Nadine F. Clerveau, a 31-year-old African American woman, was found dead and badly burned in an alley near North 25th Street and West Auer Avenue in Milwaukee on the morning of August 15, 2015. Residents discovered the remains at about 6:30 a.m.; the burning was so extensive that police initially could not establish her identity. Officers treated the death as a homicide.

Police publicly identified the remains as Clerveau’s on August 19, 2015. Court records show she had pleaded guilty to drug possession on August 6, 2015, and earlier social media posts documented struggles with heroin and crack cocaine as well as periods of sobriety and efforts to rebuild her life for her son. Reports did not establish whether she lived in that neighborhood, whether she was killed elsewhere and moved to the alley, or whether she was alive when the fire was set; the medical cause of death was not disclosed.

No arrests had been announced by August 19, 2015, and public reports did not identify a suspect, motive, or definitive sequence of events leading to her death. Did anyone in the neighborhood or who knew Nadine see her in the days before August 15, 2015, or notice anything unusual that morning?