On the evening of February 23, 1981, firefighters in Brattleboro, Vermont responded to a house fire on Elliot Street and found 39-year-old homeowner Donald Norcia dead inside. An autopsy showed Norcia died of a skull fracture caused by a blunt instrument; the fire was set afterward and investigators determined he had been dead before the flames began, since there was no smoke in his lungs.

Norcia was the owner of the Pinball Wizard and had previously owned an IGA in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. In the month before his death he had been charged with assaulting a woman, to which he pleaded innocent, and reports place him in a December fistfight at a club that left another man with a broken jaw. Authorities examined those recent altercations, but no motive was established and no suspects or arrests have been publicly named.

Who in the Brattleboro area at the time might have known Norcia or seen him in the weeks before February 23, 1981?