Janice Berryman was a 36-year-old Black woman from Kansas City, Missouri, found dead in Gillham Park on October 28, 1989. Her death matched a disturbing pattern: over several months women were turning up strangled in or near the park, bodies left in similar terrain with a recurrent signature that suggested the killer knew the park’s shadows and footpaths.

Reporting at the time identified victims as women pushed to the margins—many involved in prostitution and struggling with drug addiction—and said the attacker used the promise of crack cocaine to lure victims. After an interrupted assault in April 1990 produced a surviving witness description, police focused on Ray Shawn Jackson. He was arrested, charged in six stranglings and one interrupted assault, admitted to at least one killing, and later pleaded guilty to strangling six women; he received life without parole. Berryman is listed among the victims found during that wave, dated October 28, 1989.

Did anyone in the community know Janice Berryman, her routines, or where she spent time around midtown Kansas City?