On a balmy day in April 1977, Gov. Mills E. Godwin and a bevy of prison officials, some dressed in seersucker suits, performed a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a cluster of grand new buildings. The cost of the state’s newest maximum-security prison would run to $19.6 million. The set of five matched units, each housing 72 inmates, promised to become a bulwark of economic opportunity across hundreds of square miles of job-poor Southside Virginia.

Linwood Earl Briley was the oldest brother, the calculating leader of the Briley brothers gang. As far as police know, he began his murderous career at age 16 when he shot and killed a 57-year-old neighbor, Orline Christian, on Jan. 28, 1971. She was hanging laundry in her backyard. She had just buried her husband, so relatives thought stress might have caused a heart attack. But when the funeral home returned the robe she had been wearing, the family noticed a small, bloody hole in the back.

Thirty years after Richmond’s bloodiest murder rampage, key prosecutors and a lead detective say they are seeking the prison release of a man who helped begin and end the killings.