Ted Eddins remembers April 13, 1984, well.
"It just tore me up," he said. "I had four children at the time, and I just hated it. You never know on something like that."
Eddins lives right next to the now-overgrown Buck Toms Park in Knoxville's Lonsdale community. He was there that day 28 years ago when a body was discovered by a young neighborhood girl.
"She was stabbed 29 times, mutilated and sexually abused," said Jeff Day, a Knoxville police investigator with the cold case unit.
The body was that of 23-year-old Terri Lynn Kirkland. Her youngest sister, Robin Cox, was just 10 years old when it happened.
"I heard my mother tell my father what had happened to my sister, and I just remember losing my whole control, everything, you know, I just screamed, and lost control," Cox said. "It just rips your soul apart, and time doesn't heal, it stays with you. Every day, I wake up and I think of her, and I think what happened to her."
Kirkland's body was discovered half-nude, covered in leaves, about 100 yards into the park. Her injuries lead officers to believe she likely knew her attacker.
"It was very brutal, and they took their time, and they were very deliberate and sadistic in their treatment of her," Day said. "Not a typically robbery gone bad. I believe they did this to her on purpose."
Cox admits that her sister sometimes led a fast lifestyle and made some bad decisions at times, perhaps chose the wrong group of friends.
"In the end, it was probably the crowd that she was with, it probably led her to her murder, the people she was around," Cox said. "She was my sister, and irregardless what she did, she was a human being and she didn't deserve what she got."
At the time of the murder, investigators gathered evidence, searched for evidence and compiled a fairly large case file. But that's as far as they got.
"They had very little," Day said. "They had some leads, but they dried up, but we have some new forensic technology now, so there is some DNA evidence that we're looking at that may give us more of a breakthrough than they had before."
That has given renewed hope to Cox, who has seen her mother, father and older sister pass away without ever getting the answers they hoped for for so long.
"I'm very happy, excited to think that, after 28 years, that possibly, maybe, hopefully that something could come out of this. I mean, it's been 28 years this past month that she had been killed, and I would love to see something happen with her case," Cox said. "She's not ever been served any kind of justice or peace, you know, and it's hard. It's something that I wish upon no one 'cause it's a grief that you never get through, and there's no closure for us with her."
Anyone with information is asked to call Investigator Day at 865-215-7115.
If you have a Cold Case you'd like 10News to look into, email coldcase@wbir.com.