Frank Johnson Stewart Jr. was a 42-year-old conservation officer from the Montgomery area who was killed on Christmas Eve 1978 while responding to a report of three men hunting on private property. According to memorial and law-enforcement accounts, he confronted the group in a rural, wooded part of Alabama and began to issue citations. Before he could return home, one of the men shot him in the back of the head with a shotgun, killing him where he stood.

In his final moments Stewart managed to write a vehicle tag number in the palm of his hand. When he did not return, his wife called fellow officers on Christmas Day and a search ended with the discovery of his body. Accounts say investigators used the tag number to track down the three suspects linked to the hunting complaint, but publicly accessible listings still mark suspect information as not available and do not clearly show arrest records, charges, or trial outcomes.

If anyone knew Stewart, the incident scene, or has information about what legal steps followed after those men were located, please share what is known.