44 YEAR OLD COLD CASE MURDER SOLVED CAROL SKIDMORE

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
We're looking at the cold case that was solved that's
about forty four years old. A decades old case with
Bay County Sheriff's Office has been resolved thanks to new technology.
Three hunters stumbled upon a shallow grave containing the remains
of a woman not too far from US Highway two
thirty one in nineteen eighty. Investigator initially thought that the

(00:21):
remains belonged to Joanne Benner, a missing person from nineteen
seventy six where foul play was suspected. The Florida State
University Anthropology Lab confirmed this was not the case, however,
and Benner was known to have injuries that these remains
did not reflect the identity of the remains remained their
mystory all law enforcement you was that foul play was
suspected due to the damage clothes found with the body.

(00:45):
They pulled a tooth from the remains and sent it
to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to get a
DNA profile. The information was then run through the combined
DNA index system to look for potential matches. Investigators found
that it lined up with two people in Texas who
had submitted their DNA to help fire their missing sister
a kinship analysis confirmed that their women was their sibling,
Carol Sue Skidmore Skidmore, who was born to who's been

(01:08):
missing since nineteen seventy seven, forty seven years later the
forty seven years ago I'm Sorry. The news release says
that the Skidmore family had tragic ending started on March
twenty ninth of nineteen seventy seven. Carol, her husband James,
and their five year old son Lee Lynn went to
Texas to visit James's parents in Rossville, Georgia, near the
Tennessee Boarder. They were putting their marriage back together, the

(01:29):
release says, and the Skidmorees were last heard from on
April ninth, when Carol told her parents that she didn't
know when they'd be home. In May of that year,
a child's body was found in a lake an hour
away from Rosswelle and Tennessee. The body was wrapped in
plastics and wayed down. It appeared to have been there
for weeks. The FBI later confirmed this to be Lynne.
In June of nineteen seventy seven, james body was found

(01:51):
in an Arkansas hotel room. He had died from a
drug overdose. He left a suicide note saying that things
weren't working out for him. The Sheriff's office believe James
Dames killed Carol, leaving her body in a shallow grave
in Bay County, and their son Lynn, leaving him in
the Tennessee Lake, and then killed himself. Carrol's family was contacted,
although one of her siblings had already died. The brother
was reportedly grateful to finally know what happened and get closure.

(02:14):
It's a very tragic story when the killer is the
father who's killed both and took his own life away
and felt that he didn't have anything worth to live here.
Truly a tragic story, but a good conclusion at least
having some closure for the family. That's it for now.