On the night of October 29, 1988, 41-year-old South Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper George Tillman Radford stopped a vehicle in Dillon County for a defective headlight. The next day his patrol car was found partially submerged in a pond with his body inside; he had been shot and killed. Radford was a 16-year veteran of the Highway Patrol.

Investigators focused on Warren Douglas Manning after evidence indicated Manning left the scene with the trooper in the patrol car. A search of Manning’s residence and nearby property recovered Radford’s service revolver and other material cited by law enforcement as tying Manning to the case.

The prosecution’s efforts stretched over more than a decade. Manning faced five trials: an initial conviction and death sentence later overturned by the state Supreme Court, two trials that ended in hung juries, a third conviction that was also overturned on appeal, and, at the fifth trial in 1999, an acquittal. Does anyone have memories or information about Trooper Radford’s last shift or the events in Dillon County that night?