Cold-Case Team Studies Murders of Russell and Shirley Dermond

Three months have passed since neighbors made the grisly discovery of Russell Dermond’s beheaded body in the Lake Oconee home he shared with his wife, Shirley.

According to a previous Patch story, Russell Dermond, 88, was killed sometime over the weekend of May 2. He was beheaded in his home on Lake Oconee and his body was found on May 6 when friends went to the couple’s home. His head has not been recovered.

Shirley Dermond, 87, was missing at the time. Her body was found two weeks later, in Lake Oconee, a second Patch story reported. She had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and was dead before her body was dumped into the lake.

Investigators still have no suspects, and no motive, in the double murder.

“It just eats at you that somebody could do this and possibly get away with it. ... We don’t even know the motive at this point,” the couple’s son, Keith Dermond, told WSB TV. “It’s very hard to catch somebody when you don’t even know their motive, and you don’t know whether they would do it again.”

Dermond said his family is still sorting through his parents’ belongings.

“It’s really tough,” he said.

Russell Dermond, 88, had worked for clockmaking companies until the late 1980s when he ran a chain of Atlanta-area Hardee’s restaurants, WSB reports. About 15 years ago, the couple moved to Lake Oconee to enjoy life in a golf-course community in a waterfront home.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard R. Sills told the TV station he and another detective work on the case every day. Just this week they administered a polygraph test to someone who approached authorities with information.

And the sheriff recently asked two detectives from the cold-case squad of the Jacksonville, FL, sheriff’s office’s to examine the crime-scene photographs and other materials.

A reward fund has grown to $55,000 since it was established in early June, but has yet to produce a suspect.

Sills told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he believes the Dermonds were “at least minimally acquainted with whoever did this. That’s an assumption, coupled with some physical evidence,” he said.

The attackers didn’t use force to enter the couple’s lakeside home. Investigators said Shirley Dermond’s wallet, cellphone, purse and car were all left behind.

Maintenance workers with access inside Reynolds Plantation were given polygraph tests that turned up nothing new, Sills told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the FBI at 404-679-9000 or the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office at 706-485-8557.

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PHOTO: Shirley and Russell Dermond, a retired couple who lived on Lake Oconee, were murdered in their home three months ago. A cold-case squad from Florida recently reviewed the case.