On June 15, 1989, Cynthia Lou Herrera Means, age 30, was found murdered in her mother’s home in Muskegon Heights, Michigan. She had sustained 27 stab wounds. Her mother, 48-year-old Linda Lou Herrera, was also found slain at the same residence, shot once in the chest and stabbed 15 times. A handgun that had jammed after one shot was recovered hidden in a couch. Cynthia’s brother, Celestino Dean Herrera, discovered the bodies after cutting through a screen to enter the locked house.

Attention initially fell on Cynthia’s estranged husband, Leon Means, who had escaped from a prison transport van and was a fugitive at the time. He was arrested and charged with two counts of murder, but those charges were dropped in September 1989 for insufficient evidence; he was instead sentenced for the escape. Decades later, Means was arrested in connection with other killings and ultimately admitted to the 1989 slayings, pleading no contest to two counts of second-degree murder in 2015. Those developments brought formal accountability for Cynthia and Linda after many years.