Linda Yalem was a 22-year-old communications student and marathon trainee at the University at Buffalo when she left her dorm on September 29, 1990, for a run along the Ellicott Creek Bike Path in Amherst, New York. Her body was found the next day in woods off the path; investigators determined she had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

Police suspected her killing was linked to a series of attacks on secluded paths by a perpetrator dubbed the Bike Path Rapist, who targeted women from behind, then raped and sometimes strangled them. DNA taken from Yalem’s case and other scenes produced no match for years. In 2007 investigators obtained a DNA sample from a glass used by Altemio Sanchez; it matched the DNA from Yalem’s murder and other unsolved crimes. Sanchez was arrested on January 15, 2007, later indicted, and on May 16, 2007, pleaded guilty to the murders of Linda Yalem, Majane Mazur, and Joan Diver and to numerous rapes; he received a sentence of 75 years to life.

Does anyone have memories of the bike path in 1990 or information about Linda’s activities that day that could add to the record?