It's an inexplicable mystery. Two elderly people, beloved in their community, brutally murdered at their lake house for no apparent reason. Who killed Russell and Shirley Dermond? Check out our new True Crime Substack the True Crime Times at: https://t.co/26TIoM14Tg Check out our other show The Prosecutors: Legal Briefs for discussion on cases, controversial topics, or conversation with content creators Get Prosecutors Podcast Merch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/prosecutors-podcast/ Join the Gallery on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/4oHFF4agcAvBhm3o/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProsecutorsPod Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prosecutorspod/ Check out our website for case resources: https://prosecutorspodcast.com/ Hang out with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@prosecutorspodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who are Russell and Shirley Dermond?
Yeah.
Because other than recording, apparently I never speak to my best friend, Brett.
That's true. We do talk to each other a lot more when we're doing this. I don't remember the last time I talked to you not on the podcast. I mean, we like text and stuff.
We text, but that's not the same. You know, texting does not take place of how fun it is to garner all those one-star reviews for all our bantering. Y'all know what? I haven't talked to adults in so long, I will banter all the heck I want with you.
There you go. Except this case. Except this case. I'm just starting to care less and less what people think. So if you just want to talk for 30 minutes, we can start doing that. We can be like My Favorite Murder, where they talk for like an hour before they get to the case, and they spend like 10 minutes on the case, and they're done.
I do have to say, so I have had a lot of time to scroll on my phone because I get nap-trapped all the time, which is fantastic in this stage of newborn-ness. But my favorite, and there's been a couple one-star reviews in the last month, and my favorites are like, fantastic research, great expertise, good stories, good insights. Three stars. Don't like three minutes of ads.
And I'm like, you are unpleasable, sir.
People are like, you need to get to the point. It's like, whatever. This is my show, man.
Also, the talk, it's the journey, not the destination, y'all.
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Chapter 2: What happened on the night of the murders?
Dive right in. Let's get on it.
It's been more like six and a half, so whatever. Okay. So Russell and Shirley Dermond, as I said, they were an elderly couple living in Putnam County, Georgia in the spring of 2014. They had been married for years. 68 years. That is a long time to be alive, much less be married to somebody.
So this is a couple who has seen a lot together, been through a lot together, and are sort of, you know, I mean, they're definitely in the end of the, what's a good way to put this? The sunset of life. The, you know, the evening of life's journey or whatever. And they're spending it together. The twilight. There you go. And they're doing it in style, though.
I mean, they're living in this beautiful place in Georgia. If you've never been to Lake Oconee, it is absolutely gorgeous. And it is the type of place where a lot of wealthy or retired people who've saved up their money over their lives go. The kind of place doesn't have a whole lot of crime. Almost none. You know, once again, we're very much in Dateline territory here.
The kind of place where nothing bad ever happens. And two people who lit up the room. I mean, they were beloved by everybody they knew. We're not going to find that they had any secret enemies. We're not going to find a whole lot of skeletons in their closet. And they had lived this full happy life together before it was tragically cut short.
And if you're watching this on YouTube and you see their pictures, I mean, they literally look like the picture perfect grandma and grandpa that you would find as the placeholder in a picture frame when you go to the store. They truly look like people who lit up a room and you'll hear more about them.
How the fact that they would even be targeted if they were targeted is just mind boggling for all those who knew them.
And look, Russell, turns out he was a war hero. And like I said, he was in his 80s, so he was a World War II hero. He had served in the Navy in World War II before returning home. And, you know, didn't have a whole lot, started working at a local clock manufacturer and rose to become an executive there. So a guy who worked hard, rose up, made some money.
Meanwhile, Shirley's staying home and she's raising their four children. And they're currently living in their native state of New Jersey. Shout out to everybody in Jersey. Hope you're enjoying all your drones. And at some point, though, they decide, like most people who live in New York and New Jersey, they want to move to the south.
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Chapter 3: Why was the crime scene so unusual?
They are.
And that's right. There's Carl's Jr., which is the same. Carl's Jr. is the same restaurant as Hardee's. Yes, yes. But they're Carl's Jr. out west, and they're Hardee's here. Here— And briefly, they had this thing called, like, Red Burrito. It was like their semi-Mexican chain.
Here's like a side, you know, personal note that people are going to give us negative one star for. After Mr. Alice and Mai's—Mai's? Sure. Why not? We're flowing with it. After— Our rehearsal dinner, we didn't have time to eat during our rehearsal dinner because we were having the time of our lives. It was like the second best party ever, wedding being the best party ever. We were starving.
