Florence Burkard, a 78-year-old White woman and native of Sheboygan, was killed inside her Milwaukee North Side home on August 10, 1979. Volunteers delivering a hot meal found the scene; her body was at the bottom of the basement stairs. She had been stabbed 43 times with a pair of scissors, including a wound that penetrated the heart and was fatal.

Burkard’s murder was later linked to a string of violent home invasions in Milwaukee. Investigators ultimately connected her death to David Allen Van Dyke, who was arrested on May 23, 1980. Police said fingerprints tied him to the cases, he confessed during questioning, and prosecutors charged him with six counts of first-degree murder. Van Dyke was convicted at trial in 1981 and received six life sentences; the conviction established who entered Burkard’s home and carried out the attack.

Did anyone in Milwaukee at the time remember unusual visitors or suspicious activity near homes on the North Side that August?