Gwendolyn Kizine was a 15-year-old African American girl whose body was found on January 23, 1980, behind a building on The Paseo in Kansas City, Missouri. A neighbor on the way to work discovered her fully clothed but without shoes. Wire was wrapped tightly around her neck and wrists, and an autopsy determined the cause of death was strangulation.

Her father had reported her missing one day before the discovery; contemporaneous reports suggested she may have last been seen weeks earlier. The case went cold for decades until advances in DNA technology and renewed attention to cold cases linked her murder to a broader pattern of killings in the city. In 2004 Lorenzo Gilyard was arrested and later charged in a series of murders from 1977 to 1993, including Kizine’s. He was convicted of six counts of first-degree murder in 2007 and given life without parole; Kizine was one of the victims for whom he was charged but not separately tried.

Does anyone have memories of that neighborhood in 1980 or information about Gwendolyn that could help complete her story?