MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday that a 72-year-old man has been charged in the 1996 death of a 45-year-old St. Petersburg woman.
Stephen L. Ford was taken into custody last month during a traffic stop in Delaware and has since been extradited to Manatee County.
In December 1996, the body of a woman was found dead in a ditch along U.S. 41 in Palmetto.
An autopsy the next day found she had been stabbed 83 times, the sheriff’s office said. A few months later, dental records identified her as Doris A. Korell.
The St. Pete Police Department had been looking for Korell, who lived with her boyfriend, Ford, in a duplex on 92nd Avenue N. St. Petersburg.
“Her daughter, who lived in Maryland, reported her missing on December 11th after Stephen called her to ask if she’d seen her mother. He claimed she left in her car to go shopping after they argued,” the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
The case went cold in 1997 and was reopened in 2017, and DNA results last month led authorities back to Ford.
He has been charged with second-degree murder with a weapon.