Bloody van leads to dead body: remembering Carolyn ‘Whitney’ Antrim
ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. (WKRG) — A woman was last seen a week before her body was found. Inside of her van – blood. Another woman was arrested 13 years later in connection to the murder. This is the story of Carolyn “Whitney” Antrim.
WKRG News 5 looks back at crimes that shocked the Gulf Coast. Whitney Antrim’s story is the thirty-second in the series.
Whitney was born in Pasadena, Texas where her father worked at the Houston Space Center. When Whitney was 16, her family moved from Texas to Pensacola, Fla., where she was later reported missing.
Whitney was last seen on July 20, 2007. On the 21st, Whitney’s van was found and determined to be an abandoned vehicle.
Whitney’s mother called the police on the morning of July 27, 2007, to report her daughter as missing. Later that same day, police discovered a body in the woods near Lola Lane. The body had already begun to decompose.
On the same day that she was reported missing and the body was found, Whitney’s van was released to her family. That’s when her family noticed blood inside.
The body was eventually identified as Whitney’s and she had suffered from 12 injured ribs and a smashed skull. It was also determined that she had been sexually assaulted.
The case went unsolved for years until 2020, when an an investigator was doing an annual review of the case. As part of that review, the investigator re-interviewed several people, however, it was the new people he interviewed that led to an arrest being made.
Cheryl Burgett, 54, was arrested on Oct. 15, 2020, and charged with accessory after the fact with a bond of $250,000. To this day, no one has been charged with murder in Whitney’s case.
Anyone with information on this case can contact the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office at 850-436-9620.
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