On June 14, 1979, 21-year-old Jill Marie Parenteau was found dead in her Burbank, California, apartment. She had left work early that day to attend a baseball game but never arrived; when she missed work the next morning, police checked her apartment and found signs of forced entry. Investigators discovered Parenteau naked in the bathroom, posed with pillows under her shoulders. The autopsy showed she had been beaten, strangled, and sexually assaulted.

Blood left by the killer while crawling through a window became important evidence. Authorities focused on Rodney James Alcala, who had been in the Los Angeles area at the time and whom several people who knew Parenteau identified; Parenteau’s friend Katharine Bryant testified that she and Parenteau had met Alcala at a club several times before the murder. The blood from the scene matched Alcala’s DNA after a sample was collected under a state law, and that match was used along with other evidence in prosecutions linking him to Parenteau and several other Los Angeles-area killings.

Did anyone who knew Jill then or who lived near her apartment in 1979 notice anything unusual that night?