PUTNAM COUNTY
On May 5, the Lake Oconee News reported that Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills had taken two trips to Houston, Texas, to deliver evidence to a private lab there.
In his interview with the newspaper, the sheriff named the lab and type of evidence but requested the information be kept off the record. Since then, other news agencies have made the information public.
Sills said he drove to Houston in early December with his Suburban filled with boxes of physical evidence from the Dermond case.
In addition to photos of the scene, he said the evidence included clothing, household items, paperwork, fingerprint dustings, etc.
He took all the boxes to Othram Labs, which specializes in processing evidence including DNA extraction, repair, sequencing, and genealogy for cold cases.
“I drove it out there and consulted with the people, gave them a PowerPoint presentation of photos of the scene, and consulted with them," Sills said. "There were some scientists and administrative people there."
It was learned that DNA had not been tested on one piece of bagged evidence originally provided to the Georgia Crime Lab, Sills said. So he flew back out to Texas, this time with District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale.
“And now we have some potentially positive results from that,” Sills said, emphasizing the word potentially because “some more tests have to be done.”
Although he’s hopeful the DNA could make a break in the case, that remains to be seen, Sills said. He noted the DNA could be from the Dermonds themselves or from anyone else who was in the house beside the killer.
The victims, Russell Dermond, 88, and his wife, Shirley, 87, were slain sometime from May 2-3, 2014.
Russell Dermond’s lifeless, decapitated body was discovered in the garage of their house by a concerned neighbor. Shirley Dermond’s body was discovered in Lake Oconee more than a week later by fishermen.
For the May 4 story that provides more details of the Dermonds’ activities leading up to their untimely deaths, visit https://bit.ly/dermonds.