Faith Hathaway, an 18-year-old woman, had been out late in the early hours of May 28, 1980, celebrating what was meant to be a turning point in her life: she was about to enter the United States Army. Around 4:30 a.m., outside the Lakefront Theatre in Mandeville, Louisiana, she accepted a ride from two men, Robert Lee Willie and Joseph Vaccaro, expecting to be taken home.
Instead of turning toward safety, the car carried her north into Washington Parish, to a secluded place known as Fricke’s Cave, a heavily wooded gorge south of Franklinton. There, prosecutors said, she was trapped and assaulted—raped by one or both of the men. What followed was described in court as a killing marked by restraint and cruelty: while one man held her hands, the other repeatedly stabbed her in the throat.
Days passed with her family searching and the community combing the area. Her clothes and purse were found about 150 yards from where her body would later be discovered; the remains were located on June 4, 1980. During the search, a small printed note was found near the scene reading “you never find her,” but investigators could not tie it to Willie, to Vaccaro, or even definitively to the crime itself—no fingerprints, no proof of who wrote it, and no certainty about when it had been left.
The break that brought the suspects into custody came from beyond Louisiana’s borders. On June 3, 1980, Willie and Vaccaro were arrested in Hope, Arkansas, for unrelated crimes involving aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, and attempted murder against other victims. A week later, on June 10, both men admitted to police that they had seized Hathaway, but each tried to shove the worst of the blame onto the other, accusing the other man of rape and of cutting her throat.
In the courtroom, the case hardened into verdicts and sentences. Willie was convicted in Louisiana of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, with the Louisiana Supreme Court later describing evidence of a brutal, forceful rape and a painful death. His case went through further legal proceedings, including a remand focused on whether that unexplained note created reasonable doubt; the court ultimately found it did not, and a jury again recommended death, citing aggravating circumstances including that the killing occurred during an aggravated rape and in an especially heinous manner.
Vaccaro, who testified against Willie, was sentenced to life in prison for the Hathaway killing, according to contemporaneous reporting. Willie’s death sentence was carried out at the Louisiana State Penitentiary: he was executed by electrocution in the early hours of December 28, 1984, for the 1980 rape-slaying.
