Robert Lee Blake was 42 and working as a flagman at the Jackson, Michigan train depot when he was shot to death on New Year’s Eve 1978. He was one of three railroad employees killed that night by a disgruntled former railway worker, Rudy Bladel, who entered the depot with a 12-gauge shotgun hidden in a suitcase and shot Blake and a conductor, 50-year-old William Gulak, at close range. As Bladel was leaving he shot 32-year-old fireman Charles Lee Burton, who had come to investigate.

The investigation tied the triple homicide to Bladel, already suspected in attacks on railroad workers in Michigan and Indiana dating back to 1963. He was arrested on March 22, 1979, and initially confessed, though that confession was later challenged on the grounds it had been taken without his lawyer present. Bladel was ultimately tried and convicted of the three murders and received consecutive life sentences.