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Post by Graveyardbride on May 10, 2014 12:37:11 GMT -5
Decapitation, Disappearance Baffle Georgia Community, Law Enforcement
Nothing adds up. Russell and Shirley Dermond, married 68 years, had no known enemies. They had no questionable financial dealings. And there was no sign of forced entry into their home (above) located at 147 Carolyn Drive in Reynolds Plantation, a gated community overlooking Lake Oconee on the outskirts of Eatonton, Georgia, southeast of Atlanta. They were well-off, but it appears nothing was stolen from their residence. The only thing missing is Shirley Dermond, 87, and, in a twist that has shocked this community, her 88-year-old husband’s decapitated head. “Quite candidly, this is the most baffling case we’ve ever worked,” longtime Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said Wednesday. Three days into their investigation, Sills acknowledged his deputies had no leads in either Russell Dermond’s slaying or in the search for his missing wife.
Putnam deputies first learned of the case around 10 a.m. Tuesday. Some of the Dermonds’ neighbors had gone to check on the couple after the two failed to attend a Kentucky Derby party Saturday night or respond to phone calls. Russell Dermond, who once owned several fast-food chains, was last seen the previous Thursday at a nearby drugstore. He retired about 20 years ago, when the couple moved from Atlanta to Lake Oconee. Sills said the concerned neighbors found the Dermonds’ front door unlocked Tuesday morning. Nothing seemed amiss until one of them entered the garage, where Russell Dermond’s decapitated body was discovered. It’s assumed Dermond was killed there, but Sills said he believes Dermond was dead before his head was severed. It’s the only part of the house stained by blood. “It was the cleanest home I’ve ever been in,” Sills said. “It was almost like nobody lived there.” The perpetrators left precious little behind. No substantial clues. No ransom note.
Putnam deputies are working with the FBI and two local police departments to try to locate Shirley Dermond. “I don’t have a car, or cell phone, nothing to track her,” Sills said. While hopeful she’ll be found alive, the sheriff acknowledged he’s not optimistic.
Neighbors don’t know what to think. “I don’t think people are afraid as much as they are concerned for her,” Kathy Scott said Wednesday.
Law enforcement canvassed the Great Water community, where the Dermonds lived. It’s the most exclusive part of Reynolds Plantation, filled with homes valued in the millions. Even outside the community’s gates, Putnam County is generally considered safe. Sills said the last murder happened eight years ago. There’s never been so much as a burglary reported inside Reynolds Plantation, he advised. Accessing the Dermonds’ home is difficult enough. Visitors entering Reynolds Plantation have to get by security guards who must receive verbal confirmation from residents before allowing anyone inside. “The perpetrator could have come in by boat,” Sills said. “They could have come in by … helicopter.”
On Tuesday, agents from the Department of Natural Resources dragged the lake near the Dermonds’ home and found a Christmas tree and lawn chair, according to Sills.
“It makes you wonder: Is there’s someone in this (community) who could’ve done this,” neighbor Lillian Butterworth told The Journal-Constitution.
Right now, everyone is a suspect, Sills said.
Each of the couple’s three adult children – a daughter and two sons, all of whom live outside the state – have been interviewed by Sills in person. “I put them through the mill” with questions, he said, adding they’ve been fully cooperative. “There is nothing to indicate that their children are involved in this.” A third son died in 2000 while trying to buy drugs in Atlanta, but investigators do not believe this has anything to do with their case.
With little to work on, investigators continue to pound the pavement, looking for anyone – or anything – that might help solve the mystery. Sills said he’s confident of only one thing: “For whatever reason, these people were singled out.”
Sources: Christina Boone, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 10, 2014; and Putnam County Sheriff's Office.
See also “Dermond Murder House for Sale”: whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/2949/dermond-murder-house-sale
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Post by kitty on May 10, 2014 14:07:46 GMT -5
I live in Georgia, but not close to where this took place, but everyone is talking about it and like someone said in the other thread, there's talk of a Satanic cult. People might think that's a really way-out thing to say, but what other reason would people have to cut a person's head off if they weren't into some weird stuff? Nothing was taken from the house so far as is known, so they must have gone there with the intention of killing and decapitating the man and taking his wife.
