Dawn Basom

April 15, 1969

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Dawn’s brother-in-law didn’t think twice when he dropped off his wife’s little sister in Depot Town. After all, the murderer wasn't targeting thirteen-year-old girls. She didn’t fit the victim profile released by the police, he reasoned. Dawn was just a kid.

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Around 5 o’clock that evening, Dawn hurriedly told her mom she was meeting someone named Earl in Depot Town and that she would be home later. After hanging out with a group of friends for a while, Dawn began the trek back to her house with Earl alongside her. According to Earl, once they made it to the train tracks near the Michigan Landover Factory, Dawn assured him she could make it home by herself, unwilling to accept his offer to accompany her the rest of the way home.

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A short while later, Dawn was seen by two friends who’d been fishing on a bridge near the train tracks. She asked them to walk her home, but they declined. Minutes later, Dawn was last seen by a man who enjoyed watching the train pass by his house every day. He reportedly saw her hurry past his house around the time the passenger train stopped at 7:25 that evening. The cook on that train said that he too saw Dawn, walking on Railroad street while he leaned out the window to give the train-loving man a dinner menu. He was the last one to see her alive. She was less than 150 yards from her front porch.

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April 16, 1969

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The morning after Dawn did not return home, a truck driver spotted her body on the side of Gale Road in Ann Arbor, laying on its back. The spot in Ann Arbor where her body was found can only be described as the backwoods of town; it’s a muddy road that weaves among beautiful homes and cornfields, far removed from the bustling, noisy areas downtown.

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Like the other victims before her, Dawn was found nude and on her back. Her shirt had been pushed up around her neck, leaving her exposed. A piece of white cloth was balled up and shoved in her mouth. She had been stabbed and then strangled with forty inches of electrical wire.

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In 1969, there was an abandoned farmhouse on LeForge Road, less than a mile from the place where Mary Fleszar’s body had been found two summers before. Behind that abandoned farmhouse is where crime scene investigators found Dawn’s orange mohair sweater and eight tissues with what appeared to be semen on them. Police then turned their focus to the barn. In the barn's basement, they found more evidence left behind, than all of their previous investigations of the murdered girls. They found electrical wire and the cut end matched the wire found wrapped around Dawn’s neck. They also found pieces of white cloth, a pair of blue underwear that were not Dawn’s, one gray button, three whites buttons, and glass with blood splatter on them. The cloth and the buttons found on the farmhouse basement floor matched the shirt Dawn was wearing and the cloth that had been shoved into her mouth. They were getting closer to catching their killer.

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A month later, investigators would stand outside of the abandoned farmhouse, watching it burn. The killer had returned to cover up his mistakes. Five freshly cut lilac blossoms laid side by side in the driveway of the house—one for each of the murdered girls.

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A haunting reminder, that the killer was still one step ahead of them.