In late summer 1976, eighteen-year-old Dorothy Ann Rhodes and her nineteen-year-old boyfriend Greg Becknell were abducted in Columbia, South Carolina on September 18, 1976. The couple was taken to an isolated spot near a bible college, tied to trees, and shot in the head. Becknell was found nude; Rhodes was found fully clothed. During the subsequent trial, their killer admitted to sexually assaulting Becknell.

The man convicted for the abduction and murders was John Edward Swindler, a recently released convict who had left Leavenworth just days earlier. Two days after the killings he stole a car and fled South Carolina; he was later recognized by a police bulletin in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he fatally shot Officer Randy Basnett when confronted at a service station.

A South Carolina jury convicted Swindler of the kidnapping and murders of Rhodes and Becknell and sentenced him to four life terms because the state’s death penalty law then in effect had been overturned. Does anyone have memories of Dorothy or information about that crime that could shed more light on what happened?