On May 7, 1971, 21-year-old Jack Slaughter was found dead in East St. Louis, Illinois, alongside his 23-year-old brother Frank Slaughter and 21-year-old Arthur Lee Walson. All three victims had been shot and stabbed; their murders went unsolved for nearly a decade.

In 1980 Andre Jones, born in 1956, confessed to the triple homicide, saying he killed the men over unpaid drug debts but refusing to say whether he had accomplices. An officer reportedly did not file a report of that confession at the time, citing doubts that Jones—still very young in 1971—could have acted alone. Jones had a later criminal history that included arrests in 1979 for multiple murders and armed robberies in East St. Louis.

The 1980 confession is described as providing closure for the victims’ families after years of uncertainty, though the delayed reporting of the confession meant justice was postponed. Does anyone have additional information about the 1971 investigation or the 1980 confession that could fill the remaining gaps?