On a bitterly cold night in Newark, Ohio, on December 10, 1977, 38-year-old barmaid Joyce Vermillion finished her shift at the Forker’s Café. A friend and patron, Karen Dodrill, offered Joyce a ride home and went to warm up her car. As Karen returned toward the café she was ambushed and fatally shot by an assailant hiding in nearby bushes; the killer used a homemade silencer so the shots did not alert Joyce. Unaware of Karen’s shooting, Joyce exited the café and was also shot and killed.

Joyce’s husband reported her missing when she did not return home from work. Shell casings recovered at the scene later linked these killings to a series of .22-caliber murders that terrorized central Ohio in 1977–1978. Brothers Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon were eventually identified as the perpetrators and were sentenced to life in prison. Thaddeus Lewingdon died of lung cancer in prison in 1989 and Gary Lewingdon died of heart failure in 2004.

Does anyone have memories of Forker’s Café or Newark in 1977 that might shed light on the night Joyce and Karen were killed?