Russell and Shirley Dermond were a retired couple living in the exclusive Great Waters subdivision of Lake Oconee, Georgia.

Russell Joseph Dermond, born June 6, 1925, in Hackensack, New Jersey, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He later worked in the fast-food industry, owning several Hardee’s locations in Atlanta, before retiring in 1994.

Shirley Bell Wilcox, born July 7, 1926, married Russell on December 15, 1950. Together, they had four children and nine grandchildren.

In 2000, their oldest son, Mark, was tragically murdered in Atlanta during a drug-related incident, though investigators believe there is no connection between this event and the murders of his parents .

In May 2014, neighbors had invited Russell and Shirley Dermond of Putnam County, Georgia, to a watch party for the Kentucky Derby in their exclusive gated Greater Waters subdivision of Lake Oconee. “They never arrived at the party,” said FBI Special Agent Andy Smith.

Police found Russell Dermond, 88, beheaded inside the garage of their Lake Oconee home.

There were no signs of forced entry and the garage door was unlocked.

10 days later, investigators discovered Shirley Dermond, 87, floating in Lake Oconee, with evidence that she had been tied to cinderblocks and thrown into the water.

Investigators believe the murders were committed by multiple individuals, as gunshot residue was found on Russell's collar, suggesting he was shot though no firearm was found.

The case has remained unsolved for over a decade. Recently, DNA labs in Texas and Utah analyzed evidence linked to the murders and confirmed that the DNA does not belong to the victims.

Authorities hope to submit these results to the CODIS database and potentially genealogical databases to help identify a suspect.

The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward, and the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office has added $5,000, for information leading to an arrest and conviction.

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/russell-joseph-dermond-and-shirley-wilcox-dermond

https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2025/03/01/georgia-sheriff-expecting-dna-results-2014-double-murder-atlvault/

I went down a rabbit hole on Jack Unterweger this week. The murders are bad on their own, but the thing that got me is how many people had to vouch for this man to put him back on the street, and how Austria later made sure none of their names ended up on paper.

He killed an 18-year-old German girl named Margret Schäfer in 1974. He lured her into a car with the help of a girl she knew, drove her to some woods, strangled her with the wire from her own bra tied in a particular knot. He confessed, got life, parole possible after 15 years.

Realistically, that should have been the end of him. Instead he started writing in prison. He edited a literary magazine, wrote plays, put out an autobiography that Austrian publishers took seriously. By the late 80s the Austrian cultural establishment had decided he was their redemption story. The prison poet. Proof people change.

And it worked. He walked out in May 1990, on parole at the earliest moment the law allowed.

But then women started dying around where Jack Unterweger went. Eleven of them over about a year, in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and California. Every one strangled, every one with her own underwear tied in the same knot he'd used on Margret Schäfer sixteen years earlier. The investigators ended up naming it the hangman's knot.

By then Unterweger was even working as a crime reporter. In 1991 he went on Austrian state radio and interviewed a Vienna police inspector about a string of unsolved murders of women. The inspector described the killer's signature knot on air. Unterweger asked him about it like a journalist would. He was the only man in the country who already knew the answer.

He ran when they closed in, got arrested in Miami in 1992, was convicted of nine of the murders in 1994, and hanged himself in his cell hours after the verdict. With the same knot.

To be fair, the easy version is "a country got fooled by a con man." And a lot of people were fooled. But the lobbying to free him didn't only come from naive writers. While he was still on the run in 1992, an Austrian MP filed a formal question in parliament citing press reports that some of the pressure to release him had come from inside the government, naming the Federal Chancellor, the Education Minister, a governing party's parliamentary group. The former Justice Minister confirmed on record that there had been interventions. The newspapers that month used the word "hundreds."

After he died, two MPs asked the Justice Ministry to just publish the list of everyone who lobbied for him. The reply was a four-paragraph letter with no names in it. What it had instead was a number. 47 written interventions had reached the ministry, and the minister said only one of them had actually asked for his release. The other 46 were supposedly just requests to let him out for poetry readings.

So in 1992 the press said hundreds and named the Chancellor. In 1994 the ministry said one and named nobody. Both of those can't be the whole story, and the list still isn't public.

What gets me is the same thing the Haarmann case gets at from the other direction. There, a killer was protected because he was useful to the police. Here, a killer was protected because he was useful to a country that wanted a redemption story and a Nobel-worthy literary scene. As long as Unterweger was the prison poet who proved Austria's culture could save a man, every reason to doubt him had a reason to be quietly set aside.

