Aiexpress – Florida police say they think they have found the body of a 16-year-old girl who went missing in 2004 and whose disappearance was a mystery that took almost 20 years to solve.
The Volusia Sheriff’s Office said that detectives looking into Autumn Lane McClure’s absence found her body while digging where she was thought to have been buried on Wednesday afternoon.
She was last seen on May 10, 2004, and she is from Ormond Beach, Florida. The sheriff’s office said that her boyfriend told police that he dropped her off at the Volusia Mall at the time.
Detectives talked to McClure’s boyfriend again in 2016, and he admitted he lied in 2004 and said he didn’t drop her off at the mall, Sheriff Mike Chitwood said at a news conference Thursday. The sheriff said he told her he dropped her off at a bridge, where she got into a car with Jessica Freeman, a coworker from the grocery store.
Freeman and her 31-year-old boyfriend, Brian Donley, had McClure living with them in their trailer when she went missing. The sheriff said that McClure was having a sexual relationship with Freeman and Donley.
Later, police found Freeman and asked her for help, but she said she didn’t have any information, Chitwood said.
In 2021, a person of interest was named when police got a call from Chris Miller, a guy who knew both Donley and Freeman, the sheriff said.
Police said Miller told them, “I need to get this off my chest.” A teenage girl is lost, has been found dead, and is buried in Volusia County. Brian Donley and/or Jessica Freeman must have had something to do with this.
Chitwood said that Miller placed a secret call to Freeman, during which Freeman told Miller that “she saw Brian Donley kill Autumn and that he told a myriad of stories” about how he killed her.
Chitwood said that Donley “could make everyone afraid.” He also said that it took Miller years to “finally wake up and say, ‘Enough is enough; I can’t live with my conscience as a father knowing that I heard him tell people what he did.'”
It was said that Donley died on May 26, 2022.
“The sad part is that he’ll never face, in this world, the evil that he perpetrated,” said the sheriff.
Then, detectives went back to talk to Freeman again, and the sheriff said that prosecutors gave her protection.
Freeman told police that “she came home one afternoon and saw Brian choking Autumn in the bathroom” and that “by the time she stepped in, she saw Autumn was dead,” the sheriff said.
Police say they think the reason was that McClure was going to go home, and Donley was afraid that he would be charged if she went home and told her parents about their sexual connection.
She said that she saw boards on the bedroom floor about two weeks after the murder. The person who said this said she asked Donley, “What happened to Autumn?” “Shut up, or the same thing will happen to you,” he said, according to Chitwood.
The sheriff said that Freeman called the police again in late 2023 and told them that McClure was buried under where their trailer was.
Freeman told the police that Donley was going to go back to the scene of the crime. Freeman was afraid that “he would kill her as easily as he killed Autumn,” Chitwood said.
The police said they don’t think Freeman had anything to do with the killings.
Chitwood said that McClure’s brother is “relieved” that the body of his sister has been found.
“He wasn’t surprised. “There were rumors, but they’re glad she was found,” he said.
