Paula Nelson, a 21-year-old African American woman from Cleveland, Ohio, was tragically found strangled to death in her bedroom on October 23, 1980. At the time, she was living with her sister, Ramola Washington, who was in a relationship with Reginald Perkins. Perkins had been asked to return a set of keys to Paula Nelson shortly before her death.
Five days after this request, Paula was discovered deceased, and although Perkins was arrested as a suspect in her murder, he was never tried for this specific crime.
Reginald Perkins had a history of violent offenses. In 1981, he was convicted in Ohio for the rape and attempted rape of two 12-year-old girls and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite this, he was paroled in 1990 and moved to Fort Worth, Texas. There, in 1991, the bodies of 79-year-old Hattie Wilson and her 44-year-old niece, Shirley Douglas, were found strangled in their apartment. Perkins was dating Wilson's granddaughter at the time, linking him to the victims. In 2000, Perkins was again paroled and returned to Texas, where he murdered his stepmother, Gertie Mae Perkins. He was convicted of this crime in 2002 and sentenced to death. While on death row, DNA evidence connected him to the 1991 murders of Wilson and Douglas. Additionally, Perkins allegedly confessed to his then-girlfriend, Ramola Washington, that he had murdered her sister, Paula Nelson, back in 1980. Despite these confessions and connections, Perkins was never formally charged with Paula Nelson's murder. He was executed by lethal injection in Texas on January 22, 2009.
