The furniture and curtains are gone, the walls freshly painted. Russell and Shirley Dermond’s possessions have been cleared out of the Reynolds Plantation residence they shared for 15 years, but the secrets surrounding their gruesome deaths remain trapped inside.
It’s been six months since neighbors discovered the decapitated body of 88-year-old Russell Dermond inside the garage of his 3,200-square-foot home; investigators believe he had been dead three days.
The body of his wife, 87, was found by fishermen 10 days later and five miles away on Lake Oconee.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills and one detective continue to work the case, sifting through thousands of pages of financial documents, scouring phone records and interviewing family, friends and business associates, some of whom consented to polygraph exams. But all their effort has turned up few leads and no suspects.
“The more I dig, the less I find,” said Sills, now in his 19th year as Putnam’s sheriff. “I’m going over stuff I’ve already gone over, hoping to find something we might have missed.”
He recently enlisted the help of the Jacksonville (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office’s cold-case squad, which spent two days reviewing the evidence. Sills said he’s open to any and all sources, even the psychics who have offered their services.
“This is the most frustrating case I’ve worked since the Nuwaubian cult mess,” said Sills, referring to his battle in the late 1990s with Dwight York, the well-connected prophet of the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, a religious sect that had constructed an Egyptian-style compound on 440 acres in Eatonton. “But that was frustrating in an entirely different sense. I knew what was going on, but stopping it was the challenge.”
Sills eventually triumphed over the Nuwaubians, surviving a well-orchestrated smear campaign by its leader and his supporters. York eventually confessed in both state and federal courts to molesting 13 children and was sentenced to 135 years.
“I’m convinced that, without [Sills], we’d be living in Yorktown by now, ” said former Putnam County Commissioner Sandra Adams said. “I don’t have a doubt in my mind.”
Stopping the Nuwaubians bought Sills considerable good will among his constituents, who remain hopeful their sheriff, “Howard’ to most, will solve the most confounding mystery of his 40-year career.
“It’s a case that’s required a lot of digging, and there’s no better digger than our sheriff,” said Karen Bridgeman, associate editor of The Eatonton Messenger.
Bridgeman said the killings still come up in conversation around town but added there’s little residual fear, as most people agree with Sills that the Dermonds were targeted.
But why? The absence of motive makes this case all the more perplexing.
“You can’t find anything bad in [the Dermonds’] background,” Sills said. “No criminal connections, nothing.”
Keith Dermond, the couple’s eldest son, said he still can’t make sense of it all.
“It’s almost impossible to process,” said Dermond, who lives in Jacksonville. “We all have our theories, but none of them make sense.”
Here’s what the sheriff believes to be true: More than one person was involved, and the culprits aren’t local.
“The hoodlum world knows all about this case, and they know they could trade information if they had any,” Sills said. A $55,000 reward remains in place but has generated few calls. He plans to scrutinize the Dermonds’ associates in Phoenix next, even though it’s been some 40 years since the couple lived there. Someone, somewhere, knows something about this case, and Sills is determined to find that person.
“It’s the last thing I think about when I go to sleep at night and the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning,” he said.
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