Fountain, Fla. (WDNews) — Thanks to advances in DNA testing, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office has finally identified the skeletal remains of a woman who was recovered in 1980, after 45 years.
The remains found by hunters in a shallow grave near Highway 231 north of Fountain have been identified as those of Carol Sue Skidmore, who vanished in 1977, Sheriff Tommy Ford said Friday.
Investigators thought the remains might belong to JoAnn Benner, who had been missing since 1976. However, Benner was ruled out by the FSU Anthropology Lab’s preliminary analysis, and the case was abandoned. Nevertheless, the woman’s clothes damage suggested criminal play.
The file was recently reopened by BCSO’s Crime Scene and Cold Case Units. For DNA testing, a tooth from the remains was sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). After entering that DNA profile into CODIS, two people in Texas were matched. In an attempt to locate their sister Carol Skidmore, who had gone missing, they had sent in their DNA.
The matching was confirmed by a kinship analysis. While traveling from Texas to Georgia in 1977 with her husband, James Ronald Skidmore, and their 5-year-old son, Lynn Dale Mahaffy, Carol had disappeared. She was never heard from again after reaching out to her parents in early April 1977.
That was not the end of the catastrophe. Lynn’s body was discovered heavy down and wrapped in plastic in a lake in Tennessee in May 1977. James Skidmore was discovered dead from a heroin overdose in a motel room in Arkansas one month later. He wrote a suicide note stating that his life was not going well.
James Skidmore killed his wife and son, according to authorities, and then committed suicide.
The surviving brother of Carol has been informed. According to BCSO, he was happy to hear about his sister, to finally understand what had happened to her, and to feel at last at peace.
Sheriff Tommy Ford declared, “No matter how much time has gone by, we will never give up on pursuing justice for victims of crime.” Our Cold Case and Crime Scene Units have my utmost admiration for their unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth and providing this family with closure.
The government is still using ancestral DNA to investigate other cold cases. The State Attorney’s Office is currently reviewing the JoAnn Benner case for potential prosecution, according to investigators.
