Edward Elkington, an 83-year-old architect from California, was found dead on February 26, 1978, in a culvert along Interstate 40 near Tucumcari, New Mexico. The cause of death was recorded as suffocation with a pillow. Elkington had been traveling and was picked up by Billy Dean Battenfield and a 15-year-old boy; that teenager later led authorities to the body and identified Battenfield’s involvement.

Billy Dean Battenfield, a convicted murderer, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in New Mexico for Elkington’s death and received a 10- to 50-year sentence. Battenfield and the teenage accomplice were also implicated in at least two other murders in McKinney, Texas, in which victims Thelma Ruth McCarty, 51, and Roy Lovelady, 75, were stabbed and their bodies disposed of in a rural water well. Battenfield’s crimes extended across Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and he has been described as someone who befriended younger males and involved them in his offenses.

Does anyone have information about Elkington’s travel route or anyone who may have seen him in the days before February 26, 1978?