Richard Slysz, 50, was shot and killed during a robbery at the Junior Food Store in Thomasville, Georgia, in the early morning hours of April 10, 1994. Two men entered the store while a third waited in a car; Slysz was shot twice in the head and the robbers fled with two 12-packs of beer after failing to open the register. A second clerk, Dan Wilson, had been wounded days earlier in a separate robbery with the same .25 caliber pistol investigators later linked to the case.

Police tied Ray Jefferson Cromartie to the murder through a thumbprint on a beer carton, shoe prints matching the shoes he wore at arrest, and tracing the pistol to him. Cromartie’s accomplices, Thaddeus Lucas and Corey Clark, testified at trial that Cromartie was the shooter. In 1997 Cromartie was convicted of malice murder and sentenced to death. Cromartie sought DNA testing of evidence from the scene, a request repeatedly denied; the victim’s daughter, Elizabeth Legette, urged testing to confirm the right person was held responsible. Cromartie was executed by lethal injection on November 13, 2019.

Did anyone in Thomasville at the time remember unusual activity around the store that night or recognize the three men involved?