Unsolved murder cases in Lake County: Science, technology help investigators

Editor's note: This is the third of three stories about unsolved murder cases in Lake County. The first was published on Jan. 25 and the second was published on Jan. 26.

No longer is shoe leather and a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass the only tools available to detectives in their quest to identify victims and their attackers. Lake County law enforcement is using surveillance videos, cellphone records and a host of other tools, including new breakthroughs in DNA research.

New technology, for example, has turned a 1988 homicide investigation upside down.

Investigators were stumped when a body was discovered near a weed-infested ditch near Green Swamp Road and County Road 474.

There was some decomposition, but crime scene technicians found a blue green tank top, an acid-washed skirt with a Manisha label and pantyhose. She was 5-foot-9 and had bleached blonde hair.

Her body was sent to forensic anthropologists at the University of Florida and DNA was sent to the University of North Texas, which manages the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, for the National Institute of Justice.

But in 2010, sleuths discovered that the victim had been a man in the process of undergoing transgender transformation.

“It’s not anybody’s fault,” said Lt. Tamara Dale, the head of major crimes for the sheriff’s office.

Her hip bone measurements were in the middle range and bones were pitted, normal for the aging of a woman, but also caused by hormone shots, Dale said.

With the new information, the 5th Judicial Circuit Medical Examiners’ Office in Leesburg contacted the University of South Florida Institute of Forensic Anthropology and Applied Sciences. That institution is using isotope analysis to uncover information about victims.

Isotopes, which are atomic structures, are everywhere. Because bones don’t deteriorate as quickly as skin and hair, they can be detected longer in bones and teeth.

Analysis can reveal clues about where the victim lived in the past, what he or she ate, and other clues.

Detectives tried to find doctors who performed transgender operations during the 1980s, but the effort failed because digital records were not available at that time.

A 2007 sexual battery case in Leesburg

Another breakthrough could identify a rapist who attacked a 65-year-old woman in her Leesburg home on Oct. 21, 2007.

Crime scene analysts collected the attacker’s DNA and sent it to a lab that specializes in DNA phenotyping. The process analyzes genes based on race, genealogy and physical characteristics, and results in an artist’s rendering of what the suspect may look like.

In the 2007 case, the sketch showed a man at age 25, although he could have been in his late teens or early 20s.

“There is evidence that he may have been a drug user…,” the sheriff’s office said in 2019. “He is biracial. Specifically, his ancestry is roughly an equal mix of Northern European and African American.”

He probably had light brown skin, green or hazel eyes, reddish brown hair and some freckles. The sketch may not be exact.

One of the most sensational cases in the country involved the so-called “Golden State Killer,” suspected of murdering at least 12 people and raping 45 women in California.

Investigators fed some of his DNA markers into a public genealogy database, created to help people trace their ancestry or learn about possible genetic diseases that might affect them. They got a hit on a family tree that led to the killer. In 2018, Joseph DeAngelo Jr. was arrested, and in 2020 he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.

The first of its kind

One case in Lake County was the first of its kind.

In December 1991, a hiker in Seminole State Forest near the Wekiva River spotted what he thought was a mannequin covered by brush. Then, he spotted a leg sticking out beneath tree branches. He was horrified to learn that it was not a mannequin beneath the tree limbs, but the body of a woman who had been raped.

Because there were bear tracks nearby, and because she had been mauled, the man thought she may have been attacked by a bear. But when crime scene analysts realized that the killer had posed his prey to boast about the injuries he inflicted, it was clear that the attacker was a human monster.

Four years later, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement analyst in Orlando was feeding the killer’s DNA information into a new statewide crime computer when a coworker in Tallahassee shouted that they had a hit.

There were only 10,000 DNA samples in the computer in 1995. Now, there are millions, and it is linked to a national database.

The attacker was identified as Joseph Rolle Jr., who worked in Sorrento. He was later sentenced to life in prison. Sadly, “Jane Doe’s” identity remains a mystery, despite her data also being sent to NamUs.

Now, however, there is new hope of identifying Jane and Jill Doe.

The sheriff’s office is working with the DNA Doe Project to do a genealogy hunt for Jill Doe.

As for Jane Doe, or “Sorrento Jane Doe,” as she is known on the sheriff’s cold case web page, www.lcso.org/coldcase, investigators are working with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on a pilot genealogy project.

It’s a painstaking process, Conlee said.

If that doesn’t work, then perhaps someone someday will look at the artist’s rendering on the page and identify the mother, sister, daughter, or wife whose identity, for now, is known only by God.

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: What tools are used to help solve old murder cases in Lake County?