By Chris Bartholomew
Ah, Florida, warm-weather haven for retirees, white sandy beaches and gently lapping Gulf of Mexico waters, and beautiful orange tans. What a wonderful place for vacations, kids and all.
They say that in Florida, because of the humid environment, you can get to a skeleton within a few weeks. Some even say that if you leave a body out there for a week or so, there's not going to be much left. It's a great disposal area, if you are in the business of killing people.
March 23, 2007, while walking along a five-acre parcel of land in a wooded forest near Rockfill and Arcadia Streets in Fort Myers, a surveyor who was working for a local real estate developer stumbled across what he thought was the head of an animal. Looking back he saw that it was a human skull and he called 9-1-1.
By sunset that night, Fort Myers police recovered the bones from nearly eight complete bodies. The skeletons were found down a dirt road in an area covered in scrub and brush in an industrial section just a few miles from downtown and several miles from Interstate 75. No clothing or personal items were found, and no flesh remained on the bones, which were believed to be from adults. The bones were chewed by animals.
The remains were found within 50 yards of one another, within a 200 yard radius, and had been killed between 1980 and 2000. They were not buried; they were placed and left to the elements, covered over time with dirt and leaves. A cause of death will be difficult to determine without any tissue or organs, and it's unclear how long the bones have been there.
At first it was thought that maybe they were accidentally left by a crematorium, but then they would probably have been piled up, rather than found placed on the ground as they were.
Investigators still have no indication of how the victims were killed. There were no signs of trauma to the eight skulls. There were no bullet holes, either.
What they do know is that the killings are by far the biggest crime to hit Fort Myers.
They determined that one of the victims appeared to have Caribbean or African-American traits, while another appeared to have Hispanic traits. The others were believed to be Caucasian.
In the summer of 2007, more than 50 people submit DNA samples to see if their missing relatives are among the eight set of human remains.
November of 2007, there was a breakthrough. Police were able to identify two of the skeletons as Erik Kohler and John Blevins. Both were in their early 20s when they disappeared, and they had criminal records for misdemeanor violations such as drug possession and solicitation of a prostitute. Both seemed to be more “street-savvy” than the average person.
Both men disappeared in 1995, though Kohler's family did not report him missing until four years later. Blevins disappeared the same year as Kohler. Blevins was never reported missing.
Erik Kohler's mother said that Erik chose to live on the streets. He lived a troubled life and he probably died a horrible death. She had always thought maybe he was off somewhere and just didn't want to contact her. She said that, “at least I guess now I won't look at someone walking on the side of the road and wonder if that's my son.”
DNA samples from six unidentified victims are in the National Crime Information Center database. The samples are cross-referenced with those of reported missing persons. It could take years to discover who the people were because a lot of times people don't report transient relatives missing because they often lead lives of non-communication with family members.
Authorities are reluctant to name a suspect in the case, but one man is leading the list of possible perpetrators.
In a neighboring county there is one man who is on death row for killing a man in 2000. He is believed to have killed five others.
He was convicted of picking up a man on the street and taking him into the woods to take nude bondage photos. He then tied his victim to a tree and killed him.
Local media suggest that this man may be responsible for the uncovered bodies because he carried out his murder at the same time that the Fort Myers victims are thought to have been killed and dragged into the woods.
Until the killer is caught and convicted by proof, you have to wonder, where is he and what is he up to right now.
Editor's note: this article was written in 2008. The case is still open and no one has been charged. Two of the eight were named in the reporting above; the remaining six have not been publicly identified, and the profiles held in the National Crime Information Center database continue to be compared against missing persons reports. The death row prisoner described here is not named in the article, and this site does not name him either: no charge has ever been brought against anyone over these eight deaths, and the connection rests on the timing and the location rather than on any evidence tested in court.