Ronald Gutkowski, 51, was one of three men found shot execution-style in a room at the Atlanta Hilton and Towers during a business trip in the autumn of 1998. Housekeeping staff discovered Gutkowski and two other trucking-industry colleagues, Gerrold Shropshire, 50, and Phillip Ray Dover, 31, on October 18, 1998. Each had been fatally shot in the back of the head with a .45-caliber handgun; the victims’ wallets were missing, and robbery was identified early as a possible motive.

Hotel security footage showed a grainy image of a man with one of the victims in an elevator and later leaving with a cooler that belonged to one of the deceased. A significant lead came on October 31, 1998, when a man later identified as 37-year-old Timothy Carl Dawson was arrested during a traffic stop near Memphis; deputies found a .45-caliber pistol and credit cards belonging to the victims in his vehicle. Investigators also linked the suspect to another Atlanta-area shooting on October 15, 1998.

A Fulton County grand jury returned multiple indictments in November 1998 charging the man with murder, armed robbery, and related counts in the deaths of Gutkowski, Shropshire, and Dover, with prosecutors announcing intent to seek the death penalty. Does anyone have additional information about Gutkowski’s travel companions or what they were doing in Atlanta that week?