Denise Evans was 15 when she left her north-side Wilmington neighborhood on the evening of Friday, October 24, 1975, with a school friend. Less than 24 hours later, around midday on Saturday, October 25, hunters found two bodies in a marshy clearing in rural Lower Alloways Creek Township, Salem County, New Jersey — roughly 40 miles from Wilmington. The victims were Denise Evans and her friend, 15-year-old Carolyn Hedgepeth. Both had been shot in wounds described in contemporary accounts as execution-style.

The remoteness of the marshlands complicated any early canvass, and no one reported seeing an abduction in Wilmington the night the girls disappeared. The speed of events — disappearance one evening, bodies recovered the next day across state lines — points to a rapid transport and a swift, deliberate attack. Robert Reldan was arrested days later in connection with other New Jersey murders that month and has been suggested in some accounts as a possible suspect, but no charges were filed in the Salem County double homicide and the case remains officially unsolved.