Cold Case Florida

At about 9:30 am on June 6, 2009, Gil Perez was seen by a neighbor walking down the street near his home in Palm Beach County, Florida. That would be the last time the 47-year-old would be seen alive. Later that day, Gil's brother discovered his body on his bedroom floor, naked and covered in blood. Mary Bain, crime scene manager at the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, said it was one of the bloodiest...

On March 11, 1982, two males were camping in the woods near Ormond Beach in Volusia County, Florida. While exploring the area, they found more than broken branches and kindling to start a fire. Buried under a pile of pine needles, the campers stumbled across a set of human bones. Their discovery would launch an investigation into the identity of the remains spanning 45 years — and counting. Today,...

For nearly 55 years, the Sumter County Sheriff's Office, located in rural central Florida, has been working tirelessly to solve the murder of a young woman referred to as Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee, in reference to the body of water where her body was found. In an amazing story of perseverance and advancing technology, we now know her identity to be Maureen "Cookie" Rowan, born on March 21, 1949...

On Saturday, June 20, 2020, Gainesville, Fla., native Natisha Covert and her friends planned to attend an out-of-town concert, but at the last minute noticed a Facebook post about a block party in nearby Waldo. Just hours later in the noisy, dark, early-morning chaos of the outdoor gathering, Natisha Covert would be dead, shot through the heart with a bullet intended for someone else. Who pulled t...

On Christmas Eve 2018, with colored lights hung and presents under the tree, a 32-year-old ex-Navy Corpsman living in Central Florida offered his longtime girlfriend the best gift he could imagine: a proposal of marriage. But just three weeks later, he was shot and killed outside the gate of their rural Central Florida home. So instead of looking forward to the wedding of her dreams, his finance w...

In 1973, two sisters from New Jersey set out for the trip of their young lives. They wanted to experience spring break in the exotic and southernmost vacation spot in America, Key West, Florida. Together, they embarked on the long bus ride down the East Coast and spent several fun weeks with friends – both old and new. And even though they reportedly had been wired the money to take a return bus h...

In virtually every city in America, there are areas that statistically are more prone to violent crime than others, and there are certainly times of day – or night – that are considered less safe to be out and about. But what happened to 81-year-old Karl Lievense in Naples Florida, at his office in the middle of the day in 2018, proves that sometimes a criminal with murderous intentions doesn't ca...

On December 19, 1959, a family of four was gunned down in their home in the town of Osprey, located in a rural part of Sarasota County along Florida's southwest coast. The gruesome scene from the Walker Family home gained national attention for its brutality and its possible connection to a similar crime in Kansas just weeks before that inspired the bestseller In Cold Blood written by author Truma...

In the late 1990s in the rural area of Flagler County, Florida, just north of world famous Daytona Beach, two women were shot and killed, their bodies left in ditches on the side of the road. They were known drug users and prostitutes with reputations for being unafraid of the local biker bars or the company they kept.   But someone took advantage of that fact and ended their lives, discarded thei...

On September 30, 1971, Bobby Ray Jones went to work as a bartender at the Lone Branch in Darlington, Florida, located near the Alabama border in the northernmost part of Walton County. The bar closed early that night, but Bobby Ray answered a knock at the door and let someone in. Minutes later, that person would shoot and kill Bobby Ray, and over 50 years later, his family, friends and local law e...

In the early morning hours of March 3, 2013, Phillip Davenport was shot and killed in his front yard, with his wife and three young children hiding in a closet inside the home. Mr. Davenport had returned from a routine trip to a Wal-Mart in Navarre, Florida, just a few minutes away. He had just gotten off the phone with his wife Tamara, and did not indicate that anything was wrong. But something w...