Jason B. McColley was 18 when his body was found in an Atlanta alleyway near Kennesaw Avenue on April 6, 1986. He had been stabbed multiple times in the neck and was discovered nude from the waist down; investigators noted a possible sexual encounter before the killing. McColley was known locally as a street hustler.

His murder closely resembled the killing of Alvin George at the same location weeks earlier, and detectives linked McColley’s death to a string of unsolved homicides of young Black men in the city, many involved in sex work and killed after sexual encounters. Witnesses said they had seen McColley with a large, stocky Black man known as Big Mike the night he died, a tip that led police to 26-year-old Michael Devern Terry, who lived near the crime scenes.

Terry was arrested on November 26, 1986, and during questioning confessed to six murders, including McColley’s, saying the killings were in self-defense after disputes over payment. In February 1987 Terry was convicted for two murders and given life without parole, and he later received additional life sentences for other homicides, including Jason McColley’s. Did anyone who knew Jason or who was in that neighborhood in 1986 see him with someone called Big Mike?