On the night of January 14, 1980, five-year-old Lisa Gilligan, her four-year-old brother Gregory, and their parents Patrick and Theresa were killed in their Evansville, Indiana, home after walking in on a burglary. The intruder, identified as Donald Ray Wallace Jr., had broken into the Gilligan house after an earlier burglary of a neighboring residence. Wallace bound the family with a vacuum cleaner cord and shot each of them, then fled with stolen items.

Wallace was later found hiding in a friend’s attic with blood on his clothes. Friends testified at trial that he had confessed the killings to them and he made additional confessions in later letters. In October 1982 Wallace was convicted on four counts of murder and sentenced to death.

The crime devastated the community and ended the Gilligan family’s lives in their own home.