The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Motive, suspects elusive in killings
Couple’s deaths in upscale community alarm neighbors.
Six weeks after the grisly deaths of Russell and Shirley Dermond, their baffling slayings are no closer to being solved,
Six weeks after the deaths of Russell and Shirley Dermond, their baffling murders are no closer to being solved.
The decapitated body of 88year-old Russell Dermond was found May 6 in his garage by neighbors concerned about the couple’s well-being. In- truders appeared to have taken nothing from the upscale Reynolds Plantation home in Putnam County, but 87-yearold Shirley Dermond was missing. Her body was found in Lake Oconee 10 days later by two fishermen.
“I’ve never had a case go on for this long,” said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who’s leading the investigation. “I’ve got so little to go on.”
Russell Dermond’s head, neatly severed, indicating the work of professionals, is still missing. Sills now believes the beheading was performed simply to conceal evidence.
“If you shoot someone in the head with, say, a small-caliber gun, you’re going to potentially leave a lot of evidence behind,” Sills said.
The sheriff said he suspects robbery was the motive.
“Whatever it was (the killers) went to get, they didn’t find,” he said, adding he believes at least one of the killers arrived at the Dermonds’ house by car.
“They either stayed there awhile or they left and went back,” he said.
A neighbor said he saw a man in the Dermonds’ yard May 3. But the neighbor could not tell whether it was Russell Dermond, who investigators believe was killed sometime between May 2 and 3.
“That’s the closest thing we’ve got to a witness,” Sills said. “But, because of all the shrubbery, they didn’t get a good look at the man.”
Earlier this week, the sheriff was hopeful that investigators had received their first break. A North Georgia woman said she had overheard a conversation about the Dermonds’ murder — a plausible
lead, Sills said, but it turned out to be nothing.
A reward, now totaling just under $45,000, has yet to bring in any calls.
“That’s not going to be enough to get these people,” said Atlanta attorney Tex McIver, who spends his weekends on a farm just outside of Reynolds Plantation, where he’s a member of the country club. McIver wrote an Op-Ed for the Eatonton newspaper this week urging people to contribute to the reward fund.
“This has cast a pall over the whole area,” he said. “People are not going out on the weekends like they used to. One family I know, with two small children, won’t come up here anymore.”
“Behind the gates,” as the locals refer to Reynolds Plantation, used to be considered the safest address around. Now many residents there are in- vesting in new alarm systems and even guns.
“I’ve noticed a surge” in gun purchases within the exclusive subdivision, particularly in the Great Waters community where the Dermonds lived, Sills said.
The couple’s lakefront home remains vacant.
“It had such great memories. Now I can’t ever imagine staying there,” said Keith Dermond, one of the couple’s three adult children.
Dermond said he and his siblings still can’t make any sense of what happened to their parents.
Sills has said the Dermonds likely knew their killers, though their son said he can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt them.
“It’s frightening that such evil people are still out there,” Keith Dermond said.
Though frustrated, Sills said, investigators aren’t completely empty handed. They have, for instance, hundreds of fingerprints and hair and tissue samples, but none of that evidence has led them any closer to naming a suspect.
“You chase leads when they arise, and, if they don’t pan out, you go back to what you were doing before,” Sills said.
Mostly that’s been poring over financial records and phone logs hoping to find that crucial missing clue.
“We were talking the other day about what we’d put in a search warrant if we could get one,” Sills said. Not much. “It was pretty sad,” he said.