Leslie Brown, a 28-year-old African American woman, was found dead on January 11, 2010, in an abandoned building at 119th Street and Wentworth Avenue on Chicago’s Far South Side. She was discovered wearing only socks, and an autopsy confirmed she had been strangled. Brown, who had a history of prostitution, was one of several women targeted in a series of violent crimes between 2008 and 2010.

Investigators linked DNA from Brown’s body exclusively to Michael Johnson, a 30-year-old man with a history of violent offenses and three fingers missing from his right hand. Prosecutors said Johnson believed he had committed the perfect crime because of Brown’s profession, but the DNA match led to his conviction. In September 2015 he received a 100-year sentence for Brown’s murder and sexual assault, on top of a prior 90-year sentence from March 2014 for another brutal attack in which the survivor was choked, beaten, sexually assaulted, thrown from a second-story balcony, dragged and left in an alley.

Johnson’s crimes were described as part of a broader pattern targeting women with histories of prostitution; victims were often found half-naked. Leslie Brown’s stepfather, Ricardo Pittman, said the verdict brought mixed joy and grief, and Brown’s mother, a longtime Chicago Police Department employee, was overwhelmed by the loss.

Did anyone in the neighborhood around 119th and Wentworth remember Leslie or notice anything unusual in early January 2010?