Stephen Hawtree, 56, his wife, and their teenage son were found executed in the basement of their Monee, Illinois home in September 1972. The killings were discovered to be linked by ballistics to a string of other slayings around Chicago, including the Corbett family murders in Barrington Hills and the deaths of an Army specialist in Highland Park and a Southern Illinois University student.

Investigators connected the crimes to a group calling itself De Mau Mau, reportedly formed by dishonorably discharged Black Vietnam veterans and described as motivated by racial hatred. In October 1972 eight members were arrested, among them Reuben Taylor, Donald Taylor, Michael Clark, Nathaniel Burse, Edward Moran Jr., and Robert Wilson. Reuben Taylor, Donald Taylor, and Michael Clark were convicted in 1974 and given sentences totalling over 100 years; Nathaniel Burse was killed in jail awaiting trial and Donald Taylor died in prison in 1991.

The Hawtree family killings remain one of several linked homicides from that crime spree. Did anyone in the Chicago or Monee area have contact with the Hawtrees or remember unusual activity around their home that September?