Twenty-six-year-old Todd McAfee worked as a corporate farm manager of a three-hundred-acre tomato farm for the Bonita Packing Company in rural Myakka City, Florida, sixty-five miles south of Tampa. A bachelor and avid outdoorsman, his primary recreational activities were hunting and collecting guns. It was common knowledge that he kept his cache of weapons in the company trailer on the farm that doubled as his home and office.

Todd’s gun collection was valuable monetarily but was priceless to him personally. He collected guns because he liked them and believed they would also serve as a source of protection. They instead likely led to his murder.

Todd McAfee

As Todd’s farmhands arrived for work at 6:30 a.m. on August 18, 1987, they were surprised to find the gate still locked. They were let in a few minutes later when Todd’s assistant, Adam Williams, arrived at the farm.

Concern set in at 7:00, when, with still no sign of Todd, the farmhands noticed blood stains in the bed of his Ford Ranger truck, parked outside the gate. The concern became fear when they saw Todd’s bloodied glasses laying on the blood-covered driver’s seat. An empty gun case also sat on the dashboard.

Todd’s keys were in the ignition; on the front passenger seat were a videotape and a bag of groceries. Receipts showed they had respectively been rented and purchased the previous evening.

Adam called out for Todd when he entered his boss’s trailer but received no response. He then noticed two empty handgun cases on the floor and the twirling spindles on Todd’s answering machine from which the tape had been removed.

Adam Williams

Todd’s Employee

Three hours later, other employees discovered Todd’s body two miles away in a drainage ditch on one of the tomato fields he managed. Footprints leading away from the scene were etched in the sand.

An autopsy determined Todd had been shot four times with a .22-caliber gun with hollow-point bullets and had been dead for approximately twelve hours before he was found. A receipt found in the grocery bag in his truck showed he had purchased the groceries at 6:30 the previous evening.

Inside Todd’s trailer, authorities found the bulk of his prized gun collection, including several handguns, rifles, and shotguns, had been taken. Also missing were a VCR and several cameras.

Todd Is Found Shot To Death

Several of Todd’s guns had been stolen the previous year. Investigators believe he saw that his home was being robbed again when he arrived from the grocery store as the tire tracks in his driveway showed he sped up to the trailer. He was shot as he exited the truck and then tried to get back into the vehicle leaving the bloodstains found inside. The truck itself sustained no gunshot damage.

After shooting Todd additional times and killing him, the assailants are believed to have put his body in his truck bed and drove away to dispose of him. Investigators believe it took more than one person, and perhaps multiple people, to toss the six-feet-five-inch tall two-hundred-fifteen pound Todd into the ditch. The locale where he was found was likely chosen because locals knew an alligator resided in a nearby swamp and the killers had hoped Todd’s body would be its supper. He was discovered, however, before being gobbled by the gator.

After dumping Todd’s body, the killers drove his truck back to his home and then fled the scene.

All of Todd’s employees were questioned and their shoes were videotaped and tested against the footprints in the sand. No matches were made.

Todd Interrupts A Burglary At His Home

At approximately 6:15 p.m. on August 17, two of Todd’s friends observed a burnt orange van parked next to his home.

A woman filling her car with gas at a local station earlier that day had made small talk with another woman filling an orange van. The latter woman spoke a slurred manner and acted restive. As they were chatting, a man came out of the store and grabbed the woman filling the van and appeared to scold her for talking. The other woman heard the man’s companion call him Rob.” They entered the orange van and were soon joined by another man who they called “Runt.” The trio then drove off.

Composites were made of “Rob” and the woman, but they were not identified.

Suspect Composites

In July 1989, a man named Jerry McKie was arrested with a .30-caliber Plainfield semiautomatic rifle determined to have been stolen from Todd McAfee’s trailer nearly two years earlier. McKie lived in Arcadia, twenty miles southeast of Myakka City, and told police that he had been loaned the gun by forty-two-year-old Wilbur Anderson who had also sold him a Winchester 12-gauge shotgun, found to have been stolen from Todd’s trailer as well.

