Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Few clues & many questions in Georgia beheading cold case

Episode Date: August 10, 2017

Investigators have no suspects more than 3 years after Russell Dermond, 88, was beheaded in his Georgia home and his 87-year-old wife Shirley was found 5 miles away murdered and floating in a lake. Macon Telegraph reporter Joe Kovac and cold case expert Sheryl McCollum join Nancy Grace in this episode to examine the mystery.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. what had been done to them as they both neared their 90th birthdays, it was beyond heinous. Why would someone decapitate Russell Derman, an 88-year-old retired man, living out his golden years with his wife in a beautiful lake community in Georgia? Why would someone murder his 87-year-old wife Shirley and dump her body in the lake five miles from their home? In the years that have followed, no reasons or explanations have emerged, nor any suspects. Is there something in the Dermans' past that would relate to some form of a motive here, or is this just a random crime? They're still out there, and by God, they're capable of doing anything. They had no enemies.

They led a quiet life on a lakeside, perfectly happy, two peas in a pod, a cup and a saucer. That's who they were. They were both found dead. Beheaded. beheaded is in above the fold of every article written about them beheaded beheaded why i'm nancy grace this is crime stories and i want answers. I want answers about Russell Derman, Russell and Shirley Derman, their bodies found floating in Lake Oconee, Shirley's body was, with a horrific blow to the the head and then the beheading that to this day still consumes the local sheriff. Joining me right now is a special guest, Joe Kovac from the Macon Telegraph along with Cold Case Investigator, actually the director of the Cold Case Institute, Cheryl McCollum. Guys, I tell you what, if these were my parents, I would be a hound from hell until I found out who did this to them

to hit, beat my mother, to behead my father? Kovac, thank you so much for being with us. Let's start at the beginning. What do we know about them? This couple, Russ and Shirley Derman, were to attend a Kentucky Derby viewing party at one of their neighbor's houses, and that Saturday they never showed up. And a couple of days go by, and

their neighbors go by their house and discover the body of Russ Dermond headless in his carport between a Lincoln Town car and a Lexus SUV parked in their two-car garage. The door was shut. Wait a minute. Cheryl, did you get that? It was Kentucky Derby weekend. You know, when everybody goes to parties and watches what the Derby's like three minutes long. And it's a big to-do. Now, you know, my co-worker Dee, every year, wears a new hat. Whether she's sitting alone in her den in New York City, which I call the teacup because that's about how big her whole apartment is.

She will have on a hat and she will have probably a tray of, let's just say she's not afraid of a cocktail. I don't know how many mint juleps are disappear mysteriously that day okay but people really as we say down south put on the dog they really know how to celebrate the Kentucky Derby now you said that they were invited to a Kentucky Derby shindig did they go to it no they didn't they never showed up they have been missing at that time were they go to it? No, they didn't. They never showed up. So could they have been missing at that time? Were they expected to be there? Yeah, they were. And that was what, again, a couple of days go by. Wait a minute, Cheryl, there's our timeline. That's the beginning of the timeline, I would say, right there. The timeline is from Saturday to Tuesday. In that

timeframe, nobody saw them or heard from them. So let's just start the timeline, we think, unless you're about to tell me something new, like they missed something else, so they didn't answer the phone, or they didn't show up for dinner somewhere. We'll start the timeline at the Kentucky Derby Party, unless I hear different. Okay, Joe Kovac with me, making telegraph, and Cheryl McCollum, the director of the Cold Case Institute. So no one really checks on them for a couple of days because it's just assumed they just didn't want to get out and come to the party. Cheryl, do we have any idea who it was that found them? I doubt it was the police, so that leaves either neighbors or relatives. Do you have any idea who found them?

