Human remains found in search for teen girl who vanished 20 years ago
Human remains have been discovered nearly two decades after a 16-year-old girl vanished, putting her case on the path to some closure.
The remains were found on Wednesday at a mobile home park in the Ormond Beach area of Florida where detectives determined that Autumn McClure was murdered and buried, said the Volusia Sheriff’s Office.
Autumn was reported missing from her grandmother’s home in Ormond Beach on May 10, 2004. Autumn’s grandmother received phone calls and letters from her promising that she was OK and would return home after turning 18. The teen girl was believed to be living with a woman she worked with in Winn-Dixie.
‘There really never is a “cold case,”’ stated Sheriff Mike Chitwood while announcing the break in the case on Thursday. ‘The men and women that are assigned to our Major Case Unit and all of our investigative units, that’s what they understand.’
The woman Autumn was staying with and the woman’s boyfriend, Brian Christopher Donley Jr, then 31, lived at a mobile home park in Shady Oaks. They told investigators that Autumn was with them only briefly and that they had no idea of her whereabouts thereafter.
Investigators interviewed Donley’s girlfriend, Jessica Freeman, again in 2018 and she denied knowing anything about Autumn’s case. Three years later, a tipster claimed that Donley and his girlfriend were responsible for a teenage girl’s death in the county and provided some evidence.
Detectives in 2022 provided Freeman with a letter of immunity from the state attorney’s office, and he confessed that she saw Donley kill Autumn in the trailer and threatened to kill her if she told anyone. Donley died that same year at the age of 49, escaping criminal prosecution.
‘I’m hoping to God that when he took his last breath on May 26 of 2022, that maybe he had a vision of where the hell he was headed,’ stated Sheriff Chitwood.
As of Thursday, about 99% of the remains were recovered from the site, which had to have a trailer and concrete removed for excavation.
‘Cases like this are why we do what we do,’ stated Dr Lerah Sutton of the University of Florida’s Maples Center for Forensic Medicine, which helped with the excavation.
The remains have not been officially identified as belonging to Autumn, but her family members have been notified as the process is pending.
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