Palmetto: A 28-year-old unsolved case from Florida has finally been resolved. With the help of the Delaware State Police, the Manatee County Sheriff’s office charged 72-year-old Stephen L. Ford in 1996 with the second-degree murder of Doris A. Korell, a 45-year-old St. Petersburg resident who was discovered dead in a ditch beside U.S. 41 in Palmetto.
Authorities claim that Ford stabbed Korell, his girlfriend at the time, 83 times.
Ford was arrested by the Delaware State Police on August 16 after they pulled him over close to his Georgetown, Delaware, home. On August 30, deputies say he was returned to Florida and checked into the Manatee County Jail.
A person was discovered floating face down in a Palmetto drainage canal by Manatee sheriff’s officers on December 15, 1996. A woman who was unknown and had a gold ring on her right index finger was found dead by divers. An autopsy found the woman had multiple stab wounds in addition to injuries to the right side of her face and neck, according to arrest reports.
Detectives said they did not find any signs of sexual assault in the autopsy or later DNA results.
How did the Florida murder case develop?
Korell was reported missing a few days earlier, and Manatee County detectives claim that at the time, they were not aware that the St. Petersburg Police Department was searching for him.
After Ford called to ask if she had seen her mother, Korell’s daughter reported her missing on December 11. Based on jail records, Ford told her daughter that Korell left their shared St. Petersburg duplex to go shopping following an argument.
A week later, St. Petersburg police claim they located Korell’s red Mazda RX-7 at the Pinellas Square Mall, but they found no proof that an altercation or assault had occurred inside the vehicle. However, according to investigators, Ford parked the vehicle there and gave it a thorough cleaning.
When questioned by authorities, Ford denied any knowledge of Korell’s disappearance. According to the sheriff’s office, Ford said, “If I killed her, I should get the death penalty,” and responded, “An eye for an eye,” when asked what should happen to the person who killed Korell.
The Christmas presents inside Ford’s house had been unwrapped days before the occasion, “as if he expected” that his partner wouldn’t be found, according to detectives.
Ford was found semi-conscious and foaming at the mouth after he consumed bleach in what appeared to be a suicide attempt, according to investigators who returned to his duplex on Christmas Eve 1996 for a follow-up interview. They said they gained entry through an open window after Ford didn’t answer the door.
Detectives claim that using dental data, they were able to identify Korell’s body which was found in the Palmetto ditch a few months later. Detectives from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and the St. Petersburg Police Department realised then that they were working on the same case. However, in the months that followed, the investigation stalled and Ford relocated to Delaware because there was a dearth of tangible evidence and leads.
According to a press release, a cold case detective with the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office revived the case in 2017 and started going through files from the Manatee County and St. Petersburg police departments.
Over the following six years, fresh information, according to the sheriff’s office, surfaced that led to Ford’s arrest. Among these was a claim made by one of Korell’s acquaintances that she feared Ford and that the couple was experiencing financial and domestic difficulties.
According to a news release, Ford’s actions “showed a clear pattern of consciousness of guilty,” according to cold case detectives.
According to court documents, Ford is expected to make his first court appearance on September 6th. He is charged with second-degree murder with a weapon.
