Donna Payant was 31 and a mother of three when she was murdered while on duty at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York. In the spring of 1981 she had only recently begun work there. On May 15, 1981 she took a phone call while on duty, told a coworker she needed to address a problem, and was last seen walking toward the prison chaplain’s office. When she failed to return at the end of her shift a large search began; scent dogs traced her trail to the prison’s garbage collection area and her body was found the next morning at a landfill 20 to 25 miles away from the facility.

Investigators concluded Payant had been lured to the chaplain’s office, attacked, strangled with a Venetian blind cord and bitten. Her body was wrapped in plastic garbage bags, placed in a 55-gallon drum and dumped in a dumpster. Suspicion focused on inmate Lemuel Smith, who worked as a maintenance clerk in the chaplain’s office and was serving multiple life sentences. Bite-mark analysis matched Smith’s dental impressions to marks on Payant, and he was charged on June 6, 1981. Smith was convicted on June 10, 1983 and initially sentenced to death; that sentence was later commuted and he remains incarcerated.

Does anyone have information about Payant’s last hours at Green Haven or recall anything unusual in the chaplain’s area that day?