And so the night before our wedding, we're getting married in like seven hours. What did we do? We went and ate Hardee's. And we ate it like in the parking lot. And it was amazing. So I love Hardee's.
I still think the burgers are probably round. They're probably round.
I'm really sleep deprived. I'll say this about Hardee's.
Hardee's at some point decided they were going to make good burgers. Their burgers are really good.
Yes.
And, you know, to get back into the story, Russell was there for it all because he bought these Hardee's locations in Atlanta. And I will say this, where I'm from, Hardee's is covered up for breakfast. They do a great breakfast business and, you know, okay. They used to have good chicken, too. Anyways, so he managed these. They made some more money. His children were now older.
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Chapter 4: How did the community react to the murders?
But in May of 2014, this idyllic life came to a halt when Russell and Shirley failed to show up to a neighborhood party for the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby. Days later, this was just not like them to say they'd come to a party and not show up.
Their concerned friends went to check on the couple and they discovered that this loved couple had been the unlikely victims of an incredibly gruesome crime.
So we're about to dive into the timeline. Before they do that, I'm going to do one more aside. My greatest golfing victory was in Lake Oconee. I was playing at Reynolds Plantation. Reynolds Plantation Golf Course. I was playing there. It was with two friends, and there was a par three where the club pro was like there. And basically, you could bet that you could get closer to the hole
than the club pro. And if you did it, you got five times whatever you bet to spend at the clubhouse, right? So you didn't, you know, you had to spend it there, but, and you got your money back. So there were three of us and he led us to do one bet and all three of us got the chance. And my friend, it was, he was on, it was a business trip. I was sort of tagging along.
So he put a hundred dollars down and the guy hit it up there pretty close to the hole. Two friends did it, nowhere close. I hit it and it was the best golf shot I've ever hit in my entire life. Probably the closest I ever get to a hole in one. It was like right next to the hole. So I beat the club pro. We got the $500. It was awesome. So that's my connection to this area.
I'm not going to lie. I was kind of waiting for something even more exciting, like you won $5 million, and now you own all the golf tees in the world.
If I won $5 million, I would not be doing this show with you. Sorry. No offense to everybody.
But you'd have to spend it at the club, you know? You can only buy so many golf tees.
And this was right around when this happened, actually. It was back around this time.
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Chapter 5: What evidence was left behind at the crime scene?
I think this also shows not only do people take these parties seriously, But the Dermans are very involved in their communities, even though they've been retired for two decades, essentially, and they've lived here for 14 years. They're not recluses. They are quite part of the fabric of the community, so much so that they have lots of friends checking in on them.
We talk about this all the time where... I've said before, I hope if I ever disappear, that someone notices, you know, before a week or two or three pass by. And that's exactly what's happening. Pretty much as soon as they fail to show up to this party, people are worried and they're trying to check in on them.
And when they have not heard back from either of them, on Monday, May 6th, a couple of the neighbors decide to stop by the Dermons' home just to make sure everything's okay. And when the neighbors stop by, they notice that there's two days worth of newspapers that are still sitting on the driveway, which is unusual for the Dermons if they are at home.
Now, this is kind of the first sign that gets them kind of concerned. So they don't just leave. Instead, like the good friends they are, they approach the house and they start knocking on the door and they knock several times, but no one answers. And so they walk to the back of the Dermons' home, and the back of the home faces the lake.
This is just kind of one of the pictures of lake houses, front, back. You can go in on both sides, right? And what they find on the back door is that it's unlocked. And so the neighbors, they let themselves in. And when they do, they call for Shirley and Russell, but they get no response. Still, they are very concerned now.
They start walking through every room of the house, but nothing appears out of place. Then they make it to the garage, and that's when they're met with a shocking sight. Because behind the couple's cars was Russell's decapitated body. He was found in his bathrobe with slippers nearby, laying on his back in a pool of blood which had begun to dry around him.
And towels had been shoved around his body to prevent the blood from seeping under the garage door and down the driveway. Those of you who may follow true crime, you know that unfortunately the body does have a lot of blood that can seep out. And this is a very interesting fact that there's the added step after decapitation of putting towels around Russell's body to further evade detection.
And one of the most puzzling things perhaps, besides why anyone would target and kill Russell in such a gruesome way, was that his head was nowhere to be found. And neither was Shirley, not just her head, but her entire body. All they found was the body of Russell laying in his own drying pool of blood in the garage.
