Richard Alberts was killed on the night of November 23, 1989, after driving to a Tucson house for what he believed was a kilogram-for-cash cocaine deal. Eric Owen Mann arranged the meeting at a rental where he and his girlfriend, Karen Miller, sold drugs and guns. Mann had told Miller in the days beforehand that he planned to rip off Alberts by substituting a shoebox of newspaper for the drugs and then kill him.

When Alberts arrived with a friend, Ramon Bazurto, Mann handed over the shoebox and shot both men in a bedroom; Alberts died almost instantly and Bazurto bled to death after struggling. Mann then enlisted Carlos Alejandro to help move the bodies and drove them out near Fort Grant. Mann and Miller cleaned and repaired the house, and Mann disposed of gun parts and bullets in a lake and passed Alberts’ car to another acquaintance.

The case remained cold until 1994, when Miller left Mann, moved to Washington State, and told authorities she had witnessed the shootings and the cleanup. Alejandro and the man who received Alberts’ car corroborated parts of her account. Eric Owen Mann was arrested in January 1994 and later tried; a jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. Does anyone have further information about Alberts’ life in Tucson or who might remember that night?