Avery Leroy Howard was a 34-year-old resident of Charleston, South Carolina, who was killed in April 1975 after meeting with an acquaintance, Donald Henry Pee Wee Gaskins, in the Prospect area of Florence County. Howard and his girlfriend, Dianne Bellamy Neeley, traveled there on April 10, 1975 reportedly to arrange a payment; reports say they were attempting to extract $5,000 from Gaskins over a separate murder. Instead, Gaskins later confessed to shooting Howard and stabbing Neeley, then burying both in shallow graves on his property.

Their remains were recovered in November 1975 after Walter Neeley, Dianne’s estranged husband, told authorities what he knew and led investigators to the burial site in Prospect. Gaskins was arrested and ultimately pleaded guilty in 1978 to the murders of Howard, Dianne Bellamy Neeley, and others, receiving ten concurrent life sentences. Did anyone in the Prospect or Charleston area know Howard or Dianne and the circumstances that brought them to Gaskins that April?