Russell and Shirley Dermond /// Part 1/// 303 | Forensic Files

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let's talk some true [Music] crime on Tuesday May 6th 2014 at 9:58 a.m. Peggy win called putam County Georgia
911 from the home phone of a house she was in when putham County picked up the call
Peggy is breathing hard she tells them there's an emergency and she thinks someone is
dead she goes on to tell them the house in which she is calling from is 147 Caroline Drive in Great Waters
she is calling from the home of Russell and Shirley durman Peggy explains that she is a
neighbor of the durans and she went to their home to check on them because they have been
missing for about 4 days are they in the house she is asked yes I am she replies and then Peggy can be heard
shouting oh my God hysterically putam County wants to know if they are both dead and if Peggy found them both no
Peggy explains it's just one I don't know where the other one is she is told they are sending a deputy
and an ambulance over there just in case Peggy thanks the operator and hangs up the
phone on the call the dispatcher could hear Peggy talking to someone someone in the background who sounded like he was
saying she's not here or there's no one else here somehow the 911 operator interpreted that there were multiple
bodies on the scene she dispatched deputies in an ambulance to respond to 147 Caroline
Drive saying that a woman called 911 screaming and she didn't know how many were dead
Peggy W and her husband later told putam County Sheriff Howard Sills the following the winds who were in their
70s were friends with Russell and Shirley durman they weren't Nextdoor neighbors
but they lived less than a mile away within the same upscale gated community called Great Waters on lake okone in the
state of Georgia the winds hosted a Kentucky Derby party on Saturday May 3rd at their
home and the durans were expected to attend but never showed Peggy called the durman home a
few times over the next couple of days but there was never any answer and she started to grow concerned enough
that on Tuesday May 6th she made her husband accompany her over to the durman home they knocked but received no
response and finding the front door unlocked they went inside they looked all through the
pristine home which was over 3,000 square ft and saw nothing on their first pass the husband even glanced into the
closed attached garage and noted that the couple's two cars were parked in their
spots determined to look more thoroughly the husband made a second pass in the house and actually stepped down the
three stairs into the garage to check out the cars there behind the pale blue Lexus
SUV in the Lincoln Town Car he was confronted with the most horrifying scene imaginable on the garage floor lying
behind the Cars lay the blood soaked body of a man man lying in a dry pool of blood whether or not it was his friend
Russ was unclear the body lying on the garage floor had no head 87 yearold Shirley durman was gone
and so was the head belonging to this [Music] body [Music] before we get into the meat of this case
it's crucially important to convey an understanding of the setting because the nature of the location figures heavily
into the story Reynolds Plantation is an upscale Lakefront Resort Community rough
roughly 80 M southeast of Atlanta Georgia it's divided into several smaller gated developments with multiple
golf courses and a Lakefront Ritz Carlton all in all Reynolds Plantation is over, 1500 residences with the Great
Waters subdivision where the durman home was being the most exclusive Great Waters it's built around a Jack Nicholas
design golf course and was a gated community with 600 residences the durans built their retirement home toward the
back of the development at the end of a culdesac overlooking Lake okone the house was situated so that the house
fronted on the lake and the front lawn sloped down to the homes dock the part of the house that faced the driveway was
the back of the house this is a very heavily wooded area it was not at all open to the street or even clearly
visible to Neighbors on the other side and across the street was just Woods it was secluded just the way the durans
liked it the area was extremely safe with not so much as a burglary and Sheriff s's twood decade tenure up until
2014 now lake aone is not a small Lake in fact the 30m lake encompasses 19,000 acres and has 374 Mi of Shoreline it is
a man-made lake created by the building of a dam across the okone river lake Cony is so huge that it touches four
different counties construction of the dam flooded the area included wooded regions so that in parts of the lake
underwater trees are visible the lake sees a huge boating scene in the warmer months there are boat rental facilities
public boat launches fishing Outfitters and every home has a dock this is a very
large house although there are many yearr round residents including retirees and Families one3 third of the homes in
the subdivision are occupied only seasonally the summer season traditionally the population of mostly
rural putam County doubles to close to 45,000 people now the man in charge of the investigation is Sheriff Howard
Sills he's the elected Sheriff of putam County who has served in that role for 25 years he is a cigar smoking cowboy
boot wearing noons law man a criminal justice major in College trained at the FBI Academy and he has been in law
enforcement for about 45 years as of May 6 2015 day one of this investigation he
has solved every murder case and has sent five Killers to death row this is not a situation where the sheriff is a
