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GameChanger [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:43
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always revealing all of the secrets of the universe he is the
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captain that's my favorite line when I take off my pants it's going to be seene and it's good to see you thanks for
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listening thanks for telling a friend [Music] this week we are very pleased to be
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featuring Southern pecan by the great Folks at Lazy Magnolia Brewing Southern pecan nut brown ale according to the
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brown ale guy but this one is really really good garage grade three and 3/4 bottle caps out of five and this week's
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beer was brought to us from these beer fund contributors right here first up we have Shawn and Bethany in Millis Maine
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at true Crim garage.com and that is enough of the business okay everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer
00:03:29
let's talk some true [Music] crime on Tuesday May 6th 2014 at 9:58 a.m. Peggy win called putam County Georgia
00:04:04
911 from the home phone of a house she was in when putham County picked up the call
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Peggy is breathing hard she tells them there's an emergency and she thinks someone is
00:04:19
dead she goes on to tell them the house in which she is calling from is 147 Caroline Drive in Great Waters
00:04:30
she is calling from the home of Russell and Shirley durman Peggy explains that she is a
00:04:36
neighbor of the durans and she went to their home to check on them because they have been
00:04:43
missing for about 4 days are they in the house she is asked yes I am she replies and then Peggy can be heard
00:04:56
shouting oh my God hysterically putam County wants to know if they are both dead and if Peggy found them both no
00:05:06
Peggy explains it's just one I don't know where the other one is she is told they are sending a deputy
00:05:17
and an ambulance over there just in case Peggy thanks the operator and hangs up the
00:05:25
phone on the call the dispatcher could hear Peggy talking to someone someone in the background who sounded like he was
00:05:33
saying she's not here or there's no one else here somehow the 911 operator interpreted that there were multiple
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bodies on the scene she dispatched deputies in an ambulance to respond to 147 Caroline
00:05:51
Drive saying that a woman called 911 screaming and she didn't know how many were dead
00:06:01
Peggy W and her husband later told putam County Sheriff Howard Sills the following the winds who were in their
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70s were friends with Russell and Shirley durman they weren't Nextdoor neighbors
00:06:18
but they lived less than a mile away within the same upscale gated community called Great Waters on lake okone in the
00:06:27
state of Georgia the winds hosted a Kentucky Derby party on Saturday May 3rd at their
00:06:35
home and the durans were expected to attend but never showed Peggy called the durman home a
00:06:43
few times over the next couple of days but there was never any answer and she started to grow concerned enough
00:06:52
that on Tuesday May 6th she made her husband accompany her over to the durman home they knocked but received no
00:07:02
response and finding the front door unlocked they went inside they looked all through the
00:07:09
pristine home which was over 3,000 square ft and saw nothing on their first pass the husband even glanced into the
00:07:18
closed attached garage and noted that the couple's two cars were parked in their
00:07:26
spots determined to look more thoroughly the husband made a second pass in the house and actually stepped down the
00:07:34
three stairs into the garage to check out the cars there behind the pale blue Lexus
00:07:43
SUV in the Lincoln Town Car he was confronted with the most horrifying scene imaginable on the garage floor lying
00:07:54
behind the Cars lay the blood soaked body of a man man lying in a dry pool of blood whether or not it was his friend
00:08:07
Russ was unclear the body lying on the garage floor had no head 87 yearold Shirley durman was gone
00:08:19
and so was the head belonging to this [Music] body [Music] before we get into the meat of this case
00:08:46
it's crucially important to convey an understanding of the setting because the nature of the location figures heavily
00:08:53
into the story Reynolds Plantation is an upscale Lakefront Resort Community rough
00:08:59
roughly 80 M southeast of Atlanta Georgia it's divided into several smaller gated developments with multiple
00:09:07
golf courses and a Lakefront Ritz Carlton all in all Reynolds Plantation is over, 1500 residences with the Great
00:09:16
Waters subdivision where the durman home was being the most exclusive Great Waters it's built around a Jack Nicholas
00:09:24