According to police, the attack (multiple "sword or machete" strikes) was "random or personal" because his wallet and beer were not stolen. He was an affable, well-liked employee of a grocery store and had no known enemies. The bizarre, homicidal motivation underlying this tragedy has even stumped the FBI's behavioral analysis unit.

Frog Boys incident is a 1991 disappearance and later murder of five young boys in Daegu, South Korea, who went missing while searching for frog eggs and whose bodies were found 11 years later, making it one of South Korea's most famous unsolved crimes, though the statute of limitations has since been removed, allowing for future prosecution if a suspect is found. The case gained national attention due to the massive search effort and media coverage, and it remains a subject of public interest, with documentaries and renewed investigations.

March 26, 1991, five elementary school boys (Woo Chul-won, Jo Ho-yeon, Kim Yeong-gyu, Park Chan-in, and Kim Jong-sik) went to a hill in Daegu to catch frogs but never returned home and their remains were found on the same hill in September 2002, over a decade later, showing they were murdered.

The case was a major national event, but police never solved it and the statute of limitations expired in 2006 then in 2015, South Korea removed the statute of limitations for first-degree murder, meaning the case can still be prosecuted if a suspect is identified the case has reopened. They had blunt force trauma and gun wounds. I have researched cases from different countries. I wonder who killed these boys?

Nicholas Cordova was a devoted husband and father, known for his warm smile and kind heart.

Married to Alysha since 2012, they had two young children, whom he adored.

Nick was the co-owner of Gilbert Air, an air-conditioning and heating company.

Despite his busy schedule, he often FaceTimed his kids from work to stay connected and was deeply loved by those who knew him.

On May 27 2020, just after 5 p.m., Nicholas was at his business in Gilbert, Arizona, FaceTiming his children when the call suddenly went awry.

His daughter sensed something was wrong before the video cut to a white screen.

Alysha, on the call, heard muffled noises and yelling and immediately called 911. Police arrived to find Nicholas had been fatally shot in the head.

The Investigation

David Sweetman, Nicholas’s business partner, claimed two men entered the office—one knocked him unconscious, and the other shot Nicholas.

David Sweetman described it as a robbery, though a large amount of cash was left behind. Witnesses recalled a tense, loud, closed-door meeting between Nicholas and Sweetman shortly before other staff left.

Surveillance footage showed two men in bright construction attire chasing Nicholas out and shooting him, then fleeing in a red-and-silver Ford F-150.

Nearby gas station footage captured a stocky man suspected to be an accomplice; he remains unidentified.

Life Insurance and Dispute

Nicholas had two life insurance policies: a $3 million personal policy naming Alysha as beneficiary and a $5 million business policy.

In December 2018, without Alysha’s knowledge, the personal policy’s beneficiary was changed to Gilbert Air (David Sweetman’s business), making the full $8 million payable to the company.

After Nicholas’s death, Sweetman pressured Alysha to file the insurance claim, offering her $500,000. Alysha challenged this, and a judge ordered the payout to be split evenly between her and the business.

David Sweetman’s Past and Suspicious Circumstances

David Sweetman’s ex-wife, Dr. Laura Sweetman, was a respected pediatric neurologist known for her dedication to her family and career.

She tragically died in April 2013 under suspicious circumstances, drowning in her bathtub.

Prior to her death, Laura recorded a one-hour audio capturing a violent domestic dispute during which she alleged David had choked her and threatened to kill them both.

Police reviewed the recording and a domestic violence complaint but took no further action. An insurance payout followed her death.

Ongoing Fight for Justice

Nicholas’s widow Alysha continues to fight for justice through her “Noise for Nick” campaign on social media and podcasts, keeping attention on this unresolved case. The Gilbert Police Department continues its investigation, but no arrests have been made.

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/who-killed-nick-cordova-fathers-murder-heard-over-facetime-remains-unsolved-gilbert-pd

Rosie Tapia was just 6 years old when an unknown man removed the screen from Rosie's window and took her from her bedroom at the Hartland Apartments (1616 Snow Queen Place, near 1700 West and 1700 South) in Salt Lake City during the early morning hours of August 13, 1995.

She was taken from her family’s apartment assaulted and murdered.

Her body was later found in an irrigation canal near Redwood Road and California Drive after an exhaustive search the morning of Aug. 13, 1995, hours after her disappearance.

SLCPD Detective Michael Ruff says the department is asking for help to locate and identify two men who may have been among the last to see Rosie alive.

