On the night of October 16, 1976, 23-year-old Cheryl Lynn Payton was working as a clerk at a Compact convenience store in Mobile County, Alabama, when she was abducted at gunpoint. Her husband had dropped her off at work that afternoon, the last time he saw her alive. Signs of a struggle were found inside the deserted store, including an overturned Coke machine and a broken six-pack of sodas.

Payton, described as a young white female, was driven to a remote wooded area in rural Mobile County, raped in the front of the assailant’s truck, and shot in the head with a .32 caliber pistol. Her body was left in the woods; the following day the killer returned and mutilated her remains. A man seen near the area was chased and apprehended by authorities and later gave a detailed confession to Payton’s abduction, rape, and murder, as well as to the killings of two other local women, Venora Hyatt and Patricia Hitt.

That suspect, Thomas Warren Whisenhant, was convicted at trial in 1977 and sentenced to death. After decades of appeals and retrials he was again sentenced to death and remained on death row for more than three decades before being executed in 2010; several of Payton’s relatives, including her husband, witnessed the execution.

Did anyone in Mobile County know Payton’s routines at work or see her the evening she was abducted?