PANAMA CITY — When investigators searched Joanne Benner’s home not long after the 21-year-old wife went missing, they found a patch of carpet removed from her Titus Road home in Bayou George.
To date, her body has not been found after the suspicious disappearance in 1976; however, investigators still are convinced Benner was killed.
And they claim to know who killed her, but have never been able to prove it.
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Along with specks of what investigators suspect is blood throughout the home, Benner’s then-3-year-old daughter is reported to have told a relative that on the day of Benner’s disappearance, “Mommy had to go away because she was bleeding from the stomach,” according to Bay County Sheriff’s Office records.
Investigators also later found the patch of carpet in a trash can. It had been set on fire, BCSO reported.
Benner’s disappearance is the oldest of 31 unsolved homicides and missing persons cases that make up the cold case files of Bay County. In the dim recesses of a BCSO closet, detailed in countless pages, are the files that have confounded investigators spanning back as far as 38 years.
Advancements in technology and techniques have assisted in solving many cold cases and also have prevented the trail of numerous homicides within the past decade from going cold in BCSO’s jurisdiction.
In the remaining stacks are expansive binders of the last known whereabouts of those believed to have either left on their own will to not be heard from again, disappeared under suspicious circumstances or reached an untimely demise with no one to answer for the crime.
Cold cases: Lining the cubicle of former Panama City Beach Police Chief Lee Sullivan are the faces of those who disappeared without the reasons for their departure adding up.
“Sometimes it comes down to ‘no body, no crime,’ “ Sullivan said.
Several different agencies, and an untold number of eyes, have perused the cases. The pages upon pages of findings have accumulated over the years in thick dossiers. Currently tasked with reviewing those findings and investigating further, Sullivan volunteered for the cold case duty months ago. So far he has scanned the thousands of documents in 21 cases in what he calls “the tomb of doom,” BCSO’s cold case closet.
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“It’s like a Dumpster diver,” Sullivan said. “You can’t just look over the edge. You have to dig in and rummage around. If you don’t look through every page, you might miss something.”
A majority of the cold homicide cases have a suspect identified, Sullivan said, but some portion of the evidence have failed investigators along the way.
The Benner case has been active since 1976. Investigators suspected someone close Benner was responsible. Less than five years ago, investigators made advances they believed were going to lead to an arrest.
But at the last minute they fell through.
Investigators reportedly found blood in Benner’s house; DNA testing was not an option at the time, so they were unable to match the blood to Benner. Detectives sent some of the preserved evidence in the case for DNA testing recently, but it came back as too old and disintegrated to make a match.
DNA advancements: DNA evidence is now crucial to successfully prosecuting most crimes. But besides being able to directly connect a person to a crime scene using DNA, career criminals can tell on themselves over time without knowing they are doing so.
“The ability to extrapolate DNA now as opposed to back then is a world apart,” Sullivan said.
DNA samples are collected and stored in all homicide investigations, and they are taken in most felony crimes. The DNA is filed away in perpetuity — always out there in a database, just waiting for the right DNA sequence to join them. If that matching DNA is ever collected in a future case, a flag would pop up for investigators.
“If we know they left a DNA profile, we get a warrant on that DNA,” said Capt. Jimmy Stanford, BCSO’s chief investigator. “Then the statute of limitations on that DNA does not run out.”
BCSO has tried other avenues to solicit information on cold cases. Panhandle CrimeStoppers also issued decks of cards to state Department of Corrections inmates, with some of the cold cases featured on each card. Inmates play cards with the decks, and investigators were hopeful the move will help crack the cases.
The experiment proved less successful than anticipated, with some inmates spinning stories about the cold cases to cellmates in attempts to garner respect, Stanford said.
“They just didn’t result in a case being cleared,” he said. “But we don’t regret those.”
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However, investigators have developed a complementary approach to the crucial first 48 hours after a person’s disappearance is considered suspicious. And since 2004, BCSO has implemented a sort of witness isolation technique to prevent a suspected homicide case from going cold.
Cold case prevention: Shortly after a group of “wannabe” gang members brutally beat a 17-year-old to death with baseball bats in 2004, BCSO began using a technique that has proven quite successful — even resulting in closing a few cold cases. When foul play is suspected, the sum of BCSO’s resources are called in for assistance — and sometimes even other agencies, Stanford said.
“We don’t hesitate to call in other agencies,” he said. “If we need more help, we’ll go to other agencies. We call anybody and everybody.”
The approach involves a lightning attack of witness and suspect isolation to corroborate or refute stories. It first came into practice in 2004 after members of the “Crazy White Boys” gang beat 17-year-old Jeffrey Shane Elliot to death with baseball bats following a drug deal gone bad, Stanford said.
Investigators reported Elliot was attacked by the group in the 6500 block of South Lagoon Drive the evening of June 2. They beat the teenager unconscious with a baseball bat after he attempted to purchase drugs from them and was left near a boat ramp to die, BCSO said.
In October, deputies rounded up several teenagers and arrested them on charges relating to Elliot’s death. To weed out the valid variations of numerous witness accounts, officers interviewed several witnesses simultaneously and then compared notes to find the narrative.
“It’s so labor intensive and we hadn’t done it like that before,” Stanford said. “It encompassed much of the agency, and that is something you can’t do every day.”
Steven Bruce Fox Jr. was convicted of manslaughter for the beating and received eight years of probation.
That same year, investigators used the same strategy to charge three people in connection with the June 2002 shooting of 14-year-old Desmond Ray.
Ray was shot once behind the left ear while he sat under a tree in a courtyard of Pana-Villa Garden Apartments. His shooting was in retaliation for a shot he fired the day before at Eric Richardson. More than a year-and-a-half later, investigators organized.
Five teens were arrested for plotting to kill Ray and many were sentenced to decades of prison time following the prosecution of the case. But it wouldn’t be the last cold case to reach a resolution due to the witness isolation technique.
“We’ve been able to clear three cold cases using that tactic,” Stanford said.
Ongoing investigations: The ultimate goal of Sullivan’s review of the cold cases is to deliver a suspect to justice. And, in doing so, deliver closure to the surviving family members.
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“When you lose someone, it’s different when you at least have something there,” Sullivan said.
However, as time continues to pass, the remaining untapped avenues to investigate narrow. But while the faces peer out at the former police chief from the walls of his cubicle and the thick dossiers are still open for investigation, officers will strive for a resolution.
“It’s important no one gets forgotten,” Sullivan said.
COMING UP
- In upcoming months, The News Herald will publish articles on specific cold cases, updating the status of the investigations.