MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. (TCN) — Detectives arrested a 72-year-old man in Delaware for allegedly stabbing and killing his girlfriend and leaving her body in a ditch in 1996.
According to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, on Dec. 15, 1996, deputies were called a drainage canal on U.S. 41 North in Palmetto and found a body face-down in the water. Divers recovered the body of a female with trauma on her right neck and face. The local medical examiner concluded the victim had been stabbed 83 times. The victim did not show any signs of sexual assault, nor did she have water in her lungs.
Seven months later, in May 1997, authorities positively identified the victim as 45-year-old Doris Korell by using her dental records.
Around the same time, the St. Petersburg Police Department was searching for Korell, who had been reported missing by her daughter on Dec. 11, 1996. Korell’s boyfriend, Stephen Ford, reportedly called the daughter and asked if she had seen Korell recently.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office said in a statement that Ford told investigators at the time that he and Korell got into an argument on Dec. 8, 1996, and the next night, she “uncharacteristically left to go shopping and never returned home.” Korell did not show up to work the next day.