Donald Lee Rains, a 26-year-old man from Beloit, Wisconsin, was killed on February 2, 1981, during an armed robbery at the Radio Shack in Beloit Plaza. Rains was a customer in the store that day; 21-year-old employee Richard Walter Boeck (also described as the store manager) was killed alongside him. Both men were taken toward the rear of the business and died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Investigators linked the Radio Shack killings to a violent series of robberies and murders in Rockford, Illinois, and Beloit in late January and early February 1981. Witnesses at the Beloit store reported seeing a man in a tan-colored coat before the shootings; a programmable radio scanner was reported missing after the robbery. Federal agents arrested Raymond Lee Stewart on February 21, 1981, after locating him in North Carolina and recovering two handguns, a scanner and a tan quilted jacket during searches. He was extradited to Wisconsin, tried in Rock County Circuit Court, and convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of armed robbery, receiving consecutive life terms and an additional sentence for the robbery.