Eighteen-year-old Northern Illinois University freshman Bennett Brown disappeared after telling family he was going to a summer job at a boys camp in Wisconsin. He was last seen in the Chicago area on May 4, 1976; the family’s last contact with him was that same day and no Wisconsin camp had any record of hiring him.

On May 27, 1976 two hunters found a young man’s body in a wooded ravine in rural Lawrence County, Indiana, near Bedford. The victim, later identified as Bennett Brown of Evanston, Illinois, was wearing a blue denim shirt, jeans, a red zip-up jacket and white sneakers. An autopsy found he had been strangled and stabbed multiple times in the neck and chest and had defensive wounds on his hands and arms. He had no identification and carried $1.06 in change; a dormitory key found nearby was traced to a Northern Illinois University residence, which led to positive identification.

Why Brown was nearly 300 miles from where he was last seen remains unexplained. Investigators considered various leads, including the possibility he hitchhiked, but no suspects have been publicly named and no arrests have been announced. Does anyone have information about Brown’s movements in early May 1976 or who he might have been traveling with?