EDITORIAL: Another cold case warms up

If you had talked with Okaloosa County cops 15 years ago, you would’ve learned that the murder they were most eager to solve, the case to which they devoted the most time and effort, was that of Pluma Bell Sanford.
Ms. Sanford, a 73-year-old widow who went to Bible study every Tuesday and volunteered at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center, was tied up, beaten and strangled inside her house trailer in Wright in August 1997.
For a full year, authorities sifted clues and chased leads but kept details of the Sanford killing to themselves. They didn’t publicly acknowledge she had been strangled until August 1998. That month, sheriff’s spokesman Rick Hord said the investigation that followed Ms. Sanford’s slaying was “unprecedented” in its size and scope.
Investigators were pulling out the stops to catch Ms. Sanford’s attacker because they were worried that he had killed a second time and might kill yet again.
Nine months after Ms. Sanford was slain, another elderly woman, Jewel Summerlin Melvin, was strangled inside her home near Crestview.
“Do the similarities concern us? They cause a great deal of concern,” Chief Deputy Fred Cobb said in August ’98.
A Sheriff’s Office news release at the time said: “A page-by-page comparison of the two cases has been completed. … Investigators on both cases continue to work in unison.”
We don’t know how long the investigators worked in unison, but we do know that years passed, suspects were interviewed and cleared, and the Sanford and Melvin murders remained real-life mysteries.
Until last week.
A Missouri man with the remarkably unappealing name of Harry Leach was arrested Jan. 9 and charged with capital murder in the Sanford case. DNA had linked him to the crime. Investigators think he worked as a repairman at Ms. Sanford’s home in the summer of 1997.
The Sheriff’s Office didn’t say much last week about the Jewel Melvin case. But back in 1998, Chief Deputy Cobb guessed that if one murder was solved, it might help solve the other.
We’ll see.