Anderson and his forty-one-year-old wife Ruthie also resided in Arcadia at the time of Todd’s murder, and had both previously worked for Todd, Wilbur as a farmhand and Ruthie as a housekeeper.

Two years later, inmate Jacob Scott told authorities that Ruthie told him she had planned the burglary of Todd’s trailer and that he was killed after coming upon her, Wilbur, and another man as the theft was in process. Ruthie’s statements were conveyed to Scott, he said, while they were both being held at the Desoto County Jail, adjacent to Manatee County were Todd was murdered, on charges of dealing in stolen property.

At the time of Scott’s statements, the Andersons lived in Shaw, Mississippi. In a local junkyard, investigators located an orange van matching the description of the one seen at Todd’s home on the night of his murder. The junkyard owner told police Wilbur Anderson had sold it to him.

In October 1994, Ruthie Anderson was charged with the murder of Todd McAfee. Wilbur Anderson was charged only with stealing and selling Todd’s guns for which he was later convicted.

As Ruthie’s trial was about to begin, Jacob Scott recanted his statements and the case against her was dismissed.

Ruthie Anderson

Ruthie and Wilbur Anderson later separated. Ruthie is believed to still be living in Mississippi. Wilbur later served time in a Mississippi prison for an unrelated robbery occurring after Todd’s murder. He was released in 1996 and is now is believed to be living in Alabama. Both have refused any comment about the murder of Todd McAfee.

Police still consider the Andersons persons of interests but have nothing forensically linking them to the crime. I could not pictures of Wilbur Anderson or Jacob Scott.

Charges Dropped

The other primary persons of interest in the murder of Todd McAfee are the two still unidentified men and woman seen at the gas station in the orange van that was later seen parked outside Todd’s home.

The woman was approximately five-feet-five-inches tall with a very thin build and shoulder-length light brown hair. She appeared to be in her mid-to-late twenties, making her in early to mid-sixties today. Her hyper behavior and slurred speech suggests she had recently been using drugs. She wore a gold necklace with the letters “R B” with a small diamond in the leg of the R.

The man called Rob stood approximately five-feet-eight inches tall and weighed around one-hundred-eighty pounds. He had a light beard, curly, sandy brown colored hair, and a tattoo of an eagle on his left arm. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, making him in his early seventies today.

Authorities do not have a composite of the second man, known as Runt. He appeared to be between six-feet and six-feet-two inches tall with a thin build, mustache, and straight brown shoulder-length hair.

Under hypnosis, the woman who had seen the suspects at the gas station recalled the van was a mid-to-late-1970s model without side windows other than a tinted porthole near the rear. She also recalled seeing an automatic weapon in the vehicle.

Three people who resided in Michigan but who had connections to the Myakka City, Florida, area and who fit the suspects’ descriptions were cleared on involvement in Todd’s murder.

Not Identified

Todd McAfee was killed outside his Myakka City, Florida, home on August 17, 1987. No arrests have been made. Authorities believe the theft of his gun collection was the motive for his murder. Some of Todd’s stolen handguns, his VCR, and cameras were found, but his more valuable shotguns and rifles remain missing. The missing weapons are listed below.

Todd’s Unrecovered Weapons

Because most of Todd’s farmhands came from Arcadia, investigators believe people who lived there or near there at the time may have information relating to his murder.

If you have any information relating to the murder of Todd McAfee, please contact the Manatee County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office at 941-747-3011.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212250618/todd-jefferson-mcafee

Who Murdered Todd McAfee?

Todd McAfee’s college alma mater, Louisiana Tech University, awards two scholarships in his name to students in its agricultural department.

Scholarships In Todd’s Name

Sources:

• Bradenton Herald
• DeSoto Sun
• Sarasota Herald-Tribune
• Tampa Tribune
• Unsolved Mysteries