Almost daily, Brenda Gail Mills could be seen taking an early-morning walk in her midtown neighborhood. She'd moved to Tucson from rural Ohio for her health, and the dry desert climate agreed with her.
On the morning of Saturday, Aug. 13, 1988, Mills, 36, donned her signature wide-brimmed, linen sun hat and left her apartment for her walk.
An hour later, at 8:30 a.m., a jogger found Mills' body next to the road about 20 feet north of a beaten path used by joggers through what was then a vacant lot near the Williams Centre business complex near East Broadway and South Craycroft Road.
STATUS
At the time of her death, investigators speculated that Mills was targeted, that the attack wasn't random. There was no evidence of robbery, nor an attempt to conceal her body.
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Currently, the investigation is suspended, meaning it is not assigned to a detective or actively being worked, said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco a spokesman for the Tucson Police Department. It was last reviewed in October 2008, and police have no suspects nor any new evidence.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Mills had lived in Tucson for about 18 months. In the days leading up to her death, she told her parents in phone calls to Ohio that she thought someone was watching her and that one night someone had been on the patio outside her apartment.
Mills' health had so improved in Tucson that she anticipated moving back to Ohio. She had already bought an airplane ticket for a visit home over Labor Day weekend, but she was killed three weeks before the trip.
Her mother, Mildred Simmons, died of cancer last Aug. 14, 21 years and a day after her daughter's homicide.
"Brenda getting killed partly put her in her grave," Ralph Simmons said of his wife, who had been battling cancer for a number of years. "Mildred was her mother and (like) her sister. They were just so close."
Of his daughter, Simmons said: "She was a real good girl. She was Christian. She (did) a lot of witnessing for the Lord. She was a beautiful girl."
