On November 26, 1980, 50-year-old Willa Dean Scott ONeal was found shot to death behind the counter of the used furniture store she and her husband operated in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The shop’s cash register was open and empty, with only $41 reported missing, a detail that shaped early theories of a robbery turned violent.

Initial suspicion fell on her husband, Bob ONeal, after daughters from a previous marriage told police about his abusive behavior and their mother’s talk of divorce. Attention later shifted to Wilburn A. Henderson after a folded sheet of yellow paper at the scene bore his name and a real estate agent’s contact, and investigators learned Henderson had taken a .22 caliber pistol from a pawn shop days before the slaying and returned it soon after. Henderson was arrested in Houston; he at one point said he had been at the scene and witnessed the killing but later recanted.

The case produced multiple trials and contested forensic and circumstantial evidence, including ballistics that could not definitively link the pawned gun to the fatal bullet. Many questions about motive and responsibility remain part of this long, bitter case. Does anyone have memories or information about the store, the people involved, or that week in Fort Smith?