They were neighbors and good friends. Cheryl, what happened then? Well, Nancy, we have the husband who was found dead in the carport, and at this point, they fear that the wife has been kidnapped. She's not in the carport. She's not in the house. She's not in any of the vicinity of the neighborhood. You know, I'm thinking about the husband in the carport. Their carport, as I recall, had a door that comes down over it. Is that right, Joe? It was a two-car garage, and there was a door, I think,

that goes in from the kitchen of their house into the carport that was closed. Right, and there are two doors facing the driveway. Also, this is a lake house that's right so cheryl somebody goes in and it seems like to see this in my mind seems so um planned to actually behead someone and kill two people at the same time but the fact that he was in the garage would suggest to me either one of two things, that he was trying to leave or that he was out in his garage puttering around and that is when he was ambushed. A lot might depend on which way he was headed. What do we know about the way in which he was found, Cheryl? He was laying there with his head missing. We don't know

direction. There's no force entry. There's no sign of a real stranger. It was just, he's right there. That's it. Let's go out to the lines. Joining us right now is Mike from Kennesaw. Hi, Mike. What's your question? Thank you, Nancy. I was just wondering what business this family was in. This sounds like a professional hit. And what kind of business or entanglements they may have had that would have prompted something like this. Why do you say, Mike, from Kennesaw, that it sounds like a professional hit? Because that's my opinion, too. Go ahead. Didn't sound like there was very much evidence.

Nobody saw anything. You know, it just sounds like it was very well organized and very well thought out. Well, you know what did it for me, Mike? The beheading. Yep. Because that's something you don't see every day. You see hit and runs. You see domestic violence, shooting, asphyxiation of children, people killing for insurance money, burglary's gone wrong, revenge killings, not too many of those, but a beheading and the murder of this couple, two people at once.

But the beheading is what really did it. I mean, how rare is that? Cheryl McCollum from the Cold Case Institute. I mean, you just don't see a beheading every day, Cheryl. I can say that much anecdotally. It's extraordinarily rare, especially with a couple like this. For all intents and purposes, they had no enemies. They didn't owe large amounts of money. They weren't, you know, active in this underworld, so to speak. So it truly, it's so rare, Nancy, that as soon as you hear it, everything

else should stop. Russ Derman was found dead by friends who had dropped by to check on him and his wife the morning of May 6th, after they did not show up that weekend at a Kentucky Derby party. His headless body was found lying in a pool of blood in the family's two-car garage. Shirley was then discovered. At first, they thought she had been kidnapped. How was her body found? And I'm going to throw that out to Joan Kovach. Ten days go by after the grisly discovery in that carport. Some fishermen out on Lake Oconee saw something floating in the water, and it was Shirley's body face down, and tied to her legs or tied to her body were two 30-pound concrete bricks.

Oh, my stars. Oh, Cheryl. Cheryl, did you hear what Kovac just said? Waits. So this was absolutely not somebody breaking in and burglarizing and the couple comes in and they kill them. You don't hang around to put weights on somebody. And you said 10 days passed, 10 days. They're running up the wrong tree for 10 days, thinking she's kidnapped, when right there, literally in their backyard, is the vacation spot, Lake Oconee.

I've got to tell you guys something. I took my children the other day hiking along the Chattahoochee. The whole time, I kept thinking, please don't let a dead body go by. Please don't let a dead body go by. Because, see, in my mind, everybody in the studio is staring at me. Because all I can think about are all these cases, Cheryl, and, of course, the Wayne Williams case. Sure. Where he got caught throwing his last, we hope was his last victim, over the side of the bridge.

Absolutely. To go float down the river. And I just couldn't stop. I couldn't help it. You think I've been doing this too long? Anyway, I'd say, oh, look at that little butterfly. Please don't let there be a dead body. Please don't let there be a dead body. Anyway, so that was my day. Back to this. 10 days passed. How crucial was that, Cheryl? The 10 days they lost. It was so crucial.

