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 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. 

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

Death at a radio station

It was the end of his Friday late-night shift, and Stephon Edgerton was about to go home.

He never made it.

On Jan. 20, 2012, Edgerton, a disc jockey for radio station WGOV who used the on-air name DJ Juan Gatti, stepped outside the station, located west of Valdosta on U.S. 84 — and was shot.

Despite being hit once in the head and twice in the torso, the disc jockey managed to call Lowndes County’s 911 center for help. The call came in at 11:53 p.m., then-deputy Coroner Walter Wacter said at the time.

“This case is unique in that the victim of the homicide is the one who called it in,” said Capt. Stryde Jones with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, who at the time was a lieutenant.

Within minutes, deputies, state troopers and an ambulance crew descended on the building, which was a combined facility for several radio stations — WGOV, WAAC and WLYX.

Deputies found Edgerton lying face down outside the station. He managed to live long enough to give authorities a description of the shooter — a white man wearing a white skull cap or face mask, said then-sheriff Chris Prine.

Edgerton was taken by ambulance to South Georgia Medical Center, where he was declared dead at 12:53 a.m., Wacter said.

K9 units from the sheriff’s office worked the fields surrounding the station through the next morning and tracked the assailant as far as a nearby power line. Across U.S. 84, investigators could see where a car had pulled off about three-quarters of a mile from the station, Prine said.

“We think (the shooter) got in a car and headed east,” he said.

Investigators found a soda can and a small bag of chips outside the station, the sheriff said.

There was no apparent motive and very little forensic evidence. Edgerton was not robbed and the assailant apparently said nothing.

“He was not a high-risk victim. He had a happy home life. His kids loved him. His wife loved him,” said Wanda Edwards, then a captain with the sheriff’s office.

A reward was offered for information in the case but no arrest was ever made. Jones said Monday there have been no more new leads, though the case remains active. Edgerton, an Army veteran deployed to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, left behind a wife, Hilda, and three children: Mia, then 13, Christian, 8 and Winston, 6.

“I want people to remember that (Stephon) was a loving man, a Christian man … he was known as Juan Gatti to everyone else, but to us, he was a husband and father,” Hilda Edgerton said a few years ago. “We will not stop until the person who is responsible for taking him from us is caught.”

She ended by quoting Romans 12:19 (KJV): “Vengeance is mine. I will repay, thus saith the Lord …”

– Terry Richards, The Valdosta Daily Times

Two stories, one suspect

One day in the summer of 1996, two stories appeared on the front page of The Moultrie Observer dealing with two separate slayings.

One story reported robbery as the motive in a case where a Hispanic man killed another Hispanic man due to the suspect having some of the victim’s property in his possession at the time of his arrest. The victim, Nicaragua native Ervin Antonio Gallo, lived on the same block in Northeast Moultrie as the suspect.

Police found Gallo’s body in a brown Ford van parked on Northside Drive. Officers were dispatched there after neighbors reported the killing and location of the body.

His autopsy showed he was killed by two shots to the head from a .22-caliber rifle.

The second story gave the cause of death of an African-American woman whose skeletal remains were found in a creek bed in northwest Moultrie. Berna L. James died of multiple stab wounds, according to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation autopsy performed in Moultrie in the days after a member of the Nehemiah Lodge No. 138 found her body about 120 feet behind their clubhouse.

On Aug. 26, 1996, several members of the club were waiting for a member with a key to show up to open the lodge building. Noticing tire tracks behind the lodge, an area known as “lover’s lane,” they decided to check out the grounds.

It was when one of them decided to check the water level in the creek that passes behind the 507 West Bypass location that he saw the body. He told The Observer at the time that the body was dumped down inside the creek.

Prior to the discovery of James’ body in September, the last time a family member had seen her was in March 1996. Her mother lived in Sylvester, where James was born and her children stayed with relatives. Her father lived in Moultrie, and she spent time in both cities. At the time, police said no missing person report was filed because she often was out of town.

Although both victims were 28, the similarities would seem to stop there.

Except, perhaps, for their alleged killer.

In 1997, Luzardo Eddy J. Cazanas, who was 32 at the time of Gallo’s death, was convicted of murder in his killing.

Cazanas has been in prison since June 19, 1997, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

The Gallo case was pretty cut and dry, as far as murder cases go.

Roger Lindsay was an investigator with the Moultrie Police Department at the time, and he investigated Gallo’s death. Now retired as a commander of the MPD, Lindsay said that Cazanas made an unusual request of a friend.

