Do you know who murdered this mother and son? On a Tuesday morning in April 1979, concern grew for 26-year-old Deroshia Matthews, an African-American single mother, and her 7-year-old son, Kamal, in Omaha, Nebraska. Family and friends had not heard from them, which was unusual. After repeated unanswered calls, her mother, Pinkey, and three others went to Deroshia's home on Binney Street to check on them.
Gaining entry with a neighbor's key, they made a horrifying discovery that would haunt the city for decades.
Inside the home, they first found young Kamal in his bedroom. He was on the floor, still in his pajamas, with his hands and feet bound by rope. The search for his mother ended in the basement, where Deroshia was found partially clothed on a waterbed, also with a rope around her neck. The house had been ransacked, with drawers pulled out and papers scattered about, yet police noted there were no signs of a violent struggle. The back door was found bolted from the inside. Autopsies would later confirm that both mother and son had been strangled, and Deroshia had also been suffocated. Police believed the murders occurred early on Monday, April 23, as Kamal had missed school and his evening paper route that day.
For a quarter of a century, the brutal double homicide remained a cold case, a source of enduring pain for the family who pleaded for answers. The initial investigation stalled, and no arrests were made for years. A break seemed to come in 2004 when a man named Louis M. Walker, who had changed his name to Abdulmalik Husain, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Husain knew Deroshia, having met her at a community event years earlier. His DNA, entered into a national database after an unrelated arrest, had matched samples from the 1979 crime scene. However, in a devastating turn for the family, the charges were dismissed a year later due to a clerical error.
Justice, however, was not entirely denied. The Omaha Police Department's cold case unit continued to work on the case. In 2021, advancements in forensic technology allowed for the re-examination of key evidence. This new analysis provided sufficient evidence to once again bring charges against the same man. In February 2025, nearly 46 years after the murders, 67-year-old Abdulmalik Husain was arrested again and booked on two counts of murder for the deaths of Deroshia and Kamal Matthews. Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer stated, "Murders are never forgotten, and justice has no expiration date."
