Dwight Dees was a 20-year-old Black man from Rochester who was found dead in January 1975 after what first looked like a car crash. A borrowed car was discovered nose-down at the bottom of a roughly twenty-foot embankment, but investigators soon found a trail of blood leading away from the vehicle to an old barn where there were signs he had been attacked and left bleeding before his body was returned to the car.

Detectives focused on James Turner, Dees’ brother-in-law, after evidence was recovered near Turner’s home that included a freshly scrubbed two-foot machete and bloodstained tweed pants. Turner, described in reports as a 44-year-old from Scottsville, was arrested less than a day after Dees was found and was indicted in Monroe County Court in late February 1975; he entered a not-guilty plea in early March. The case raised sharp questions about motive: Dees had recently restarted payments on a $50,000 life-insurance policy that he’d previously let lapse.