John Elmer Rausin Jr. was 63 when he was found dead in the garage at his Depew home on the morning of June 12, 1980. Investigators described an extremely violent scene: he had been shot twice, stabbed about ten times, and his throat was slit. Later memorials list him among those lost to gun violence that day, though the fatal assault combined gunfire with multiple stab wounds.

Nearly three years later authorities arrested two women from Cleveland, Oklahoma: Ida Prewitt, then in her mid-fifties, and her daughter Deborah Rausin, who was John’s wife and in her early thirties. Court records show both were formally charged in 1983, but the charges were eventually dropped and no conviction resulted.