On October 21, 2000, 16-year-old Justin Mello, a high school soccer player working an after-school shift at Mancino’s Pizza and Grinders in New Baltimore, Michigan, was forced into the restaurant’s freezer, made to kneel, and shot in the back of the head. A delivery driver found his body, and the killing shocked a community that had not seen a homicide in about thirty years.

Early investigation attention centered on three local teenagers: 19-year-old Frank Kuecken, 18-year-old Jonathan Kaled, and 16-year-old Matthew Daniels. Kuecken and Kaled initially confessed and implicated Daniels; all three were arrested and charged with murder, armed robbery, and conspiracy. The confessions were later recanted as coerced, alibi witnesses placed the accused miles away at a party, and charges against Daniels were dropped when witness testimony failed.

The probe shifted after the arrests of 20-year-old David Baumann and 19-year-old Dennis Bryan in a multi-state crime spree. Ballistics testing linked a gun used by Baumann and Bryan to the murder of Justin, and the pair had committed another killing in Florida in which the victim was forced to kneel in a walk-in cooler before being shot in the back of the head. Kaled and Kuecken were eventually exonerated.

Did anyone who knew Justin or who was in New Baltimore on October 21, 2000, see or hear anything that night?