Michael Mansfield was a 19-year-old college student from Rolling Meadows, Illinois, who disappeared on December 31, 1975, while home on break from Lincoln College. He had been scheduled to testify in a criminal case six days later and told his parents that afternoon, after receiving a phone call and putting on his coat, that he was going to visit a friend in Arlington Heights. He never returned and no body was found.

Authorities long suspected Mansfield had been killed to prevent his testimony against Russell Smrekar, a former Lincoln College student charged with theft who had a history of violent behavior and was later convicted of murdering two other people connected to the same case. In 2011, Smrekar made a deathbed confession admitting to killing Michael Mansfield and another potential witness, Ruth Martin. Searches were conducted at properties linked to Smrekar, but Mansfield’s remains have not been recovered.

Who knew Michael Mansfield or remembers seeing him in Rolling Meadows or Arlington Heights in late December 1975?