens of Tamaqua recalls running into him.

“I only ever saw him in passing or outside for a cigarette. But he was always nice, never really came off like a violent person.”

But Kutz said she noticed a change in Diane’s demeanor whenever Robert came around the Tamaqua Diner. Kutz said Diane seemed afraid. Diane eventually confided to Kutz she was involved in an abusive relationship.

“Just before Thanksgiving, Diane said to me, ‘If anybody finds me dead, tell them Robert Bailey did it,’ ” Kutz said.

Since her death, Facebook friends posted that she was afraid of him.

By November, Robert was out of work.

There are many unanswered questions, but what is known is that a domestic dispute broke out.

Tempers flared. A knife was pulled.

Thanksgiving weekend ended with a call to the coroner.