Eddie Rusboldt's visit to D.C. started off like almost any 23-year-old's. Rusboldt toured the popular local sites, met up with friends, and visited some of the District's bars and nightclubs.
But on his last night in town, the Purdue University student was separated from his buddies. His body was discovered the next morning on the tree-lined 1900 block of Sunderland Place NW, near Dupont Circle.
Police say the May 31, 1986, homicide appears to be a robbery that took a wrong turn. Rusboldt's brother, Mark, was an Air Force serviceman stationed in Korea when he got the news about his younger brother's murder. Eddie was the second-youngest of seven siblings.
"At some point, after a while, you just have to resign yourself, that it's something that you have to live with," Mark Rusboldt, who lives in Orlando, Fla., told The Washington Examiner.
"We still think about him all the time. It just took a while to resign yourself that you're never going to see him and let God do what God does," Rusboldt said.
Eddie Rusboldt died of compression of the neck and chest with blunt force injuries of the face and head, according to medical examiners. Police said Rusboldt was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Police investigators were unable to turn up any suspects, even though Rusboldt was found in an area often frequented by pedestrians. Witness descriptions varied. One story involved a group of black males, while other witnesses described seeing Korean and Vietnamese gangs.
Rusboldt had been in D.C. during a summer break to meet friends from the District and Northern Virginia. But Rusboldt's pals lost track of their friend and their car near the end of the night. Rusboldt's friends scoured the Dupont neighborhoods for about 45 minutes and eventually found the car. But they never met up with Rusboldt.
Rusboldt's friends drove the car back to Arlington and called the police the next day when their friend didn't show up.