design golf course and was a gated community with 600 residences the durans built their retirement home toward the
00:09:31
back of the development at the end of a culdesac overlooking Lake okone the house was situated so that the house
00:09:38
fronted on the lake and the front lawn sloped down to the homes dock the part of the house that faced the driveway was
00:09:46
the back of the house this is a very heavily wooded area it was not at all open to the street or even clearly
00:09:54
visible to Neighbors on the other side and across the street was just Woods it was secluded just the way the durans
00:10:01
liked it the area was extremely safe with not so much as a burglary and Sheriff s's twood decade tenure up until
00:10:10
2014 now lake aone is not a small Lake in fact the 30m lake encompasses 19,000 acres and has 374 Mi of Shoreline it is
00:10:22
a man-made lake created by the building of a dam across the okone river lake Cony is so huge that it touches four
00:10:31
different counties construction of the dam flooded the area included wooded regions so that in parts of the lake
00:10:39
underwater trees are visible the lake sees a huge boating scene in the warmer months there are boat rental facilities
00:10:47
public boat launches fishing Outfitters and every home has a dock this is a very
00:10:53
large house although there are many yearr round residents including retirees and Families one3 third of the homes in
00:10:59
the subdivision are occupied only seasonally the summer season traditionally the population of mostly
00:11:06
rural putam County doubles to close to 45,000 people now the man in charge of the investigation is Sheriff Howard
00:11:15
Sills he's the elected Sheriff of putam County who has served in that role for 25 years he is a cigar smoking cowboy
00:11:24
boot wearing noons law man a criminal justice major in College trained at the FBI Academy and he has been in law
00:11:33
enforcement for about 45 years as of May 6 2015 day one of this investigation he
00:11:41
has solved every murder case and has sent five Killers to death row this is not a situation where the sheriff is a
00:11:48
local yokal who botches investigations right this guy Sills is the man I watched a lot of interviews of sheriff
00:11:56
SS he's very uh Tommy Le Jones you know like in in No Country for Old Men type thing I didn't kill my wife I don't
00:12:06
care uh Sheriff Sills was at the home 147 Caroline Drive very quickly when responding to that 911 call he later
00:12:15
admitted expecting to find a murder suicide first thing he looked over the decapitated body that lay on the garage
00:12:23
floor between the cars the man's faded red t-shirt was partially pushed up his blue and white white striped boxer
00:12:29
shorts drenched in dried blood a bunched up bathrobe lay under the body the man's
00:12:36
bare feet were Blood Stained there was a dull Red Trail of blood which s says showed that the body had been moved a
00:12:43
few feet a pair of LL bean slippers lay nearby The Corpse's hands were bruised and bloody the left index finger had a
00:12:52
severe gash all the way onto the palm of the hand so defensive wounds yes the head had been cut off along the line of
00:13:02
the T-shirt collar in several what he describes as clean cuts so whoever did this he says knew what they were doing
00:13:10
based on information obtained from Russell durman's driver's license the body belonged to him that's what the
00:13:17
sheriff figured right and a positive identification would later be made on the garage floor was quite a bit
00:13:25
of dried blood with a large pull of blood and bodily fluids near the top of the body strangely several towels line
00:13:32
the garage door crack where the door met the ground next to the left side of Russell's body as if someone had ensured
00:13:40
that the blood would not seep under the door and out onto the driveway outside so a sign of
00:13:47
premeditation well a sign of wanting to conceal this body as long as possible to
00:13:53
the outside world right to the right side of the body were Mortals clearly intended to soak up the excess blood it
00:14:00
was determined that the towels were from a bathroom in the durman's home just behind the Lincoln Sheriff Sills found a
00:14:09
blood spot on the garage floor as if something round had been placed there later he said that it was larger than a
00:14:17
head would be and I know that's a pretty grotesque description there but these are his words and his his assessment of
00:14:26
the crime scene the rest of the house was in pristine condition the 3,200 ft 4bedroom tan stucco house was
00:14:35
neat orderly dirt and dust free an unfinished USA Today crossword puzzle was sitting on the kitchen table folded
00:14:43
with the pencil still placed on top and a prescription with Shirley durman's name on it was on the counter next to a
00:14:50
Netflix movie Return mhm an open laptop was on the dining room table with a pair
00:14:57
of glasses inside and an open case nearby other than the garage nothing whatsoever appeared to be disturbed
00:15:04
there was no forced entry and we know the winds found the door unlocked there was no sign of any kind
00:15:11