local yokal who botches investigations right this guy Sills is the man I watched a lot of interviews of sheriff
SS he's very uh Tommy Le Jones you know like in in No Country for Old Men type thing I didn't kill my wife I don't
care uh Sheriff Sills was at the home 147 Caroline Drive very quickly when responding to that 911 call he later
admitted expecting to find a murder suicide first thing he looked over the decapitated body that lay on the garage
floor between the cars the man's faded red t-shirt was partially pushed up his blue and white white striped boxer
shorts drenched in dried blood a bunched up bathrobe lay under the body the man's
bare feet were Blood Stained there was a dull Red Trail of blood which s says showed that the body had been moved a
few feet a pair of LL bean slippers lay nearby The Corpse's hands were bruised and bloody the left index finger had a
severe gash all the way onto the palm of the hand so defensive wounds yes the head had been cut off along the line of
the T-shirt collar in several what he describes as clean cuts so whoever did this he says knew what they were doing
based on information obtained from Russell durman's driver's license the body belonged to him that's what the
sheriff figured right and a positive identification would later be made on the garage floor was quite a bit
of dried blood with a large pull of blood and bodily fluids near the top of the body strangely several towels line
the garage door crack where the door met the ground next to the left side of Russell's body as if someone had ensured
that the blood would not seep under the door and out onto the driveway outside so a sign of
premeditation well a sign of wanting to conceal this body as long as possible to
the outside world right to the right side of the body were Mortals clearly intended to soak up the excess blood it
was determined that the towels were from a bathroom in the durman's home just behind the Lincoln Sheriff Sills found a
blood spot on the garage floor as if something round had been placed there later he said that it was larger than a
head would be and I know that's a pretty grotesque description there but these are his words and his his assessment of
the crime scene the rest of the house was in pristine condition the 3,200 ft 4bedroom tan stucco house was
neat orderly dirt and dust free an unfinished USA Today crossword puzzle was sitting on the kitchen table folded
with the pencil still placed on top and a prescription with Shirley durman's name on it was on the counter next to a
Netflix movie Return mhm an open laptop was on the dining room table with a pair
of glasses inside and an open case nearby other than the garage nothing whatsoever appeared to be disturbed
there was no forced entry and we know the winds found the door unlocked there was no sign of any kind
of struggle or altercation and nothing appeared to have been stolen Shirley's two handbags with cash and cell phone
were still on her vanity Russell's wallet and cell were also in the home a jewelry bag lay in plain sight the only
things missing was Russell's head and Shirley Derman so we have no sign of a struggle we have no sign of a Breakin M
we have no sign that anybody took anything of value right so kind of rules out robbery it could be a robbery gone
bad and then we find Russell but we do not find his wife mhm it's a very weird situation um and
also I think what is not found in the home is ke here so the house was dusted for Prints but if Tex found any
interesting prints they were not released they've not released that information right the entire house was
checked over using luminol and no blood whatsoever was detected other than in the garage but even there there was no
spatter or spray just the pulled blood around Russell's body no weapons of any variety were found Sheriff SS has
remarked that they did find some forensic evidence but we don't know what that is or whether it has proved at all
useful despite Sheriff s's dragging the lake area around the durman's dock and grid searches with dogs looking in
nearby Woods nothing else was found because a perpetrator could be coming by car or foot or possibly by boat yes the
house would have been accessible by boat a fullscale investigation Into The Disappearance of Shirley durman was
launched boats searched nearby areas of Lake okone using the latest sonar equipment
and even a submersible robot but this turned up nothing caber dogs failed to hit on anything near the house the FBI
was called in to help in the search for the likely abducted woman and billboards
went up all over the area to publicize her missing status meanwhile an autopsy was
performed on Russell's body which wasn't that badly decomposed even though it's estimated that he was dead for several
days the garage in the durman home was air conditioned so this slowed this process down the gbi medical examiner
ruled that the cause of death was cranial cerebral trauma because there was no evidence of any fatal injury to
the body everyone was extremely relieved to learn that Russell had not been decapitated while he was still alive
which Sheriff SS concluded based on the the lack of arterial blood spray evidence in the garage or anywhere else
for that matter some kind of traumatic injury had been inflicted on Russell's head killing him now without his head it
could not be determined for certain what that injury was but the autopsy noted specifically that the decapitation was
the result of a clean cut through the vertebrae and spinal cord leading Sills to conclude that it had likely been done