“He asked the owner (of a van) if he could use his van to dispose of a body,” Lindsay said. “The owner of the van said no.”

The evening James’ body was found, Lindsay worked into the night and personnel from the Moultrie Fire Department, who were providing lighting, stayed there all night to make sure no person or any animals disturbed the bones.

“The next day (former Colquitt County Coroner) Rodney Brian and (GBI forensic pathologist) Dr. (Antonio) Clark spent the day in the ditch sifting the scene,” Lindsay said. “Dr. Clark told me during the exam her skeletal remains had several stab wounds from a knife.”

Retired police Sgt. Joe Smith, now deceased, was familiar with James and told Lindsay at the time that he had not seen her in several months. When police learned that James’ parents had not seen her in some time either, they obtained her dental records and made the identification based on them.

Later, some pieces started falling into place for Lindsay. One came from the owner of the van who told police he had refused to let Cazanas borrow the van to dispose of Gallo’s body.

“He (Cazanas) told him he knew a place near the Cope Rendering plant where he could dispose of the body,” Lindsay said. That was the same area where James’ body was found.

“Her father said (he) saw her on Christmas day,” Lindsay said. “He said there was a Hispanic-looking guy in the car who never got out.”

Lindsay also remembered that Clark, the forensic pathologist, had told him earlier that if he uncovered a knife during the course of the investigation he could determine whether or not it was the one used in James’ slaying.

“When the guy (Cazanas) was arrested he had a knife, and then we found the body,” Lindsay said. “When the suspect in Gallo’s murder was arrested he had a big knife on his person. I kept saying this guy we’ve got in jail is a suspect.”

At the point where it looked like a case could be built, Lindsay ran into a problem. The knife had disappeared from the police evidence room.

“The knife was disposed of, so I didn’t have the knife to give to Dr. Clark,” Lindsay said. “We never did follow up on this lead because the knife had been disposed of.”

One potential comfort for Lindsay is that having served more than 20 years, Cazanas has already put in more time than the average time served for murder.

And, according to the Department of Corrections, he could be there for some time yet. The agency’s website gives no information on his sentence date or a date that he could become eligible for parole.

– Alan Mauldin, The Moultrie Observer

No significant leads

Joseph Ronald Sapp of Live Oak was found shot in the head multiple times at the rear of the Columbia County Fair Grounds on April 15, 1983.

According to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, no significant leads have been made since that time.

A 1983 interview with a nearby resident revealed a car fitting the description of Sapp’s 1979 Ford Fairmont drove into the ball complex at the fairgrounds, both doors opened, three to four shots were fired, both doors opened again and the car proceeded out of the complex, according to CCSO.

Several hours later, Sapp’s car was found abandoned in the wooded area at the rear of Fat Man’s Bar B Cue off of U.S. Highway 90.

The report states the crime scene proved futile for any additional information other than the tire tracks, two bullet projectiles, foot tracks and information obtained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime lab.

A search of the area where the vehicle was found revealed a knit cap that belonged to Sapp’s young son and a welder’s shirt.

Public Information Officer Sgt. Murray Smith said many folks have been interviewed but no one seems to know what took place.

Smith said the case is still actively being investigated. In 2012, a new detective was assigned to the case and DNA was sent to be retested since technology has advanced in that area since the murder.

The results did not bring about any leads, according to CCSO.

“No law-enforcement agency wants cases to go unsolved, and we have certainly not given up,” Smith said. “Some cases are not clear cut and require time and effort.

“This is a challenging case but we want justice,” he said, vowing to keep looking for the killer.

Sapp was an employee of Occidental, now PCS Phosphate, in White Springs for eight years prior to his death.

The day of his death, Sapp withdrew a large sum of money from his bank account and made calls at work to procure building supplies for the construction of a new home that was to start the next day.

According to the CCSO, Sapp called his wife at 3:37 p.m. and said he was going to the construction site after work and called again at 4:30 p.m. saying he would be working overtime.

The report states he got off work at 3:30 p.m., left Occidental around 4:30 p.m., left the bank around 5 p.m. and was seen making a small purchase at the Thriftway at 5:30 p.m. in Live Oak.

CCSO could find no one else who saw Sapp after 5:30 p.m.

Anyone with any information on the case is asked to contact Detective Sgt. Jimmy Watson at 386-752-9212.

– Jessie Box, The Suwannee Democrat

Still waiting for a telephone call

When David Garner sits on the front porch of his deer-processing and vegetable business in Hancock County, he can’t help but think of his brother, who helped found the business near Sparta several years ago.

