VALDOSTA — Across the SunLight Project coverage area — Valdosta, Dalton, Thomasville, Milledgeville, Tifton and Moultrie, Ga., and Live Oak, Jasper and Mayo, Fla., along with the surrounding counties — murders, disappearances and mysteries, some stretching back decades, remain unresolved.

Earlier this year, the SunLight Project team presented cold cases throughout Georgia and North Florida. In the weeks following that first series, authorities announced the arrest of a 24-year-old cold case involving Grant Green, an insurance man killed in Lowndes County in the early 1990s.

Last week and this week, the SunLight Project team looks at more unsolved cases from its coverage area.

 

A brother remembered

Anthony Davis was a family man, married with two children. He was outgoing, loved to laugh and had a really bad sweet tooth.

This is how Barbara Davis remembers her little brother. But she also remembers the day a Lowndes County detective called her on a Monday morning back in January 2005 asking if she knew where Anthony was.

“We were sleeping in because it was a holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and he asked if I knew where he was,” Barbara said. “I told him I didn’t and he said he had a body that could be his.”

It was Anthony’s body. Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office identified the body by tattoos, Barbara said. Years ago, Anthony served time for robbery, so his tattoos were in the sheriff’s database.

Anthony’s murder was brutal, Capt. Stryde Jones said.

“Not only was he shot but then they set his body on fire,” Jones said. “Young teenagers were riding motorcycles out by the big power lines and saw smoke, so, naturally, they went to see what was burning.”

Jones said they interviewed at least 100 people on Anthony’s case, from friends and family to less-than-savory people he reportedly knew, but deputies found no leads.

The suspect or suspects more than likely burned Anthony’s body to destroy any evidence and make it harder for police to identify him, Jones said. The department has suspects but nothing concrete to pin anyone down.

Despite the lack of evidence and lack of leads, Jones said they always have hope someone will come forward with a new piece of information.

“Maybe somebody has information and things have changed in their life and they’re willing to come forward,” Jones said. “We worked a case once where an ex-spouse came to us several years after the murder and told us her ex-husband did it. That led to a conviction.”

For Barbara, finding the person who took her little brother’s life is about finally receiving closure. She said not knowing who killed him makes her feel like anyone could have done it.

“I look around every day, especially when I’m in Valdosta, and I just wonder ‘Who?’” she said. “You just don’t know who you are talking to. Who that person could be associated with or if that person could be the person or related to the person. It’s a mystery you just can’t solve.”

It eats away at her, she said, but she believes it must also be eating away at the person who killed Anthony. She said no one could do something so terrible to a person and not be tortured by it.

“To do something like that, your conscience shouldn’t let you rest and that’s punishment by itself,” Barbara said.

She said she hopes whoever killed Anthony will eventually be incapable of living with the guilt and surrender to law enforcement. Until then, she and Anthony’s family have to live everyday hoping.

“Not only did they destroy Anthony’s life but he also destroyed a family,” Barbara said.

– Thomas Lynn, The Valdosta Daily Times

Mystery remains in Rhames case

A headless body. A life sentence. A hired psychic.

The disappearance and murder of Jenny Rhames took many twists and turns in the case’s eight-year span in the 1990s.

Despite a conviction, a mystery remains — the location of Rhames’ skull.

A psychic, hired by a private Thomasville resident, sought answers in the case, which began in July 1991, when Rhames was last seen during the Fourth of July holiday.

Rhames went to the Wade Chastain Road residence of Michael David “Mickey” Griffin, her ex-common-law husband, to drop off her dog. She and Griffin had two young children together. 

“She was reported missing,” said Lt. Tim Watkins, Thomas County Sheriff’s Office chief investigator, adding Rhames was reported to be going to Panama City, Fla., to visit her sister, who had been in a traffic crash. 

Watkins joined the sheriff’s office staff several years after the Rhames case. 

The Griffin residence was found burned to the ground. Rhames’ Mercury Cougar, disabled by disconnected ignition wires, remained parked at the charred scene.

In October 1991, Rhames’ remains were found by hunters in McIntosh County woods, five miles north of Darien. Her remains were identified in November 1991 at the state crime lab in Atlanta. 