with a very sharp blade and it happened in in the garage well right and they don't have his head they have his body
and we don't have wounds on the body that would make us believe that's how he died so they just have to assume that
the injury happened to his head Sheriff Sills was operating under the assumption
that Shirley durman had been abducted and was in danger he considered it was possible that Shirley was involved in
Russell's murder but what SS was able to determine from the crime scene led him to Discount this Theory pretty quickly
right first of all Shirley dur was 87 years old and she had physical infirmities that prevented her from
easily handling stairs or walking down to the lakefront from the house so the idea that that she did this by herself
that she managed to kill and decapitate her husband move the body and then disappear with the head on foot with
none of her personal effects just seemed I mean almost in impossibility so who were the
durans Russell was born in 1925 in hackin sack New Jersey old hackin sack yeah he attended college and he served
in the Navy he was a World War II veteran after the war in 1950 he married Shirley who was born in 1926 also in New
Jersey she attended Bernard College in New York Russell worked as an executive at the general Time Corporation the
company this company made clocks the durans had four children Brad Keith Mark and
lesie they moved to Atlanta in 19 in the 1980s Russell retired from the corporate
world at age 58 and branched into fast food franchises at one time owning 19 Hardies
locations in 1998 he sold the business off to two of his sons who had been employed by their father's business and
he and Shirley moved to their Dreamhouse on the Lakefront at Lake okone Russell was a regular golfer and
surley played bridge and enjoyed gardening they had a dock in front of their house as as did the others but
they sold their boat in 2012 remember we stated that Shirley was having trouble getting down to the
lakefront this looks to me like a situation where an older couple might be downsizing a little bit Yeah and plus
boats are a lot of work yeah just ask me I'm a captain I love boats but they're a
big pain in the ass uh both were active in their church had friends in the community and were known to be just nice
normal folks many happy Summers were spent with their kids and grandkids at their house on the lake let's go through
the last sightings of the durans on Thursday May 1st 2014 Russell ran some errands in town we
know from surveillance footage exactly where Russell went and what he did at 2:15 p.m. Russell transferred money for
an upcoming long-term care insurance premium via the drive-thru Lane at the lake of cone People's Bank mhm he then
traveled to the nearby Publix a a grocery store arriving at 2:26 p.m. to pick up a prescription for Shirley he
also picked up a loaf of bread and a few cucumbers he stopped and chatted with a
gentleman in one of the aisles then he checked out and he walked out of the store
now also on that Thursday May 1st Shirley attended her twice weekly Bridge group at 12:30 p.m. sometime before
dinner the durman son Brad spoke to his parents on the phone like most days he said they just chatted about how their
day went on Friday May 2nd a neighbor reported seeing Russell walking on the golf course in the community Russell had
recently given up Golf and had taken to walking just to get some exercise we don't know what time this was though
this is we don't have a time for this sighting this was the last time anyone reported any sightings of Shirley and
Russell dur at some point during the day on Friday Shirley durman sent an email and we have no reason to believe that it
was someone else sending it we know from what was found in the house that Shirley
worked on the crossword puzzle in the USA Today weekend edition right which is delivered on
Fridays it was found on the kitchen table her children told Sheriff SS that she usually worked on the puzzle in the
mornings and we know that at 4:30 p.m. on Friday the durman's mail was delivered according to the mail carrier
sure Sheriff Sills apparently has reason to believe that the mail was taken inside by the durans perhaps it was
found inside the home or the mail carrier saw them we don't we don't know for certain how he came to this
conclusion in any event Sheriff SS is certain that the durans were alive and well at 4:30 p.m. on Friday May
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cheers to you Captain So based on these sightings and what we know about the crime scene we can narrow down the time
frame of when something happened to the dermit so between 4:30 p.m. Friday and 400 p.m. on Saturday this is when they
failed to show up at the Kentucky derby party plus Russell durman's body had been found clothed in boxer shorts a
T-shirt and a robe with slippers nearby so he likely was either preparing for bed or had recently got up from bed the
bed was found unmade and an otherwise Immaculate home the durman children told Sheriff Sills that if Russell didn't
have a reason to get dressed first thing in the morning you know like an appointment or an errand he was known to
hang around the house in his robe until late morning I like the cut off his jip in any event whatever happened Russell
somehow being killed and surely being taken happened between Friday during the day and Saturday early afternoon no one
reported anything strange nobody reported any strange cars at the house or boats parked at the durman's dock so
who could have taken this elderly frail woman and to what end with more and more
