On January 11, 1980, 25-year-old Nadine Madger was found brutally murdered in her Willoughby, Ohio, apartment. A young mother, she had been stabbed more than 40 times with a butcher knife. Her husband, Mark Madger, discovered the scene after returning from work; their six-month-old son was in a playpen in the living room and was not harmed.

There were no clear motives and no obvious signs of forced entry, and the case went cold for decades. Investigators later matched blood on Nadine’s clothing to Stephen Joseph Simcak using advanced DNA methods and genealogical analysis, suggesting the attacker injured himself during the assault. Simcak, a former U.S. Marine who had worked at Lincoln Electric and once owned a yellow Dodge Dart similar to a car seen near the scene, died in 2018 and therefore was never prosecuted.

Family members expressed relief that the killer was identified and frustration that he could not be brought to justice. Does anyone have information about Simcak’s connection to Nadine or about the events in Willoughby on January 11, 1980?