of struggle or altercation and nothing appeared to have been stolen Shirley's two handbags with cash and cell phone
00:15:18
were still on her vanity Russell's wallet and cell were also in the home a jewelry bag lay in plain sight the only
00:15:27
things missing was Russell's head and Shirley Derman so we have no sign of a struggle we have no sign of a Breakin M
00:15:35
we have no sign that anybody took anything of value right so kind of rules out robbery it could be a robbery gone
00:15:45
bad and then we find Russell but we do not find his wife mhm it's a very weird situation um and
00:15:55
also I think what is not found in the home is ke here so the house was dusted for Prints but if Tex found any
00:16:03
interesting prints they were not released they've not released that information right the entire house was
00:16:08
checked over using luminol and no blood whatsoever was detected other than in the garage but even there there was no
00:16:16
spatter or spray just the pulled blood around Russell's body no weapons of any variety were found Sheriff SS has
00:16:25
remarked that they did find some forensic evidence but we don't know what that is or whether it has proved at all
00:16:33
useful despite Sheriff s's dragging the lake area around the durman's dock and grid searches with dogs looking in
00:16:41
nearby Woods nothing else was found because a perpetrator could be coming by car or foot or possibly by boat yes the
00:16:50
house would have been accessible by boat a fullscale investigation Into The Disappearance of Shirley durman was
00:16:58
launched boats searched nearby areas of Lake okone using the latest sonar equipment
00:17:04
and even a submersible robot but this turned up nothing caber dogs failed to hit on anything near the house the FBI
00:17:13
was called in to help in the search for the likely abducted woman and billboards
00:17:18
went up all over the area to publicize her missing status meanwhile an autopsy was
00:17:26
performed on Russell's body which wasn't that badly decomposed even though it's estimated that he was dead for several
00:17:32
days the garage in the durman home was air conditioned so this slowed this process down the gbi medical examiner
00:17:40
ruled that the cause of death was cranial cerebral trauma because there was no evidence of any fatal injury to
00:17:48
the body everyone was extremely relieved to learn that Russell had not been decapitated while he was still alive
00:17:55
which Sheriff SS concluded based on the the lack of arterial blood spray evidence in the garage or anywhere else
00:18:02
for that matter some kind of traumatic injury had been inflicted on Russell's head killing him now without his head it
00:18:09
could not be determined for certain what that injury was but the autopsy noted specifically that the decapitation was
00:18:17
the result of a clean cut through the vertebrae and spinal cord leading Sills to conclude that it had likely been done
00:18:25
with a very sharp blade and it happened in in the garage well right and they don't have his head they have his body
00:18:32
and we don't have wounds on the body that would make us believe that's how he died so they just have to assume that
00:18:40
the injury happened to his head Sheriff Sills was operating under the assumption
00:18:45
that Shirley durman had been abducted and was in danger he considered it was possible that Shirley was involved in
00:18:54
Russell's murder but what SS was able to determine from the crime scene led him to Discount this Theory pretty quickly
00:19:02
right first of all Shirley dur was 87 years old and she had physical infirmities that prevented her from
00:19:08
easily handling stairs or walking down to the lakefront from the house so the idea that that she did this by herself
00:19:17
that she managed to kill and decapitate her husband move the body and then disappear with the head on foot with
00:19:23
none of her personal effects just seemed I mean almost in impossibility so who were the
00:19:31
durans Russell was born in 1925 in hackin sack New Jersey old hackin sack yeah he attended college and he served
00:19:40
in the Navy he was a World War II veteran after the war in 1950 he married Shirley who was born in 1926 also in New
00:19:49
Jersey she attended Bernard College in New York Russell worked as an executive at the general Time Corporation the
00:19:57
company this company made clocks the durans had four children Brad Keith Mark and
00:20:04
lesie they moved to Atlanta in 19 in the 1980s Russell retired from the corporate
00:20:10
world at age 58 and branched into fast food franchises at one time owning 19 Hardies
00:20:17
locations in 1998 he sold the business off to two of his sons who had been employed by their father's business and
00:20:26
he and Shirley moved to their Dreamhouse on the Lakefront at Lake okone Russell was a regular golfer and
00:20:34
surley played bridge and enjoyed gardening they had a dock in front of their house as as did the others but
00:20:41
they sold their boat in 2012 remember we stated that Shirley was having trouble getting down to the
00:20:47
lakefront this looks to me like a situation where an older couple might be downsizing a little bit Yeah and plus
00:20:54