time passing with no answers as to Shirley's whereabouts Sheriff SS braced himself for a ransom note or call but it
never came then on Friday May 16th at 2:24 p.m. two men were out fishing on Lake aone near the Wallace Dam their
boat neared a section of standing Timber where underwat trees were visible yeah the men spotted Something In The Water
as they got closer and approached the object they were shocked to see that it was a human body floating face down they
called 911 and reported a body floating in the water against a tree Lieutenant Luke responded to the scene via Patrol
boat he located the body and called Sheriff SS around 300 p.m. they pulled a bloated
water logged female body from the water sils said later that the body was swollen to twice its normal size and was
decomposing the body was fully dressed wearing army green capri pants brown and tan floral short sleev shirt and laced
size eight white shoes she was fully dressed yeah Sheriff SS was pretty sure that they had just found 87-year-old
Shirley durman she had been missing for at least 10 days by this point although the cause of death was not immediately
evident to Sills it was clear that shirle had not put herself into the lake the body had floated to the top which is
a natural reaction to the gases that build up inside a decomposing corpse that is submerged we we have any wounds
on her well the reason the the obvious thing that he notes right away of why she didn't put herself in the lake
is you know the body floated up to the top despite two red 30 lb con conrete blocks tied to both of her ankles with a
paracord yeah the cement blocks were inside a bluish gray mesh bag someone had put the blocks in the bag tied the
bag to Shirley's ankles and thrown her into the lake this is about 5 and2 miles from the durman home this area was
accessible only by boat Shirley's killer or Killers used a boat to discard her body and 46t deep water this is one of
the deepest areas of the lake she was positively identified as Shirley dur by dental records the autopsy found that
Shirley skull was fractured she was struck at least twice on the right side of her head two v-shaped lacer
lacerations were found on her skull but the skull fractures were round in shape leading Sheriff Sills to Guess that the
weapon used was a hammer although he is reiterated that we do not know for sure what the weapon was
the cause of death was blunt impact injury of the head there was no sign of sexual assault the 550 or 55 paracord
was wrapped around her ankles and the lack of bruising indicated that The Binding of Shirley's ankles occurred
after death now to save time because we do have a lot to get to right trust me when when I when I say this I've looked
into this and this was an extremely thorough an exhaustive investigation the agencies involved led
by Sheriff Sills have looked into everything and every inch and angle was looked at even extending his
investigation into other jurisdictions and other states so I want to give you just a small part of Sill's
investigation but not the whole thing because it' be just be too much Sills obtained tens of thousands of pages of
the durans phone records and those of their children and others associated with them no one detected any unusual
calls or interactions with anyone anyone the durans had contact with was looked into Sills canvased the neighborhood and
talked to over 200 residents about 225 people were asked 30 questions including where they were on the dates in question
right and whether they had any surveillance footage that could help the investigation the interviewers
discovered that sure enough one woman said she had seen a man in the durman's yard on that Saturday this woman
reported seeing a man from her vantage point in a house that wasn't very close by she was not able to determine this
man's race age or ethnicity uhhuh but she says he was in the durman's yard on Saturday Sheriff SS met with her and
reconstructed the Vantage Point she had and agreed that it was unlikely she could identify the man it could even
have been Russell himself as far as we know Sheriff Sills also interviewed Shirley's bridge club members the pastor
of their church and members of the congregation all of their friends a handyman day labors and gardeners in the
area some of whom were subjected to polygraphs and past he ran background checks on the residents of Great Waters
looking for criminal histories I mean this is so strange I mean we have one person dead in the house
decapitated you then take the other person that doesn't seem to make any sense unless it was to get them into a
area so he could do weird sexual things the motive would be sexual I think once you remove the female or Ransom but no
Ransom note comes MH and then you find her in a area that would have to you'd have to
get to by boat but we don't know if the perpetrator got to their house by a boat
it's very very confusing well you're pointing out something that's very spot on right here because the the alarming
thing about this case and the difficult thing about this investigation it really seems like you
have to determine why the movements of the perpetrators were what they were yeah and it's very difficult to
determine that one because the lack of motive but two here's the thing when researching this I found out that uh one
when somebody's murdered and then decapitated decapitation is pretty it's a pretty low percentage of the time that
that even occurs yeah then on top of that when the head is removed from the crime scene from the murder scene that
