Vernita Wheat was a 9-year-old Black girl from Kenosha, Wisconsin, who disappeared on May 29, 1984, after leaving her home with a man who had been calling himself Robert Knight. The man, later identified as Alton Coleman, had gained the family’s trust by saying he lived nearby and worked for American Motors; Juanita Wheat permitted Vernita to go with him when he said he needed to fetch a stereo from his apartment.

Witnesses placed Coleman and Vernita together that night at the 400 Club in Kenosha and later near Slater’s Barbecue in Waukegan, Illinois, after a taxi ride Coleman directed across state lines. Vernita’s partially decomposed body was found in an abandoned Waukegan building on June 19, 1984; she had been bound with cable wire and died of ligature strangulation. Investigators recovered Coleman’s fingerprint on the bathroom door and documented his travel, flight, and attempts to obtain false identification after her disappearance.

Coleman was tried in Lake County, Illinois, convicted of murder and aggravated kidnapping, and received a death sentence plus an additional prison term. Does anyone have memories of Vernita or of the Kenosha–Waukegan area in late May 1984 that could add detail to the timeline?