Opal Margaret Peggy Holder was 42 when she was abducted from her workplace, the Unifirst Federal Savings and Loan at the MetroCenter Mall branch in Jackson, Mississippi, on September 17, 1981. Her body was recovered on October 27, 1981, in Sumter County, Alabama, bringing an end to the search.

Authorities arrested and indicted Marion Albert Pruett for Holder’s murder. He was tried on a capital murder charge in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial District of Hinds County; the case was later moved to Lowndes County. Pruett was found guilty and sentenced to death. His conviction and sentence remained contested through appeals and petitions for writs of habeas corpus, including a 1987 effort to be discharged on the grounds the state had not retried him within a 120-day period.