But again, there's very little evidence in the home. Now, because she was concealed in water, there's less evidence on her. So you've got two carries, two crime scenes, and you should at this point start a parallel investigation. Well, the reality is, although I'm saying, oh, they lost 10 days, let's think this through just a moment, because they knew they had a crime scene they knew there was a murder so they were processing it as a murder the only thing they didn't have the missing piece of the puzzle was shirley so they find her body and what did they determine was the cause of death joe um

blunt force uh she might have been beaten to death with perhaps a hammer. Why do you say perhaps? They couldn't get any of the shape of the hammer? That's one of the few things you can get a shape from the indentations on the body is a hammer. Yeah, and I guess being in the water for 10 days may have obscured some of that, but the water washed away perhaps a lot of trace evidence impact, but that's their supposition anyway. Just so your listeners have an idea, this ain't no pond we're talking about. Shirley was found five miles from her house by water. As you know, Nancy, Oconee there is a 20-square-mile impoundment, as Sheriff Howard Seals says. It's surrounded by big houses, golf courses. If you take I-20 east out of downtown Atlanta, about an hour or so, about halfway to Augusta or the South Carolina border,

you'll kind of come to a big lake. And as you cross the northern tip of Lake Oconee there on Interstate 20, I guess it's about five or six miles down the water to the Dermott House. Their place was about a $700,000 house that overlooked a cove there. And that's one of the things about this is not only did they live in a cove by lake that you have trouble seeing from the water even today they were also in a cul-de-sac that was surrounded by trees so it was the perfect place for something to happen and nobody to see do we know whether there was a sex attack on her i don't think there was cheryl has that never been released was was a sex attack on her? I don't think there was.

Cheryl, has that never been released? Was there a sex attack on her? It has not been released, Nancy. But that's one thing that she was placed in water that you would think about. Because water usually is to conceal another crime, to wash something away. So it's something to think about. I'm a little stumped right here because if there has been a sex attack, a rape, for instance, a traditionally known rape, there would still be DNA evidence after 10 days in the water, Cheryl. Possibly. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. No, no, no. I've just got to say that if

there were no, if there was normal penile vaginal rape, there would be degraded. Yes. But there would still be 10 days later, there would still be indicia of spermatozoa. Absolutely. Correct. Because after X number of hours on spermatozoa, the head comes off, and after X number of hours, the tail comes off. But DNA would still be

there. DNA that could be traced. Well, here's the reason I say possibly. If this happened, you know, it depends on whether or not a prophylactic was used. There's other elements there that might have been, again, for concealment. So possibly. Okay, Cheryl.

You say tomato, but I'm going to say pumpkin squash on this one because when you come in and that and that is your intent to rape i don't think anybody's really thinking about using a condom but but but but the reality is i don't think she was sex attacked i don't think that happened because of the because of the mode of killing. So, you know, arguing over nothing because I really do not believe, given the circumstances under which they were found, that this was about a sex attack. This was a planned event.

But why? That's where we stand right now, but there's so much more. We are trying to figure out a cold case. A lovely couple murdered brutally, and people only realize something is wrong when they don't show up for the Kentucky Derby party they were invited to. Then the discovery of the husband beheaded five miles and ten days later, they find his wife floating face down in the Oconee River.

And to this day, there is not an answer. And this quiet little community, this has never happened before. Question. Joe, did they ever find his head? No. And they have looked. There were deputies fanned out across this neighborhood and across the area

just doing the grid searches and all they could do. At one point, I think the day Shirley was found in the water, one of the Atlanta TV reporters had asked, couldn't you have done more to find her? And Sheriff Howard Sills replied, well, short of bringing in the United States Navy to search this 18,000, 19,000-acre lake,

I don't know what we could have done. So, I mean, it's not from a lack of hunting it. Searching water is extremely difficult, extremely difficult. And speaking as an experienced diver, I can tell you even a dive team in lake water it's very difficult because it is murky it is um on the bottom can be muddy sandy the water is dark it's very very hard to do a dive search and that's a good point that you bring that up yeah because speaking of diving she was found in 50 feet of water. This is not far from the Wallace Dam where she was dumped. The other thing about Lake Oconee is it's a man-made lake, and what's just under the water in those? Trees.

