On a September evening in 1991, Bryan Bernstein, 22, and his wife Laura, 22, both recent Cornell graduates en route to Los Angeles to attend graduate programs at UCLA, stopped at a rest area on Interstate 8 near Yuma, Arizona. At the rest stop they were confronted and robbed by 16-year-old Travis Amaral, acting under the direction of 26-year-old Gregory Scott Dickens. Amaral, armed with a handgun, forced the couple into the adjacent desert and both were shot in the head. Laura died at the scene; Bryan was found alive by a deputy sheriff, taken to the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, and died the following day.

Investigators located Dickens and Amaral in San Diego. Amaral, questioned during an unrelated sexual assault investigation involving Dickens, confessed to both killings and implicated Dickens. Both men were charged with two counts of first-degree murder and armed robbery; Amaral agreed to cooperate and Dickens was prosecuted for his role. Does anyone have information about Bryan and Laura’s last hours at the rest area or remember seeing anything unusual along Interstate 8 that night?