On a February morning in 2014, 59-year-old music teacher Ruthanne Lodato answered a knock at her Alexandria, Virginia, front door. An older, balding white man with a gray beard opened fire, killing Lodato and wounding a caregiver who was inside the house. The caregiver survived and gave a description that produced a police sketch.

Investigators noticed similarities between Lodato’s killing and two other unsolved Alexandria homicides: Ronald Kirby, shot in his home in November 2013, and Nancy Dunning, shot in her home in December 2003. Ballistics testing and the surviving witness’s identification helped focus the case on Charles Severance, a former Alexandria resident. Prosecutors described a motive tied to Severance’s animosity toward the city’s elite; defense attorneys pointed to his mental illness. In November 2015 a jury convicted Severance of the murders; he received multiple life terms plus additional years.

Did anyone in Alexandria recognize the man seen in the sketch or the car reported near Lodato’s house that morning?