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After many decades of hard work & determination, as we age, our thoughts naturally begin to focus on the idea of retirement. During retirement, a time that might be referred to as our golden years, we can hope that enough money has been saved & we’re in good health to enjoy the time when we’re no longer tethered to an alarm clock or a strict schedule.
In 2014, Russell & Shirley Dermond were enjoying their retirement in a gorgeous $1 million home within a gated neighborhood along Lake Oconee near Eatonton, Georgia, a location about 80 miles southeast of Atlanta. The area is known as Georgia’s Lake Country & is home to nearly 60 miles of water with Lake Oconee & Lake Sinclair combined.
The town of Eatonton, which was established in 1808, is surrounded by farms, churches & historic Victorian homes. Rural roads that lead into town encourage visitors to stop at the roadside stands that sell pecans, peaches & boiled peanuts. Although rural Putnam County had a population of 21,353 in 2015, during the summer months, that number would more than double as vacationers made their way to the lakeside communities.
88-year-old Russell Dermond & his 87-year-old wife, Shirley Dermond, had moved away from Atlanta around the turn of the century to retire to the Great Waters at Reynolds Lake Oconee subdivision where they owned a five-bedroom, 6-bathroom 5,800 square foot lakefront home in a wooded cul-de-sac at 147 Carolyn Drive that overlooked a cove in a golfing neighborhood on Lake Oconee. The estimated value of the home at the end of 2025 was $2.75 million after it sold for $650,000 in 2015.
In May 2014, the couple, who were each from New Jersey, had gotten married on December 15, 1950 & were about 7 ½ months from celebrating their 64th wedding anniversary. Throughout their marriage, Russell had been in the Navy & served during World War II & the couple had three sons & one daughter together, Mark, Keith, Brad & Leslie, as well as nine grandchildren.
Sadly, on August 30, 2000, their son, Mark, died on his 47th birthday in a drug-deal-gone-wrong when he was shot & killed while attempting to purchase crack cocaine near the Atlanta University Center. After he was shot three times in the neck & torso, 28-year-old Shatik Hinnet, was arrested.
Russell & Shirley were a religious couple who put their family above all else. Although Brad & Keith lived in Florida & Leslie in North Carolina, during the summer of 2014, like every other summer, their grandchildren were scheduled to come to Lake Oconee to attend summer camp & visit their grandparents. According to their son, Brad, his parents were the most wonderful people you’d ever want to meet.
After working in the fast food industry & owning several Hardee’s locations in Atlanta, Shirley & Russell retired from Roswell, Georgia in 1994. Despite their retirement, the couple remained very active; Russell was an avid golfer while Shirley was an artist & a writer who loved gardening, playing bridge with her friends & was known to complete cross-word puzzles while she enjoyed her breakfast each morning.
Their home on Carolyn Drive gave them total privacy & offered stunning views of the lake & since the area was quiet & gated, it gave them a sense of safety.
The last time the Dermonds were seen was on Thursday, May 1, 2014 when Russell headed out to run some errands before dinner. At 2:15 pm, he pulled up to the Lake Oconee branch of Peoples Bank to transfer money for an upcoming insurance expense. From here, he headed over to Publix at 2:30 pm to do some grocery shopping & pick up Shirley’s prescription for her upcoming cataract surgery at the pharmacy. Once home, Russell chatted with their son Brad, as they did most days of the week.
When Russell & Shirley hadn’t shown up for a planned Kentucky Derby party that was being held two days later on Saturday, May 3, 2014, neighbors started to grow concerned. When they still hadn’t seen movement from their house three days later, they decided to walk over & check on the elderly couple on Tuesday, May 6 at 9:58 am.
On that warm, spring morning, 72-year-old Margaret “Peggy” Winn & her husband approached the Dermond’s screen porch & noticed an unclaimed newspaper sitting on the driveway. Peggy walked up the few steps that were situated between two green bushes & entered the home through their unlocked front door.
As she & her husband made their way through the home, it was quiet & there was no sign of Shirley or Russell. When they reached the garage, they were horrified to see Russell’s headless body lying on the ground. Peggy immediately picked up the phone, frantically dialed 911 & told the dispatcher, Yes, hello… I have an emergency. I think I have somebody dead. She went on to explain that they went over to check on their neighbors since they had been missing for about four days. They only found Russell’s body while Shirley was nowhere to be found.
Deputies Darrell Turk & Barak Wood responded to the home at 10:09 am & contacted dispatch for backup. Before their arrival, police initially believed they might have been dealing with a suicide. Chief Deputy Blenk, Lieutenant John Murphey & Sheriff Sills followed shortly behind & approached the white, two-car garage.
At 10:15 am, when Sheriff Sills briefly searched the home, he came upon the decapitated body of 88-year-old Russell Dermond which was lying on the garage floor behind a cream-colored Lincoln Town Car & a light-blue Lexus SUV.
