In the pre-dawn hours of October 3, 1987, Dr. Susan Hellams, a 32-year-old neurosurgery resident, was found dead in her Woodland Heights home in Richmond. Her husband discovered her partially clothed body on the bedroom closet floor. The scene showed extreme violence: she had been bound, beaten, and sexually assaulted, and died of ligature strangulation with two belts wrapped around her neck. An intruder had entered by cutting through a second-story window screen.

Investigators noted the killing resembled a recent slaying in the city, raising concern that a serial offender was active. Semen collected at the scene became crucial evidence. A DNA profile developed from that biological material was compared to a sample from Timothy Wilson Spencer, a 25-year-old parolee living in a nearby halfway house; the analysis produced a match. Spencer was arrested in January 1988 and later convicted of Hellams’s capital murder, rape, and burglary, and received the death penalty.

Did anyone in Richmond’s Woodland Heights neighborhood in 1987 notice unusual activity around second-story windows or unfamiliar faces near midnight?