On December 31, 1993, Phillip Elliott Devine, a 22-year-old Black man originally from Los Angeles and then living in Iowa, was found shot to death in a farmhouse near Humboldt, Nebraska. He was one of three people killed in a brutal attack at a rental farmhouse where he had been staying after a holiday visit with a girlfriend ended; Devine had reportedly planned to catch a bus the next morning. His mother, Aisha McCain, described him as very kind, giving and deeply religious and said he really didn’t know the people he was staying with.

The killings were connected to an earlier assault on another resident, Brandon Teena. Two local men, John Lotter, 22, and Marvin Tom Nissen, 21, who had assaulted Brandon days earlier, returned to the farmhouse on December 31 intending to silence him and ended up murdering Brandon plus Lisa Lambert and Phillip Devine. Lambert’s infant son was found unharmed. Lotter and Nissen were arrested and charged; Nissen later testified against Lotter.

Devine appears to have been an innocent bystander who was killed because he was present at the scene. Did anyone who knew Phillip or saw him in Humboldt that week ever come forward with information?