James Ferris, 25, disappeared after accepting an invitation for a short-term place to stay on the evening of September 26, 1985. He was taken to a house on Charlotte Street where, according to later evidence, he was drugged, restrained and subjected to prolonged torture over roughly 27 hours. A log recovered from the house recorded his decline and ended with an entry marking his death as 86, a chef’s term.

The case stalled for years with only a missing-person report and unproven suspicion. On April 2, 1988, a different captive escaped from the same home; police arrested the homeowner and executed a search warrant. Investigators found signs of restraint and torture, syringes, an electrical transformer wired toward a bed, hundreds of Polaroids, blood evidence, human remains, newspaper clippings about a missing young man, and Ferris’s wallet and driver’s license. Ferris’s wife identified him in postmortem Polaroids from the house.

Robert A. Berdella Jr. later pleaded guilty to multiple murders, including the second-degree murder of James Ferris; court records place Ferris’s date of death as September 27, 1985. Does anyone have recollections of Ferris, the Charlotte Street area, or information that could add detail to his last known movements?