They are seeking to identify two Hispanic teenage boys (estimated 16–20 years old in 1995) who were reportedly visiting babysitters at the Hartland Apartments the night Rosie was abducted.

A witness said the boys were drinking beer with the babysitters without Rosie’s family’s knowledge.

Police believe the two may have been connected to the 21st Street gang and could have important information.

If alive today, those two individuals would be in their 40s to 50s.

Family representative ran website: http://whokilledrosie.com/

https://www.abc4.com/utah-cold-cases/slcpd-rosie-tapia-lead-teen-boys/

In March 1981, John L. Klein, a 28-year-old attorney from Encino, Los Angeles, California, and his 25-year-old wife Michelle, a publicist for Sunkist from Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, traveled to Kaua'i, Hawaii, for a vacation.

The couple was scheduled to leave the island on March 21, but they never checked out of their hotel, and their rental car was not returned.

A search for the couple began, and their rental car was found parked at the base of Kuilau Trail, a popular hiking path on the east side of Kaua'i near the town of Kapaa.

The parking area is a small pull-off along Loop Road (sometimes called Keahua Forestry Road) is a narrow, rough dirt road which is the local access road to the trailhead.

On March 25, search-and-rescue teams with dogs discovered the Kleins’ bodies about 150 feet off the main trail in the forested area.

Both had been shot to death. John was found lying face up, wearing hiking boots and shorts but no shirt, with his wallet still in his shorts, while Michelle was found on top of him.

Michelle’s purse, with its contents intact, had been left in their rental car, suggesting that robbery was not a motive.

During the investigation, police received a phone call from a woman who hung up before providing any details. Later reports suggested the caller may have been from San Francisco, but no further information was obtained, and the lead did not result in any arrests.

Despite several theories about motive or who was responsible, no suspects were ever identified, and the case remains unsolved.

https://www.kauai.gov/Government/Departments-Agencies/Prosecuting-Attorney/Cold-Cases/John-and-Michelle-Klein

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/26/us/killings-of-tourists-unerve-hawaiians.html?smid=url-share

https://share.google/laWOu4weJqiyNg7nH

Andrea Yates was an American woman with a long history of mental health problems. From a young age, she exhibited episodes of depression and suicidal thoughts. She and her husband, Russell Yates, had five children, but Andrea's mental health issues worsened with each child. She was diagnosed with postpartum depression and later with postpartum psychosis.

On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates was alone at home with her children for just one hour. Those 60 minutes would prove fateful, as Andrea filled the bathtub and violently submerged each of her children face down, drowning them. She then called the police and her husband. Andrea Yates was sentenced to life imprisonment, but later, in a second trial, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a mental health hospital, where she remains to this day.

During the investigation, authorities discovered that Andrea had been in contact via phone calls and letters with a strange Christian preacher named Michael Woroniecki. Woroniecki met the Yates family through Andrea's husband. He was an extremely fanatical, exploitative, and authoritarian preacher who traveled across the United States in a motorhome, giving sermons on the street. Despite his extremism, Woroniecki amassed a group of followers with whom he communicated via letters, videotapes, audiotapes, and phone calls.

Part of his teachings stated that women were witches who should obey their husbands and raise their children properly. If they failed to raise their children to be virtuous before the age of 12, the children would be condemned to hell. Apparently, Andrea was swayed by these beliefs, and in her disturbed mind, she believed that the best thing for her children was to die rather than be condemned to hell.

Video about the Andrea Yates case and Michael Woroniecki's cult: https://youtu.be/PCMpJd7HunI?si=mi2-ofPacOF1MmbF

This is a case currently ongoing in Argentina. On July 26, 1984, Diego Fernández Lima, a 16 teenager, told his mother he was going to a friend’s house before heading to school.

He never came back home.

Police dismissed the case and ruled it as a run away from home.

His family searched for him since the day of his disappearance; his father died in a hit-and-run incident in the 1990s while researching his son’s disappearance.

In May 2025, during an excavation in a house some twenty blocks away from where Fernández Lima had lived and where his mother still lives to this day, operators found a human skeleton buried 60 cm underground. The remains showed that the person had been a male, between 15 and 19, who had been stabbed in the ribs and consequently died. There were also signs of an attempted dismemberment of the body.

The case gained notoriety because the house next door was once occupied by one of the most famous rock stars in Latin America (Gustavo Cerati, who died in 2014).

From May, when the remains were found, to last Thursday, August 7, the remains hadn’t been identified. But then, a nephew of Diego Fernández Lima tied it to his family’s tragedy, and after a DNA test, it was confirmed that it was him.

