Russell E. Lewis, Jr., was in Tulsa on a temporary work assignment from St. Louis when he went out for dinner on the evening of April 26, 1979. He was carjacked and shot in the head with a stolen revolver; his body was later found discarded down an embankment near a local park.

Investigators linked the killing to Charles Troy Coleman, an escapee from the Muskogee County Jail who had broken out by climbing through a hole in the roof. Coleman, already held on first-degree murder charges in the deaths of another couple, fled to Tulsa and was later captured in Arizona. He was extradited to Oklahoma, convicted in Lewis’s murder along with other killings and assaults, and sentenced to death; Lewis’s estate later prevailed in a workers’ compensation dispute at the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

If anyone knew Russell Lewis Jr. or has information about his last movements in Tulsa, please share what is known.