Warren Green was 40 when he and his wife, 38-year-old Lois, were killed during a robbery at their Western Auto store in Mount Vernon, Alabama, on December 1, 1977 — his birthday. The couple was forced into a back room, bound back-to-back with an electrical cord, and each was shot in the head at point-blank range. Warren died at the scene; Lois died a few hours later at a local hospital.

Investigators identified four suspects: Freddie Lee Wright, Roger McQueen, Percy Craig, and Reginald Tinsley. The group had reportedly stopped in Mount Vernon to buy tape after a car-seat tear while on their way to another planned robbery; the decision to rob the Western Auto store was later described as impulsive. Wright’s former girlfriend, Doris Lacey Lambert, testified that he confessed, and Wright was identified by his accomplices as the man who fired the shots.

Wright’s first 1979 trial ended with a hung jury; a second trial the next month produced a guilty verdict from an all-white jury and a death sentence. Craig and Tinsley were later released after serving time; McQueen was serving a federal sentence for an unrelated kidnapping. After appeals and a clemency denial, Wright was executed in Alabama’s electric chair in the early morning hours of March 3, 2000.

Did anyone in the Mount Vernon area at the time remember the Greens, their store, or unusual activity around December 1, 1977?