Cheryl Cross was a 38-year-old African-American woman whose decomposing body was found on December 8, 1998, in the attic of an abandoned house at 1220 West 52nd Street in Chicago. Her clothing was disturbed, a rope remained around her neck, a broken knife blade was lodged in her back, and pieces of a two-by-four were near and beneath her body. The medical examiner ruled the stab wound to her back the cause of death, with blunt-force trauma to the head contributing; her forehead and nose were fractured and the injuries indicated she had been struck while alive.

Investigators later connected Cross’s death to a pattern of killings in Englewood, and DNA from a vaginal swab matched Andre Crawford. Crawford gave videotaped statements describing meeting Cross in early December 1998, stabbing her, strangling her with a rope, striking her with a pipe, and sexually assaulting her; many physical details in his account matched the autopsy findings. He was charged in Cross’s killing along with numerous other murders and sexual assaults. The jury found Crawford guilty of murder and aggravated criminal sexual assault in Cross’s death as part of a larger conviction for multiple murders.

Did anyone in the neighborhood around West 52nd Street in 1998 notice activity at that abandoned house or see Cheryl Cross in the days before her body was found?