Back in 1973, there was a murder of 7 family members in Georgia not far from where I live. These 4 guys had escaped from prison in Maryland and they drove all the way to south Georgia and killed 6 men, who were all members of the same family and kidnapped one of their wives, took her off and raped her repeatedly before killing her. A lot of times, people who commit crimes like this go on the run and they could turn up hundreds of miles away and do the same thing.
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Post by jason on May 11, 2014 21:08:08 GMT -5
I doubt that the people who cut off this old guy's head escaped from prison somewhere. They would have had to get into and out of an upscale gated community without being noticed, unless they came by boat and if they did, how would they have known how many people were in a particular house, of if anyone was there at all? I think this was an inside job and by inside, I mean someone who lived in the same community. I also think they were into something weird, like Satanism, because why else would they want someone's head? Another thing is how did they manage to kill and cut off the man's head without disturbing anything in the house, unless they hung around and cleaned up everything afterwards? Another strange thing is who kidnaps a woman that age? If she were a younger woman, then the reason would be obvious, but this lady was 87 years old!
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Post by pat on May 13, 2014 0:20:23 GMT -5
My brother has some friends with the sheriff's office and they said that the GBI and sheriff up there don't have any leads at all. They don't know how the people got in and out of the house or the gates and nobody saw or heard anything. There are even theories that maybe the wife killed and decapitated her husband and then left, but her purse and all of her personal effects were still in the house. My neighbor's parents live out in a rural area and they insisted that they come and stay with them because they don't know where whoever did this might show up next. I've heard that if the police don't have any leads in 48 hours, that there's a good chance that the case won't be solved and it's been a week now.
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Post by natalie on May 13, 2014 15:44:05 GMT -5
It could have been a family member. They would have been able to get into the gated community without issue. Did they question the guards as to whether anyone pulled in with the intent to pay them a visit, or do they have surveillance cameras that show the vehicles entering and leaving the community? You'd think that with such expensive homes, the gated community itself would have very sophisticated surveillance. Most of the exclusive gated communities with million-dollar waterfront homes have cameras all around the entrance gates, and sometimes, they have them hidden in the trees as you drive along, so they can catch people trying to rob or assault a resident.
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Post by Sam on May 14, 2014 0:33:04 GMT -5
I'm sure that the sheriff has interviewed everybody that might have seen anyone coming or going. I don't think that their family lives anywhere close by and if any of them had visited, they would have been questioned. That's a very low crime area from what I've heard and they probably don't have cameras at the gates. There's also speculation that someone could have come in by boat. The fact that there isn't any evidence rules out teenagers, in my opinion, because teens aren't all that careful and don't usually know how to clean up a crime scene.
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Post by madeline on May 14, 2014 2:25:02 GMT -5
There are a lot of trees around the house, so I doubt if any of their neighbors saw anything. Whoever did it knew what they were doing. It's not that easy to cut someone's head off because you have to cut through the spine and there would be a LOT of blood, even if he had been dead for a while, so whoever did it would have had to put down plastic drop cloths or cleaned up a lot of blood. This wasn't something done on a whim, it was planned.
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Post by catherine on May 15, 2014 11:16:45 GMT -5
The FBI has offered a $20K reward for information. The FBI and police always discourage family members from offering rewards because it brings all of the crazies out of the woodwork, so the FBI itself announcing the reward means they're desperate for information.
Sam, I agree that teenagers didn't do this. There was some talk of organized crime, but the FBI said the guy didn't have any organized crime connections and their family members lived in Florida and the Carolinas, although one son was murdered in Atlanta in 2000. It sort of makes you wonder if maybe there isn't some kind of pseudo-Satanic cult operating in that community. I've been to Eatonton, Georgia and it's a nice, quiet little town, but the people who live at the development called Reynolds Plantation are from all over, so there's no telling what some weirdos might be into. It would be unusual for senior citizens to be into something like that, but I think the community is open to everyone, which means you would have people of all ages.
One thing that really has me puzzled is that one of the reports said that they didn't have any outside help and that their 3300 square foot house was spotless. How did two people close to 90 years old keep a house of that size spotless without even a part time cleaning woman?
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Post by pat on May 16, 2014 0:10:42 GMT -5
This just gets stranger and stranger. They had a house that size that from what I've read cost a million dollars and they didn't even have a cleaning lady? Maybe there was something in there they didn't want anyone to see.