And the lake was built in 1980 or so, and underwater there's still these. It's a graveyard of old tree stumps, and some of them just beneath the surface. So she was even tangled up in one of those trunks. It's a miracle she came to the top. I was just about to say, instead of trashing the cops on this one, we better praise the cops. It is a miracle she was ever found. And her being found that close to the Wallace Dam,

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neighbors check in on this couple to find the worst possible scenario. The wife is gone. Shirley is missing, believed to be kidnapped. The husband has been found beheaded, beheaded in the garage. His head has never been recovered. Never. Now, what does that say about who the perpetrators are, Cheryl? Nancy, it says that they could have kept it as a calling card, a trophy. They could have taken it as a calling card to show other people, hey, look what we did.

You better behave yourself. They could have used it with the wife to force her into the boat. Because, again, you're talking she was taken away. She was not killed there. First of all, let me respond to what you're talking she was taken away. She was not killed there. Wait, wait. First of all, let me respond to what you're saying. Number one, it was not a calling card because when you have a calling card, you give the card to somebody. Do you really think, Cheryl McCollum, come on,

you and I have analyzed so-called conspiracy cases our whole life. I guess since we were in third grade, it feels like. You know nobody can keep their yap shut. Uh-uh. Mm-mm. No, I agree with you. I'm just saying that's one of the, if you're looking at whether or not this was a hit, that's something the mob would tend to do.

Yeah, okay, I agree with that. I agree with that. His head's in that lake. I do. I believe it's in the lake. I think so, too. But again, with her. I do. I believe it's in the lake. But again, with her... Hold on, I heard Kovac join in

that he thinks so too, because think about it, Cheryl, what Joe Kovac told us a few moments ago about the bottom of that lake. I mean, if you're doing, let's just say side-scan sonar, you're going to see the outline of trees and stumps

that never find it. Never. If it were in that lake. Never. I could just see them taking his head by the hair and throwing it right out in the middle of that lake. And why, Cheryl, do you believe, and I'm not so sure I agree with you on this one, why do you believe she was killed elsewhere? I think she could have easily been a soft kill, like asphyxiation or a blow to the head. Well, it was a blow to the head. And I don't think they took her out on a boat to do it. I think they killed her right there and then dumped her body.

Why do you think she wasn't killed right there? All right, stay with me. Okay. Stay with me. Okay. Stay with me. Just like we used to be in the war room. I'll try. She was treated differently. Her head was not severed.

But she's taken and put in a location that is five miles away by boat. She is tied down with cinder blocks. They did not want her to reappear. Why not just kill her and have her beside him? They treated her differently, Nancy, and that needs to be focused on. Ooh, ooh, that's a really... You know, you should probably be something like the director

of a cold case institute, Cheryl. Back to you. Joe. Joe Kovac, what about that? That's actually very significant that she was treated differently. And do you believe, Joe, she was taken somewhere else to be killed? And this is actually very critical. Yeah, Cheryl brings up a great point, and she's probably on the right track.

I mean, I say probably because these things, no one knows. This is all speculation, but still, there's probably no doubt that the killers separated the couple. That's at least one of the theories from the investigation, that these bad guys, or bad guy, but most likely bad guys, separated them, took Shirley to some other location, and perhaps it was some kind of an extortion try, that they played them against one another, that They used leverage, I guess, against one another to find something that perhaps this couple who'd been married for 68 years didn't have. And in the end, maybe they thought this couple, the Dermans, had money, and they couldn't find it, so this is the ending. It might have been that way anyway. But again, these are all guesses, but the fact that they were taken parted in some way, I wonder if there were phone calls made back and forth saying, look what we're doing, tell us where the money is,

tell us where whatever it is is. And when you can't tell somebody something that doesn't exist, Lord help you. Cheryl, I'd like to hear your response to that theory. It's pretty good. And again, Nancy, there's blood in that garage. There's a lack of her blood. They took great time with her. They took her five miles away.

They risked being seen. They risked her screaming over water. They risk several things to put her in a different location. So again, my focus, I would start with her. Let me ask you this, Joe Kovac from the Macon Telegraph. Are we sure that she was taken out onto the water by boat or could it have been by car? Is there any location they could have dumped her by car? I've been on the lake a lot. I grew up fishing over there and have been there recently by boat.

