Catherine DiMauro, 31, was last seen late on the night of June 28, 1988, walking along U.S. Route 40. At about 6:25 a.m. the next morning construction workers found her nude body at a residential construction site near Glasgow. Investigators recorded extensive trauma consistent with a brutal assault but no evidence of sexual assault. Her body was coated in distinctive blue carpet fibers and a piece of duct tape was tangled in her hair—two physical details that became central to the investigation.

Detectives linked DiMauro’s killing to the November 1987 slaying of Shirley Ellis and assembled a multi-agency task force that included FBI profilers. Undercover female officers posed as sex workers along the Route 40 corridor. During a decoy operation an undercover officer recovered blue fibers from the floor of a blue Ford panel van and noted its license plate; the van was registered to 31-year-old electrician Steven Brian Pennell. A search of the van produced carpet fibers, hair, blood, duct tape and a so-called torture kit, and DNA testing tied bloodstains to DiMauro.

Pennell was arrested on November 29, 1988, and later convicted by a jury of murdering Shirley Ellis and Catherine DiMauro. The blue fibers and the duct tape in DiMauro’s hair were key links in the case. Did anyone who knew Catherine or who worked along Route 40 in 1988 notice a blue panel van or anything unusual that summer?