Shocking Lake Oconee murders have gone unsolved for 7 years. Now there’s a new lead
For seven years, the killings of Russell and Shirley Dermond at Lake Oconee have gone unsolved, the motive unknown and the culprit or culprits uncaught in a bizarre double slaying that has remained as baffling as it was heinous.
But a possible lead unearthed in recent months by Putnam County sheriff’s investigators working in conjunction with the FBI has detectives somewhat optimistic about a chance to finally zero in on a suspect.
Sheriff Howard Sills, who is personally spearheading the probe, earlier this week declined to publicly divulge what evidentiary avenue was being pursued, but told The Telegraph that the effort could prove promising.
“I am currently trying to obtain data of a highly technical nature that I believe will be fruitful. ... I’ve obtained some of it and I have reason to believe that when I obtain the rest of the data and sort it out that it may well lead me to a suspect or suspects in this case,” Sills said.
No arrests, few leads
There have been no arrests and until now few if any useful leads since the investigation into the Dermond slayings began the morning of May 6, 2014, when Russell Dermond’s decapitated body was found lying in a puddle of blood inside his closed carport.
Russell Joseph “Russ” Dermond, 88, had last been seen on May 2, the day before that year’s Kentucky Derby. A neighbor had invited the Dermonds to a Derby party, but they never showed up.
Friends of the couple grew concerned. After not hearing from the Dermonds for a few days, the friends went to the lakefront Dermond house that is nestled in a wooded cove on Carolyn Drive to check on the pair.
The 3,200-square-foot, $1 million home in Great Waters subdivision, lies just under 10 miles due south of Interstate 20 and a dozen or so miles northeast of downtown Eatonton.
Fishermen find Shirley’s body
The body of Shirley Wilcox Dermond, who was 87, turned up May 16, 10 days after her husband’s. It had been weighed down with concrete blocks but surfaced in about 90 feet of water, tangled in treetops just below the surface. It was found by fishermen.
The spot where her body, which had not been decapitated, was discovered is about five miles down the lake from the home the Dermonds, New Jersey natives, had retired to about a decade and a half prior.
Autopsies revealed that the Dermonds, who’d been married for 68 years, died of head wounds, but exactly how or what they were killed with is unknown.
Investigators have since scoured the couple’s financial and other records for clues to anything that might put them on the killer’s trail, but so far nothing has helped.
Russell Dermond, once an avid golfer, had retired from corporate life in the Northeast in the late 1980s and moved to Georgia to run a chain of Atlanta-area fast-food restaurants.
Shirley Dermond had been a homemaker who in her later years liked gardening, playing bridge and doing crossword puzzles.
Five years ago in 2016, one of the couple’s sons, Keith Dermond, who lived in Florida, told The Telegraph that he hadn’t given up hope his parents’ killer might someday be caught. But he was also realistic.
“It’s very hard to catch somebody when you don’t even know their motive. You have no clue as to what you’re looking for. I always thought that, you know, maybe it was some kind of a serial killer kind of thing … just because of the weird things that (the killer) did. But the thing is, … a lot of the times serial killers are very hard to catch. They know what they’re doing. … But you think there would be other crimes,” Keith Dermond said.
“Unless somebody comes forward and gives them a clue, what else do they have to go on? It’s two years later. … I think the only chance we have at this point (is) that he trips himself up.”
‘I think about this every day’
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This week, while Sheriff Sills declined to elaborate on what clue he may have in hand, he said the material was “something I am actively working on.”
The Dermond mystery still generates its share of sometimes-kooky tips, which investigators dutifully check out.
A few weeks back, a tip from a college professor in another state seemed plausible until Sills ran it down. The professor claimed that a “psycho” love interest she had met online was responsible for killing the Dermonds. She even emailed Sills hundreds of pages of notes supporting her claim, which Sills debunked.
“I’m not exaggerating,” Sills said. “I think about this (case) every day no matter where I am. ... The concern of it may have diminished in the public, because time, of course, erodes all things.”
“I travel all over the United States of America and the first thing (people) ask me no matter where I go” is about the Dermond killings, he said. “They’ll say, ‘They never came up with nothing on that murder, did they?’ I’ll say, ‘Well, you’re looking at they. And they ain’t give up yet.’”
This story was originally published May 5, 2021 at 5:00 AM.