A convicted serial killer, child molester and sex offender confessed to the murder of a high school student, according to authorities.
Billy Mansfield confessed to abducting 18-year-oldCarol Ann Barrett from her Florida hotel room in the middle of the night and then killing the young woman, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
That confession comes 44 years after police discovered Barrett’s body in a ditch along the side of a highway on March 24,1980.
Her friends provided information about the teen’s abductor to authorities and a sketch was made of a suspect, but no leads emerged and the murder investigation soon became a cold case .
Then, in 2017, Barrett’s case was reexamined by the JSO cold case unit, who after reviewing all available evidence, decided to reopen the investigation into the murdered teen.
Three years later, Mansfield went from being a person of interest to a suspect in the case, according to the JSO.
“In September 2022, after multiple interviews spanning two years, Billy Mansfield advised that he was in fact the suspect in the police sketch completed following the abduction,” says the JSO in its statement. “He went on to confess to the abduction from the Daytona Beach Shores hotel, as well as to her murder shortly thereafter.”