In spring 2006, 29-year-old Dawnette Marie Harrell of Traverse City, Michigan, went missing on April 1 while she was pregnant. Family described her as kind and loving; she worked at a Bob Evans restaurant and an Admiral Discount Cigarette Store. She was last seen by a friend in the early morning hours in the parking lot of a Kmart. Days later her car was found locked in that lot but Dawnette was gone.

More than a year after her disappearance investigators searched the Whitewater Township home of 20-year-old coworker Justin Scott Stair, who had been involved with Dawnette and was believed to be the father of her unborn child. Her body was found buried in a shallow grave on the property; an autopsy determined she died of a single gunshot wound to the head. A .32-caliber handgun later linked to the killing was recovered at the residence along with Dawnette’s purse and car keys hidden in the ceiling.

Stair was arrested and charged; a jury convicted him of first-degree premeditated murder and assault of a pregnant individual causing the fetus’s death. He received life in prison for Dawnette’s murder plus an additional 18 to 50 years for the death of her unborn child. Did anyone in the Traverse City area have contact with Dawnette in the days around April 1, 2006?