boats are a lot of work yeah just ask me I'm a captain I love boats but they're a
00:20:58
big pain in the ass uh both were active in their church had friends in the community and were known to be just nice
00:21:05
normal folks many happy Summers were spent with their kids and grandkids at their house on the lake let's go through
00:21:13
the last sightings of the durans on Thursday May 1st 2014 Russell ran some errands in town we
00:21:22
know from surveillance footage exactly where Russell went and what he did at 2:15 p.m. Russell transferred money for
00:21:31
an upcoming long-term care insurance premium via the drive-thru Lane at the lake of cone People's Bank mhm he then
00:21:40
traveled to the nearby Publix a a grocery store arriving at 2:26 p.m. to pick up a prescription for Shirley he
00:21:49
also picked up a loaf of bread and a few cucumbers he stopped and chatted with a
00:21:54
gentleman in one of the aisles then he checked out and he walked out of the store
00:21:58
now also on that Thursday May 1st Shirley attended her twice weekly Bridge group at 12:30 p.m. sometime before
00:22:06
dinner the durman son Brad spoke to his parents on the phone like most days he said they just chatted about how their
00:22:14
day went on Friday May 2nd a neighbor reported seeing Russell walking on the golf course in the community Russell had
00:22:23
recently given up Golf and had taken to walking just to get some exercise we don't know what time this was though
00:22:31
this is we don't have a time for this sighting this was the last time anyone reported any sightings of Shirley and
00:22:38
Russell dur at some point during the day on Friday Shirley durman sent an email and we have no reason to believe that it
00:22:46
was someone else sending it we know from what was found in the house that Shirley
00:22:51
worked on the crossword puzzle in the USA Today weekend edition right which is delivered on
00:22:58
Fridays it was found on the kitchen table her children told Sheriff SS that she usually worked on the puzzle in the
00:23:05
mornings and we know that at 4:30 p.m. on Friday the durman's mail was delivered according to the mail carrier
00:23:13
sure Sheriff Sills apparently has reason to believe that the mail was taken inside by the durans perhaps it was
00:23:21
found inside the home or the mail carrier saw them we don't we don't know for certain how he came to this
00:23:28
conclusion in any event Sheriff SS is certain that the durans were alive and well at 4:30 p.m. on Friday May
00:23:39
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cheers to you Captain So based on these sightings and what we know about the crime scene we can narrow down the time
00:25:47
frame of when something happened to the dermit so between 4:30 p.m. Friday and 400 p.m. on Saturday this is when they
00:25:56
failed to show up at the Kentucky derby party plus Russell durman's body had been found clothed in boxer shorts a
00:26:04
T-shirt and a robe with slippers nearby so he likely was either preparing for bed or had recently got up from bed the
00:26:11
bed was found unmade and an otherwise Immaculate home the durman children told Sheriff Sills that if Russell didn't
00:26:20
have a reason to get dressed first thing in the morning you know like an appointment or an errand he was known to
00:26:27
hang around the house in his robe until late morning I like the cut off his jip in any event whatever happened Russell
00:26:34
somehow being killed and surely being taken happened between Friday during the day and Saturday early afternoon no one
00:26:43
reported anything strange nobody reported any strange cars at the house or boats parked at the durman's dock so
00:26:51
who could have taken this elderly frail woman and to what end with more and more
00:26:58
time passing with no answers as to Shirley's whereabouts Sheriff SS braced himself for a ransom note or call but it
00:27:07
never came then on Friday May 16th at 2:24 p.m. two men were out fishing on Lake aone near the Wallace Dam their
00:27:18
boat neared a section of standing Timber where underwat trees were visible yeah the men spotted Something In The Water
00:27:26
as they got closer and approached the object they were shocked to see that it was a human body floating face down they
00:27:34
called 911 and reported a body floating in the water against a tree Lieutenant Luke responded to the scene via Patrol
00:27:42
boat he located the body and called Sheriff SS around 300 p.m. they pulled a bloated
00:27:50
water logged female body from the water sils said later that the body was swollen to twice its normal size and was
00:27:58
decomposing the body was fully dressed wearing army green capri pants brown and tan floral short sleev shirt and laced
00:28:07
size eight white shoes she was fully dressed yeah Sheriff SS was pretty sure that they had just found 87-year-old
00:28:16
Shirley durman she had been missing for at least 10 days by this point although the cause of death was not immediately
00:28:25
evident to Sills it was clear that shirle had not put herself into the lake the body had floated to the top which is
00:28:33
a natural reaction to the gases that build up inside a decomposing corpse that is submerged we we have any wounds