So let's go ahead and stop for a second and talk a little bit about this, because I think we're already seeing some things that are clues about what exactly happened here. Number one, as Alice mentioned, which door was open? The back door. Now, this home, it sits on a cul-de-sac deep in this neighborhood, this gated community.
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Chapter 6: Who could have wanted to harm the Dermonds?
you're going to have to be someone who could get down on the ground with a knife and complete a decapitation. That automatically tells you, you know, if you're thinking, is this another 88-year-old? Probably not.
And along the lines of dexterity, time. If in fact, you're going to go the added step, you don't need to decapitate someone to kill them. Especially if we find out later that the decapitation happens post-mortem. So that's just extra. Most people who are trying to commit a crime, whether it be a murder or a robbery or anything else, try to get in and out.
So once the deed is done, once Russell's dead, there's no need to stick around and do this added level of just torture, really. I mean, he's dead, but it is just absolutely, I mean, it's demoralizing for his loved ones, not just to find him brutally murdered, but then to have like, you know, this disrespect of his head being removed. And then the added time,
and forethought to put towels around him to further evade detection so this person has dexterity this person also is not worried about being caught otherwise he would have hightailed it out of there and not taken the extra step of cutting the head Bringing something to put the head in. If you think that's a lot of blood around him, there's going to be a lot of blood on the head.
Maybe he walked out just holding a head, but probably he thought enough about it to bring something to put the head in. That doesn't sound like a heat of the moment matter. It sounds like very calculated, very cold, very planned, and also huge question mark. Why take Russell's head?
And as you noted, you know, this person obviously feels like at the time this happens, they have all the time in the world because they have time to remove the head. They have time to do the towels, but they're also trying to buy time down the road.
you know they don't want this murder being discovered for instance the next morning they don't want the paper guy to come throw the paper out and see blood seeping out from underneath the garage door and call the cops they want some time in between when this happens to get away slash create an alibi whatever they need to do in that period of time and that automatically makes you think
is this someone who is in some way connected to them because you would think and i think if you talk to people in the behavioral analysis unit you know if you talk to julia over on the consult she would probably tell you that taking time to do something like this to delay discovery usually means it's not a random act of violence because what you do in a random act of violence is you kill the person and then you get out
Because getting away is the most important thing. Because if you can get away, no one's ever really going to be able to tie you to that particular murder. They don't do that. For some reason, they are seeking to delay discovery of the bodies. So this poor couple, they come in. They find the bodies to give you some idea.
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Chapter 7: What makes this case particularly mysterious?
It's so large that you need a boat to access it. And people are typically not just boating around trying people's back doors because boats are loud. You need to have access to a boat, which is kind of expensive. And they're...
They're very you can see that very easily on the lake, especially when we're talking about a cul-de-sac situation where if you see someone's boat, you notice when a boat doesn't belong in your cul-de-sac because people know whose boats are whose and any community members who come. They usually don't go into the kind of these quieter coves.
You're going out into the open water, you're going fishing or something like that. There's nothing to do here. It's not for sightseeing purposes. This is really for view purposes. Their lakefront property is for viewing.
Right, exactly. And, you know, the other thing we can talk about, and I'm sure we'll talk about this some more, but those of you who've lived on a lake, boats are loud. I mean, nobody's rowboating across the lake. They're using a motor. Even if you're at a pretty low speed, it's going to be somewhat loud and sound travels across lakes.
And certainly when you're going at any speed, you're going to hear the boat. One thing that I think is interesting about this case and something to think about, could someone have pulled a boat up to this home without them knowing about it? You know, I'm not going to say it's impossible.
But you would either have to make yourself very conspicuous because you're moving so slow and silently across the lake so as to try not to make noise. Or you're going to make noise and somebody would be like, that sounds like a boat pulling up to our dock. And that could also tell you something about who this is, because if it's someone they knew.
or someone somehow connected to them, that might not be something that would arouse suspicion. And it might be something that would lead you to unlock the back door, for instance.
And along the lines of that boat thing, very bold if this person uses a boat. Because what do you have to do with a boat when you park it? You leave it on the open water for all to see for the amount of time it's going to take to commit this murder. That is, I mean, talk about a sitting duck. We talked about just several docks on this cul-de-sac area.
And so all you need is someone to look out the window and say, huh. What boat's over at the Dermans dock? They don't have a boat. None of their kids are visiting. I've never seen that boat before. That's noteworthy.
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