On the rainy evening of November 29, 1987, 23-year-old Shirley Anne Ellis left her family’s home in Newark’s Brookmont Farms carrying a Thanksgiving platter intended for an AIDS patient at Wilmington Hospital. She hitched a ride along U.S. Route 40, a stretch she had known from an earlier period of her life. Passersby soon found her by the roadside, partially unclothed, hands and feet bound with tape, legs arranged, with injuries consistent with torture, a ligature around her neck, and blunt-force trauma consistent with a hammer; there were no signs of sexual assault.

Ellis’s killing was later linked to other deaths along Route 40 during 1987–1988. Evidence gathered during an undercover operation in September 1988 tied a blue Ford panel van with blue carpet to the series; fibers and other forensic traces connected the van and its owner, 31-year-old electrician Steven Brian Pennell, to multiple victims. Pennell was arrested on November 29, 1988, and was convicted in 1989 for the murders of Ellis and Catherine DiMauro; subsequent pleas and proceedings produced additional first-degree murder convictions and death sentences. Ellis was among the earlier verdicts affirmed on appeal.

Does anyone have memories of Route 40 in late 1987 or recollections about Shirley Ellis that could add to her story?