Where she was, I mean, short of somebody swimming out there, which is unlikely, there had to have been a boat involved. There's no bridge there. What is interesting is where they found her isn't barred from at least one boat ramp. So, again, it's also possible, and I think the sheriff early on wondered if this had been done by car and then the disposal part done by boat, that perhaps these killers didn't come by boat in the first place but secondarily used a boat to dump her body now you could argue either way but i think he thinks that a car came uh to the house at least at some point okay so bottom line we don't know i'm very familiar with the area as well from having been a camp counselor there uh the 4-H National Park there.

Let me get back to the disposal of the body because you're right. But, you know, Cheryl, he was special too because beheading is very, very rare. Absolutely. And at least our world and our country in the U.S., that's a very, very obscure way to dispose of a body, and the fact that his head has never been found, it means something. It means something.

So, Cheryl, the fact that we believe, see, I was thinking there may have been an overpass of some sort where they could have dumped her, you know, much the way Wayne Williams dumped her off into the Chattahoochee, his bodies. But you guys are telling me, no, there's no overpass. They would have had to have done it most likely by boat. See, that adds a lot to who the killers are. Somebody that may have come by boat.

Also, did they have a boat dock in their backyard? Yes. Mr. Kovac. Sure, they did, yes dock in their backyard? Yes. Mr. Kovac? Sure, they did, yes. They did. Still there. Wow. So what does that mean to me that the killer may have come by boat?

Does that mean it was somebody that lived on the lake, was familiar with the lake? Obviously, they had to be to navigate the water and get to the right boat ramp wouldn't you agree with that joe well i guess you just get in the water and go back the way you came i mean did they use gps that sort of thing to get around yeah there's so many ways to speculate on that i've often wondered if if this were again playing the other end of it if it were some random attack someone cruising down the lake looking for a light on in the early spring, then I just don't know that you would have picked that house. Wait, somebody cruising around the lake looking for a light on,

that would be completely diametrically opposed to a specific hit. You can't have, first of of all somebody cruising around on a boat probably would have money to have a boat let's just say it's not a homeless vagrant that wandered in somebody is cruising the Oconee with a boat and I you know I've just mastered GPS in my car all right so it's hard for me to imagine doing GPS out on the water. But Cheryl, I don't believe it was anybody that needed GPS. I think they knew exactly where they were going. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't say, oh, they looked for a light on and saw this place and it was a targeted

hit. light on and saw this place and it was a targeted hit so no i was bringing up the other end of the spectrum being they don't know but you go from from totally random to total uh take out gotcha okay yeah okay hold on just one moment guys i'm going out to the lines. Max, North Carolina. Hi, Max. What's your question? Well, I've got a couple of questions. First of all, it likely was someone who killed them who were familiar with the neighborhood. They were local people in my in my opinion. Number number one. And then did the police find the couple? And I wasn't clear as to what happened with the husband. Did he also disappear, but they found her? But also, did the police find their cell phones at their home?

And maybe there was some talk over the cell phones in connection with this whole terrible thing. You know, Max, this is the case where the husband is found beheaded in the garage and the wife's body is not found. For days later, 10 days later, five miles away, face down in the Oconee near a dam, a huge dam. And let me understand this. Cheryl, is there not a bridge going over the dam? She couldn't have been thrown from the bridge. I'm focused on the fact that the killer has a boat.

Yeah, there's no bridge. There's no overpass. There's no way to get to that location except for boats. Well, the more questions. Especially with a body and 30-pound block. The more questions I ask, the more questions... Especially with a body and 30-pound block. The more questions I ask, the more questions I have. This is what I know for sure. He's beheaded, she's bludgeoned dead

and thrown purposefully into the Oconee River, and to this day the case hasn't been solved, nor has the head been found. Okay, here's another wrinkle. Here's another wrench to throw at you two. To Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Institute,

it doesn't end there. What about the rest of the family? Nancy, this couple had a son that was also murdered years before in what appeared to be a drug deal gone bad. You know, I'm just taking that and what you just said and working it over and over in my mind because once you say drugs, all bets are off.

