By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer

In the wake of the apparent solving of the 31-year-old homicide of a minister’s wife in St. Cloud, Osceola County law enforcement looked to Norma Page’s confessed killer Steve H. Bronson Jr. to possibly crack other unsolved cases.

While the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office and the Kissimmee Police Department both called Bronson a person of interest in a couple of unsolved murders, the fact remains that collectively the three policing agencies of Osceola County have 36 unsolved homicides among them. The cases are as old as 1981 and as new as December.

The Sheriff’s Office alone has 21 unsolved homicides going back to 1981. Sheriff Bob Hansell said the hard work of his office and the public’s information is “significant” in solving cases.

“Even one unsolved homicide is a concern for both the community and the victim’s family,” he said.

St. Cloud Police Deputy Chief Vinny Shepard said 36 unsolved homicides may not seem like much given the county is more than 150 years old, but, as he put it, “one unsolved case is too many.”

Shepard has his own cold case hurdle: St. Cloud’s only unsolved murder now that the Page killing may be solved.

The victim’s name was Julia Sue Wilbanks. She was found by a passing motorist just before 10 a.m. on Sept. 23, 1991, in a swale approximately 200 yards east of the bridge near Partin Triangle Park.  

Shepard theorizes Wilbanks, a known prostitute and drug user who also was known as Julia Sue Loveless, was murdered elsewhere and dumped by her killer. She was stabbed multiple times and had severe defensive wounds on her hands. There were no signs of sexual assault.

“It was a violent crime,” Shepard said. “Given her particular lifestyle, she was considered quite a hustler.”

Shepard, who was a patrol officer at the time of Wilbanks’ murder, was given two months in 1997 to reopen the case and try to solve it. Seven 4-inch thick binders filled with interviews conducted with 300 witnesses and persons of interest, tips and gruesome crime scene photographs sit in a cabinet above his head.

Shepard said an unknown DNA sample was found during his investigation and entered into the same DNA database that connected Bronson to Norma Page’s murder, but no matches were found.

“Pretty much every angle has been followed up on,” Shepard said. “I definitely would like to see this case solved before I retire.”

Wilbanks was last seen alive in Kissimmee by a “working associate” walking away from the Budget Inn at 307 E. Vine St. toward Bay Street.

Shepard urged anyone with information on the case to contact him at 407-891-6772.

Innovative investigation tactics

Between 2007 and 2008, Osceola County policing agencies partnered with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Department of Corrections and the Central Florida Crimeline to distribute more than 165,000 decks of playing cards featuring unsolved Osceola County murders to inmates in state prisons. Each cold case playing card has a photo of the victim, if available, and a short paragraph about the crime. Three editions of the decks were produced and other state agencies also participated.

To date, no Osceola County case has been solved because of the cards. However, two homicides outside the county were solved thanks to this unorthodox tip-generator.

The Osceola County deck features such cases as the Nov. 30, 1992, murder of Bonnie Goodson, the 34-year old mother of two daughters who was found mortally wounded in the Truck Accessories Store at 205 S. John Young Parkway in Kissimmee, where she worked. A roofing tool – part pry bar, part claw hammer – was found near Goodson and was used to beat her in the head, according to newspaper accounts of the case. Less than $500 was missing from the register.

The case is KPD’s oldest unsolved homicide.

While Goodson’s body was exhumed in September 1995 to collect hair samples – the first exhumation of its kind in Osceola County – the case remains unsolved.

“The public’s assistance is paramount to solving crime,” Kissimmee Police Chief Fran Iwanski said. “All tips are followed up on and no detail is too small.”

KPD has 13 additional unsolved homicides it would like to solve, including the March 6, 2004, death of Kelly Balderas, who was found beaten to death in the motel room she was living in at the Breeze Inn on East Vine Street in Kissimmee, according to newspaper accounts.

The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office is on the hunt to solve 21 homicides. The oldest case is nearly 30 years old.

The agency is seeking information to close the homicide of 79-year-old widow Bertha Hemminghaus. The bespectacled homemaker and great-grandmother was found bludgeoned to death in October 1989 in her Good Samaritan Retirement Village double-wide mobile home.

Bronson, who is one of seven persons of interest in this case, was questioned about it after his arrest in December for Page’s murder. However, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Twis Lizasuain said his story never wavered from the one he told in 1989. He is still considered a person of interest in the case.

What makes a case cold?

FDLE does not create statewide parameters for classifying unsolved cases as “cold” and leaves classification up to each law enforcement agency.

KPD does not call its unsolved homicides “cold cases,” preferring to leave each case active, according to spokeswoman Stacie Miller.

KPD continues to follow leads and examine case information no matter how old the case is until the case is solved, Iwanski said.

“You never know when you are going to get a little piece of information that solves the entire case,” she said.

The Sheriff’s Office has two classifications for homicides depending on the amount of information and evidence each case has, Lizasuain said. It currently has 10 cold cases and 11 unsolved homicides.

Cold cases for the Sheriff’s Office are those with no leads, no suspects or persons of interest and very little evidence, making it close to impossible to solve. However, unsolved cases are those with suspects or persons of interest without enough evidence to make an arrest, no matter how old the case is, Lizasuain said.

Shepard considers the Wilbanks case cold because the department has exhausted all leads and needs the last puzzle piece to fall into place, like the DNA match in Norma Page’s murder did late last year.

“The big break in the Page case was the DNA and the change in the technology,” Shepard said. “There wasn’t much forensic evidence (in Wilbanks’ case).”

Real-life police work is not as fast-paced and easy as crime shows on television make it out to be, with fictional detectives solving complicated murders within an episode or two, Shepard said, adding that the wider the gap between a crime and its solving, the more likely witnesses will forget details and suspects will form alibis, destroy evidence and get rid of weapons.

“In any crime scene investigation, the first 24 hours are the most important,” he said.

The unsolved homicide deck of cards is available for viewing at www.fdle.

state.fl.us under unsolved homicides.

Anyone with information on the cases featured in this story is urged to contact the law enforcement agency identified as handling the case, or to remain anonymous, call Crimeline at 1-800-423-TIPS (8477).