On November 15, 1978, Dora D. Wallace, a 55-year-old African-American woman, was murdered in her Belleville, Illinois, home. Her husband, Michael Wallace, 67, was killed in the same attack. The assailant, Andre Vernell Jones, decapitated Michael and stabbed Dora before setting the couple’s house on fire in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence.

Jones, who had a prior record including theft and armed robbery, was arrested in May 1979 in connection with a separate series of killings committed with Freddie Clyde Tiller Jr. During interrogation he confessed to the 1978 murders of Michael and Dora Wallace, but he was never formally tried for their deaths. Jones later pleaded guilty in August 1979 to three counts of murder related to the 1979 killings and received a death sentence that was subsequently changed in later proceedings.

The Wallace family’s case remains notable for the brutality of the attack and for the absence of a formal trial on those specific charges. Did anyone in Belleville at the time have information about the couple or their movements in the weeks before November 15, 1978?