Those people are vicious. Absolutely. Vicious. What do you think of that, Joe Kovac? I mean, this couple in no way, they were pristine. Their reputations were beyond reproach. So, could they in any way, Joe Kovac, be connected to their son's murder? Could they? Perhaps. Likely, no.

I mean, his killer is in jail. Their son's killer is still in prison. That happened back in 2000 on the west side of downtown Atlanta. Okay, what about that, Cheryl? How does that affect their murders? Well, again, there's a drug connection. There's other people that may have known that this victim came from money perhaps they wanted to go to the family and extort them for some other reason you know now that is a

good idea it's just something you have to run that's a good idea because not necessarily i mean it sounds like it's out of a fifth grade novel all right that there's this big conspiracy and they think they know more about the case. It could be just as simple as whatever doper killed the son had an accomplice or talked from behind bars and told somebody about this couple that they're rich and they have a nearly million dollar house on the water, and this is where they live, and this is what you can find in the house. It could be just that simple, Cheryl McCollum. It absolutely could be. Of course, if it's that simple, Joe Kovac, you would have expected it to be solved by now.

If it were just some penny-ante doper that came in, you would have not expected such a clean kill i mean to behead somebody and not leave any dna evidence uh that's almost impossible and the same with killing her bludgeoning her dead and then attaching weights to her body and taking her most likely by boat five miles to dump her uh-uh no that's not an amateur, Joe Kovac. Yeah, as one of the couple's surviving sons, Keith, who lives down in Florida, told me last year, you know, he said, it's bad enough to lose both of your parents at the same time, but in the way it happened, he said, you could have had Sherlock Holmes on this case from day one, and he says, I don't know that Sherlock Holmes would have solved it.

He said, you do something like this and don't leave any clues. It's hard to believe. Were there other children or just the one other son? They have a daughter and two sons survived. And what do we know about them? What do they say about this? I've only spoken to one of their uh children and keith dermond who i think is their oldest surviving have they been cleared that's what i want to know i

believe so i believe so and again as much as you can clear someone in an unsolved murder was anything taken from the home joe not that they know of the place wasn't in disarray. One investigator told me that the house was kept so clean that one of those you'd eat off the floor kind of places. Just a beautiful home that was, aside from maybe a lamp or two that was moved, nothing to really say there was a struggle in the house. Sounds more like an ambush more and more, Cheryl McCollum. Now, Cheryl, what if anything can you tell me about

a man seen near the home of Russ and Shirley Derman around the time of their murders? Well, there was a witness that saw a man in the yard, but I believe, Joe, that the sheriff has excluded him. I guess nobody's excluded but again that's one of

the things with these as these go the more people you talk to the more you're at least fairly certain of who isn't involved and that's sometimes half the battle so you're saying Joe that the one guy seen near the scene has been excluded no I don't know that no I'm not aware of that I don't even know that he's ever been identified this was just just a kind of a phantom, I guess you want to call it. Cheryl, what do we know about any potential suspects? To my knowledge, Nancy, they have none. They have developed no clear motive. They've developed no clear person of interest. When law enforcement, including an FBI agent, arrived at the scene where Shirley's body

surfaced, they found that she had been tied to cinder blocks before being placed in the water. She had been struck and killed by a blunt force object, possibly a hammer, which has never been found. Hammers, possibly a hammer, which has never been found.

Hammers, unlike, say, a baseball bat or a rock, make a very distinct pattern. With a bat or a cylindrical object, you can sometimes get the shape, but with a hammer, you can actually see on a body the indentations from the hammer head or the claw the problem is she had been in the water for 10 days which greatly degraded the skin surface and could have ruined any evidence from her skin surface regarding the indentions of a hammer. That is the problem. Would it make a difference? Yes, it would. But we can go on the theory that they think the murder weapon was a hammer. What does that mean? Was the hammer missing from the home or was the hammer brought in? We know they had to get there by boat, by boat, either getting there or disposing of the body by boat.

