For 54 years, Sumter County sheriff’s investigators were baffled, frustrated, and haunted by a terrible mystery: Who was the murdered woman found under a bridge that they dubbed “Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee”?

The woman, between 5-foot-2 and 5-foot-5 inches tall and 110 to 120 pounds, was wearing plaid green pants, a matching green shirt, and a green and yellow shawl. She also wore a Baylor wristwatch, a yellow gold ring with a clear stone on her left ring finger, and a small gold necklace.

She had been wrapped in a piece of carpet with a man’s 36-inch belt tied around her neck.

“There were no DNA comparisons in 1971,” said Capt. Jon Galvin. “Fingerprints were our bread and butter.”

Back then, fingerprints were filed away by hand, awaiting comparison by latent fingerprint experts to ot

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