David’s 60-year-old brother, Nelson Garner, was brutally attacked and murdered at the business on Dec. 2, 2012.

It’s been nearly five years since the Cummings man’s body was found slumped over a chair in the office of the business by his younger brother, David. And Nelson Garner’s killer has yet to be identified or brought to justice.

David Garner is now retired from plant work and running Garner’s Grinders. He said it had been nearly a year since he heard an update from authorities about his brother’s murder case.

“I brought something up to them when I called and talked with Georgia Bureau of Investigation Case Agent David Peebles about a year ago,” David Garner said during a recent interview with The Union-Recorder. “They checked into it, what I brought up, but they said they didn’t think the investigation was going in that direction and that they was OK in the way they were going with it.”

The GBI, along with the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, has been involved in jointly investigating the crime since the beginning.

A short time after the crime, David said he remembers hearing lawmen tell him and other members of his family they felt they could solve the case in about a year’s time.

“They told all of us that it wouldn’t be if; it would be when,” David said. “We all assumed it would be less than a year or something like that. And it’s been going on for five years now.”

David said when it comes to his brother’s murder, he’d like to know if authorities have a suspect or not.

“If they’ve got a suspect, I’d like to see them go ahead and arrest him,” David said. “I’d like to see them go as far as they can go in trying to prosecute him for what he did to my brother.”

David said he had some thoughts about what might have led up to his brother’s murder.

“I think it was caused by a disagreement with somebody Nelson knew,” David said, noting he believes he knows that same person.

David said he has shared the name of that person but authorities are still checking into whether that person actually had anything to do with the crime or not.

“I’ve brought up the names of several people,” David said. “I don’t know who actually did it.”

When asked what he thought the disagreement might have been, if that was the motive for someone having taken his brother’s life, David said he didn’t think it was a big disagreement.

“I think it was some little disagreement that went crazy,” David said.

He said when he walked in and discovered his brother, he immediately thought he had been shot to death because of the amount of blood coming from his brother’s head.

Authorities have never publicly revealed how Nelson Garner was killed or what weapon, if any, was used.

He said he saw at least a couple of hundred dollars in cash laying on a nearby table.

“It (money) was stacked up,” David said.

David said he doesn’t know if his brother was killed over money.

“To be honest with you, I do not know,” David said. “It was a complete shock. I couldn’t believe it.”

He said he will never get over his brother’s death.

“It’s just like the tragedy in Las Vegas. I went through the same thing as those people have just gone through,” David said.

Ultimately, David, like other members of his family, want to see justice prevail in the unsolved murder case of Nelson Garner.

He believes that one day he and other family members will get that telephone call from Agent Peebles, or someone else with the GBI, letting them know that an arrest has been made in the case.

“I think they’ve tried real hard to solve my brother’s case; I really do,” David said. “But now I don’t know what’s going on with the case. I know they’ve put a lot of money and effort into solving it. I just wish it was’t so hard on them to solve it.”

– Billy W. Hobbs, The Union-Recorder

Fetus found abandoned at landfill

More than two years later, there have been no new clues in the case of a fetus found in a landfill, said Capt. Rick Swiney, Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office.

In early January 2015, two employees of the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority were sorting through a bag of clothing when they found in a recyclable container and discovered a fetus in a plastic bag with a blanket and a pair of ladies’ size-five “No Boundaries” brand blue jeans.

The fetus appeared to be about five or six months old.

The bag was in a larger container that held recyclable material from across Whitfield County. The container was brought to the landfill on Dec. 31, 2014. Officials said the fetus had to have been in the container when it was dumped.

Swiney said the case is not being investigated as a homicide. Anyone with information about the fetus is asked to call the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office at (706) 278-1233 and ask for the detectives’ office.

– Charles Oliver, The Dalton Citizen

Hit-and-run mystery continues

In the summer of 1998, Barney Major never made it home. 

Major, a Boston native, was walking home on Grooverville Road and died after a hit-and-run. 

“He was struck and killed by an unknown party or parties,” said Lt. Tim Watkins, Thomas County Sheriff’s Office chief investigator.   

The accident occurred close to a mile toward Grooverville Road’s intersection with Whitney Camp Road. 

Georgia State Patrol worked the case as a hit-and-run, Watkins said. A car was found and processed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The vehicle was determined not to have any relation with the case, Watkins said. 

“We’ve never been able to find that information,” he said. 

No new information has been uncovered.

– Jordan Barela, The Times-Enterprise