Originally published August 22, 2006
Police increase reward in Pamela Kinney case
Few leads more than a year after teen's death
By Chitra Subramanyam
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Pamela Kinney was 19 when she disappeared on Aug. 14, 2005, in Apalachicola. Three weeks later, her remains were found in a wooded area near the airport. Now, after more than a year, the leads have all but dried up and information reduced to a trickle.
Mike Mock, Franklin County sheriff, and FDLE agents investigating the case are sure there is someone in the community who knows something about the slaying. But that person isn't talking.
In an effort to rekindle interest in the case, the Franklin County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on Monday announced an increase in the reward from $6,000 to $10,000 that could lead to the arrest and conviction of whomever was behind Kinney's slaying.
Tom McInerney, FDLE's special agent-in-charge, said he hopes the reward money will act as a "catalyst" so that any person with information will come forward and "do the right thing."
Annette Fagan, an Apalachicola resident and Kinney's great-aunt, seemed to echo Mock when she talked about her great-niece's disappearance and unresolved death. "This is a small town," she said about Apalachicola. "If people have information and don't come forward, then the police just have to go with the clues they have so far."
Though she didn't spend much time with Kinney, Fagan said, every time she had seen her "she was bubbly... and more like a child than the 19-year-old she was. She was just having a good time."
"I just want them to hurry up and find the person," she said during a phone interview Monday.
Kinney moved to Washington, D.C., with her mother, Lasha, as a child but returned to visit her father, Raymond Lockley, sometime in June 2005.
On the day she went missing, Kinney went out with some neighborhood friends and was to spend the night at her great-grandmother's house.
Then, on Labor Day, Mock said, a man exploring the woods off Tilton Road in Apalachicola found what seemed to be human remains. In December, DNA tests confirmed they were Kinney's remains.
Investigators also found some items there that led them to a house on St. George Island. "These were things that should have been at the house," said Mike Devaney, FDLE special agent. The evidence led them to believe the house was where the crime was committed. At that time, the house was under construction because Hurricane Dennis had damaged it.
Investigators are now looking for information on anyone who was seen leaving with Kinney and what happened to her after she was killed.
"The bottom line is," Mock said, "we are not going to let this go. We are going to keep this case alive."
Anyone with information on this case is asked to call the Franklin County Sheriff's Office at (850) 670-8500 or the FDLE at (800) 342-0820.
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