On the evening of January 24, 1981, 13-year-old Amanda Joy Neal and her 12-year-old cousin Melanie Sue Polk went to a sleepover at the home of Amanda’s father, Bobby Neal, in Lawrence County, Mississippi. Howard Monteville Neal, Bobby’s half-brother, abducted the three from the house, forced them into his car and drove them to a remote wooded area where he murdered Bobby. He then took the two girls to another isolated location, sexually assaulted them and shot them. A fisherman found Amanda and Melanie’s bodies on February 6, 1981. Pathologists reported Amanda had bruises, lacerations and signs of manual strangulation in addition to a fatal gunshot wound, and may have lived up to thirty minutes after being shot. Investigators also found Amanda’s initials scratched inside the car trunk.

Howard Neal fled to California and was arrested there for shoplifting; a background check linked him to the Mississippi case. After days of interrogation he confessed. In February 1982 a jury convicted him of capital murder in Amanda’s killing and sentenced him to death. He spent decades on death row amid claims about intellectual disability; a judge resentenced him to life without parole in 2008, and in 2023 the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a new resentencing to address the question of his intellectual disabilities. Did anyone who knew Amanda or the family in Lawrence County remember unusual activity around January 24, 1981?