Michele Gordon was 22 when her body was found on the rocky banks of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal on September 20, 1988. She had last been seen days earlier entering a blue Ford panel van along U.S. Route 40 near Newark, Delaware. The autopsy indicated homicide and detected cocaine in her system, a detail cited in explaining how a prolonged assault led to cardiac collapse.

Police tied the same blue van to Steven Brian Pennell after an undercover operation on Route 40; an officer posing as a sex worker obtained the plate and collected fibers from the van’s blue carpet that matched trace evidence from earlier victims. A search of Pennell’s property uncovered restraints, tools described in court as a torture kit, and fibers and biological material linking him to multiple murdered women from the corridor. Pennell was arrested November 29, 1988, later indicted in Gordon’s death, and convicted in the related Route 40 cases.

Did anyone who lived or worked along Route 40 in 1988 see a blue Ford panel van or remember unusual activity around Newark that month?