On the evening of September 18, 1986, 54-year-old Maryland Toll Facilities Police officer Robert Franklin Pyles Sr. stopped to assist a man walking on the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge. The man, identified as Frank Spanky Green, said his van had run out of gas. As Pyles transported Green back to the disabled vehicle, Green produced a weapon and shot the officer. Pyles died of his wounds nine days later, on September 27, 1986. Pyles had served with the department for 19 years.

Investigators found that Green was a parole violator from New York, wanted for violent crimes and driving a stolen van. He was arrested, tried, and convicted of first-degree murder in Pyles’s death and of three counts of attempted murder related to other offenses, receiving four consecutive life terms.

Are there details about Pyles’s service or the bridge patrol that could help anyone who remembers that night come forward?