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A new employee of the Adult Book and Cinema Store disappeared overnight April 18, 1974, along with 51 bondage-themed adult magazines, a calculator and $30. A cord leading to an extension from a pay phone had been cut and the shop door left unlocked.
Two and a half days later, a man went to feed cattle on a vacant farm he owned east of Hallam and found her bullet-riddled body.
Patricia Carol Webb was nude under the hay, except for a quilted jacket, one of 143 extra-large jackets distributed by a feed mill and given to customers or sold to employees. Webb, 24, had a piece of tape over her mouth.
Thirty-eight years later, her death remains one of Lincoln’s greatest murder mysteries.
“This case has been investigated, reinvestigated, reinvestigated. A lot of effort put into it,” said Lincoln Police Sgt. Larry Barksdale, who was tasked with the investigation since the early 1990s. Barksdale retired in 2012, but the case remains open.
Together, Lincoln police, the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office, Nebraska State Patrol and FBI logged nearly 15,000 man hours during the first year alone. They even consulted clairvoyants.