00:28:41
on her well the reason the the obvious thing that he notes right away of why she didn't put herself in the lake
00:28:51
is you know the body floated up to the top despite two red 30 lb con conrete blocks tied to both of her ankles with a
00:29:00
paracord yeah the cement blocks were inside a bluish gray mesh bag someone had put the blocks in the bag tied the
00:29:08
bag to Shirley's ankles and thrown her into the lake this is about 5 and2 miles from the durman home this area was
00:29:16
accessible only by boat Shirley's killer or Killers used a boat to discard her body and 46t deep water this is one of
00:29:26
the deepest areas of the lake she was positively identified as Shirley dur by dental records the autopsy found that
00:29:34
Shirley skull was fractured she was struck at least twice on the right side of her head two v-shaped lacer
00:29:42
lacerations were found on her skull but the skull fractures were round in shape leading Sheriff Sills to Guess that the
00:29:50
weapon used was a hammer although he is reiterated that we do not know for sure what the weapon was
00:29:58
the cause of death was blunt impact injury of the head there was no sign of sexual assault the 550 or 55 paracord
00:30:08
was wrapped around her ankles and the lack of bruising indicated that The Binding of Shirley's ankles occurred
00:30:15
after death now to save time because we do have a lot to get to right trust me when when I when I say this I've looked
00:30:24
into this and this was an extremely thorough an exhaustive investigation the agencies involved led
00:30:32
by Sheriff Sills have looked into everything and every inch and angle was looked at even extending his
00:30:39
investigation into other jurisdictions and other states so I want to give you just a small part of Sill's
00:30:46
investigation but not the whole thing because it' be just be too much Sills obtained tens of thousands of pages of
00:30:53
the durans phone records and those of their children and others associated with them no one detected any unusual
00:31:01
calls or interactions with anyone anyone the durans had contact with was looked into Sills canvased the neighborhood and
00:31:11
talked to over 200 residents about 225 people were asked 30 questions including where they were on the dates in question
00:31:21
right and whether they had any surveillance footage that could help the investigation the interviewers
00:31:27
discovered that sure enough one woman said she had seen a man in the durman's yard on that Saturday this woman
00:31:34
reported seeing a man from her vantage point in a house that wasn't very close by she was not able to determine this
00:31:43
man's race age or ethnicity uhhuh but she says he was in the durman's yard on Saturday Sheriff SS met with her and
00:31:53
reconstructed the Vantage Point she had and agreed that it was unlikely she could identify the man it could even
00:32:01
have been Russell himself as far as we know Sheriff Sills also interviewed Shirley's bridge club members the pastor
00:32:10
of their church and members of the congregation all of their friends a handyman day labors and gardeners in the
00:32:17
area some of whom were subjected to polygraphs and past he ran background checks on the residents of Great Waters
00:32:26
looking for criminal histories I mean this is so strange I mean we have one person dead in the house
00:32:34
decapitated you then take the other person that doesn't seem to make any sense unless it was to get them into a
00:32:43
area so he could do weird sexual things the motive would be sexual I think once you remove the female or Ransom but no
00:32:53
Ransom note comes MH and then you find her in a area that would have to you'd have to
00:33:00
get to by boat but we don't know if the perpetrator got to their house by a boat
00:33:08
it's very very confusing well you're pointing out something that's very spot on right here because the the alarming
00:33:16
thing about this case and the difficult thing about this investigation it really seems like you
00:33:22
have to determine why the movements of the perpetrators were what they were yeah and it's very difficult to
00:33:29
determine that one because the lack of motive but two here's the thing when researching this I found out that uh one
00:33:38
when somebody's murdered and then decapitated decapitation is pretty it's a pretty low percentage of the time that
00:33:44
that even occurs yeah then on top of that when the head is removed from the crime scene from the murder scene that
00:33:51
percentage is even much less I couldn't find any statistics on a situation like this at all where there is decapitation
00:34:01
head removed and a second victim who's removed from the murder scene yeah so in talking about the people that that
00:34:08
sheriff SS looked at I mean that's a pretty thorough list right there I mean he even looked into the mailman yeah and
00:34:15
then you have this idea too is is it two perpetrators because there's two victims but it doesn't have to be like
00:34:23
normally you'd go okay well um you have a a man and his wife and and maybe there
00:34:29
would be it' make it a lot easier if there's two perpetrators well because they're an elderly couple not
