The Mystery of Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee
On February 19, 1971, in Lake Panasoffkee, Florida, an unidentified young woman was found murdered. She has remained unidentified for 52 years.
I have a true crime obsession. Unsolved mysteries. And two unsolved mysteries in particular have obsessed me over the years. One is the Gilgo beach murders, which I never thought would be solved during my lifetime, but which apparently has been (thank the Lord for that). And the other is the case of Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee. It is an unfathomably sad mystery, one that has lasted five decades and truly deserves to be solved. Unfortunately, the chances of this one ever being solved in the course of my does not look good. But let me tell you the story anyway.
I first heard about the case through Unsolved Mysteries, the TV show, in an episode that aired in 1992. Since then it has remained with me, haunted me really (see the artists composite above). It is a terrible thing to think that such a horrible murder could occur in America without any consequences. And yet, 52 years later, here we are.
Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee, which is how she is now known, was found by two teenage hitchhikers in Lake Panasoffkee, Florida, on February 19, 1971. She remains, to this day, unidentified. She was wearing a green floral poncho/shawl, a green shirt and green plaid pants. She also wore a Baylor watch, a gold chain, and a golden ring on her ring finger, so the motive probably wasn't a robbery. And that, perhaps is the saddest part of this story. That in 52 years, no one has claimed her body for burial. And with every year, the chances that we will know who she is get dimmer.
On that day in February 1971, the hitchhikers found a partially submerged figure floating beneath a highway overpass in Lake Panasoffkee. "She was wrapped in a blanket, like a house rug, and dropped over the Panasoffkee bridge," Sumter County Sheriff Bill Farmer said. "And the reason these guys saw her, she had one hand that was draped over a root coming out of the water." From CS Voll on Crimebeat:
On 19 February 1971, two hitchhikers walked over the Interstate 75 bridge, near Lake Panasoffkee (Sumter County, Florida), when they spotted an unusual shape under the overpass. The duo almost moved on, but then they saw a hand draped over a root. Once they determined it was a body, they flagged down a state trooper.
Near the southern edge of Lake Panasoffkee, investigators found a house rug wrapped around a deceased female. Decomposition made it impossible to collect fingerprints. The woman had sported a green floral poncho/shawl, a green shirt, and green plaid pants. In terms of accessories, she wore a Baylor watch, a gold chain, and a golden ring on her ring finger.
The story gets more grim from there, unfortunately. The body was so badly decomposed that no fingerprints were able to have been drawn. A man’s size 36 belt was found still wrapped around her neck. It was probably the cause of her death. She carried no form of identification and was wrapped in a house rug. The body more than likely did not come from the area. The coroner found that she had been dead for around 30 days by the time she was discovered. And the fact that her body was under the I-75 bridge, which connects Florida to the southeast United States, suggests that she could have been transported there from anywhere.
The USF cold case project made a sketch of her in 2012. She had prominent cheekbones, brown almond-shaped eyes, and black hair. And when she died, according to the coroner, she was between 17 and 24 years old and weighed about 115 pounds. Further, she was between 5 feet two inches and 5 feet and five inches. The indeterminacy here is due to the decomposition of the body. One bright spot in the mystery, however, was determined from a second autopsy. There, forensic anthropologist William Maples determined that the right ankle of Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee had undergone Watson Jones orthopedic ligament reconstruction surgery. It is a very specific type of procedure, so that might help eventually identifying her.
There are a lot of good people working on solving this decades old mystery. George Kamenov, a University of Florida scientist, analyzed the lead isotopes of Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee’s teeth, determining she was southeastern European. People’s teeth carry unique lead signatures that differ based on the region’s from where they had lived. Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee’s matched those of Lavrion, Greece, a ferry boat hub for the Cyclades Islands. “And the shifting carbon isotopes in her hair showed a grain-based European diet at the tips and a corn-based American diet near the roots,” writes Joe Byrnes for WMFE. “So she had probably moved here in the previous 10 months.”
The coroner also determined that she had given birth to at least one child, which makes this case even more heartbreaking. There are many theories surrounding this case. She could have been an abused Greek nanny, or on a student exchange program. But in the latter case, why didn’t the school ever report her missing?
In the decades since first watching that episode of Unsolved Mysteries, I have thought of this poor women who came to an unfortunate end often. Who was this Greek woman who died before I was even born? Why has no one ever come forward to claim her body? What were the circumstances surrounding her death? Is the man who killed her still alive? How does he live with himself, having caused the death of another human being without any consequences?
Perhaps, God willing, someday there will be some finality to this unsolved mystery even though Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee is far beyond such mundane concerns.
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