“She was identified by (her) bones, because she was in a car accident previously,” Watkins said.

A few days after Rhames’ headless body was discovered, Griffin, originally from McIntosh County, was arrested there.

Griffin was charged with her murder.

“They indicted Griffin in McIntosh County and they tried him over there,” said David Hutchings, former longtime Thomas County clerk of superior court.

The August 1992 trial in Darien resulted in a hung jury, and a mistrial was declared. Following the mistrial, more evidence was found, pinpointing that the murder occurred in Thomas County.  

Griffin, again, was charged with murder in January 1994. A kidnapping charge also was lodged against the defendant.

Although charged in 1994, Griffin did not stand trial until August 1999.

Mark Mitchell, former assistant district attorney in the Southern Judicial Circuit, said he argued the case two to three times in the Georgia Supreme Court before the case was tried in Thomas County.

Mitchell, who serves today as judge of State Court of Thomas County and Thomasville Municipal Court, argued the Rhames case with Jim Hardy, lead prosecutor in the case and now a Southern Circuit judge.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty.

Hutchings noted the case used a unified appeal procedure, which is used in cases seeking the death penalty. A unified appeal procedure, Hutchings said, uses a checklist for the judge and lawyers when seeking the death penalty.

“It took several, several hearings and several months at a time to go through the hearings,” Hutchings said.

“I have never seen a criminal case that got more procedurally screwed up than that,” Mitchell said of the case’s procedural policy.

Along with seeking the death penalty, the case played out in court in many different ways, such as tape-recorded threats Griffin made toward Rhames.

“It was a lot of twists and turns in the case,” Hutchings said. “It was not an easy case from a lot of standpoints.”

“This case just had everything,” Mitchell said.

Griffin was found guilty but was spared the death penalty. Given two consecutive life sentences for each charge, he is incarcerated at Smith State Prison in Glennville. 

Patti Dozier, Thomasville Times-Enterprise senior reporter, covered the Rhames case constantly, from the beginning of the reported disappearance to the court sentencing.

“I covered every aspect of everything that happened,” Dozier said.

A 40-plus year reporter, Dozier remembers going to the office of the late Bob Geer, then with the Thomas County Sheriff’s Office, at the historic Thomas County Courthouse. Dozier arrived for her usual 7:30 a.m. daily meeting with Geer on July 5, 1991.

“I noticed wet clumps of clay going up the stairs,” she recalled.

Geer, Dozier said, informed her of Rhames’ disappearance and law-enforcement’s efforts to find the missing woman.

Dozier knew Rhames. Rhames worked at Thomasville Animal Hospital, where Dozier met the veterinarian employee.

“She was very sweet and calming, very kind,” Dozier said of Rhames’ way with animals.

Dozier covered the trial gavel to gavel. 

She said she felt a “huge responsibility” to Rhames and her family to “expose Griffin’s cruel nature and not leave anything out.” 

The trial not only had an effect on Rhames’ family but also taxpayers. According to a January 2007 Times-Enterprise story, the trial cost close to $300,000.

“It was extremely expensive to taxpayers,” Dozier noted.

Rhames’ death is still upsetting, Dozier said. A mother lost her daughter; children lost their mother, and the “animal kingdom lost a really sweet girl who cared about God’s creatures.”

“Of all the murder trials and other trials that I’ve covered, the (Rhames) case was the most grueling, I think, for everyone involved,” Dozier said.

Jordan Barela, Thomasville Times Enterprise

Death at a call for help

Working for his family’s wrecker service, Johnny Eugene Abraham Parnell responded to a call for help on Interstate 10 on the morning of Dec. 4, 1989.

Parnell, 24, was later found on the side of I-10 near Live Oak, Fla., killed by a gunshot wound.

Parnell was found by a passerby, according to a Suwannee Democrat article, which also reported that Parnell was shot in the back of the head.

Jeff Cameron, a lieutenant with the Suwannee County Sheriff’s Office, said the weapon that killed Parnell was unique and there aren’t many in circulation.

The SCSO and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement tried tracking down the weapons sold in the area but never had any breakthroughs.

