Loretta Young Brown was a 29-year-old Black woman who was sexually assaulted and killed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on November 26, 1984. Her death came during a series of attacks that terrorized the city’s predominantly Black neighborhoods; few public details survive about her personal life or the circumstances of her final hours.

Investigators long considered Eddie Lee Mosley a possible suspect in multiple rapes and killings around northwestern Fort Lauderdale. At the time of Loretta’s murder forensic tools could not produce a definitive match, and the case remained cold while Mosley faced other accusations, an overturned conviction, an acquittal, and later arrests. In 2001 advances in DNA testing linked Mosley’s genetic profile to biological evidence from Loretta’s case, and authorities described her as the eighth victim tied to him by DNA or investigative findings.

Two psychiatric evaluations found Mosley mentally incompetent to stand trial, so prosecutors did not try him for Loretta’s death; he was committed to a state psychiatric institution and died in May 2020. No credible second suspect has been publicly identified, and the available forensic findings place responsibility for the assault and killing on Mosley. Did anyone who knew Loretta or lived in northwestern Fort Lauderdale at that time see or hear anything that might still help clarify her last hours?