On September 27, 1989, 35-year-old Jolaine Lanman and her 3-year-old son Kenneth were found dead in their Belleville, St. Clair County, Illinois home. John Lanman, the husband and father, discovered both bodies when he returned home around 5 p.m. Jolaine’s face was covered in blood and a pair of scissors protruded from her neck. Authorities determined both victims died from blunt trauma to the head and stab wounds to the neck.

Police arrested Dale R. Anderson two days after the murders. Anderson, a former Illinois Department of Public Aid employee who had been fired over a year earlier, was linked to a note left at the scene that named the supervisors he purportedly wanted to frame and listed their vehicle plate numbers; handwriting experts attributed the note to Anderson. Witnesses placed Anderson in the neighborhood that day and several neighbors identified his car. He was tried, convicted of both murders, and sentenced to life without parole.

Anderson was also suspected in a separate 1988 killing of Audrey Cardenas, found in a dry creek bed near Belleville Township High School East, but he was never charged in that case. Anderson later died in June 2023 while serving his sentence; the death was not considered suspicious. Did anyone in the Belleville area know Jolaine, Kenneth, or have information about that day that could shed more light on the case?