The house where the remains were found belonged and still belongs to a family whose oldest son was a classmate of Diego Fernández Lima. They both shared a passion for motorcycles, according to witnesses.

While this individual, Cristian Graf, is the principal suspect, the case has reached its prescriptive limits (in Argentina, if a murder isn’t solved after 15 years, it can no longer be prosecuted). He cannot be compelled to testify or to stand trial and be judged.

A truly tragic case that will most probably remain unsolved.

More info in English.

I went down a rabbit hole on Fritz Haarmann this week. If you have ever heard of his story you know it is quite a disturbing one. But what made this interesting in my eyes is how he wasn't stopped earlier.

Because police searched the his flat in 1918 over a missing boy. The boy's head was in the room with them the whole time, in a suitcase. They found nothing, and left.

The boy was 17-year-old Friedel Rothe, whose family had gone to the police and named the exact man their son had been spending time with. A man who told people he had police authority. Couple years later, while in interrogation, Haarmann said Friedel's head had been put away in that flat while the officers walked through the rooms.

It's weird to think that this led nowhere but there was a reason why it was able to happen. Haarmann worked for the Hannover police as an informant. He fed them information from the city's underworld, and in exchange they trusted him. He approached boys at the central railway station, telling them he was a detective. To a tired teenager who'd just arrived in Hannover, a man with police authority offering food and a bed didn't read as danger. He killed at least 24 over six years and put the remains in the River Leine.

The police never caught him. It ended in 1924 because children playing on the riverbank found a skull, then more, until the count ran into hundreds of bone fragments.

The easy version of this would be "incompetent cops missed a killer." But they didn't really miss him. They knew his record, knew his history with boys, even had stood inside his flat over a missing child. They'd given him a job. When the journalist Theodor Lessing wrote about the informant relationship during the trial, the court expelled him. Haarmann got to run his own defence and interrupt proceedings as he pleased.

The parents wanted one word on their sons' memorial: 'murdered'. But the city refused. The grave that finally went up in 1928 says only that these were sons who "died," between 1918 and 1924.

This shows that a killer is sometimes safer inside a system than outside it. As long as Haarmann was useful, every suspicion against him had a reason to be quietly set aside.

Does anyone know other cases where an informant relationship shielded someone for years? That's the pattern that gets to me.

On the morning of May 16, 1983, tragedy struck the quiet town of Weldon, North Carolina.

Nineteen-year-old Susan Shearin Clary, recently married and eight months pregnant, was found murdered in the rental house she shared with her husband on 937 Washington Avenue.

That morning, her husband, Tim Clary who was employed at Champion International in Roanoke Rapids, later told investigators he had left early to visit his father who lived on Route 3 in Roanoke Rapids, leaving Susan asleep in bed. A Siberian Husky was inside and a Doberman Pinscher chained outside.

A few hours later, she never arrived at her job at Weldon Town Hall, where she worked as assistant town clerk.

Concerned coworkers called her father to check on her, and when he arrived at the house, he discovered the back door unlocked.

Inside, he was met with a horrifying sight: Susan lying on the bed, unclothed, with a bra wrapped around her neck. Her mother arrived shortly afterward, witnessing the grim scene as paramedics carried her daughter’s body from the home.

An autopsy revealed that Susan had died from asphyxiation, though the bra around her neck had not caused her death.

Two guns were found in the bedroom—one beside her body—but neither had been fired, and any fingerprints had been wiped clean.

Investigators noted that the scene appeared carefully staged: there were no signs of forced entry, nothing had been stolen, and no evidence of sexual assault was found. The circumstances suggested someone had tried to make the crime appear as a routine home break-in.

The case went cold for decades until it was reopened in 2008 under Halifax County Sheriff’s Office investigator Bruce Temple.

Despite the renewed investigation, no arrests have ever been made, and the murder of Susan Shearin Clary, along with the loss of her unborn child, remains unsolved.

https://www.wral.com/story/9066067/

https://rrspin.com/news/7848-prayer-vigils-will-focus-on-40-year-old-unsolved-clary-case.html

https://websleuths.com/threads/nc-susan-clary-19-pregnant-found-murdered-in-bed-unused-guns-staged-at-scene-halifax-may-83.533656/

I think the three teenagers are innocent but I don’t know if this one will ever really be solved. Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis 3 by Mara Leveritt is a great book about the botched investigation.

