Garry Durrance (Seminole County jail).
After 24 years, police in Sanford, Florida, say they found the man who brutally murdered a local woman and left her body in a wooded area she had been living at. It was her own boyfriend, who had kicked her out of their home around the day before, officers announced on Friday.
The defendant, Gary Durrance, who is now 73 and sitting in the Seminole County jail, had a turbulent history with the victim, Sherry Holtz, 50, according to Sanford cops. Police spokesperson Bianca Gillett said that officers had responded to the couple’s home between 1996 and 1999 over domestic violence incidents involving the two.
She did not elaborate on this incidents. Besides the murder, Durrance’s criminal history in Seminole County are for two DUI cases in 1999, records show. Nonetheless, officers say that things came to a head in early December of 1999. They got a call regarding a body found behind Aamco Transmission at 2890 South Orlando Drive. A person collecting cans in the woods had found Holtz, contacted employees in the nearby business, and they contacted authorities.
It was a “brutal homicide,” Gillett said.
Holtz was found on her back on a concrete slab about 20 feet into the woodline. Her throat was cut and was the primary cause of death, but Gillett also noted strangulation and blunt force trauma that could have also proved fatal. Clothing was pulled off, exposing most of Holtz’s body; police believe she suffered a sexual battery.
At the time, police spoke to Durrance and the couple’s three roommates. According to cops, the defendant had kicked the victim out of the home on Dec. 2, 1999. Holtz was last seen on Dec. 3 at a bar then called “Uncle Nick’s Bar” at 2605 Park Drive in Sanford. Witnesses said she left there between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m., and police said statements showed she might have possibly gone with “two separate male persons of interest.” Beyond that, however, cops said they found nothing to substantiate the details about the persons of interest. Gillett noted that the crime scene was about 0.6 miles from the bar.
At the time, however, there were alleged holes in Durrance’s alibi. Witnesses indicated that the defendant, who claimed he had not seen Holtz since Dec. 1 of that year, left the home at some point late on the 3rd or early on the 4th, and returned home between 2:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. on the 4th, according to cops.
The case came to a halt until investigators reopened it last year and resubmitted evidence to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. This time, the blood was a match for Holtz, and DNA on other parts of the knife was from Durrance, according to police. Gillett noted that the persons of interest were excluded because of the testing, though they remained persons of interest as of Friday.
Investigators said they reinterviewed any witnesses still alive from the time, and police said they learned that in December 1999, Durrance had described seeing Holtz’s body.
Officers arrested the defendant on Thursday in Volusia County.
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