Billy Mansfield Jr. confessed to abducting and murdering Carol Ann Barrett, authorities say. (Mug shot: California Department of Corrections; image: Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office)
After more than 40 years, investigators say they solved a teenager’s mysterious murder by tracking down her suspect — an already convicted serial killer — and hearing his confession. Billy Mansfield Jr. abducted Carol Ann Barrett, 18, from the Treasure Island Motel in Daytona Beach at approximately 2 a.m. on March 23, 1980, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in Florida. The victim was found dead all the way over in Jacksonville.
Authorities announced the killer is cooperating with law enforcement on other cases.
“Billy Mansfield continues to cooperate with detectives in other jurisdictions regarding additional Cold Cases,” the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said in a press release.
Barrett was visiting Daytona Beach with a group of high school friends while on Spring Break from Zanesville, Ohio, authorities said.
An unknown assailant abducted her from the motel that early morning of March 23, 1980. Investigators made a police sketch after interviewing her friends who had been in the room at the time of the kidnapping.
A passerby, however, found Barrett’s body in a ditch line along I-95 near Pecan Park Road in Jacksonville.
“Following an autopsy, Carol’s death was ruled a Homicide,” they wrote. “Tragically, the case went ‘cold’ after years of work by detectives with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office along with the original jurisdiction.”
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s Cold Case Unit reopened the case in August 2017, they said. Investigators developed Billy Mansfield Jr., now 68 and then 24 at the time of the Barrett murder, as a person of interest in 2020 and ultimately as the suspect.
“In September of 2022, after multiple interviews spanning two years, Billy Mansfield advised that he was in fact the suspect in the police sketch completed following the abduction,” they wrote. “He went on to confess to the abduction from the Daytona Beach Shores hotel, as well as to her murder shortly thereafter.”
He was already in a California prison for murdering Rene Sailing, 29, a mother-of-three who was found strangled in a drainage ditch. Mansfield also pleaded guilty in Florida on four counts of murder in the first degree and one count of attempted battery of a 12-year-old or older; Hernando County investigators in 1981 dug up the defendant’s family home, discovering four slain victims, according to The Tampa Bay Times in 2022:
- Theresa Caroline Fillingim, 16
- Sandra Graham, 21
- Elaine Zeigler, 15
- and a Jane Doe, who they did not manage to identify except to determine she was a white woman in her 20s
Barrett is the sixth victim that investigators managed to find. Authorities decided not to pursue a criminal case in her death.
“Following the more than quarter-century investigation into Carol’s murder, it has been determined the SAO would not seek prosecution as Billy Mansfield will remain in prison in California on one life sentence for Murder, as well as four concurrent life sentences in Florida for Murder in separate cases,” the sheriff’s office wrote.