00:34:36
necessarily so it's like now are we looking at one perpetrator or or two well all three of the durman adult kids
00:34:44
who lived in other states were interviewed multiple times polygraphed and passed now remember when we were
00:34:51
discussing who the durans were we mentioned that they had four children right but one of of their children had
00:34:58
passed away before this ever happened okay so SS looked extensively into the durans financial records SS noted that
00:35:07
the durans were somewhat Frugal and were careful with their money they weren't they were not overly wealthy they were
00:35:13
not in any way ostentatious or glitzy they didn't even have ATM cards well wouldn't they be Children of the
00:35:22
depression so they'd be more frugal yeah and I mean I know we went through his career and his professional life but the
00:35:31
vibe I get here is yeah they did well and they were successful but it seems to me like they may have got to where they
00:35:38
were late in life by being Frugal for most of their lives more so than just making a bunch of money right there was
00:35:46
absolutely nothing unusual about any of their financial affairs Sheriff SS even insisted on being present when the
00:35:54
durman children opened their parents safety deposit box just in case there was something important inside and he
00:36:02
says there was not right one of the first things Sheriff SS considered was the security around Great Waters around
00:36:09
that development where the derans lived this was an incredibly low crime area of
00:36:15
course there were security cameras at the guard shack that monitored the entrance to the subdivision Sills sent a
00:36:22
deputy to obtain the camera footage from the days surrounding the durman murder but there was no footage doesn't it seem
00:36:30
like it's just this way every time all the time yeah uh the system had been fried a a few weeks earlier by a bolt of
00:36:39
lightning from a storm on April 28th so there are no recordings of the comings and goings and activities at Great
00:36:47
Waters after that date yeah but how many people in this area knew this probably quite a bit right I I cannot say I would
00:36:57
speculate that in most situations this isn't something that they would broadcast to the residents you would
00:37:05
think they would right as a safety precaution hey our security cameras have been compromised to to lightning I can't
00:37:14
say for certain if it was general knowledge of the residents because I couldn't find that information but what
00:37:20
I can say is Sheriff Sills who I consider to be incredibly knowledgeable and thorough he obviously was unaware of
00:37:28
it because he sent a deputy to collect footage that was not there Sheriff SS said that the only time
00:37:36
his office had any interaction with the durans was back in 2012 this is when the
00:37:43
durans had reported a credit card fraud incident they had never reported anything else fishy ever or even called
00:37:52
the police otherwise the guard shack at the entrance to to Great Waters this was
00:37:58
a typical little booth Man by a security guard who checked authorizations of those entering the development in 2014
00:38:06
there was no arm that came down to stop access for cars trying to get in the shack was manned 24 hours a day and
00:38:15
visitors had to be approved via telephone call to the residents residents themselves had stickers
00:38:21
showing that they lived there but others such as Great Waters maintenance men landscape workers repair men and so on
00:38:30
also could get temporary passes and were most likely just wave through if they displayed them and people who told the
00:38:38
guards that they were there to play golf or eat at the clubhouse were also admitted right Sheriff s said that in
00:38:46
theory records of these people were kept but it doesn't sound like it would be that hard for an outsider to enter the
00:38:53
area security was pretty LAX overall the durans had a security system at their home but their son Brad indicated
00:39:01
they it had been disconnected over Easter a few weeks before the murders we haven't been able to gather any
00:39:09
additional information about whether the home security system was out of order at
00:39:13
the time of the murders or not but it seems to be this way Sheriff Sills has remarked that it was functional but it
00:39:20
was not turned on but in another interview with WSBTV V 2 he indicated that the home security system had been
00:39:30
disconnected twice in the few weeks before the murders the durman children said that normally their parents would
00:39:36
lock their doors and set the alarm at night but clearly whether it was working or not the alarm was not in use at the
00:39:44
moment the durman's home was accessed by someone with Sinister intentions also the durman's home number
00:39:52
and address were publicly available so clearly they weren't too concerned about security Sheriff SS
00:39:59
looked into all the boat rentals around the time of the murders on the assumption that The Killers could have
00:40:06
arrived by boat bypassing allog together the guard shack and the risk associated
