Helen Mae Dutcher, a 36-year-old white woman, was murdered on December 1, 1979, in an alley behind a dry cleaning business in Ferndale, Michigan. She suffered twelve stab wounds to the neck and back in an attack witnessed by a neighbor, Joseph Foy, who saw her struggling with an assailant from his porch and later helped produce a composite sketch.

The case went cold for decades until a 2004 television program prompted Foy to identify Coral Eugene Watts as the man he had seen that day. That renewed eyewitness identification led Michigan authorities to charge Watts with first-degree murder. At trial, Foy’s testimony and accounts from other women who survived attacks by Watts were presented to the jury.

On November 17, 2004, Coral Eugene Watts was found guilty of Helen Mae Dutcher’s murder, a verdict that provided the family with long-awaited closure. Does anyone have memories of the Ferndale neighborhood in 1979 or information that could add detail to the timeline of Helen’s last day?