Joycie Flowers, a 41-year-old African American mother of four known locally as a Sunday school teacher and choir director, was found dead on May 24, 1990, in a homeless camp in Kansas City, Missouri. Her body was discovered naked except for one sock and showed evidence of rat bites. DNA testing later identified semen from Clifton Lee Ray Jr. inside Flowers’ body and mouth, a piece of evidence prosecutors used to link him to her killing and to the 1987 murder of Deborah D. Taylor.

Ray, who had a prior criminal history, was already in custody for a separate 1995 murder when the DNA match emerged. Prosecutors described a pattern of victims strangled; the defense argued the sexual contact might have been consensual and that someone else could have killed Flowers. In October 2007 a jury convicted Ray of the murders of Joycie Flowers and Deborah Taylor, and he received life without parole. Flowers’ daughter Janel Flowers said the family felt some relief after the verdict.

Did anyone in the Kansas City area know Joycie or remember seeing her in 1990?