Long-time Newton residents Ida (Cahill) Gregory Reynolds and Thelma Fisher, who spent some of their final days together at Newton Healthcare, did not share a bond forged by typical forces, such as family or friendship. Since March 3, 1983, the two were connected in life for another reason: Both lost a child to the brutal — and still unsolved — Copper Dollar Ranch murders.

Thelma passed away Jan. 24, 2011, and Ida followed 16 months later, on May 15, 2012, with neither one ever seeing justice for their children, 20-year-old Steven Joseph Fisher and 17-year-old Melisa Lynn Gregory. Just days before she died, however, Thelma — who was in regular contact with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office in an effort to see the crime solved — left Ida’s oldest daughter with one plea.

“She told me, ‘Lisa, I want you to just keep at them,’” Newton resident Lisa Gregory said. “She wanted me to keep doing what she had been doing. She said, ‘I’ll know when I get home what happened to them.’ But she wanted us to know here too. It was really tough.”