Tracey Gladys Miller was 26 when she was found murdered in her Manhattan, Kansas, home on the morning of November 2, 1978. A wife and the mother of a 15-month-old daughter, she was discovered at the foot of the staircase after failing to show up for a planned lunch. The child was found unharmed upstairs.

The attack was brutal: Miller had been stabbed multiple times and her throat slashed. There were no signs of forced entry and the weapon was never recovered. Investigators searched the nearby woods and ran a secret witness program, but the case went cold for years.

A break came after a 1980 arrest in St. Charles, Missouri. Anthony Joe LaRette Jr., then 29 and originally from Topeka, confessed to multiple murders across several states, including Tracey Miller’s killing. LaRette was later convicted and sentenced to death in connection with another murder, and he provided details of additional crimes while incarcerated.

Did anyone who knew Tracey or the Millers in Manhattan remember anything unusual around November 1978?