UPDATE: Shirley Dermond, the 87-year-old Eatonton woman whose body was pulled from Lake Oconee Friday afternoon, died of blunt force trauma to the head, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She did not drown and she was not alive when she was put in the water, he said.
Her husband, 88-year-old Russell Dermond, was found decapitated in the garage of the couple’s Reynolds Plantation home on May 6. Investigators today are searching for his head in the same lake where Shirley Dermond’s body was found.
So far, authorities have not located Russell Dermond’s head, Sills told The AJC this afternoon.
ORIGINAL REPORT: Putnam County investigators are back on Lake Oconee today, searching the same waters where two fishermen Friday afternoon spotted the body of an elderly woman presumed to be the missing 87-year-old wife of a World War II veteran found decapitated in the garage of the couple's Reynolds Plantation home.
After Russell and Shirley Dermond failed to show for a Kentucky Derby party or answer phone calls, concerned neighbors went to the couple’s home on May 6 and discovered the headless body of 88-year-old Russell Dermond. His head and Shirley Dermond were nowhere to be found.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said Friday he is “fairly confident” the body pulled from the lake was that of Shirley Dermond. He told Channel 2 Action News this morning that he should have “positive ID” later today.
Searchers today are looking for the head of Russell Dermond as well as other unspecified evidence on Lake Oconee, Sills told Channel 2. The sheriff said he is “doing something else” on the lake, but declined to elaborate. He also told the television station there is nothing new in the investigation that would reveal who killed the Dermonds or why they were killed. The body was found roughly five miles from the couple’s home, increasing the likelihood the killers gained access to the Dermonds’ home via Lake Oconee.
“There is a definite probability there was a boat element” in the crime, Sills said Friday.
One of the two fishermen who found the body spoke with Channel 2.
While he did not discuss the condition of the body, Ronnie Serrao said he and his neighbor were out fishing on the lake Friday afternoon when they spotted something they first thought was a buoy.
“It became apparent as we pulled closer that it wasn’t just something floating in the water,” he told Channel 2. “It was a person.”
The other fisherman, Dennis Higgs, told The Eatonton Messenger that he called 911 about 2:24 p.m. Friday. The 911 dispatcher "put us in touch with the Putnam County Sheriff's Office," he told the newspaper. "They got her in the boat and took her."
Serrao told Channel 2 he spent three years in Vietnam, but nothing affected him like what he saw Friday.
The GBI Crime Lab will perform an autopsy on the body to determine a cause of death. There were no glaring signs of trauma to the body, Sills told reporters.
Meanwhile, investigators are looking for possible witnesses who may have noticed suspicious activity on the lake between May 2 and May 3, the period investigators believe the Dermonds were killed. The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office has set up a hotline. That number is 706-485-8557.
