James Berkeley Norris: Unsolved 1974 Murder
Murder mystery now 45 years old
2019 article by Danielle Ivanov
Dixie County’s oldest unsolved homicide case hit its 45th anniversary this month.
On Oct. 4, 1974, James Norris got off a red-eye flight from San Francisco to Miami with about $12,000. He went to Citrus County to spend it all on Columbian marijuana. In Inglis, he mailed a postcard to his mom in Fairfield, California.
Then he disappeared.
Back in Fairfield, Norris’ family was panicking. His parents filed a missing persons report with local police and reached out to Florida police as well as the FBI. When nothing turned up, they hired a private investigator.
As soon as the private investigator found out James Norris had gone for a drug deal, the family said, they assumed the worst: robbery and murder. Esperanza Norris, mother of six, became depressed by the struggle to find her missing son...
“It was shocking to see my mother unravel like that,” said Rosemary Norris-Southward, youngest of the Norris children.
After 18 torturous months, she said, her mother had a vision.
Esperanza Norris said her beloved son, whom she affectionately called Jimmy, appeared to her in her home. She said he was calm. And while he didn’t speak, she knew she didn’t need to worry about him anymore...
On April 16, 1976, a bulldozer going to a lime-rock pit found human bones in the forest off U.S. Highway 19 in Dixie County. Catalogued as another “John Doe,” the bones couldn’t be identified to any missing person at the time.
Esperanza Norris and James Norris Sr. died not knowing what happened to their son and left his five siblings still waiting...
Rosemary Norris-Southward was 13 when her brother, 11 years her senior, disappeared.
She devoted herself to finding him, she said. When she got her first computer in the ‘90s, a Macintosh Performa 476, she publicized his story on every missing persons website she could find.
And in 2004, she said, when the California Department of Justice passed a law allowing families of missing persons to file their DNA for future testing, she got her immediate family to send in samples...
Five years later, DNA testing finally caught up. Part of the John Doe’s remains were sent to the University of North Texas to extract a sample.
In 2010, Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agent Mike Kennedy matched up the John Doe’s description — Caucasian male, mid twenties, good dental care — to Rosemary Norris’ story of Jimmy Norris on NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
Her California DNA samples were matched up to his in Texas, and John Doe was identified as James Norris, 36 years after his disappearance.
“I went from disbelief to shock to grief to anger to relief to panic, all in a matter of minutes,” said Rosemary Norris-Southward, Jimmy Norris’ youngest sister.
She and her sister Kathie flew to Florida soon after to get their brother’s remains. When they finally brought him home, they buried him in a local cemetery with their mother’s ashes. She had written in her will to not bury her until he was found...
On his tombstone is the word “evernow,” a creation from one of his poems.
“He was at his core a kind, gentle soul with a creative spirit and a brilliant mind,” Rosemary Norris-Southward said. “I think I know what it means now, and that’s what I want — that serenity in the evernow.”
Currently, FDLE and the Dixie County Sheriff’s Office are still pursuing James Norris’ homicide investigation.
“Just because Mr. Norris was here to buy marijuana doesn’t mean he deserved to be killed and left in the woods,” special agent Kennedy said. “His life had value, and he deserves justice.”
Scott Harden, a major with the sheriff’s office, agreed. “The siblings shouldn’t be left like the parents were,” he said. “Maybe in the next few weeks we’ll get more answers.”
To report information about the crime, call Harden at 352-498-1245 or Kennedy at 850-410-7645.
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UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! AFTER BEING A MISSING PERSON FOR 36+ YEARS OUR BROTHER'S REMAINS HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED, RETURNED HOME, AND BURIED AT ROCKVILLE CEMETERY IN FAIRFIELD, CA! THERE IS AN ACTIVE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION IN PROGRESS TO FIND HIS MURDERER(S). IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION PLEASE...
www.findagrave.com
Apparently a drug deal gone bad, his body was later discovered in a Dixie County forest
www.gainesville.com
