EATONTON, Ga. — There is as much mystery today as there was four years ago surrounding the murders of Russell and Shirley Dermond, who lived in a beautiful home in the plush gated community of Reynolds’ Great Waters on Lake Oconee in Putnam County.

This past weekend marked the fourth-year anniversary of their murders and authorities admit they still haven’t been able to establish the type of lead needed to find the couple’s killers.

But for the first time since the slayings, more information is being revealed to the media — such as how the 88-year-old Russell Dermond might have been killed before he was decapitated.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills talked in-depth about the case Thursday with The Union-Recorder.

“We know for a fact that Russell Dermond’s head was surgically removed from his body in the garage and that he was already dead at the time, and that’s all we know,” Sills said.

The sheriff said he believes Russell Dermond’s death was caused by a gunshot wound to the head.

“I believe his killer used a small caliber handgun to shoot Russell Dermond in the head and then they took some sort of sharp instrument and cut his head off,” Sills said.

Even though Dermond’s corpse was found at the home, Sills said he was not certain the residence was the crime scene.

Sills again can’t say where the actual crime scene was because one has never been established.

And the same thing is true of where the crime scene was for Russell’s wife’s murder.

What is certain about how she met her death is that she was beaten, said the veteran sheriff, who has solved dozens of homicide cases during his lengthy law enforcement career.

“Based on the way Mrs. Dermond was killed, there should have been more evidence,” Sills said. “But I actually don’t believe she was killed there at the house.”

Local, state and federal authorities originally thought Shirley Dermond had been abducted by her husband’s killers. A large reward subsequently was announced by the FBI for information as to Shirley Dermond’s whereabouts, and large digital billboards popped up along heavily-traveled roads throughout Georgia’s Lake Country and elsewhere.

It was about two weeks after deputies and detectives with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office answered the call from a neighbor who found the body of World War II veteran Russell Dermond that they learn what happened to 87-year-old Shirley Dermond.

A pair of fishermen alerted local authorities that they had come across a body floating on the lake, about six miles from where the Dermonds lived.

“Her body had been dumped in the water and a couple of cinder blocks tied to it,” Sills said, noting a synthetic cord had been used to bind her feet to the concrete blocks.

Sills said it immediately became obvious to him that whoever murdered Shirley Dermond apparently had intended on her body not being found.

“It’s my belief they weren’t professional killers,” Sills said. “But whoever put that body out there where they put it, they no doubt ever intended on it ever being found.”

Shirley Dermond’s body was recovered from waters more than 60-feet deep — one of the deepest parts of the Lake Oconee and a short distance by boat from the dam.

Years before the couple was killed, they had sold the boat they once had and kept at the dock down by their dock behind their home. And Russell had stopped playing golf.

“They were in fact getting ready to give a lot of things to Goodwill,” Sills said.

Russell and Shirley had been invited to attend a Kentucky Derby party at the home of friends who lived nearby on the weekend of May 3, 2014. Although they accepted the invitation, they never showed up.

“These were all neighbors and friends having this party,” Sills said, noting that the Dermond’s didn’t have to drive to it.

It wasn’t until two days later that Russell’s headless corpse was discovered in the garage of his home by a neighbor.

Sills wants desperately to solve the double-murder case, so that the killers can be brought to justice and so the Dermonds two sons and daughter can get closure.

Sills admitted that it still bothers him that the case hasn’t been solved. And every time he hears about a double-murder that has occurred somewhere in Georgia or out-of-state, he said he calls authorities working the cases just to make sure there are no similarities.

One such check recently led Sills to call the Polk County Florida Sheriff’s Office.

The case there involved a suspect who had killed somebody in Florida and killed someone else in South Carolina where a beheading took place.

“I was on the phone, immediately, to check and see whether there might be any similarities between their case and our case,” Sills said. 

He said unfortunately, he didn’t see any connection between that case and his in Putnam County.

Another example of where searches for possible connected murder cases have happened led him to South Carolina last month. An elderly couple who lived on a lake was murdered.

“I’ve been in communication with state police up there,” Sills said. “But that case appears to have been one committed by a local individual.”

Anyone with information about the murders of Russell and Shirley Dermond should call the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office at 706-485-8557.