Cassandra Ann Johnson was 17 when she disappeared from northern Detroit after leaving her boyfriend’s home on Tuller Street on August 18, 1980 to run a quick errand. She was found the next day nude and battered in a field near Cloverlawn and Chalfonte streets. An examination determined she died of severe head injuries inflicted in a savage beating.

Her murder came during a string of killings of young African American women in Detroit that year, a pattern investigators later linked to one or more perpetrators. Donald Murphy, born in 1944, became a suspect in some 1980 Detroit murders and was convicted for two; he also confessed to killing several other women. Murphy was never formally charged in Johnson’s death, and no suspect has been publicly identified in her case.

Her murder remains unsolved. Does anyone have information about Cassandra’s movements on August 18, 1980, or recollections of the neighborhood at that time?