That is very critical. It is isolating who may have done this. Someone that had access to a boat, owned a boat, or knew how to get one and use it on the Oconee River. They also knew where the Wallace Dam was because that is where her body was left or floated to. Why? It's extremely deep there. The churning of the water of the dam would take her body down, down, down,

into that underwater forest that Kovac just described for you. Someone knew exactly what they were doing. This is not an amateur, and these people are still unapprehended. His head has never been found. Boxes scattered throughout Sills' office, who is a law enforcement officer on this case contain literally hundreds of interviews with individuals, media trying to get information, phone record information, unknown numbers of pages of financial records, bank statements, credit card, tax records, you name it.

That is what they continue to sift through. What do we know about their finances, Joe Kovac? Well, Russ Dermott had been an executive for a clock manufacturer, I think, up in the New York City area. They're both New Jersey natives, Shirley and Russell. After retiring or leaving that business in the 80s, early 90s, Russell started managing a chain of fast food restaurants around metro Atlanta. I think they had about 10 restaurants.

And they later retired to the lake around the turn of the century. Okay, hold on just a moment. Cheryl McCollum, that sounds like a whole lot of money. Sounds like a whole lot of money. It looks like a whole lot of money if you see the house. But again, Nancy, there was no ransom, none of their checks or credit cards were used, nothing of value was taken, not their cars, not jewelry, not earth.

So what I'm saying is not necessarily that it was a theft case. What I'm saying is could money have been a motive? I mean, there's no known sex attack. Oh, no question. Nothing we know of was stolen. Right. So what's the motive? Either it was money or information.

What did they know? Did they know something? Or was it about the money? There's basically, there's three reasons normally people are going to kill you. Money, sex, or revenge. And if she wasn't sexually attacked, you can take sex off the table. We can't tie money to it. So that leaves revenge. And at this level of violence, you would almost want to look at that. Yeah, Sheriff Sills, Nancy, has said, I still remember him telling me this, this case screams out for a vicious enemy. But who that is, is in the wind. Alan Duke, give us the tip line, please.

Nancy, it's the Putnam County, Georgia Sheriff's Department that's the lead agency in this investigation. You can reach them with your leads at 706-485-8557. Again, for tips, the Putnam County Sheriff's Department, 706-485-8557. Here's a clip from the podcast by Macon Telegraph reporter Joe Kovacs interviewing the Putnam County Sheriff about how the bodies were discovered. On the evening that I visited him recently, he sat down in a cushioned chair out on that porch, lit a Cohiba cigar, and began telling the story of how the Dermons died

and what's been done since. He started at the beginning, the late morning of May 6, 2014, when those worried neighbors found the headless body of their friend, Russell Derman. After calling several times, they decided to drive over. When I say drive over, I'm not talking about a mile, a mile and a half at the most.

And went in the kitchen door, which was not locked, and walked in the house and called out their names and things like that. They actually walked through the kitchen, and there was a door to the garage. That was one of the first things they did. They went from the kitchen into the garage and opened it and saw both of their vehicles there. So they assumed they were there somewhere. And this is a two-story home, or at least a story and a half,

or whatever you want to call it. It had a full basement that was partially finished. Anyway, they walked through the whole house calling out their names and didn't find them. And then eventually the man, this was a couple, a contemporary couple of theirs about the same age, the garage door when you opened, you could see the cars, but there was a step, I say a step, at least three steps down from the kitchen level into the garage. He stepped down there and then when he got between the two cars, that's when he saw the body.

The body was bad enough, but when he walked over there, that's when he saw that the head had been removed from the body. And of course then they called and you can imagine quite a state because there was somewhat bit of a confusion and the dispatchers told me that, you know, there were bodies all over the house. I don't know how I got construed that, but I obviously responded to that in a very quick fashion. And sure enough, when we got there, it was clear to me it was a post-mortem decapitation, but nonetheless, there was still

a lot of blood that had drained from the, I think, thoraxal cavity would be the proper term, out all over the floor of the garage. And of course, at that juncture, hell we didn't even know who these people were. The mystery surrounding the brutal death of Russ and Shirley Dermond remains open and active. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.