Florida Keys

Who beat, dragged, strangled, killed, dumped these 3 in the Keys? Maybe Facebook knows

 

The Monroe County Sheriff's Office hopes social media will help reinvigorate unsolved cases from long ago and perhaps help people remember details that might help solve a few of them.

The cases will be posted on the agency's new Facebook page, Florida Keys Missing and Unsolved, www.facebook.com/pages/Florida-Keys-Missing-and-Unsolved/187864244671823?ref=hl).

People can visit it to read about people who have gone missing over the years and not been found, bodies that remain unidentified, or unsolved murders and other major crimes that need resolution.

Detectives revisit the cases as they have time, agency spokeswoman Becky Herrin said. They double-check old leads and make sure DNA and other information is entered into databases, among other things.

"We hope by featuring these cases on Facebook, someone will see them and maybe remember something that will help us," said Major Crimes Unit Sgt. Linda Mixon. "Maybe someone who was originally reluctant to cooperate has grown up or changed their mind, Maybe someone heard from a person reported missing and just didn't think to let us know. Stranger things have happened."

The first three cases to be entered on the Facebook page:

•  Lisa Sanders, age 20, killed on Dec. 16, 1988, on No Name Key. She was 4-foot-10 and 106 pounds.

That night, Herrin said, she attended a party with friends at the end of No Name Road on No Name Key. Her friends last saw her leaving on foot about 9:30 p.m. Her parents reported her missing the following day and a short time later, her body was found lying near a gravel pit on No Name.

She had been beaten, stabbed and dragged behind a car by a rope tied around her neck. Anyone with information about the case can call Mixon at 797-0089.

•  Patty Lanza, age 4, killed on Little Torch Key on July 2, 1988.

Herrin said she had attended a party with her mother at a home on Gato Road on Little Torch. Her mother last saw her at 10 p.m. Her body was found nearby the following afternoon. She had been raped and hit in the head, then her body was thrown in bushes off the side of the road.

Anyone with information can contact Major Crimes Detective Geni Hernandez at 809-3040 or 797-0046.

•  On Feb. 15, 1991, the body of a young woman was found on a short dirt trail in a heavily wooded area near the south end of the Bahia Honda Bridge. She had been beaten and strangled.

She has never been identified, and was given the nickname by the media of the Valentines Day murder victim. She was white, age 16 to 25, 145 pounds, and had brown eyes and straight, collar-length dark brown hair. She had a Timex wristwatch with a silver band and four earrings in each ear.

She had a tattoo of a heart with the word "Love" in cursive on her upper left arm and another of a cross on the web of skin between her thumb and forefinger of her left hand. Anyone with information can call Mixon at the number for her above.

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