On August 1, 1980, Robert Matzke, a 60-year-old retired Air Force colonel, was shot and killed in Holmes Beach, Florida, during a violent spree that left four people dead and one injured. Matzke was working in his yard near the Kingfish Boat Ramp when he saw a suspicious man leaving the scene of a crash involving a station wagon and a boat trailer. That man had already fatally shot Dr. Juan Dumois, 47, and Dumois’s sons Eric, 13, and Mark, 9, and had critically wounded their uncle, Raymond Barrows, 52.

Matzke followed the suspect to a nearby Foodway grocery store, now a Publix Super Market, and confronted him; the suspect shot and killed Matzke and then fled. The assailant has been described as a hitchhiker who initially approached the Dumois family asking for help. Despite extensive investigations and ongoing appeals for information from Manatee County Crime Stoppers, no arrest has been made and the killer’s identity remains unknown.

Did anyone in the area at the time see the man leaving the crash or the confrontation at the store?