On Valentine’s Day 1994 the body of 29-year-old Mary Haskins Ferguson was found around 9 a.m. on a baseball field at Hamilton Junior High School in Northeast Washington, D.C., near Gallaudet University. She was discovered partially clothed by a passerby. Initial police examination reported no obvious gunshot or stab wounds and no clear marks of strangulation, though investigators suspected foul play.

Ferguson was described as a Black woman with known ties to the city’s drug and sex trade and was one of several women whose deaths heightened fear in the community during a period of very high homicide numbers and a low clearance rate. The case remained unsolved amid that broader wave of violent crime that strained the police department.

Did anyone who knew Mary or who was in the neighborhood that morning see anything unusual that could help fill in the timeline?