On February 4, 1941, Bronx police officers were called to the home of John and Catherine Pappas for a report of a homicide. Based on the evidence, detectives theorized that someone had been invited into the Pappas apartment while Catherine was home alone and that same someone had strangled her to death, then ransacked the apartment looking for valuables. To investigators the scene resembled a fairly straightforward robbery-homicide; however, to detective Ed Burns, there were elements of the crime scene that bore a striking similarity to another assault and robbery case he’d been assigned to just two weeks earlier in another part of the Bronx.