Flagler County Sheriff's Office hopes new image solves cold case murder mystery
A cold case murder mystery began three decades ago when a basketball bounced into some woods in a cul-de-sac in Palm Coast. Now the Flagler County Sheriff's Office is hoping that a new "facial approximation" will help give the victim a name.
When two young boys walked into the woods at the dead end of Sea Ship Place to get their basketball on Jan. 10, 1993, they found something else: partial skeletal remains beneath some brush, according to the sheriff’s office.
The remains belonged to a woman, a homicide victim, the sheriff’s office stated.
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Clarence Murphy said Monday that he was having a family gathering that day 30 years ago and they were playing basketball in the cul-de-sac. He said his son, who was 12 at the time, found the remains.
"The ball went up in the woods and he went in there to get it and he came rushing back out of there. We thought he had seen a ghost or something. But he came out says 'There's a body in there.' So, I think a few of us went up in there and looked and, after that, we called 911."
It was a jarring discovery, particularly for his son.
"It bothered him for a while," Murphy said.
He said when his family moved into their house in 1991 it was the only home on the cul-de-sac, which is now built out. A dark area on the pavement shows were the basketball hoop once stood.
Murphy said he hopes the sheriff's office identifies the woman so her family can have some closure.
FCSO works with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office recently obtained from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office a facial approximation of what the woman is believed to have looked like.
“We hope that someone may be able to identify this woman so we can bring closure to her family who has been waiting for over 30 years to know what happened to her,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in a press release. “We know someone out there knows something, so call us.”
On Jan. 10, the 30th anniversary of the discovery, Flagler County Sheriff’s Det. Sarah Scalia personally delivered the woman’s skull to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Imaging Unit.
The unit reviewed the skull along with ancestry information to create the facial approximation, which strives to be a likeness, but should not be looked at as a portrait of the person, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
When the remains were first discovered, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office investigated with the help of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Forensic anthropologists from the University of Florida and the Medical Examiner’s Office provided the following information in 1993:
She had been dead for approximately two to three years.
She was 25-35 years old (born between 1955-1965).
She was approximately 5 feet, 3 inches tall.
She had a previous right nasal fracture.
The anthropologists and medical examiners in 1993 had indicated they believed the woman was white, possibly Indian. But that’s no longer believed to be the case.
In July 2021, a DNA laboratory, Othram, developed a DNA profile for the woman. It was then discovered that she was African-American, possibly mixed with Caucasian.
Othram researched genealogy and established that she was a descendant of George Washington Coleman and Clarissa Minnick from the area of Edgefield/Aiken, South Carolina, the release stated.
Scalia and Othram are working to identify the woman and at least 30 relatives have been contacted.
Scalia was assigned in 2022 to the department's cold case unit, which Staly created in 2021 to investigate unsolved homicide, sexual battery and missing persons cases.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office asks anyone with any information about the woman’s identity or her death to please contact Scalia at sscalia@flaglersheriff.com; email TIPS@flaglersheriff.com; call FCSO at 386-313-4911; or call CrimeStoppers of NE Florida at 888-277-TIPS. CrimeStoppers of NE Florida offers a reward of up to $5,000.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Flagler County cold case: Officials hope new image identifies victim
