On the morning of July 16, 1996, Carmen Rigby, 45, an employee at Tardy Furniture in Winona, Mississippi, was found shot in the head and killed alongside three others: owner Bertha Tardy and employees Robert Golden and Derrick Bobo Stewart. A retired employee who arrived to train new hires discovered the four victims at the downtown store.

Investigators eventually arrested a former employee, Curtis Giovanni Flowers, after he had moved to Texas. The state’s case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence and witness testimony, including a jailhouse informant who alleged a confession. That testimony later came apart, and reporting exposed significant problems with the prosecution’s evidence and witnesses.

After multiple trials over more than two decades, charges were dismissed with prejudice by the Mississippi Attorney General’s office in September 2020 for lack of credible evidence and unavailable witnesses, leaving the murders officially unsolved and the families without the conviction they sought.