Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told reporters Friday he is “fairly confident” a body pulled from Lake Oconee Friday afternoon was that of Shirley Dermond, missing for two weeks.
Dermond, 87, was nowhere to be found when neighbors discovered the decapitated body of her husband, Russell Dermond, 10 days ago in the garage of the couple’s home Reynolds Plantation home.
“Now we know Shirley Dermond was murdered,” Sills said.
She was found roughly five miles away, 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.
The sheriff said the search for Russell Dermond’s missing head will focus in the lake around the area where his wife’s body was found — ” literally almost in the middle of Lake Oconee,” on the Greene County side, the sheriff said. The water there is deep, about 50 feet, he said.
Two fishermen found the body and notified the sheriff’s office around 2:30 p.m. Sills said there was “no glaring sign of trauma” to her body,” which is being transported to the State Crime Lab where an official cause of death will be determined.
The crime has put Eatonton on edge, as investigators continue to search for clues as to why the Dermonds were targeted. The couple, who previously lived in Atlanta, retired to the lake after running a chain of fast food restaurants for years.
They had no known enemies. Their gated community restricted access to their home.
Investigators believe they Dermonds were killed sometime between May 2 and 3rd. Though he wouldn’t elaborate, Keith Dermond, the couple’s son, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution it’s likely the crimes happened during the day.
“They had a security system. And they always kept their doors locked,” Keith Dermond said. “They were religious about that.”
Keith Dermond also revealed that cameras manning the gates at Reynolds Plantation weren’t functioning at the time.
Polygraph tests were administered to maintenance workers with access inside the gated community about 80 miles southeast of Atlanta, but nothing came of them, Sills said.
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