Ann Barnes, 36, was found dead on April 17, 1987, by a pedestrian near 13th Street and Lydia Avenue in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. An autopsy determined she had been strangled. At the time she worked as a housekeeper at St. Mary’s Hospital and also as an exotic dancer.

Her death was one of a string of similar cases in the Kansas City area between 1977 and 1993 in which female victims, many involved in sex work, were strangled. The case went cold for many years until DNA technology advanced and evidence was re-examined. A blood sample taken in 1987 and voluntarily provided by Lorenzo Gilyard in a separate investigation was later linked to multiple victims, including Ann Barnes.

In 2007 Gilyard was convicted of six murders, including Barnes, and received life without parole. Did anyone who knew Ann in Kansas City remember anything unusual in the weeks before her death?