Fingerprints in blood link Macon man to 1997 cold-case murder in Florida, report says
A Macon man was jailed Tuesday after his arrest in connection with the 1997 strangulation slaying of a woman in Orlando, Florida, officials said.
Jimmy Lee Mahone, 51, who lives on Lilly Avenue just south of Montpelier Avenue, was arrested on a murder charge and was awaiting extradition to Florida, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Mahone, according to Florida prison records, has served time for crimes that include burglary, theft and selling cocaine. It was unclear how long he had lived in Macon, but online business records show him connected to a lawn service in Woodstock around 2013.
The Orlando Sentinel newspaper on Tuesday reported that Mahone was wanted in Florida on a second-degree murder charge in the April 15, 1997, slaying of Donna Jean Byrd.
Byrd, 42, was “found strangled inside a home ... after deputies were called to the home about a possible burglary,” the Sentinel reported, citing sheriff’s officials there.
The newspaper noted that detectives at the scene in 1997 discovered “a couple of fingerprints in blood ... but were not able to identify them.”
But recently, “detectives with the cold case unit (in Orange County, Florida) re-submitted the prints for review” and they were linked to Mahone, the newspaper reported.
Byrd’s obituary in the Sentinel described her as a homemaker and an Elyria, Ohio, native, who moved to the Orlando area a decade prior to her death.