The graveyard shift at convenience stores is one of the most dangerous jobs in retail sales. The nighttime clerk is often the only person working while most of the community is sleeping. A store with a single attendant makes an ideal target for robbers. In a sense, the clerk is on an island that can be a very dangerous place, especially for a woman. Thieves are usually satisfied with taking money, but occasionally, they come to kill.
Thirty-six-year-old Darlene Messer, a divorced mother of a sixteen-year-old daughter, moved from her native Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to Florida in 1987. After living in Middleburg for nearly two years, she moved to Lake City, sixty miles west of Jacksonville and only a few miles from the Georgia border, where she worked as a clerk at the Suwanee Swifty Food Store along State Road 100, an east-west highway running through northeast Florida. She typically worked the 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. graveyard shift.
Darlene Messer’s stay at the Suwanee Swifty was short and most unsweet. Six months after starting employment, the woman who worked the graveyard shift was sent to the actual graveyard, having been brutally murdered. Thirty-four years later, her killer is still unidentified.
Darlene Messer
As was usually the case, Darlene was the only clerk working the night shift at the Suwanee Swifty Food Store on September 17-18, 1989. In preparation for mopping, she had just put the stripper on the floor when several people entered the store during the early morning hours of September 18.
At 12:35 a.m., Darlene checked out three correctional officers purchasing snacks and a couple buying coffee. Approximately three minutes later, a Georgia couple stopped at the store for coffee and snacks. They then returned to their car in the parking lot where they chatted as they ate their food and sipped the coffee. As they were driving out of the parking lot at approximately 12:50 a.m., they nearly hit an incoming Pontiac Grand Prix. The couple descried the vehicle as rust-red “Heinz 57” in color, possibly a 1976 or 1977 model. They did not see the occupant(s).
Store logs record one final sale at the Suwannee Swifty at 12:54 a.m.
So Far, a Typical Night
At approximately 1:00 a.m., another customer entered the store and found money and several store items strewn across the un-mopped floor. After calling for a clerk but receiving no response, he drove to another convenience store and phoned police, only to learn that officers were already on their way.
At 12:55 a.m., only one minute after the last sale was recorded, a silent alarm had been sounded at the Suwannee Swifty Food Store.
The Suwannee Swifty Convenience Store
Lying on the floor amidst the scattered money and store merchandise was a man’s belt, looped through at the end. It appeared to have been used to hold a person down.
Columbia County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene
Obtained by First Coast News
The money trail led into the parking lot. A store inventory determined approximately $100 was missing from the register, but Darlene’s purse, containing her own money as well as her handgun, sat undisturbed on a crate on the counter.
Columbia County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene
Obtained by First Coast News
It appeared a struggle had occurred in the store as several merchandise display items had been knocked over. The attack apparently occurred shortly after Darlene rang up the last customer at 12:54 a.m.; the silent alarm was activated only one minute later. Police response was prompt but, unfortunately, too late.
Two days later, on September 20, a railroad employee found Darlene’s bludgeoned body lying face down in a creek beneath the Swift Creek Bridge in Union County, thirteen miles from the store. Her face was beaten beyond recognition. Body bruises suggested the murder weapon was a ball-peen hammer. With the exception of a missing shoe, she was fully clothed and had not been raped. One earring and a necklace she was last seen wearing were also missing.
Beaten to Death
A large oil stain and blood droplets were found on the bridge. The latter suggested Darlene’s body had been thrown from the bridge, although she may have been murdered elsewhere.
The Oil Leak
After learning of Darlene’s background, the manner in which she was killed raised investigators’ eyebrows. She had moved from her native Canada to Florida to marry Charles Messer, a prisoner with whom she had become a pen pal. They wed in June 1988.
Some newspapers articles at the time state Charles Messer was serving a twelve-year sentence for robbery and that he was up for parole at the end of September 1989. Others, however, state he was serving a life sentence for the 1973 robbery and murder of a former marine named Henry Fowler III. Still other sources state he was on death row. I found an incarcerated Charles Messer is presently serving a life sentence for murder in Florida.
Some Internet sleuths have postulated that the imprisoned Charles Messer hired a hitman to murder his wife after learning of her alleged affairs. All sources of the time as well as contemporary, however, state he has been ruled out of any involvement in Darlene’s murder.
Darlene and Charles
Investigators initially thought Darlene Messer’s murder was related to the disappearances of three other Florida convenience store clerks who also vanished while working the graveyard shift.
On August 6, 1989, six weeks before Darlene was murdered, twenty-nine-year-old Donna Callahan vanished while working the night shift at the Sunshine Jr. Food Store in Gulf Breeze, in the far-west Florida Panhandle, three-hundred miles west of Lake City. Donna was three months pregnant with her second child at the time.