Cameron said there was no suspect located at the time of the murder.

At the request of the family, Cameron reopened the case May 23, 2014.

All the evidence was retested for DNA evidence.

Cameron said they did find a partial DNA profile.

“It’s still not enough to identify anyone, but in the future, I hope one day there will be a match,” Cameron said.

Cameron added there was never a clear motive identified for the murder.

“They never really had much to go on other than rumors,” Cameron said.

— Jessie R. Box, Suwannee Democrat

Unsolved hit-and-run

EATONTON — It’s been a little more than six years since the body of Eddie “Sonny” Broadus was discovered on the side of the road not far from his home in Eatonton but Police Chief Kent Lawrence remembers it like it was yesterday.

Eatonton Police Department officers are reminded every time they go into their squad room that the vehicular homicide case remains unsolved. A folder with the name of the victim hangs on a bulletin board to remind them every day.

The outside of the folder hanging on the bulletin board reads: Open Case – Broadus hit-and-run, Aug. 5, 2011.

Broadus, who walked everywhere he went, was known by lots of people, simply by his last name, said Lawrence, who has served as police chief of the small city in Putnam County for more than 35 years.

“We just all called him Broadus,” Lawrence said. “Everybody knew him as Broadus. He was born and raised here.”

“He drank heavily and just kinda stood out on various street corners,” Lawrence said. “He had some mental issues. He was a little slow but everybody seemed to like him.”

Broadus worked odds-and-ends type of jobs in the community.

“He walked to town every morning and back home every night, unless somebody saw him, knew him and would drop him off at his home,” Lawrence said.

His body was found about midway down on Glennwood Springs Road on the morning of Aug. 5, 2011.

Lawrence said he remembers exactly what he was doing on the day he was informed someone’s body was lying in a ditch.

“I was directing traffic at Glennwood Springs and U.S. Highway 441, because it was the first day of school,” Lawrence said. “I had a man pull up and tell me that there was a fellow laying in the ditch right up the road.”

Lawrence said he just started directing school traffic when the man approached him and told him about the body. Lawrence said he immediately drove up the road. 

“I could pretty much tell that the man was deceased,” Lawrence said, noting he couldn’t identify the man as being Broadus at the time. “So, I immediately called for the Eatonton Fire Department to come out and park the fire truck in the lane of traffic to block the view of Mr. Broadus’ body being on the shoulder of the road.”

The police chief said he parked his patrol vehicle at an angle nearby with its blue lights turned on. Lawrence said he later called for assistance from special agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region 6 Office in Milledgeville.

At the time, he alerted both state agencies. The police chief said he didn’t immediately know the cause of death at the time.

“I didn’t know if he had died from a gunshot, or if he had been killed in a hit-and-run or what,” Lawrence said. “So, that’s why I had both of those agencies come to the scene.”

Believing at the time the death might be related to a hit-and-run, Lawrence said he called troopers with the Georgia State Patrol post in Madison.

It was later determined by local and state authorities the death was the result of a hit-and-run. Authorities were able to determine from the injuries that the victim suffered a traffic-related death.

“The evidence showed us that it was a vehicle that struck Mr. Broadus,” Lawrence said. “So that took it out of the GBI’s hands and turned it over to the GSP.”

The police chief said his department had received extensive assistance in working the case from troopers with the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstructive Team.

“Ever since 2011, they have worked with us on this unsolved hit-and-run case,” Lawrence said. “That’s how we came up with all the vehicles and years, the makes and models, and the type of vehicle that struck and killed Broadus.”

The police chief said he had officers pull records related to the types of vehicles that might have been involved in hitting and killing the victim.

“I had my investigators go back and pull these year models for Eatonton and Putnam County,” Lawrence said. “And they went to everybody that we had a name on and owned one of these vehicles in Eatonton. They personally knocked on the door of the owners of these vehicles. We had a good list, just here in Eatonton.”

He said he believes Broadus was hit sometime between 11 p.m., Aug. 4, and 7:30 a.m., Aug. 5, 2011.

The only piece of evidence found at the crime scene was a broken piece of signal light from the front-end of the vehicle that hit and killed Broadus.

