Billy Mansfield Jr., now 66, pleaded guilty to killing four women and to the attempted sexual battery of another.
Investigators have confirmed that remains unearthed in a Florida junkyard 41 years ago match a missing teenager, the victim of a serial killer now imprisoned for life in California, sheriff’s officials said.
Hernando County Sheriff’s investigators, with an assist from the University of North Texas and Virginia-based DNA technology company Parabon Nano Labs, identified Theresa Caroline Fillingim as the third of four bodies uncovered in April 1981 from what neighbors referred to as a “house of horrors.”
Fillingim had been reported missing by her sister in Tampa nearly a year before that, on May 16, 1980. She was a week from her 17th birthday.
The teen’s remains were sent to numerous labs over the years, but investigators didn’t develop a DNA profile until 2020. The sample was sent to the University of North Texas seeking a match in a national database, without results.
“Using DNA evidence from this investigation, Snapshot produced trait predictions for the associated victim. Individual predictions were made for the victim’s ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape,” a news release said.
The profile allowed investigators to generate their leads, and a DNA sample from Fillingim’s sister confirmed the identity, “finally bringing peace to the victim’s family,” the sheriff’s release said.
Publicity from that case led an anonymous tipster to ask Hernando County officials to search Mansfield’s home for Sandra Graham, a 21-year-old who went missing from Tampa on April 17, 1980.
Mansfield, now 66, pleaded guilty to killing all four women and to the attempted sexual battery of another. He’s been denied parole multiple times, according to California prison records.
