Grace McAlister
Reporter1@riverbendnews.org
On Monday, Jan. 9, the Suwannee River Regional Library, in conjunction with Suwannee Valley Unsolved, will host Cold Cases of the Suwannee Valley for the second time. The event will be held at the Hatch Park Community Center in Branford, located at 403 SE Craven Ave.
The event will highlight three cold cases in both Suwannee and Columbia Counties, led by Jason Futch, creator of Suwannee Valley Unsolved. The cases presented will be as follows:
• Darlene Messer was murdered on Sept. 18, 1989. She was initially abducted from the Suwannee Swifty Convenience Store on the corner of SR-100 and Price Creek Road. Her body was located underneath the Swift Creek Bridge in Union County. Her death was the result of blunt force trauma. The case will be presented by Randy Roberts, retired Detective Sergeant from the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office and Jason Futch of Suwannee Valley Unsolved.
• Deborah Howard went missing in July of 1976. She had not been heard from for years prior to the family finally reporting her missing in 2015. Since the opening of the investigation, a person of interest was identified, and the case remains open. The case will be presented by Retired Investigator Jake Brooks, assisted by Wayne Kelly of the Suwannee County Sheriff’s Office.
• John Robert Thomas was murdered on Dec. 9, 2001. He had been found deceased at the intersection of NE Washington and Broadway Avenue in downtown Lake City. A woman was arrested for the murder in 2002, but was released after a grand jury could not come to an agreement to prosecute her. She remains a person of interest, and the Lake City Police Department believes there are people knowledgeable about the murder that have yet to come forward. The case and family impact statement will be presented by Heather Landacre, Thomas’s aunt and cold case advocate.
The doors will open at Hatch Park Community Center at 5:30 p.m., and the event will begin at 6 p.m. The event is geared toward educating the public on current open cold case investigations with the hope that someone may come forward with information that could be helpful to investigators.
The public is invited to attend, and active law enforcement officials from agencies in the area are strongly encouraged to attend this event. The seating will be first come first served, with preferential seating in the front two rows available to families of cold case victims and law enforcement.