On the afternoon of September 10, 1980, in Van Buren, Arkansas, Suzanne Staton Ware, 23, and her father Kenneth Staton were bound, gagged, and each shot twice in the head at close range during an armed robbery at Staton’s Jewelry Store in the Cloverleaf Shopping Center. Their bodies were found about 6:00 p.m. by a clerk from a neighboring business. Two men who had planned the robbery after meeting at a campground were identified as suspects: Eugene Wallace Perry and Richard Phillip Anderson.

The pair had surveilled the store in the days before the crime and brought a wig to conceal their identities. They fled in Suzanne Ware’s vehicle, abandoned it later, and stole an estimated $100,000 in jewelry. Both were arrested within months — Perry in Florida and Anderson after fleeing to Canada — and were convicted for the murders.

Was anyone in Van Buren at the time aware of suspicious activity around the shopping center in the days before September 10, 1980?