percentage is even much less I couldn't find any statistics on a situation like this at all where there is decapitation
head removed and a second victim who's removed from the murder scene yeah so in talking about the people that that
sheriff SS looked at I mean that's a pretty thorough list right there I mean he even looked into the mailman yeah and
then you have this idea too is is it two perpetrators because there's two victims but it doesn't have to be like
normally you'd go okay well um you have a a man and his wife and and maybe there
would be it' make it a lot easier if there's two perpetrators well because they're an elderly couple not
necessarily so it's like now are we looking at one perpetrator or or two well all three of the durman adult kids
who lived in other states were interviewed multiple times polygraphed and passed now remember when we were
discussing who the durans were we mentioned that they had four children right but one of of their children had
passed away before this ever happened okay so SS looked extensively into the durans financial records SS noted that
the durans were somewhat Frugal and were careful with their money they weren't they were not overly wealthy they were
not in any way ostentatious or glitzy they didn't even have ATM cards well wouldn't they be Children of the
depression so they'd be more frugal yeah and I mean I know we went through his career and his professional life but the
vibe I get here is yeah they did well and they were successful but it seems to me like they may have got to where they
were late in life by being Frugal for most of their lives more so than just making a bunch of money right there was
absolutely nothing unusual about any of their financial affairs Sheriff SS even insisted on being present when the
durman children opened their parents safety deposit box just in case there was something important inside and he
says there was not right one of the first things Sheriff SS considered was the security around Great Waters around
that development where the derans lived this was an incredibly low crime area of
course there were security cameras at the guard shack that monitored the entrance to the subdivision Sills sent a
deputy to obtain the camera footage from the days surrounding the durman murder but there was no footage doesn't it seem
like it's just this way every time all the time yeah uh the system had been fried a a few weeks earlier by a bolt of
lightning from a storm on April 28th so there are no recordings of the comings and goings and activities at Great
Waters after that date yeah but how many people in this area knew this probably quite a bit right I I cannot say I would
speculate that in most situations this isn't something that they would broadcast to the residents you would
think they would right as a safety precaution hey our security cameras have been compromised to to lightning I can't
say for certain if it was general knowledge of the residents because I couldn't find that information but what
I can say is Sheriff Sills who I consider to be incredibly knowledgeable and thorough he obviously was unaware of
it because he sent a deputy to collect footage that was not there Sheriff SS said that the only time
his office had any interaction with the durans was back in 2012 this is when the
durans had reported a credit card fraud incident they had never reported anything else fishy ever or even called
the police otherwise the guard shack at the entrance to to Great Waters this was
a typical little booth Man by a security guard who checked authorizations of those entering the development in 2014
there was no arm that came down to stop access for cars trying to get in the shack was manned 24 hours a day and
visitors had to be approved via telephone call to the residents residents themselves had stickers
showing that they lived there but others such as Great Waters maintenance men landscape workers repair men and so on
also could get temporary passes and were most likely just wave through if they displayed them and people who told the
guards that they were there to play golf or eat at the clubhouse were also admitted right Sheriff s said that in
theory records of these people were kept but it doesn't sound like it would be that hard for an outsider to enter the
area security was pretty LAX overall the durans had a security system at their home but their son Brad indicated
they it had been disconnected over Easter a few weeks before the murders we haven't been able to gather any
additional information about whether the home security system was out of order at
the time of the murders or not but it seems to be this way Sheriff Sills has remarked that it was functional but it
was not turned on but in another interview with WSBTV V 2 he indicated that the home security system had been
disconnected twice in the few weeks before the murders the durman children said that normally their parents would
lock their doors and set the alarm at night but clearly whether it was working or not the alarm was not in use at the
moment the durman's home was accessed by someone with Sinister intentions also the durman's home number
and address were publicly available so clearly they weren't too concerned about security Sheriff SS
looked into all the boat rentals around the time of the murders on the assumption that The Killers could have
arrived by boat bypassing allog together the guard shack and the risk associated
with driving into and out of the community yeah if he found anything he isn't saying there there were no boat
thefts reported around that time if you know if even leading up to that days or weeks or months in advance and no one