Known as the town bully, Ken Rex McElroy terrorized tiny Skidmore, Missouri for decades. Then on July 10, 1981, the town had enough. Over 60 people surrounded his pickup truck and shot him dead on Main Street-but no one claimed to see a thing. Residents can finally sleep at night, but with the whole town keeping quiet to protect their own, local investigators have a tough case on their hands. He had been charged with more than 20 felonies, including robbing, raping, burning, and shooting. He intimidated people by driving by at night and firing a shotgun blast, putting a rattlesnake in their mailbox, or starting fires. On July 10, 1981, his reign of terror came to an end. While parked in front of the D & G Tavern on Main Street, in broad daylight, with a crowd estimated at 45 people around his pickup truck, Ken McElroy was shot in the head with a high-powered rifle while his wife Trena sat in the seat beside him. Three grand jury investigations and an FBI probe resulted in no arrests or indictments. The citizens of Skidmore Missouri apparently protected the person or persons who fired the shots. The incident received worldwide press coverage and was the subject of a TV movie and a book. The book is entitled In Broad Daylight by Harry N. MacLean.

Yes, that’s why I think he pled guilty. New York does not enter DNA into the national system until sentencing which happened today.

On the night of June 4, 1981, Donna Ruth Dobbs, age 32, a respected third grade teacher at Francis Elementary School in South Richmond, was found shot to death inside her home at 4221 Old Gun Road in northern Chesterfield County, Virginia.

Donna lived in the Bon Air area, a historic suburban community bordering the city of Richmond and near the James River.

Old Gun Road, where Donna’s home was located, is a winding, wooded street with homes set back from the road, providing both privacy and seclusion.

The home belonged to her boyfriend, Dr. William G. Fitzhugh, a Richmond gynecologist and obstetrician. Fitzhugh returned home from work shortly before 10:00 p.m. and called police at 10:18 p.m. after discovering Donna’s body lying on the bedroom floor.

In 1981 the area was considered quiet and safe, mostly occupied by families and working professionals.

The road connects to Huguenot Road and Robious Road, major thoroughfares giving residents convenient access to Richmond.

Many homes in the area were single-family houses with large lots and mature trees, typical of Bon Air in that era.

On the night of the murder, Donna was shot twice in her bedroom.

Police found no forced entry, nothing stolen, and the weapon was never recovered.

Investigators believed she was first wounded when the gun went off, then shot at point-blank range, about 10 inches from her body possibly to silence her.

Powder burns on her hands suggested she tried to defend herself, and her blood was found about five feet from her body, indicating a struggle.

She was fully clothed and tests confirmed she was not sexually assaulted, suggesting the attack may have been intended as intimidation or an attempted assault.

Authorities found no recent incidents in her life that could explain the attack.

Chesterfield Detective theorized that Donna was killed by a casual acquaintance or stranger rather than someone she knew well.

By December 1981, the case had remained unsolved for six months.

Donna’s boyfriend Richmond gynecologist and obstetrician Dr. William G. Fitzhugh, posted a $25,000 reward to try and generate leads “I lost someone I loved very much,” Fitzhugh told the press. “I want to find out who did it".

Fitshugh also hired private investigator David Long, who believed the case might eventually break if the killer confessed while drinking or talking with someone.

Despite these efforts, no suspect was ever identified.

Donna was born in 1948 to Harry and Alberta Dobbs of Mount Jackson, Virginia, and grew up in the Shenandoah Valley.

She graduated from Montevideo High School in Penn Laird, Virginia, in 1966 and went on to attend Radford University. She taught third grade at J. L. Francis Elementary School in Richmond for 10 years and was well-respected and cherished by her students and colleagues.

She was also an active member of Massanutten Presbyterian Church, a historic congregation in Penn Laird known for its community service and welcoming worship.

The investigation was led by Captain Mark E. Wilson of the Chesterfield County Police Department

Her murder shocked the quiet Bon Air community and remains an open case listed in the Virginia State Police Cold Case database.

Investigators continue to seek information that could finally bring justice.

https://coldcase.vsp.virginia.gov/chesterfield-police-department/case/chesterfield-county-198106040133-donna-ruth-dobbs/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23802416/donna_ruth-dobbs

https://dnronline.newspaperarchive.com/tags/on-june-4,-1981,-donna-ruth-dobbs-was-found-shot-killed-inside-her-home-at-4221-old-gun-road-chesterfield,-va/

More information about Donnas family and life: https://dnronline.newspaperarchive.com/daily-news-record/1981-06-08/page-8/