High schooler found dead on 1980 spring break trip, Florida cops say. Now man confesses
More than four decades after an Ohio high schooler was found dead in Florida while on a spring break trip, a convicted serial killer has confessed to her killing, a sheriff’s office said.
Carol Ann Barrett, an 18-year-old high schooler from Zanesville, Ohio, was with a group of friends on March 23, 1980, enjoying their spring break in Daytona Beach Shores, according to a Jan. 25 news release from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
The group was staying at the Treasure Island Motel, the sheriff’s office said, when Barrett was abducted.
A man had forced his way into their room and held the eight friends at gunpoint, according to Project Cold Case, a Jacksonville-based cold case advocacy group.
“After forcing his way inside their room, a man told them to get naked, robbed them, and threatened that if they tried anything he would kill one of them,” the group said. “He then said he was going to take one of them to make sure they wouldn’t call the police after he left.”
Project Cold Case said the man initially grabbed one of Barrett’s friends, but he became “agitated” when she panicked, and Barrett volunteered to go in her place.
The next day, Barrett’s body was found by a passerby on Interstate 95 on the north side of Jacksonville, the sheriff’s office said, about 100 miles north of Daytona Beach Shores.
Speaking to WJAX in 2017, Dan Janson, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office cold case supervisor, said Barrett had been killed “execution” style and that it didn’t appear as if there was a struggle.
“After interviewing Carol’s friends that had been in the room at the time of the kidnapping, a police sketch of the suspect was completed,” the sheriff’s office said on Jan. 25.
The case remained cold until 2022, when Billy Mansfield was identified as a suspect in Barrett’s death, the sheriff’s office said.
Deputies did not say how the search was narrowed to Mansfield, but Janson told WJAX in 2017 the sheriff’s office had a partial palm print from the suspect to accompany the police sketch.
Mansfield, who was 65 in 2022 but would have been 24 at the time of the killing, had spent the majority of his life in and out of legal trouble in connection with sexual crimes, the Toronto Sun reported.
Between 1975 and 1980, Mansfield was accused of killing three women and two teenage girls in Florida and California, according to the outlet, and the bodies of four of the victims were found in the backyard of his home in 1981.
“In September of 2022, after multiple interviews spanning two years, Billy Mansfield advised that he was in fact the suspect in the police sketch completed following the abduction,” the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said. “He went on to confess to the abduction from the Daytona Beach Shores hotel, as well as to her murder shortly thereafter.”
Mansfield is serving a life sentence after he was convicted of murder in California, and has four concurrent life sentences in Florida on murder charges, the sheriff’s office said.
Mansfield will remain in prison and the State Attorney’s Office will not seek prosecution in Barrett’s death, according to the sheriff’s office.
“Billy Mansfield continues to cooperate with detectives in other jurisdictions regarding additional cold cases,” the sheriff’s office said.
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