Man killed in orange grove 39 years ago identified as missing dad, FL cops say

A man was found tied up and shot “execution-style” in a Florida orange grove in 1986, but his identity posed a decades-long mystery, authorities said.

Now, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office has identified that man as Blaine Lewis Brown Jr., who would have been 39 at the time he was found dead in Fort Pierce.

Brown, a horse farmer from Ocala, told his wife and two young sons that he was driving to Miami for horse-related business on Sept. 26, 1986, investigators said at a news conference broadcast April 28.

Then he disappeared.

The truck he rented was later found abandoned in a parking lot in Miami, but investigators believe Brown never made it there.

Cold case Det. Paul Taylor suspects Brown was killed the same day he left home.

Less than two weeks after Brown left on his trip, an unidentified man was found “bound and shot multiple times in an execution-style killing” in an orange grove, Sheriff Richard Del Toro said.

The man had cash on him, which made investigators believe it wasn’t a robbery.

“Where he was found … it wasn’t random,” Taylor said. “There was a reason why he was there.”

The body was found Oct. 7, 1986, the same day Brown was reported missing, according to the sheriff. But detectives couldn’t identify the victim or a suspect, and the case went cold.

In 2019, investigators reopened the case and secured permission to exhume the body to collect additional DNA samples, Del Toro said.

Then Othram Labs was brought on in 2024 to conduct advanced genetic genealogy testing to look for possible relatives, the sheriff said.

The lab results led investigators to family members who were able to provide a DNA sample and confirm the John Doe’s identification as Brown.

“Whenever I did make contact with the son to do a death notification, he actually told me that throughout his entire life he never knew what happened to his dad,” Taylor said. “He said that he thought that maybe his dad just decided not to come home anymore. So that gave him a little bit of closure there.”

Taylor said there were rumors that Brown was involved in drug dealing, according to his family, but detectives were still investigating that claim.

The sheriff’s office is asking anyone with information to come forward as investigators work to uncover who killed Brown.

Fort Pierce is about a 70-mile drive north of West Palm Beach.