On August 15, 1986, 37-year-old Sophia Glover was found dead in San Diego’s Normal Heights neighborhood. Her nude body was wrapped in a blanket and left beside a residential alley; she had severe blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and chest, ligature marks consistent with manual strangulation, and forensic evidence indicated sodomy. Toxicology showed she had ingested crack cocaine. Her neatly folded clothes were recovered a short distance away.

Investigators linked her killing to a string of murders targeting unhoused women and sex workers along El Cajon Boulevard, where bodies had been dumped in alleys or set ablaze inside dumpsters. DNA from Glover produced only a partial profile, but fingerprint evidence and crime-scene similarities helped focus the inquiry on Bryan Maurice Jones, an ex-bouncer already imprisoned for rape. Jones was charged in June 1992; at trial forensic testimony matched his genetic markers to semen on the blanket and surviving victims identified him. A jury convicted him in April 1994 of first-degree murder in the deaths of JoAnn Sweets and Sophia Glover and sentenced him to death.

Detectives examined other men during the investigation, including Ronald Porter and Elmer Nance, but neither was charged in Glover’s killing. Did anyone in Normal Heights or along El Cajon Boulevard have information back in 1986 that could still help explain how Glover came to be targeted?