Robert Hannah was a 61-year-old retired hospital cafeteria worker who lived alone in north Columbus, Mississippi. On the evening of October 13, 1998, firefighters responding to a house fire found Hannah inside; he had been bound and gagged and had been strangled before the blaze. Reports describe him as hog-tied, and investigators found the gas inside the home had been turned on, with the fire appearing deliberately set after the killing.

Hannah’s death was one of five similar murders of elderly residents within a one- to three-mile radius of northern Columbus in the mid- to late 1990s: Mack Fowler (1996), George Wilbanks (1997), and Louise Randall and Betty Everett (fall 1998). In each case there were no signs of forced entry. Authorities formed special investigative teams, conducted canvasses and re-interviews, and offered a reward, but no arrest has been announced in Hannah’s killing. DNA later linked David Murray to Fowler’s 1996 murder, and Earnest Talley was arrested but not indicted in Wilbanks’s case; neither development tied to Hannah’s death.

Who knew Robert Hannah, his routines, or might remember unusual visitors in that neighborhood in October 1998?