Debra Ann Ford was 25 and a mother of two when she was found murdered in her Shreveport, Louisiana home on August 31, 1984. Her body showed extreme and personal violence: hands bound behind her back with an electrical cord from a kitchen fan, gagged with clothing, stabbed nine times in the chest and her throat cut six times in injuries described as a near-decapitation. An intruder had entered by pulling open a bathroom window screen. Initial police work produced no immediate leads.

Investigators later linked Ford’s killing to a string of other brutal murders in the area. Nathaniel R. Code Jr., who had recently been released from prison in 1984 after serving time for aggravated rape and lived near the scenes, emerged as a person of interest. After his arrest in August 1987 in connection with other murders, fingerprints tied Code to Ford’s scene. A Caddo Parish grand jury indicted him on five counts of first-degree murder, including Ford’s. He was later tried and convicted in her murder.

Did anyone in Shreveport at the time remember suspicious visitors or unusual activity near Ford’s home in late August 1984?