SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. (SNN TV) — Fifty years after a young Suncoast woman was murdered, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office is still looking for answers.
On Nov. 10, 1973, Sarasota deputies on patrol discovered the body of 19-year-old Mary Jo Shelleby, a student at Manatee Junior College. She was found on a dirt roadway at the south end of McIntosh Road.
“Several reports of her being seen at a bar in Sarasota prior to her body being discovered. Investigators determined she was seen by several people at a bar drinking,” said Capt. Joe Giasone, an investigator with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.
The drinking age was 18 in 1973, so Giasone said she wasn’t doing anything illegal. Hopping around is what she did.
“From the reports we read, she was a free spirit, a 1970s kid if you could describe it that way,” he said. “We had reports that she would hitchhike places. From some interviews that we did with her friends, she was a very friendly person, a very outgoing person, the kind of person everyone would have liked to have met.”
When Shelleby was found, SCSO collected evidence, but DNA testing wasn’t introduced into the courts until 13 years later in 1986.
Interviews continued as recently as a couple years ago but nothing led to probable cause for an arrest. Evidence has been resubmitted multiple times.
“When new technology comes up, if we think it’ll be helpful in maybe solving a case, we send it off for testing to see if we come up with anything,” said Giasone.
SCSO is pushing this cold case because sometimes, people don’t know they have information about a case.
“Back in 1973, it wasn’t like it is today where people know what happened an hour after it happened,” Giasone explained. “In 1973, there wasn’t social media. Obviously, there wasn’t the internet. There were newspapers and TV reports at 6 o’clock news. That’s how people got their news.”
And they’re pushing it because no one alive is advocating for her.
“She has no surviving family that we know of. She deserves the attention that she’s getting and the case deserves to be solved,” said Giasone.
If you have any information, call SCSO’s Criminal Investigations at (941)-861-4900 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at (941)366-TIPS. You can also contact the Sheriff’s Office through their Facebook page or email them at info@SarasotaSheriff.org.