00:40:11
with driving into and out of the community yeah if he found anything he isn't saying there there were no boat
00:40:20
thefts reported around that time if you know if even leading up to that days or weeks or months in advance and no one
00:40:29
reported that their boat appeared to have been used by someone else during this time as well it is still possible
00:40:35
that somebody could have used somebody's boat and returned it without them knowing mhm Sills looked into all
00:40:43
similar murders particularly decapitations around the country murders with decapitations are rare with only
00:40:50
three to four occurring yearly and cases where the head is taken are even more rare one case in New York seemed very
00:40:59
similar this took place in November of 2015 when 83-year-old Lois collie was beaten to death in her home in an
00:41:07
exclusive Community there was no forced entry and nothing was taken and there seemed to be no motive The Clincher was
00:41:15
that Miss colie Mrs collie's family owned fast food restaurants just like the durans did at one time yet law
00:41:24
enforcement was not able to establish a connection with the durans and in fact the suspect was arrested in 2017 in the
00:41:32
collie case but seems to have no links whatsoever to Shirley and Russell Sheriff SS consulted forensic
00:41:40
experts as far away as China and utilized Manpower from other law enforcement agencies as far away as
00:41:46
London he also sat down with six psychics over the years who claim to have known nothing Sheriff SS
00:41:54
interviewed 8 to 10 former employees of Russell durman and administered polygraphs to the lawn guy and the
00:42:00
handyman who did some work around the dur house there was no other domestic help at the time and it seems like these
00:42:07
polygraphs led nowhere well he's definitely doing his due diligence and anybody that's willing to talk and
00:42:13
anybody that's willing to give a polygraph they're at least going through with it well and that's why I point out
00:42:20
that this investigation seems to be incredibly thorough one this is a guy who very I mean he clearly has the
00:42:29
experience and the knowledge to take on this type of investigation but he's also humble
00:42:36
enough that he does get other people involved and that's one thing that a lot of experts will say is once a case goes
00:42:43
cold you know after let's say 12 months of getting no real leads that are that are taking you anywhere MH and and the
00:42:51
investigation seems to just be going nowhere that's when you get other agency involved you get new fresh eyes on the
00:42:59
crime on the crime scene on the evidence that you currently have and try to get some type of lead based off of other
00:43:08
experts experiences so Sheriff Sills even borrowed two experienced detectives from
00:43:14
the Jacksonville Florida Cold Case Squad the detectives reviewed the case files with Sills to help him try to get
00:43:23
to the bottom of this case Sheriff SS also periodically brought in experts from the DA's office and neighboring
00:43:30
counties as well as the FBI to help aid in the investigation where it stands today Captain we still don't know what
00:43:39
happened to the durans who did this and why it also seems too like there would be access points to this
00:43:49
water that might not be able to they might not be able to patrol or or no so it could be a possibility too
00:43:59
that the perpetrator would park somewhere else access the water further away and make it
00:44:07
into the the subdivision yeah and that brings up another good question too is if you have trouble establishing a
00:44:15
motive here were the derans themselves actually targeted or was this person or persons
00:44:23
just determined to enter the area and then choose a Target at some point right but
00:44:30
again why just for to to cause harm to somebody because again we don't there's no sign of burglary you think that would
00:44:42
be the motive and there's no sign of sexual assault so is it just a Thrill Kill well I think
00:44:51
before we move on to some theories let's let's go through a quick list of what we
00:44:57
do in fact know the the facts of the case as it stands today because there is some new information that came out along
00:45:05
the way one thing that I really enjoy about Sheriff SS is he's kind of an open book guy he understands that there is
00:45:13
certain things that as investigators they should hold back but he's also of the type that he will put a lot of
00:45:20
things out into the public and as a case goes on he will add information to help
00:45:28
break get a break in the case right as we pointed out before this incident this guy has solved every murder that
00:45:36
happened during the course of his uh tenure as the sheriff so what we do know is this Russell and Shirley durman were
00:45:45
murdered and likely this happened sometime between late afternoon on Friday May 2nd and 400 p.m. on Saturday
00:45:52
May 3rd no one broke in there was no obvious signs of struggle the couple was not restrained and the couple likely was
00:46:01
not killed in the home that's a weird part okay and and I know that's tough for us to wrap our heads around here
