Dawn René Backes was a 12-year-old seventh grader at Gesu Elementary School in Toledo, Ohio, known for a gentle demeanor and a love of animals. On the evening of February 21, 1981, she was at a pizza parlor at Central Avenue and Secor Road; after a mix-up left her without a ride around 10:30 PM she chose to walk home. Near the University of Toledo she was seen by Anthony Cook, who intercepted her with his pickup truck and abducted her.

Anthony then picked up his brother Nathaniel Cook and they drove Dawn to the abandoned State Theater on Collingwood Boulevard, a building the brothers had visited before. In the theater basement they blindfolded and raped her, forced her to re-dress, and killed her by repeatedly dropping a cinder block on her head, crushing her skull.

The murder was among a series of abductions, rapes, and killings in 1980–1981 later linked to the Cook brothers. Anthony Cook was arrested on October 14, 1981, for an unrelated murder; DNA profiling in 1998 connected both brothers to several unsolved cases, and in 2000 they confessed to multiple murders as part of a plea agreement. Does anyone have memories of Dawn or of that area in 1981 that might add detail about her last known movements?