The murder of Carol Ann Barrett

This case was closed by a confession, not a trial. For decades investigators had little more than Barrett's body, a police sketch based on her friends' descriptions, and an unresolved palm print. In August 2017 the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office cold case unit reopened the case. Its supervisor, Sgt. Dan Janson, told Action News Jax that November that the print might be tested with technology that did not exist in 1980, and that he had tracked down the original latent print examiner. The sheriff's office has not said publicly whether the print played any part in what followed. It said that a person of interest it had developed in 2020, Billy Mansfield Jr., became the suspect; he would have been 24 at the time. The Miami Herald noted that deputies did not say how the search was narrowed to him. After multiple interviews spanning two years, the sheriff's office said, Mansfield advised in September 2022 that he was the suspect in the police sketch, and went on to confess to the abduction and to her murder shortly afterward. The State Attorney's Office for the Fourth Judicial Circuit was consulted and decided not to seek prosecution, because Mansfield is serving a life sentence for murder in California and four concurrent life sentences in Florida for other murders. The sheriff's office announced the closure on January 25, 2024. No court has heard evidence in Barrett's case, and the public record does not describe any corroboration beyond the confession. In June 2026, speaking about a search in Hernando County for other possible victims, Sheriff Al Nienhuis said Mansfield is a serial killer who is "less than truthful" and may be mistaken because so much time has passed. He was referring to the burial sites, not to Barrett's case.