Do you know who murdered this mother and son? On Tuesday, April 24, 1979, the quiet life of a 7-year-old African-American boy named Kamal Matthews came to a tragic end in Omaha, Nebraska. Concern grew for Kamal and his 26-year-old mother, Deroshia Matthews, when family and friends could not reach them, a silence that was deeply out of character. After failing to get a response, his grandmother and a few others obtained a key from a neighbor to enter their home on Binney Street. Inside, they made a devastating discovery.
Kamal was found in his bedroom, still in his pajamas, his hands and feet bound with rope. In the basement, they found his mother, also deceased.
The police were called immediately, and an investigation into the double homicide began. The home appeared ransacked, yet there were no signs of a forced entry, leading investigators to believe the victims may have known their killer. Autopsies later confirmed that both Kamal and his mother had been strangled. Investigators interviewed a man named Louis Walker, who knew Deroshia, several times in the initial phase of the investigation, but he was not charged, and the case eventually went cold, leaving the family with no answers for decades.
Years turned into decades with no resolution. The case was finally reignited by advancements in forensic science. A break came in 2004 when Louis Walker, who had since changed his name to Abdulmalik Husain, was arrested on an unrelated charge in Colorado, and his DNA was entered into a national database. His sample matched DNA evidence that had been collected from the Matthews' home in 1979. Husain was charged with the murders, but in 2005 the case was dismissed, reportedly due to a clerical error.
The Omaha Police Department, however, never gave up on the case. In 2021, investigators reexamined key evidence from the crime scene using new technology, which once again pointed directly to Husain. Nearly 46 years after the deaths of Kamal and Deroshia Matthews, Abdulmalik Husain was arrested again in February 2025 and booked on two counts of murder. The arrest brought a renewed hope for justice that had been long-awaited by a family shattered by the events of that spring day in 1979.