00:46:10
but that is something that sheriff Sills has said on you know news coverage and in interviews regarding this case he
00:46:19
says that he believes that they were likely not killed at home meaning that there's little
00:46:26
there's no evidence to suggest that they were killed in the home itself mhm which
00:46:31
is an added angle difficult angle for this case especially when you factor in that
00:46:38
we don't really have any eyewitnesses but the one who states they saw a man in the durman's yard who could not be
00:46:47
identified because of how far away this witness was mhm so Russell was decapitated with a very sharp tool
00:46:54
probably a knife this occurred after death and it we do know that the decapitation did happen in the garage
00:47:01
there is evidence to um back that up his head has never been found Russell was wearing what appeared to be the clothes
00:47:09
that he slept in or Was preparing to sleep in Sheriff SS later revealed this is one of those interesting things right
00:47:18
here he later revealed after keeping this information under wraps for some time that a small amount of
00:47:26
GSR was found on the back of Russell's shirt near his collar Russell had this GSR on the back of his shirt and he was
00:47:35
not known to be a sport shooter so this points out that he may have been shot in
00:47:40
the head before he was decapitated and Russell had a deep laceration on his hand and hair was
00:47:48
entangled in his hand Shirley was killed by blows to the head with a hammer or another tool which crushed her skull
00:47:57
Shirley was likely taken away by boat tied to the bag containing the concrete blocks and dumped in the lake after she
00:48:05
was already dead it's possible that she was driven away in a car to the other side of the lake and then placed in a
00:48:12
boat but either way a boat had to be involved because of where the body was found and located and I really Circle
00:48:21
this part in the investigation and who the killers may be well hold on just to stop you right there so you're saying a
00:48:28
boat has to be involved based on where her body was found mhm but the but a boat would have to be involved for The
00:48:36
Dumping of the body not necessarily the taking of the woman right right and that but that's what I'm
00:48:43
pointing out in circling here is because of the location of where the body was found yeah and because it was weighted
00:48:50
down you know he brought in Sheriff SS brought in the appropriate people to determine that the body didn't it it
00:48:58
came out of the water shortly after it floated to the top yeah and they also determined that it couldn't have moved
00:49:05
more than a 100 yards from where the location was that she was eventually found he actually thinks that it
00:49:11
probably moved even less than that because as they pointed out in the 911 call the body was lying up was like
00:49:18
snagged on one of those trees so this is one of the deepest parts of the lake and
00:49:24
this is a very big lake so Sheriff SS is really reminding us here that a that a boat in some form
00:49:31
was involved in this case at some point it has to be so The Killers or the killer came
00:49:40
prepared as they likely brought the tools that were used on Russell remember these items were not found in the house
00:49:46
and there was no obvious things that were um noticed to have been missing from the house mhm Shirley was found in
00:49:54
deep water at as we pointed out earlier about 5 1/2 miles from their home nothing obvious was taken from the house
00:50:02
there were valuables left in plain sight this really really makes it confusing to
00:50:09
the motive that was involved here now if the eyewitness is to be believed which Sheriff SS says he
00:50:19
believes this eyewitness a man was in the durman's yard and this took place on Saturday
00:50:26
some forensic evidence was found at the scene now whether it be DNA fibers tangible evidence or just something else
00:50:33
we don't know what that is although multiple news sources report that no foreign DNA was found Sheriff Sills has
00:50:41
said that he has quote forensic evidence collected at the house but he is keeping
00:50:47
mum on what it would be yeah that could be anything yeah there was no blood found on the grounds on the dock or in
00:50:56
the home anywhere except the garage we do know that in 2012 the durans were victims of American Express
00:51:04
credit card fraud where one of their cards was hacked in $2,000 in online expenditures racked up at Macy's and
00:51:13
Amazon they reported this to the putam county sheriff's office this is the only interaction that the Germans ever had
00:51:21
with the Sheriff's Office Russell and Shirley lived a normal quiet life and were well-liked social and friendly they
00:51:28
were well off but Frugal and cautious with their spending they were contemplating
00:51:34
downsizing and had sold their boat the family seemed to be close and loving they seem to have no enemies yeah and
00:51:42
were described as religious sweet unassuming family [Music] people make sure you sign up and
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