Just ten days before Christmas in 1996, Manatee County deputies were called to a drainage canal in Palmetto. There, they found a woman’s body, which had been floating face down before divers recovered it.
Deputies were unable to identify Doris A. Korell, the 45-year-old woman from St. Petersburg who was pulled from the canal, for months. Her investigation would remain unsolved even longer, spanning nearly 30 years.
But now, a 72-year-old man that deputies identified as her former boyfriend is finally behind bars.
The Sunday that the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office found Korell in the canal on US 41 North, deputies noticed she was wearing a gold ring on her right index finger. The Medical Examiner also noted that she had trauma to the right side of her neck and face.
An autopsy the following day, on Dec. 15, revealed that she had been stabbed a total of 83 times. At the time, MCSO detectives were unaware that the St. Petersburg Police Department was looking for Korell, who was living with her boyfriend, Stephen Ford, in a duplex on 92nd Avenue North.