Charles Pomeroy Almon III, a 46-year-old contractor from Knoxville, stopped his customary Sunday calls to his parents in September 1979. His abandoned Jaguar was later found near Newport with valuables still inside, but no sign of Almon himself. That disappearance left his family without answers for months.

In December 1979 an investigation into the disappearance of an unrelated woman led detectives to 18-year-old Nicholas Todd Sutton, who had worked for Almon. Sutton eventually confessed to multiple killings and led authorities to several victims. In May 1980 divers searching a rock quarry near Newport recovered Almon’s body wrapped and chained to a concrete block. An autopsy showed Almon had been dead for several months prior to the other murders, undermining Sutton’s claim that Almon had killed Sutton’s grandmother and that Sutton acted in self-defense.

Sutton was convicted in Almon’s murder. Did anyone in Knoxville or Newport know Almon’s routines well enough to explain how he came to be separated from his car that September?