On April 23, 1986, 45-year-old Virginia Kearns was one of five people killed during a violent spree in Lexington, Kentucky. The day began when Kearns called police about two intoxicated women refusing to leave her apartment; officers spoke with the women, LaFonda Fay Foster and Tina Marie Powell, and left. Afterward the two women followed Kearns to a drugstore and then returned, taking Kearns, her husband Carlos, their housekeeper Trudy Harrell and two friends, Roger Keene and Theodore Sweet, captive.

According to accounts from the incident, Foster and Powell drove the five captives around the city. The rampage ended in a secluded field where Virginia Kearns, Carlos Kearns and Trudy Harrell were shot, stabbed and run over with a car. Foster and Powell were arrested the next day and later convicted on five counts of first-degree murder; Foster was initially sentenced to death and Powell to life imprisonment.

The killings devastated the Lexington community and remain notable for the extreme violence and the involvement of drugs and alcohol in the perpetrators’ actions. Does anyone have additional information about Virginia Kearns or recollections from Lexington in 1986 that could add context to her story?