On June 20, 1997, 41-year-old Joyce Mims, a Black woman, was found dead inside a vacant house at 2940 N. 5th Street on Milwaukee’s north side. Renovation workers discovered her on the second floor in a small closet-like area. Family members had last seen Mims two days earlier as she walked away from her home.

An autopsy found numerous abrasions and contusions around her neck, hemorrhaging within the neck muscles, a fractured left hyoid bone, petechial hemorrhaging around the eyes and blunt-force injuries to her neck and back. The deputy medical examiner determined she died of asphyxia caused by manual strangulation. Biological evidence, including vaginal swabs, was collected and later yielded a male DNA profile that initially produced no match in the state databank.

That DNA profile ultimately linked Mims to other Milwaukee strangulation homicides. Investigators later matched the profile to Walter E. Ellis and charged him in multiple killings, including Mims’s. The DNA work that sat without an identifying match for years became the key evidence tying her killing to a serial offender and leading to prosecution.

If anyone knew Joyce, her movements in June 1997, or has information about the vacant house at 2940 N. 5th Street, please share what is known.