The night before Broadus’ body was discovered, a large crowd reportedly attended a race at a track in Putnam County.

“There was a lot of people there,” Lawrence said, noting he wasn’t accusing anyone who attended the race as being the person that struck and killed Broadus. “But it could have been one of them.”

Lawrence theorized someone who attended the race on Aug. 4, 2011, could have taken a shortcut back out onto U.S. Highway 441 from Glennwork Springs Road and hit the by-pass to go home.

“Somebody could have hit Mr. Broadus coming from the Huddle House, or something like that, going back to Madison or Covington or some other place nearby,” Lawrence said.

The type of vehicle believed responsible for causing the death of Broadus is between a 1994 and a 1996 Chevrolet pickup truck or SUV.

Anyone with information about the unsolved hit-and-run vehicular homicide case should call the Eatonton Police Department at (706) 485-3551. 

Billy W. Hobbs, The Union-Recorder

Unsolved mystery on a dirt road

Authorities are reviewing the 37-year-old unsolved death of a Moody Air Force Base airman to see if improved technology can shed any light on the case.

The body of Mary Susan Humphrey of Lenexa, Kansas, was found on a dirt road in Berrien County by hunters Sunday, June 15, 1980, according to news reports of the time.

An investigation led law enforcement to arrest a former boyfriend of Humphrey but he was tried and acquitted by a Berrien County jury on Oct. 10, 1980.

There have been no major developments in the case since, said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Ben Collins. The GBI remains in touch with her father, who lives in Montana, he said.

“We are going back, looking at the physical evidence and trying to determine if it would help to use technology available now that wasn’t available then,” including DNA procedures, Collins said.

Humphrey was last seen by friends Friday, May 30, 1980, in Valdosta after leaving Grego’s, which was a popular night club at the time, with a male she met that night, according to GBI records.

Humphrey was an air-traffic controller who lived off base near Walker’s Crossing. She left the bar and went to the man’s apartment off Forrest Street in Valdosta, according to the GBI.

The man told officers Humphrey wanted to go home at about 3 a.m. and left his apartment walking down Forrest Street near Park Avenue, the GBI said.

Humphrey was a white female, 23, with red hair, stood 5-foot-3 and weighed 128 pounds. She was last seen wearing a long-sleeve burgundy shirt and dark-colored slacks, according to the GBI.

If anyone has any information concerning Mary Susan Humphrey, contact the GBI Office in Douglas at (912) 389-4103.

– Terry Richards, The Valdosta Daily Times

 

Businessman death unsolved

Live Oak businessman Danny McCrimon, 54, left home on the morning of June 13, 1993, and was not seen for five months.

McCrimon was reported missing by his family several days after he went missing.

His truck was found Aug. 4, 1993, in woods outside of Lakeland, Ga.

The Suwannee Democrat previously reported the area around his truck was searched for two days and no clues to the disappearance were found.

Lt. Jeff Cameron said the Suwannee County Sheriff’s Office was not the lead agency for the investigation, but it did help when needed.

“I know Sheriff Robert Leonard checked every airport in the area for McCrimon on a flight. There was no results,” Cameron said.

His body was found Nov. 12, 1993, in Lakeland.

Cameron said the body was severely decomposed when found but he wouldn’t say how McCrimon was killed.

The Suwannee Democrat previously reported the body was found 350 yards from where McCrimon’s truck was located.

Cameron said the vegetation was thick where the body was found.

“I know the sheriff’s posse searched the area,” Cameron said.

According to McCrimon’s obituary, he was the owner of McCrimon’s Office Supply, a member of the Live Oak Elks Lodge #1165, past president of the Suwannee County Chamber of Commerce and past president of the Suwannee County Country Club.

— Jessie R. Box, Suwannee Democrat

Searching for answers

About 10 years ago, a body was found near Interstate 75 near Jennings, Fla.

There wasn’t much information or evidence at the time, and time hasn’t changed that.

A farmer found the body in a field between County Road 146 and I-75 while spreading fertilizer on it Sept. 6, 2007.

According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators at that time, the man was dead for at least a week.

