In the early hours of July 11, 1985, 27-year-old Tina Slaughter was fatally stabbed in her Minneapolis apartment on the 1700 block of Fremont Avenue North. An intruder broke in while her two young sons, Duane and Marcellus, slept in another room. Slaughter was attacked in bed and in another room, but despite severe injuries she managed to leave the apartment and get help from a neighbor; police found her semi-conscious in a hallway and she died at the hospital hours later.

Investigators reported the attacker also took a television, indicating a burglary that turned violent, and a witness reportedly saw a suspect fleeing the building. No arrests were made and the case grew cold; the family later suffered the additional loss of Tina’s oldest son Duane, who was killed in an unrelated incident in 2001. In 2016 new DNA was recovered from an item at the scene and investigators reopened the evidence for testing, but the murder remains unsolved.

Anyone with memories of that neighborhood or information about the night of July 11, 1985, is asked to come forward.