On the evening of October 1, 1971, 12-year-old Nenomoshia Yates, known to family as Neno, left her home on Benning Road in Southeast Washington, D.C., to walk less than a block to a Safeway to buy paper plates, sugar, and flour. A store employee later confirmed she had purchased the items, but she never returned home. A witness reported seeing a girl matching her description get into a blue Volkswagen in the store parking lot, a lead that produced no arrests.

About three hours after she was last seen, a 16-year-old hitchhiker found Nenomoshia’s body on the side of Pennsylvania Avenue in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The autopsy showed she had been sexually assaulted and strangled with such force that her esophagus broke. She was found fully clothed but missing her shoes; investigators recovered unidentified green fibers on her clothing, a detail later linked to other similar cases.

Nenomoshia’s murder was one of six unsolved killings of young Black girls in the Washington area between April 1971 and September 1972 attributed in media accounts to the Freeway Phantom. Several suspects have been considered over the years, but no arrests in Nenomoshia’s case have been announced. Did anyone in the area at that time ever notice unfamiliar vehicles, people, or clothing matching these details?