BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — The Hernando County Sheriff's Office said it has identified a suspect who killed a woman in 1972 and dumped her body in a wooded area of Brooksville.
Sheriff Al Nienhuis held a press conference on Thursday. He said Jerry Lee Fletcher killed Peggy Joyce Shelton in July of 1972.
Her body was discovered wrapped in a blanket in the area of High Corner Road and Cortez Boulevard in Brooksville.
"We had an unidentified female that was found in a heavily wooded area of Hernando County. She was strangled and she was wrapped in a fairly unique blanket and over the years, we put that blanket out, trying to find leads on this particular case and again the body was disposed of in the woods," said Sheriff Nienhuis.
Sheriff Nienhuis said the human remains were not identified for decades.
In January, Hernando County detectives announced that they made a positive identification of the victim in the case.
In August 2022, Othram Labs used genealogy and DNA testing to get a match of a family member. Detectives were able to identify the human remains as Peggy Joyce Shelton.
"This is all pre-DNA, don't forget, the 70s, DNA didn’t come around until the 80s and didn’t get going anywhere until the 90s in the country," said Detective George Loydgren.
Detectives released a facial reconstruction to the public in hopes that it would generate new leads.
Sheriff Nienhuis said Shelton married Fletcher in 1971. Before Fletcher married Shelton, he lived at a motel.
His parents owned a motel on Nebraska Avenue in Tampa. The motel is no longer there.
"Peggy's body was wrapped in a blanket or comforter. It was twin size that would commonly be found in this type of motel and a resident of this motel in fact actually told detectives that he had actually stayed there and had a twin size bed because the rooms were so small," said Sheriff Nienhuis.
The Tampa Police Department arrested Fletcher on February 18, 1972 for the abduction and rape of a 16-year-old girl. He was found not guilty in 1972.
Sheriff Nienhuis said Fletcher moved to Illinois for work and married another woman.
The sheriff's office said Fletcher murdered another woman, Shirley McCune, in April of 1973. Her body was discovered at a cemetery in Marshall County, Illinois.
"She was raped, strangled and disposed of in a wooded area and she too, that victim was wrapped in a blanket," said Sheriff Nienhuis
The sheriff's office said in 2011, a Pinellas County detective got a DNA hit on the abduction, rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in 1971. Her body was discovered in an orange grove in Palm Harbor.
A detective visited Fletcher in an Illinois prison.
"There Fletcher admitted to additional murders in Florida, but because he was not given the assurance that he would not face the death penalty by Pinellas County prosecutors, he refused to give additional information on those murders," said Sheriff Nienhuis.
Nienhuis said Fletcher died in prison in 2014.
"If anybody knows Jerry Lee Fletcher, anybody I haven't spoke to or anybody who had a relationship with him, and were abused by him or has any further information, they can call the sheriff's office and tell me. I can look into it and see if there's any other cases he might be associated with because his DNA is in the database, the national database," said Detective Loydgren.
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