The Hamilton County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office received a missing person’s report from the Valdosta Police Department and were able to match a palm print from the missing person to match it to the body, identifying the victim as Anthony Paul Henry, 36.

“The only thing we could find out at the time was Anthony Paul Henry was from Valdosta, Ga.,” Hamilton County Sheriff Harrell Reid said. “There were no other clues at the time, it had been about a week or two before someone found him and called us.”

His death was confirmed as a homicide by Reid. The victim had been shot twice in the head and dumped near the interstate.

The case is ongoing, and Reid said if any new information or evidence was to come forward, it would be pursued.

— Alexis Spoehr, Jasper News

Recent case goes cold

It was in the heat of this past summer when a Moultrie woman’s body was found at her home. But despite it being a little more than three months ago, the hunt for her killer has gone stone cold.

Mattie Green Harris was found dead of a gunshot wound at her Third Avenue home on the morning of July 18.

So far the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Moultrie Police Department have little or nothing to go on in solving this crime, according to authorities. So much so they consider it a markedly different mystery than those they usually encounter – as in no information flowing in, even from the grapevine.

From what they have gathered, the 68-year-old had no enemies and was loved in the neighborhood, even by those who on any other occasion may have been considered suspects in the shooting.

“We’ve talked to some of the roughest people in the city limits of Moultrie,” said Jamy Steinberg, special agent in charge of the GBI’s Thomasville office. “Some of these people we’ve sent to prison. They’re saying, ‘If I hear something, you’ll be the first to know.'”

Some of the people questioned said they were appreciative of Harris, who often gave them advice they should turn their lives around.

“She’s talked to them and tried to steer them right,” Steinberg said. “From what we’ve learned about her, she helped out in the community. We’ve seen absolutely no reason for her to be targeted.”

The neighborhood where Harris lived is usually bustling with activity but police have not found anyone who had any information. They have stressed that even the smallest clue, no matter how inconsequential it may seem, could help them solve the slaying.

A reward has been offered, and increased, since the shooting.

About two weeks after Harris’ death, a private donor, who did not wish to be identified, and church congregations, who passed the offering plates in search of cash, pooled donations to establish a $1,500 reward.

Gov. Nathan Deal, through an Aug. 30 executive order, increased that amount by $1,000 to a total of $2,500.

Police are hoping the added incentive helps convince someone to come forward with helpful information.

Anyone who has a tip can call the GBI at (229) 225-4090, or the Moultrie police tip line at (229) 890-5449.

– Alan Mauldin, Moultrie Observer

 

Death at Spook Bridge

On Sept. 13, 1999, Charles Harper went on an early morning walk near “Spook Bridge” on the border of Lowndes and Brooks counties.

That day, 18 years ago, he found the body of 20-year-old Ray Felton below the bridge with multiple gunshot wounds to his head. He had been murdered, execution style, the previous night.

Harper called the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office to report what he found, according to a Valdosta Daily Times story published at the time. It was later determined Felton was a few feet within the Lowndes County line, making it a Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office case.

There was little evidence for the deputies to work with, the report states. Then LCSO Lt. Logan Henderson told a reporter at the time there were no leads. Deputies could track Felton’s whereabouts that day until about 8 p.m. Sunday but had little else to go on.

The area around the bridge is a popular, out-of-the way spot for parties. To make things more difficult, firing rounds into the river is among the favorite activities of revelers in the area, the story states. Then, Henderson said investigators biggest hope of catching the murderer is someone saw something and would report it to the department.

Now, nearly 20 years later, the case remains just as cold as it was when Felton’s body was first found, said Capt. Stryde Jones of the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office. No one has come forward and deputies have no new leads.

Jones said he was last seen a couple of days before. 

“We know he went out there with somebody and signs point to the fact that he knew that person,” Jones said. “There were no signs of a struggle, no signs the body was dumped there, and we still have no suspects.”

The department hasn’t given up hope and neither has Felton’s mother, Jones said. She still calls him every now and again asking if there is any news. Every time he has to tell her the same thing.

“That’s the problem with these kinds of cases, the cold cases. There’s nothing really to go on,” Jones said. “You just have to keep up hope something is going to change.”

– Tom Lynn | The Valdosta Daily Times