Mary Houston, 75, vanished from a table at a soul food restaurant in Shaw, Washington, D.C., after excusing herself to use the restroom during a Monday morning outing in May 2014 that she and her husband Douglas called their daily date night. Living with Alzheimer’s, family members at first feared she had become disoriented and tried to walk the roughly two miles back to her Brookland home.

Two days later, on Wednesday, May 7, 2014, a construction worker found her body in the basement of an empty warehouse in the 800 block of Channing Place NE, only a few blocks from the home she may have been attempting to reach. An autopsy determined Mary Houston died of blunt force injuries and asphyxiation; she had been beaten and strangled. Her jewelry and money remained on her person, making robbery an unlikely motive. As of this account, police had not identified suspects or made arrests.

Did anyone in the Shaw or Brookland areas see Mary the morning she disappeared or notice unfamiliar persons or vehicles near Channing Place NE that week?