Six weeks later, on September 19, the day after Darlene was last seen, fifty-year-old Eileen Mangold disappeared while working the late shift at the Kangaroo Fuel Stop in the central Florida town of Riverview, one-hundred-seventy-five miles south of Lake City and four-hundred seventy-five miles southeast of Gulf Breeze.
Five months later, in the early morning hours of February 4, 1990, twenty-six-year-old Deborah Poe vanished while working at the Circle K convenience store in Orlando, eighty-five miles northeast of Riverview, one-hundred-fifty miles south of Lake City, and four-hundred-fifty miles southeast of Gulf Breeze.
Authorities feared a serial killer was targeting female convenience stores/gas station attendants in Florida. Subsequent findings, however, have led them to believe the women’s cases are not connected.
Donna Callahan Eileen Mangold Deborah Poe
Eileen Mangold’s body was found on September 20, the day after her disappearance and the same day Darlene Messer’s body was found. Eileen had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death.
A man named Franklin Smith was charged with her murder, but after his first trial resulted in a hung jury, a second jury found him not guilty.
Click on the link to read my write-up on the murder of Eileen Mangold.
Eileen Mangold
Beaten to Death
In 1996, seven years after the disappearance of Donna Callahan, convicted murderer Alex Wells led police to her remains buried on family property in DeFuniak Springs, eighty-five miles northeast of Gulf Breeze, where she was last seen. She had been strangled to death.
Wells also implicated his half-brother, Mark Riebe, in the murder.
Donna Callahan
Strangled to Death
Wells and Riebe are also suspects in the 1992 disappearance of Pamela Ray, whom I wrote about in the write-up linked below.
Authorities believe Riebe and Wells may be serial killers, but nothing I found has named them as suspects in the murders of Darlene Messer or Eileen Mangold.
Mark Riebe Alex Wells
Deborah Poe is also still missing. Police say they have a suspect in her disappearance, a man who lived across the street near a church where they searched for her remains in 2002.
Some reports have speculated the suspect is Scott Iaggi, Deborah’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. Police have not confirmed the claims, nor have they named their suspect in Deborah’s disappearance.
Here is the link to my write-up on Deborah’s case.
Darlene Messer is no longer believed to be the victim of a serial killer; she is instead thought to have been killed in an all-too-common random murder not connected to the murders of Donna Callahan and Eileen Mangold or to the disappearance and likely murders of Deborah Poe and Pamela Ray.
Investigators have several suspects.
Not Believed Connected
A thirty-one-year-old Gainesville, Florida, man arrested for two convenience store robberies only a few days after Darlene’s murder is a suspect. One of the robberies occurred in Gainesville, forty-five miles south of Lake City; the other occurred in Starke, thirty-five miles southeast of Lake City. A witness had seen a blue car with a woman screaming inside in the area; this man often drove a blue car, though it was registered to his wife. Following the suspect’s arrest, the car was impounded but nothing was found linking him to the murder of Darlene Messer. Some reports also state DNA taken from blood found on the bridge, as well as from the belt buckle left at the store, did not match his. I could not find any source identifying this man.
Other suspects include two men Darlene had reported to police on September 8, ten days before her murder. She had seen the men loitering in the Suwanee Swifty store parking lot. After finding weapons on them and believing they intended to rob the store, responding officers arrested the men.
One of men drove a rust-colored Pontiac Grand Prix, matching the description of the car seen by the Georgia couple entering the Suwanee Store parking lot shortly before the store’s silent alarm was sounded. When police questioned this man, he was under the vehicle fixing what appeared to be an oil leak. This caught the officers’ attention because a large amount of oil was found on the Swift Creek Bridge over the creek where Darlene’s body had been tossed. The man denied any involvement in Darlene’s murder.
Investigators also found that these two men, identified only as “Bob” and “Roger,” had both previously worked with Darlene at the Oyster Shack, a restaurant in Middleburg, fifty-five miles east of Lake City, where she had lived after moving to Florida. While employed there, Darlene had reported the men for stealing beer from the restaurant.
Neither man’s DNA matched that found on the blood on the bridge or on the belt buckle left at the store. The men, however, are still viewed as persons of interests, and investigators believe it possible a third person may have been with them.
Another person of interest is a man Darlene had reported for leering through her apartment window several months before her murder. I found no source identifying the Peeping Tom.
Multiple Suspects
Darlene Messer was murdered on September 18, 1989. No arrests have been made.
If you believe you have any information relating to her murder, please contact the Columbia County, Florida Sheriff’s Office detective division at 386-758-1095.
Darlene’s Murder Remains Unsolved
SOURCES:
- First Coast News
- Gainesville Sun
- Northwest Florida Daily News
- Orlando Sentinel
- Unsolved Mysteries
0 Comments