Russell’s faded red t-shirt had been partially pulled up, exposing his belly button down to the waistband of his blue & white striped boxer shorts which were covered in dried blood. His headless remains were positioned on top of his bunched-up robe.
There were several different colored towels lined up at the garage door along the area where the door closes & meets the ground, likely to keep blood from seeping out from under the garage door. The towels were next to the left side of Russell’s body & above where his head once was where there was now a large pool of congealed blood & bodily fluids.
Along the right side of Russell’s body were additional towels that appeared to have been used to soak up excess blood from his extensive injuries. However, rather than the killer cleaning the blood, the towels had only further spread it around.
While Russell’s loafer-style slippers had been haphazardly tossed to the side of his body, his bare feet were splotchy in appearance with blood stains that left a dull trail of blood that smeared from the door to his body. His hands were bruised & bloodied while a deep gash had been inflicted to his left index finger. Although Shirley wasn’t at the house, there were fine strands of her hair tangled within the blood, likely there because he tried to protect his wife.
Russell’s driver’s license listed him as 5’5” & 175# which matched the height & weight of the victim lying on the garage floor. Because his head was nowhere to be found, authorities were unable to match the 88-year-old’s gray hair & brown eyes.
The gruesome scene in the garage was a stark contrast to the tidiness of the inside of the Dermond’s immaculate home. There was no sign of forced entry or a struggle, nothing out of place & the jewelry & medications were where the couple had likely left them. The prescriptions Russell had picked up from the pharmacy five days earlier on Thursday, were sitting on the kitchen counter next to several framed photos of their grandchildren as well as a small vase that held a single white flower. Their laptop sat open on the dining room table with an open case that held a pair of glasses. Shirley’s unfinished crossword puzzle sat folded over on the kitchen table with a pencil on top.
There was a calendar sitting near the phone with Shirley’s upcoming cataract surgery noted as well as a thank-you card from one of their grandchildren. A Netflix movie rental return was sitting on the counter near a jewelry bag that had been undisturbed with a gray-beaded necklace sitting on top.
Once inside the couple’s bedroom, police found the bed unmade with the comforter pulled down & over a bench that was positioned at the foot of the bed while throw pillows were tossed to the side. Clothing was placed on a chair with shoes underneath & a pair of khaki shorts, a green polo shirt & dark gym shoes were also in the bedroom.
The dresser, which had been recently dusted, held a cell phone & a framed wedding photo. Shirley’s slippers had been placed under a pink ottoman in the master bathroom & on her vanity were two black purses, cash, perfume, makeup & brushes.
Since Shirley was missing, Sheriff Sills called on his team to search the lake with the county’s patrol boat using drag hooks. Another team was sent into the nearby woods with search dogs in tow. Although it has never been found, Sheriff Sills believes that Russell’s head was discarded in Lake Oconee.
After she was reported missing, the FBI offered a $20,000 reward for Shirley & soon after, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR) launched a specialty equipped pontoon boat to search Lake Oconee.
When the GBI state crime lab performed an autopsy on Russell’s mildly decomposed body on Thursday, May 8, Dr. Sandra Thomas noted postmortem decapitation at the base of the neck with a clean-cut through the C-5 vertebral body & the spinal cord. She determined that his cause of death was from craniocerebral trauma from a single clean cut that transected the cervical vertebral body. His manner of death was clearly homicide. Based on the fingerprints that were on file from Russell’s time served in the U.S. Navy, a positive identification was made.
Sheriff Sills believes that Russell’s cause of death was from a gunshot wound to the head as gunshot residue was found on the collar of his shirt. It’s likely he was decapitated in an attempt to hide the gunshot wound & bullet to conceal ballistic evidence.
Deputies were exceptionally concerned for Shirley’s wellbeing, believing that she may have been abducted. Not only was her car at the house, but her purse & cellphone had also been left behind.
Ten days after Russell’s body was found, two men were out fishing five miles from the Dermond’s home near the Greene County shore of Lake Oconee on Friday, May 16. At about 2:24 pm, they spotted what they initially believed was a buoy floating in the water until they got closer & realized it was a body.
When they called 911, Dennis Higgs told the dispatcher that he saw what appeared to be a body floating in the water against a tree, but indicated that he didn’t want to get any closer.
When Lt. Luke arrived at the scene via patrol boat, he came upon a severely bloated, badly decomposed body. By 3 pm, the rescue team pulled the white, female victim from the water & noted that she had two 30# red cinder blocks tied around each of her ankles over the white socks she wore. The blocks were inside a blueish-gray mash bag that was held in place by a parachute cord for the purpose of weighing the woman down in the water.
According to investigators, a professional would have known that the way the concrete blocks had been utilized on Shirley’s body would not have worked.
The female victim recovered from the water wore Army-green capri pants with soggy tissues in the pockets, a brown & tan floral short-sleeved shirt & laced, size 8, white Easy Spirit shoes with orthopedic inserts. Her appearance was consistent with Shirley Dermond, who stood at 5”2”.
