It’s one of the oldest cases on file and one that came close to being resolved.

After a series of mistrials, a then 16-year-old was acquitted for the murder of a small grocery store owner at what was then the U.S. Post Office on Sixth Avenue.

The victim was a World War II veteran, a deacon at his church and a small business owner.

Kyle McConkey, 55, owner of Kyle’s Stop-N-Shop on E. 12th Ave., was shot and killed while buying stamps late at night at the former U.S. Post Office on East Sixth Avenue.

According to testimony, McConkey was shot near an automated stamp machine then ran approximately 50 feet before he was shot several more times with a .22 caliber pistol.

One of the bullets missed McConkey, passed through a sheetrock wall and struck the mailroom, a picture in the Oct. 27, 1975, Rome News-Tribune shows the scene of the crime in vivid detail.

His wife, who was waiting for him in the car, said he told her “I’m dead” before expiring.

There was a significant amount of evidence, including an eyewitness.

The motive was robbery, police said at the time, McConkey’s wallet was taken. Another witness said the motive was revenge by a disgruntled young customer after an earlier confrontation.

McConkey’s wife told police she saw a young heavyset man sitting on the post office steps when she and her husband pulled up to the building. She identified a then 16-year-old man who she witnessed running out the post office’s East First Street side doors with a gun in his hand.

The young suspect was arrested several months later. In the next year, after at least one mistrial, the young man was acquitted.

Years later, the newspaper reported the murder was still under investigation, but no new suspects have been arrested in the case.

The new federal building had only been opened about a year when the incident occurred.

As a deterrence to further crime, and as a direct result of the murder, more lighting was installed at both entrances of the federal building.

In an another case, Jessie Crozier, 67, had been dead almost two weeks when he was found in his Kingston Avenue apartment, which had doubled as a snack bar.

He had been stabbed in the neck twice with a knife.

At that time, police said he may have been dead as many as three weeks before being discovered, but police said Crozier’s apartment, which has a stone floor and walls, acted as a “cooler” slowing his decomposition and making it difficult to determine how long he had been dead.

He was last seen Feb 18, 1994, and was found March 8, 1994 after his landlord asked police to check the apartment.

Crozier had been a lifelong resident of Floyd County and was employed by Georgia Power, according to his obituary. There was no sign of a break-in or struggle in the house and the motive was likely a dispute.

In the days following the death the suspect list grew, including a woman who had been charged with stabbing Crozier in the leg over a dispute over liquor four months prior. He had also reported being robbed by two women two years earlier.

But without being able to determine an exact time of death and a long period of time before Crozier’s body was found it was difficult make an arrest with such a large window of time in which the death could have occurred.

For those who may have any information on the McConkey or Crozier cases, contact Rome Police Department Capt. Terry Autry at 706-238-5121.

Reports from Google archive: March 9, 1994 Oct 27, 1975 Nov 14, 1975