In spring 1993 a couple at Lake Lou Yeager Park found what they first thought was a burning mannequin. It was the decapitated, burned body of a Black woman who had been set on fire. Her identity was unknown for over a year until a detective expanded the inquiry beyond initial assumptions about race and matched fingerprints to a missing person report for Lynn Matchem-Thomas from St. Louis, filed two days before the discovery. She was 39.

Investigation attention turned to her estranged husband, Curtis Thomas. Officers searched his St. Louis home the day after the missing-person report but did not complete a basement search after he refused entry. Before the body was positively identified, he reportedly admitted responsibility and said he had hidden her head in a bucket of concrete so police would never find it. Curtis Thomas was charged with murder; prosecutors later reduced the charge to concealment of a homicide. He was convicted of the lesser offense and sentenced to ten years for hiding his wife’s body.

Does anyone have information about Lynn Matchem-Thomas, her life in St. Louis, or what happened in the days before she disappeared?