2 Florida Students Found Dead Near Slaying Site
Two female college students were found dead Friday in their campus-area apartment just blocks from where five other students were slain in August.
Police said the deaths did not appear to be related to the murders that terrorized the city last summer, but they did not rule out a connection.
The two victims were students at the university, as were four of the five students killed last year, a spokesman said.
“From some of the initial reports we’ve gotten, it appears there are really not any similarities with the murders of last year,” said spokesman John Joyce of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “Early reports are that it’s not the same type of (crime) scene.”
But he said it was too early to be certain that the latest deaths had no connection with the earlier murders. The women were identified as Carla Marie McKishnie, 22, of Brandon and Eleanor Anne Grace, 20, of Ft. Myers.
Police have not filed charges in the earlier slayings, although they have named Danny Rolling, who is being held on other charges, as the leading suspect.
They also have not ruled out the involvement of a second killer, but a second suspect, Edward Humphrey, has been detained for several months on separate charges.
Several of the students killed in August were mutilated and dismembered. The bodies of the two women found Friday were not mutilated, Joyce said. They were found by a male friend about 7 a.m. in an apartment complex where Tiffany Sessions, daughter of a wealthy South Florida real estate developer, disappeared in 1989.
Sessions was never found despite an intensive search led by her father, Patrick Sessions.
The complex is in the same part of town where the five students--four women and a man--were killed, police said. The task force investigating those murders sent investigators to the scene.
The bodies of Sonya Larsen, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Tracy Paules and Manual Taboada were found between Aug. 26 and Aug. 28 last year. Their deaths set off one of the most intensive investigations in state history.
“We are treating it as a homicide,” said Alachua County Sheriff’s Capt. Andy Hamilton of Friday’s discovery.
More to Read
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.