reported that their boat appeared to have been used by someone else during this time as well it is still possible
that somebody could have used somebody's boat and returned it without them knowing mhm Sills looked into all
similar murders particularly decapitations around the country murders with decapitations are rare with only
three to four occurring yearly and cases where the head is taken are even more rare one case in New York seemed very
similar this took place in November of 2015 when 83-year-old Lois collie was beaten to death in her home in an
exclusive Community there was no forced entry and nothing was taken and there seemed to be no motive The Clincher was
that Miss colie Mrs collie's family owned fast food restaurants just like the durans did at one time yet law
enforcement was not able to establish a connection with the durans and in fact the suspect was arrested in 2017 in the
collie case but seems to have no links whatsoever to Shirley and Russell Sheriff SS consulted forensic
experts as far away as China and utilized Manpower from other law enforcement agencies as far away as
London he also sat down with six psychics over the years who claim to have known nothing Sheriff SS
interviewed 8 to 10 former employees of Russell durman and administered polygraphs to the lawn guy and the
handyman who did some work around the dur house there was no other domestic help at the time and it seems like these
polygraphs led nowhere well he's definitely doing his due diligence and anybody that's willing to talk and
anybody that's willing to give a polygraph they're at least going through with it well and that's why I point out
that this investigation seems to be incredibly thorough one this is a guy who very I mean he clearly has the
experience and the knowledge to take on this type of investigation but he's also humble
enough that he does get other people involved and that's one thing that a lot of experts will say is once a case goes
cold you know after let's say 12 months of getting no real leads that are that are taking you anywhere MH and and the
investigation seems to just be going nowhere that's when you get other agency involved you get new fresh eyes on the
crime on the crime scene on the evidence that you currently have and try to get some type of lead based off of other
experts experiences so Sheriff Sills even borrowed two experienced detectives from
the Jacksonville Florida Cold Case Squad the detectives reviewed the case files with Sills to help him try to get
to the bottom of this case Sheriff SS also periodically brought in experts from the DA's office and neighboring
counties as well as the FBI to help aid in the investigation where it stands today Captain we still don't know what
happened to the durans who did this and why it also seems too like there would be access points to this
water that might not be able to they might not be able to patrol or or no so it could be a possibility too
that the perpetrator would park somewhere else access the water further away and make it
into the the subdivision yeah and that brings up another good question too is if you have trouble establishing a
motive here were the derans themselves actually targeted or was this person or persons
just determined to enter the area and then choose a Target at some point right but
again why just for to to cause harm to somebody because again we don't there's no sign of burglary you think that would
be the motive and there's no sign of sexual assault so is it just a Thrill Kill well I think
before we move on to some theories let's let's go through a quick list of what we
do in fact know the the facts of the case as it stands today because there is some new information that came out along
the way one thing that I really enjoy about Sheriff SS is he's kind of an open book guy he understands that there is
certain things that as investigators they should hold back but he's also of the type that he will put a lot of
things out into the public and as a case goes on he will add information to help
break get a break in the case right as we pointed out before this incident this guy has solved every murder that
happened during the course of his uh tenure as the sheriff so what we do know is this Russell and Shirley durman were
murdered and likely this happened sometime between late afternoon on Friday May 2nd and 400 p.m. on Saturday
May 3rd no one broke in there was no obvious signs of struggle the couple was not restrained and the couple likely was
not killed in the home that's a weird part okay and and I know that's tough for us to wrap our heads around here
but that is something that sheriff Sills has said on you know news coverage and in interviews regarding this case he
says that he believes that they were likely not killed at home meaning that there's little
there's no evidence to suggest that they were killed in the home itself mhm which
is an added angle difficult angle for this case especially when you factor in that
we don't really have any eyewitnesses but the one who states they saw a man in the durman's yard who could not be
identified because of how far away this witness was mhm so Russell was decapitated with a very sharp tool
probably a knife this occurred after death and it we do know that the decapitation did happen in the garage
there is evidence to um back that up his head has never been found Russell was wearing what appeared to be the clothes
that he slept in or Was preparing to sleep in Sheriff SS later revealed this is one of those interesting things right
