DAYTONA BEACH — One set of human remains was found rotting inside a Daytona Beach apartment.
The other set was found in a fernery 20 miles away.
The killing of Jeffrey Albertsman — and the accompanying mystery of his detached limbs — was a painstaking case that took six months to solve and it was one of several indicators that 2017 was shaping up to be an unusually brutal year for homicides.
In all, 32 slayings were reported in Volusia and Flagler counties, up from 19 the previous year. That is the highest annual total since 2002, a year that also included 32 murders. Dating back to the first term of the Clinton Administration, no other year has exceeded that number.
"It's a weird thing. You can have strategies in place one year and get 10 and the next year you have the same exact strategies in place and you get 32," Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said.
"But nationwide the homicide trend has been going up ... (and) I think we're mirroring that."
There was at least one homicide every month last year in the two-county region. The bloodiest month was May, which had five. The longest stretch during the year without a homicide was 35 days.
The jurisdiction with the most slayings was Daytona Beach, which had 12. Unincorporated Volusia was second with seven.
Many of the killings were similar in that the victims were killed by a relative. Most involved firearms. Many were drug-related. One involved the killing of a suspected prostitute. Another involved the killing of a motorcycle gang member. That one, along with eight more, remain open cases.
Still unsolved
Some of the 2017 slayings will be remembered for being particularly gruesome or heinous. One of the victims, Tracy Adams, 39, was set on fire Aug. 27 as she sat in her car in her driveway. She was still covered in flames when she ran inside her DeLand house with her children inside, according to DeLand police. She died from her injuries weeks later.
In another case, 60-year-old Carlos Cruz, of Deltona, was found shot dead, lying in a ditch Nov. 11. The circumstances resembled a scene from the old gangster series "The Sopranos."
Volusia sheriff's deputies said Cruz was helping a driver whose vehicle was stuck. He walked back to his driveway and then drove his truck over in an attempt to pull the stranded motorist's car. That driver wound up fatally shooting Cruz so he could steal his pickup, detectives said. The vehicle was driven to Apopka and set on fire.
"That, to me, was a really, really senseless and brutal act," Chitwood said of the Cruz murder case. "We're working that one hard."
Both the Adams and Cruz murders are among the nine from last year that have remained unsolved in Volusia.
DeLand police Chief Jason Umberger said his detectives are close to the finish line in the Adams investigation.
"We have done a lot of work on it ... (but) at this point, we haven't gotten the approval yet from the State Attorney's Office to issue an arrest warrant," he said. "There are still some investigative things (prosecutors) would like for us to run down."
Another of the still-unsolved cases involves the death of an infant, who doctors determined died from a blow to the head on Nov. 17, Orange City police said. One of the persons of interest in that case was embroiled in another incident in another jurisdiction, which has further complicated the infant death investigation, police said. They wouldn't be more specific.
Female suspects
Two of of the 32 murders — one in Daytona Beach and the other near Bunnell — were committed by women whose previous mates also died under strange circumstances, authorities said.
Albertsman, 55, was fatally shot inside his North Street apartment in Daytona Beach last summer. When investigators found the body on July 25, they were surprised to discover the victim's limbs had been sawed off his torso. Albertsman's arms and legs were discovered a couple months later in DeLeon Springs.
Nelci Tetley, 67, was charged in her ex-boyfriend's homicide. Daytona Beach Police Chief Craig Capri called the killing "demented."
There also was was the death of Charles "Butch" Singer, whose body was found covered in moth balls underneath a jon boat near County Road 305 outside Bunnell. Flagler County sheriff's deputies said Singer's wife, Dorothy Singer, shot her legally blind husband and used moth balls she had purchased at a general store to mask the scent of his decomposing body.
Authorities said Tetley is a person of interest in a 2007 case involving the death of a 27-year-old man whose dismembered body was found on the bank of the Tomoka River. Ormond Beach police have not charged Tetley in that case. As for Singer, Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said her previous two husbands "died suddenly" and he had urged the Putnam County Sheriff's Office to look closer into the 2011 death of her second husband, but the agency has declined to do so.
Flagler murders
Flagler tallied five total murders in 2017 compared to none in 2016. Dating back to 1995, Flagler had never had that many in one year, according to statistics provided by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Palm Coast had two homicides in 2017, while Flagler Beach and Bunnell had one each. The other took place in unincorporated Bunnell. Four have been closed with an arrest while Bunnell police have released the name of the suspect in their investigation. The State Attorney's Office has yet to formerly file charges.
"Homicides in Flagler County are pretty rare and to have five in one year is disheartening," Staly said.
"Flagler is still one of the safest places to live in the (region) and we're doing everything we can to make sure that trend we saw last year doesn't continue."
In August, a 22-year-old Palm Coast man was charged following the stabbing death of his 60-year-old mother. Detectives said the suspect, Nathaniel Shimmel killed his mother after she confronted him about not looking for a job and threatened to kick him out of her house.
Staly looks at such cases as proof that family feuds these days are more often ending in violence.
"I think this country as a whole has become a more violent country," Staly said. "People are resolving their disputes by killing whoever they're fighting with ... and you're seeing a breakdown of the family unit across the country."
State Attorney R.J. Larizza said one of roughly every four homicide cases his office prosecutes is typically domestic-related.
"Family relationships can go sideways sometimes and go violent," Larizza said.
He was surprised to learn of the spike in the number of homicides in 2017, especially when compared to the year before.
"It's very sad and it's very disturbing to see that number go up like that," Larizza said.
Theories
Overall, crime is going down across Florida and the U.S., but murder rates aren't following the overall crime trends. Statewide, Florida's murder rate went up each year from 2013 through 2016, according to FDLE. Last year's statewide totals aren't available. Nationally, according to the FBI, the first six months of 2017 had more homicides compared to the first six months of 2016. The increase was 1.5 percent. In the Southeast, the increase was 3.6 percent.
Staly said one of the major driving factors behind a rise in homicides is the continued proliferation of narcotics.
"If you're in the criminal underworld, there are always guns involved," he said, referring specifically to the illegal drug trade. "That's the hazard of the occupation you've chosen. It's unfortunate people have that lack of respect for life."
Chitwood pointed out the area's gun theft problem, which might also be linked to last year's increase in shooting deaths. More than 170 guns were stolen from unlocked cars in his jurisdiction last year, he said. That has led to more firearms in the hands of felons.
"You have to ask who are committing these homicides," he said. "All too often it's those who consistently get arrested and who still somehow find a way to arm themselves."
Umberger suspects a new generation of adults have become desensitized because they are exposed to so much violence through video games, television shows, movies and the Internet. Future generations will be worse off unless that is somehow ratcheted back, he said.
"We seem to be a generation consumed with violence," he said. "I believe we're conditioning our young people. They're becoming numb to what they're actually doing. I think it diminishes the overall value of life."
First-person shooter games with graphics that are all-too-real, violent images on YouTube and other streaming sites and a steady diet of violence in films and television shows have romanticized violence at an unprecedented rate, Umberger said. They have blurred the line between fantasy and reality.
"What we behold and look at lovingly and longingly is what we'll become," he said.