bessie
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Georgia Jean Crews was 12
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April 8, 1980, Georgia Jean Crews told her older brother she was going to walk to a nearby convenience store [later report says she was going to a friend's house]. Within an hour later, when she hadn't returned, her brother grew concerned. He began calling neighbors and friends. Georgia's father was a commercial fisherman. He and Georgia's mother were at a nearby lake checking on fishing gear. By midnight, over 100 people had joined in a search of Lake County.
A massive search was conducted over the following week.
April 10, 1980, LE received an anonymous phone call from a man:
Hello yeah you know that girl that you looking fo yeah, the twelve year old yeah shes dead.
April 16, 1980, people walking through a shortcut to a K-mart in Casselberry found Georgia's body, 25 miles from her home in Montverde. They detected a disturbing foul odor, and followed it to the source.
She was lying face up in bushes. One leg tucked under the other. She was clothed in the same jeans and blue tank top she'd been wearing when she left home, but she had no shoes.
X-rays and dental records were used to identify her badly decomposed body. There were no outward signs of injury, no gunshot wounds or stab wounds. There was no sign of sexual assault.
[A later report says she died from a stab wound to the back.]
Murdered Girl's Body Found
April 19, 1980
Unsolved Slaying Still Haunts Town
April 8, 1990|By Wesley Loy Of The Sentinel Staff
[...]
When the fifth-grader turned up missing, as many as 100 townspeople turned out to aid lawmen in the hunt, according to news accounts. Deputies used tracking dogs. They flew over the town in a helicopter. They went over the groves on horseback and even dragged the bottom of Lake Florence near the girl's home on Highland Avenue.
Mrs. Crews said she and her husband, Mike, working at that time as a commercial fisherman, had been out that afternoon setting a trotline for catfish.
Georgia was last seen by her older brother, Tony, who was 16 at the time. He told investigators that he and a friend, Eddie Page, were playing records when they saw Georgia walk out the front door.
Tony said he thought his sister was heading to her best friend's house to watch Kenny Rogers in The Gambler. The friend reported that Georgia never showed up.
The last sign of Georgia was a trail of footprints on a dirt road near her home.