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Post by Sam on May 16, 2014 1:30:32 GMT -5
That's something to think about, Pat. It does seem strange that people that age with that much money wouldn't have someone to help them with house work.
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Post by jane on May 16, 2014 9:10:28 GMT -5
I agree that there is something strange about these people not having help with house cleaning. They were ages 87 and 88 and the house was described as spotless. There's no way that they could have kept a house of that size spotless. I wonder if they had someone do the yard work or if we're supposed to believe that they cut the lawn and trimmed the bushes?
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Post by Graveyardbride on May 17, 2014 12:43:48 GMT -5
Missing Wife of Decapitated Georgia Man Found Dead in Lake
By any standard, the killings are grisly. With the discovery of the body of an 87-year-old Georgia woman whose disappearance came to light after her husband’s decapitated body was found in their waterfront home, authorities not only want to know who did it, but also why. Shirley Dermond’s body was found in Lake Oconee, south of Athens, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told reporters Friday. “We now, unfortunately, know that Shirley Dermond was murdered,” Sills said. He declined to discuss the condition of the body other than to say, “the head was not removed or anything like that.”
Authorities were alerted Friday by two fishermen who spotted what they believed to be a body in the lake, some five or six miles from the couple’s home. The discovery adds an element to the investigation – the possibility that a boat was a mode of transportation in the killing, Sills said. “This jumps us about two jumps up on the checkerboard, shall we say,” he said.
Dermond’s family is in shock with the news of the discovery of her body, said the Rev. David Key of Lake Oconee Community Church. “We haven’t even had a funeral for Russell because their kids wanted to wait. Now that we know about Shirley, we will start planning the funeral services for both.”
From the beginning, investigators treated Dermond’s disappearance as an abduction. Her purse, cell phone and car were all at the couple’s million-dollar waterfront home on Lake Oconee where her husband’s headless body was found. She is believed to have been taken from her home after her husband, 88-year-old Russell Dermond, was decapitated sometime between May 2 and May 4. Investigators continue to search for his head, and they plan to look in the same area of the lake where Dermond’s body was found, Sill said. “Obviously, the head of Mr. Dermond will be quite difficult to locate.” Russell Dermond’s body was discovered in the couple’s garage after friends, who hadn’t heard from the couple in days, went to their home.
The FBI put up more than 100 billboards in its search for the missing woman, and it offered a reward of up to $20,000 for information to her location or the arrest of the person responsible for her disappearance.
“The mindset of the individual that did this was a homicidal individual that doesn’t deserve to breathe the air on this Earth,” Sills added.
In the days after Dermond’s disappearance, authorities searched Lake Oconee in the vicinity of the couple’s home – turning up only a lawn chair and a Christmas tree – and sent cadaver dogs into the nearby woods, to no avail. Authorities have also spoken to neighbors, family and friends. So far, the investigation has turned up little to shed light on the crimes. Investigators aren’t aware of any enemies the couple had made, or any reason someone would target them, Sills said.
Source: CNN Justice, May 17, 2014.
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Post by aprillynn93 on May 17, 2014 13:21:40 GMT -5
I wish they would have had surveillance cameras around their house. I bet whoever did this knew before hand that they didn't.
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Post by Graveyardbride on May 18, 2014 6:28:48 GMT -5
Some people value their privacy. I don't have security cameras. Besides, cameras can easily be disabled or removed.
I think the fact these people had no outside help is the key to these murders. Suppose there were others living in the house unknown to anyone else? It would be easy for a person (or persons) to take advantage of two people that age and move into their home. The house was large, concealed by trees and bushes and unless the couple told someone, no one else in the neighborhood would have known anyone was there. If the house was as spotless as the reports claim, unless the Dermonds were two of the healthiest most agile octogenarians who ever lived, they couldn’t have possibly kept a house that size in such a condition themselves. Also, it isn’t normal for anyone to live in a spotless house. When people live in a house, it’s supposed to appear lived-in. The sheriff should question family members and neighbors about the couple’s housekeeping habits and find out if they had help in the past.
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Post by aprillynn93 on May 18, 2014 13:53:53 GMT -5
Agreed. My last home was only around 2500 sq feet. I cleaned that house constantly, but even so, I could not keep it spotless. Now admittedly I have pets and a kid, but I don't think I could have kept it spotless even if it were just my husband and I living there. Certainly not if I were in my eighties.
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