On September 25, 1982, 29-year-old Dorothy Lyons was among the victims of a mass shooting in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The attacker, 40-year-old former prison guard George Emil Banks, used a Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in an attack that began at his home on Schoolhouse Lane. Dorothy was one of three women in relationships with Banks killed inside the house; the shooting also killed five children there, including Dorothy’s 11-year-old daughter Nancy Lyons.

After shooting people at his home and a bystander outside, Banks continued to a mobile home park in Jenkins Township where he killed another former girlfriend and three members of her family. Banks was later found barricaded in a friend’s house, surrendered after a four-hour standoff, and was tried the following year. The jury in June 1983 convicted him of multiple counts of murder and recommended the death penalty.

The case raised repeated questions about Banks’s mental state during later appeals and competency hearings. Does anyone have recollections of Dorothy, Nancy, or the neighborhood in Wilkes-Barre from 1982 that could add context to their lives?