here he later revealed after keeping this information under wraps for some time that a small amount of
GSR was found on the back of Russell's shirt near his collar Russell had this GSR on the back of his shirt and he was
not known to be a sport shooter so this points out that he may have been shot in
the head before he was decapitated and Russell had a deep laceration on his hand and hair was
entangled in his hand Shirley was killed by blows to the head with a hammer or another tool which crushed her skull
Shirley was likely taken away by boat tied to the bag containing the concrete blocks and dumped in the lake after she
was already dead it's possible that she was driven away in a car to the other side of the lake and then placed in a
boat but either way a boat had to be involved because of where the body was found and located and I really Circle
this part in the investigation and who the killers may be well hold on just to stop you right there so you're saying a
boat has to be involved based on where her body was found mhm but the but a boat would have to be involved for The
Dumping of the body not necessarily the taking of the woman right right and that but that's what I'm
pointing out in circling here is because of the location of where the body was found yeah and because it was weighted
down you know he brought in Sheriff SS brought in the appropriate people to determine that the body didn't it it
came out of the water shortly after it floated to the top yeah and they also determined that it couldn't have moved
more than a 100 yards from where the location was that she was eventually found he actually thinks that it
probably moved even less than that because as they pointed out in the 911 call the body was lying up was like
snagged on one of those trees so this is one of the deepest parts of the lake and
this is a very big lake so Sheriff SS is really reminding us here that a that a boat in some form
was involved in this case at some point it has to be so The Killers or the killer came
prepared as they likely brought the tools that were used on Russell remember these items were not found in the house
and there was no obvious things that were um noticed to have been missing from the house mhm Shirley was found in
deep water at as we pointed out earlier about 5 1/2 miles from their home nothing obvious was taken from the house
there were valuables left in plain sight this really really makes it confusing to
the motive that was involved here now if the eyewitness is to be believed which Sheriff SS says he
believes this eyewitness a man was in the durman's yard and this took place on Saturday
some forensic evidence was found at the scene now whether it be DNA fibers tangible evidence or just something else
we don't know what that is although multiple news sources report that no foreign DNA was found Sheriff Sills has
said that he has quote forensic evidence collected at the house but he is keeping
mum on what it would be yeah that could be anything yeah there was no blood found on the grounds on the dock or in
the home anywhere except the garage we do know that in 2012 the durans were victims of American Express
credit card fraud where one of their cards was hacked in $2,000 in online expenditures racked up at Macy's and
Amazon they reported this to the putam county sheriff's office this is the only interaction that the Germans ever had
with the Sheriff's Office Russell and Shirley lived a normal quiet life and were well-liked social and friendly they
were well off but Frugal and cautious with their spending they were contemplating
downsizing and had sold their boat the family seemed to be close and loving they seem to have no enemies yeah and
were described as religious sweet unassuming family [Music] people make sure you sign up and
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Russell and Shirley Dermond /// Part 1/// 303

Part 1 of 2

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On Tuesday, May 6th 2014 - A woman called Putnum County, Georgia 911. She reported she was at the home of friends checking on them. The elderly couple had been missing for days. She called because inside the home she found someone dead in the garage that she could not identify. This is a crime and mystery that continues to haunt the state of Georgia to this day. Join us in the garage as we discuss this fascinating case. Beer of the Week - Southern Pecan Nut Brown Ale by Lazy Magnolia Brewing Garage Grade - 3 and 3 quarter bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

The episode investigates the murders of Russell and Shirley Durman, focusing on the crime scene, investigation, and unanswered questions surrounding their deaths.

Key points

Southern Pecan Beer Review. This week's featured beer is Southern Pecan, the first beer made with roasted pecans.
911 Call from Peggy Win. Peggy Win calls 911, believing someone is dead in her neighbors' home.
The Horrifying Discovery. A neighbor discovers a blood-soaked body in the garage of the Durman home.
Discovery of Shirley Durman's Body. Two fishermen discover a body floating in the lake, identified as 87-year-old Shirley Durman.
Investigation Insights. Sheriff Sills conducts an exhaustive investigation into the murders of Russell and Shirley Durman.
Mysterious Circumstances. The couple was likely not killed at home, adding complexity to the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

We have saved her from cubical hell.

A listener's praise for the show.

2:44WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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