Florida Man Missing for 46 Years Confirmed Dead; Homicide Investigation Underway

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office announced that a family has finally received closure over 40 years after a Florida man, Ronald Gilchrist, went missing leaving the Tampa Bay area, according to WTSP.

On October 28, 1980, Gilchrist, then 29 years old, left Clearwater to travel to Miami with plans to pick up his in-laws at the Miami International Airport and take them to Marco Island.

Gilchrist called from a restaurant payphone in Mulberry on October 29, 1980, his last communication with his family. However, he never arrived at the airport as planned and had been missing since then.

Case of Florida Man Missing Since 1980 Solved

Detectives from the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office obtained photos of Ronald Gilchrist from 1980. They shared them with the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office, per WSVN.

It was discovered that Miami police had investigated a homicide in November 1980 involving an unidentified man, later known as John Doe, whose description matched that of Gilchrist, the Florida man missing for more than four decades.

The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office formally identified John Doe as Ronald Gilchrist. The Miami-Dade Police Department is investigating his death as a homicide on June 7.

'Trunk Lady' Murder Victim Identified After 53 Years

Before Ronald Gilchrist, a Florida man missing since 1980, a mother who disappeared in 1965 from Tucson, Arizona, was also found last month, Fox13 noted.

The St. Petersburg Police Department in Florida received a call from two juveniles on Halloween in 1969. The juveniles reported seeing two white men placing a trunk in a field behind the former Oyster Bar at 4300 34th Street South.

Upon opening the trunk, officers discovered a woman's body wrapped in a large plastic bag. The woman had visible head injuries and had been strangled with a Western-style bolo tie. She was partially clothed in a pajama top.

The woman, known as the 'trunk lady' for decades, was believed to be a victim of homicide. Due to the lack of identification, she was buried as a 'Jane Doe' in Memorial Park Cemetery. However, on February 10, 2010, her body was exhumed for further investigation.

Over the years, investigators made multiple attempts to identify her using dental and bone samples, but the degraded condition of the samples hindered their efforts.

A breakthrough occurred when St. Petersburg cold case detective Wally Pavelski discovered an original sample of the victim's hair and skin taken during the autopsy this year. This sample was sent to a laboratory in Texas for analysis.

Orthram laboratories returned a DNA profile in April, matching the DNA from her children, proving that she was indeed Sylvia June Atherton.

According to the police, the woman was 41 years old when she died and was the mother of five children. While the details surrounding her disappearance and death remain unresolved, Atherton's daughter has expressed relief upon confirming her mother's identity.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Bert Hoover

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