Paul J. Harmon was a 26-year-old White police officer with the Huntington Police Department and an Air Force veteran when he was killed during the early morning hours of December 14, 1981. What began as an attempted armed robbery at a McDonald’s in Chesapeake, Ohio, escalated into a chain of events that brought two fleeing men into Huntington. Harmon responded to a radioed report of a suspected break-in near 19th Street and Jefferson Avenue and radioed that he had located the men. Seconds later Officer Randy Byard heard a gunshot and then four more.

Harmon was found severely beaten and shot five times; his service revolver and flashlight were missing. Witnesses saw two men flee and leave in a green 1971 Buick Skylark. One nearby resident identified Bobby Dean Stacy as the shooter. The abandoned Buick, registered to Stacy, contained Harmon’s service revolver, a loaded .357 Magnum, ski masks, and property tied to the earlier Ohio robbery; Wilbert Mayle’s fingerprints and other evidence linked both men to the vehicle and to the crimes. Stacy and Mayle were later convicted of first-degree felony murder in connection with Harmon’s death.

Did anyone in the area that night notice a green 1971 Buick Skylark or see men running from 19th Street and Jefferson Avenue?