Robert Hedderman, 48, was killed during the afternoon of November 24, 1976, while working inside the Hedderman Religious Shop at 50 Columbia Street in Albany, New York. His secretary, Margaret Byron, was murdered alongside him; both suffered multiple stab wounds and were then slashed across the throat. Witnesses later identified Lemuel Smith from photographs as a man seen in the shop that day and as someone leaving the scene.

A sweater belonging to Smith, recovered during a lawful search of a building where he had worked, yielded a hair that the FBI reported matched Byron. Smith was separately indicted in Schenectady County on kidnapping and attempted armed robbery charges. In March 1978 he made extensive admissions to investigators during a controlled meeting; those statements led to an Albany County indictment for the double homicide. At trial the jury rejected Smith’s mental-disease defense, and he was convicted and given consecutive 25 years to life sentences.

Does anyone have information about the Hedderman shop, the Columbia Street neighborhood in 1976, or memories that could shed further light on that afternoon?