Vicki Ripple was 17 and working a lunchtime shift at a High’s Ice Cream in Newport News when a man entered the shop and shot her once in the head on January 31, 1984. She was a nursing student; the killing occurred on a busy city street and was one of several similar slayings in the Tidewater area that winter.

Investigators linked Ripple’s death to four other recent homicides in which women were shot execution-style. Authorities arrested 27-year-old Syvasky Poyner of Newport News on February 4, 1984. He confessed to five murders, saying he robbed his victims and then killed them to eliminate witnesses; his victims included a beauty shop operator in Hampton, two motel employees in Williamsburg, a candy distributor, and Ripple.

Poyner was tried and convicted of five counts of capital murder and sentenced to death. He was executed by electrocution on March 18, 1993. If anyone knew Vicki, where she worked or spent time the weeks before January 31, please share what you remember.