Using dental records, Shirley was positively identified while her autopsy was performed by Dr. Jonathan Eisenstat the following day on May 17. He noted that she had been struck at least twice in the head with a circular weapon, such as a hammer, causing a skull fracture & hemorrhaging in her brain. Her manner of death was homicide while her cause of death was blunt impact injury of the head.
Despite an exhaustive investigation that involved hundreds of interviews, there was no suspect & no clear motive. When Sills searched Shirley & Russell’s financial records, pouring over eight years worth of records, he noted that their expenditures were remarkably routine.
Sadly, the community’s security cameras within the neighborhood where Russell & Shirley lived weren’t working after they had been damaged during a lightning storm a few weeks before their murders.
Sheriff Sills is confident that both Russell & Shirley’s murders weren’t committed at their home & he also believes that it was not a random crime. Since Shirley had been struck in the head at least twice, physical evidence would have been left behind that wasn’t found in her home. Investigators do believe that Russell’s head was removed in the garage based on the physical evidence left behind.
Because Shirley’s remains were found in the water, both murders could have potentially happened on a boat. Up until that point, the neighborhood where they lived was virtually crime-free & could have been reached by car, foot or boat. Although a guard house is situated at the front of the neighborhood, there was no way to prevent visitors from approaching the community via boat.
Based on the investigation, Sills believes that the couple were killed sometime between 4:30 pm on Friday, May 2 when the mail was delivered to 4 pm on Saturday, May 3, when Russell & Shirley missed their party.
As time went on, Sills began to believe that the Dermonds died in what he referred to as a botched robbery extortion in which they were unable to deliver whatever cash or valuables a bad person or people had demanded. Investigators don’t believe that Mark, Russell & Shirley’s son’s murder, had any connection to their deaths.
Their surviving sons & daughter had been nowhere near their parent’s house when they were murdered, they each had a solid alibi & each took a polygraph test & passed. They continue to hold out hope that their parent’s killer or killers are found.
In May 2015, it emerged that there had been a mystery man spotted on the Dermond’s property around the timeframe of their murders. Sills interviewed him, but no arrests were made as he deduced it would have been physically impossible for him to have committed the murders.
Sills is confident that more than one person was responsible as it’s highly unlikely that a single individual had been able to carry the murders out by themself.
There have been several theories as to who was responsible for their deaths; a New Jersey mob, a drug dealer seeking revenge, a family member. However, nothing ever panned out due to the lack of an obvious motive. No fingerprints were found at the scene, no foreign DNA, no eye-witnesses. They’ve looked into other similar cases where an elderly couple is murdered, but there have been no cases that are truly similar.
At this point, investigators are left to hope that someone will come forward with information; that maybe the killer confessed to what they’d done to the Dermonds.
Keith Dermond indicated that what he & his family have gone through in the wake of their parent’s murders is something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. Losing parents at the same time is devastating enough, but the violent nature of how his parents died paired with the fact that their killer is still out there only compounds the pain they carry.
Keith is frustrated by the fact that the security cameras within the neighborhood weren’t functioning, how visitors license plates weren’t routinely recorded & how most anyone could have driven in undetected had the killer come into the neighborhood in a car. According to Keith, although his parents lived in a wealthy neighborhood, they were well-off, but they weren’t super-rich compared to some of the other homes within their neighborhood. He’s even speculated about a serial killer who had no motive at all other than being psychotic.
Brad Dermond is left with bittersweet memories of his parents because that, as well as unanswered questions, is all that remains. Because his parents were elderly, he realized that a phone call could come through at any time with bad news, but he could have never been prepared for that type of call. When he received the worst phone call of his life, Brad had been at his son’s baseball game. He’s left to only imagine the horrors of his parent’s last moments & the pain & fear they endured
Despite 2026 marking 12 years since the innocent couple were brutally murdered, Sheriff Sills continues to think about Shirley & Russell’s case every day. He can only hope that new evidence will shed light onto the investigation. As years have passed & technology has evolved, the FBI has been analyzing cell phone data while in 2024, when Russell’s clothing was further tested, an unknown DNA profile was found. Thus far, the sample has not been a match to anyone within the CODIS database so they may turn to advanced genealogical techniques to find the source.
There is a $45,000 reward for information that leads to their killer. Anyone with information is asked to call the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office at (706) 485-8557.
References:
- Find a Grave: Mark Christian “Lark” Dermond
- Zillow: 147 Carolyn Dr, Eatonton, GA
- What Lies Beyond: Dermond murder house for sale
- USA Today: Mystery man emerges in year-old Ga. beheading case
- Fox 5: New evidence surfaces in Lake Oconee beheading
- The Telegraph: Son of slain Dermond couple says Lake Oconee mystery ‘haunts us’
- 11 Alive: Gone Cold: A lake with no leads: Who killed the Dermonds?
- CNN: Georgia elderly man decapitated, wife missing; authorities seek clues
- People: Who decapitated a Hardee’s franchise owner & killed his wife – while family was still haunted by son’s prior murder
