Our card this week is Lois West, the Ace of Hearts from Virginia.

It's been almost 40 years since 24-year-old Lois West was found dead inside an abandoned house in eastern Virginia.

And despite many sightings of her in what were likely the final hours of her life,

police have never been able to determine who killed her.

But that doesn't mean they won't.

There is still evidence on file from 1986 that might fill in some of the holes

that have plagued this case for 40 years.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Thank you. The The This story starts at an abandoned house on Richmond Road in Williamsburg all the way back in 1986.

At the time, there was no one living in the house.

The owners were renovating it to either rent or sell, and it had been vacant for quite some time.

Jake Rice is a retired investigator for James City County Police Department in eastern Virginia.

Nowadays, he's a civilian employee working property and evidence,

and also cold cases.

In the house, there was no furniture, as in beds, any kind of dressers, anything of that sort.

There was a bathtub, a sink, and a toilet in the bathroom.

A company owned the rancher-style house, so it's not like a family or a bunch of roommates

were fixing the place up.

Save for a pest control guy going in to do a check, no one had been there for one or two

weeks at the least.

Or at least no one should have been in that house until a contractor named Peter

Smith arrived on the morning of August 15th to do some flooring work.

...