Susan Nowell knew something was not right at the Kangaroo Fuel Stop on U.S. Route 301 in Riverview, Florida, fifteen miles southeast of Tampa. As the eighteen-year-old pulled in for gas at 9:15 p.m. on the evening of September 19, 1989, she saw Eileen Mangold, the night shift manager, and a long-haired man exiting the building. They entered Eileen’s car; Eileen on the driver’ side, the man on the passenger’s side. The lights at the gas station were still on and the doors were open. Eileen then circled the gas station, pulled beside Susan’s car, stopped, looked at Susan, and yelled, “Help me! I’m being robbed.” The man then ordered Eileen to drive away.

Realizing Eileen was in trouble, Susan drove to a nearby pizza parlor and called 911. Afterwards, she pulled onto Highway 301 to look for Eileen’s car. She saw it briefly stopped on the shoulder of the road before it pulled away. Not wanting to put herself in danger, Susan did not follow the car.

Eileen Mangold, a divorced mother of three who was one week shy of her fifty-first birthday, was found raped and beaten to death the following day. Her murder remained cold for a decade until DNA led to a suspect.

Investigators and prosecutors thought their case was airtight, but they were in for an unpleasant surprise.

 

Eileen Mangold

When police arrived at the Kangaroo Fuel Stop, they found the store abandoned and the cash register empty. The total take was determined to be less than $100.

Eileen’s car, a 1984 Ford LTD Station Wagon, was found abandoned in a residential neighborhood, two miles away, shortly after 1:30 a.m. on the morning of September 20. The engine was cold, suggesting the vehicle had been there for a while. Her torn, blood-stained blouse lay on the ground and a blouse button was found on the driver’s seat, indicating the struggle began inside the vehicle. Blood and fingerprints on the hood suggested the attack continued there.

At 11:15 a.m., ten hours later, Eileen’s body, clothed only in underpants, socks, and tennis shoes, was found in a patch of woods near Interstate 75, five miles from where her car was abandoned. An autopsy determined she was killed by blunt force trauma to her head, neck, and torso.

Map of Eileen’s Trauma

From the Tampa Tribune

On September 18, the day before Eileen Mangold’s murder, another convenience store clerk, thirty-six-year-old Darlene Messer, disappeared while working the graveyard shift at a Lake City convenience store, one-hundred-eighty miles northwest of Riverview in the Florida panhandle. Darlene’s badly beaten body was found two days later, the same day Eileen’s body was found.

For a time, investigators believed the murders of the two female convenience store workers were related, but they now feel the killings were only of a similar nature.

Click on th link to read my write-up on the murder of Darlene Messer, which is also unsolved.

Link

 

Darlene Messer

Investigators also for a time believed Eileen’s murder was related to the disappearances of two other Florida convenience store clerks who also vanished while working the graveyard shift.

On August 6, 1989, six weeks before Eileen 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, four-hundred-eighty miles northwest of Riverview. Donna was three months pregnant with her second child at the time.

Six months later, twenty-six-year-old Deborah Poe vanished in the early morning hours of February 4, 1990, while working at the Circle K convenience store in Orlando, eighty-five miles northeast of Riverview, and four-hundred-fifty miles southeast of Gulf Breeze.

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. They are not believed to be involved in the murder of Eileen Mangold.

Deborah Poe is still missing. Her disappearance is also no longer believed to be connected to the murder of Eileen Mangold.

No Poe

 

                        Donna Callahan                                 Deborah Poe

Police believe Eileen Mangold’s killer was from the Riverview area and that she may have known him.

Based on the description provided by Susan Nowell, police created a composite sketch of the man. He was approximately thirty-years-old, six feet tall with a husky build, and weighed between one-hundred-ninety and two-hundred pounds. He had curly shoulder-length blonde hair, a scruffy beard and green or blue eyes. He was wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt.

Composite Sketch Of Eileen’s Killer

Over a decade later, in December 1999, Franklin Smith was charged with Eileen Mangold’s murder after a partial fingerprint found on the hood of her car was matched to him. His blood sample was also matched to semen found on Eileen’s blouse. In addition, Eileen had told friends and co-workers that a man named Frank had previously made unwanted sexual advances toward her while she waited on him at the store.

At the time of Eileen’s murder, Smith, a truck driver, lived less than two miles from the Kangaroo Convenience Store. He had a nefarious past, having first served a one-year stint in prison at age seventeen for auto theft. In 1975, he was convicted on three counts of aggravated assault and two counts of rape occurring in Tampa, fifteen miles northwest of Riverview. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but he was released in 1988, the year before Eileen’s murder.

Smith continued his unlawful activities. In 1990, the year after Eileen’s murder, he was charged with aggravated assault after punching his wife in the mouth, pulling her hair, and attempting to run over her, but the case was dismissed because she declined to press charges. Later that year, however, Smith was found guilty of making harassing phone calls and battery in an unrelated incident.  The following year, he was charged with aggravated assault and battery, followed by a charge of shoplifting in 1992. I could not find if he was convicted on any of those counts.

Franklin Smith

Smith, however, did not resemble the composite sketch or Susan Nowell’s physical description of the man she saw with Eileen. Susan described the assailant as having bushy hair. Franklin Smith had little hair and had been balding for over a decade. She did not believe he was the man who had kidnapped Eileen.

Nevertheless, police and prosecutors were certain they had their man because of the physical evidence. Smith’s lawyers, however, were able cast doubt on the validity of the DNA findings. They contended the samples from Eileen’s blouse were labeled and handled inappropriately, insinuating the investigators or the lab may have mixed up or contaminated the results.

The clouding of the DNA evidence, along with Susan’s eyewitness doubts, produced enough reasonable doubt to result in a hung jury. At Smith’s retrial, the DNA evidence was again disputed and this time, the jury returned a not guilty verdict.

Not Convicted

I found an obituary for a Franklin Alfred Smith of Brandon, Florida, who died at age seventy-three on February 29, 2020. The obituary does not elaborate on his background, but his age matches that of the accused killer Franklin Smith and Brandon is only ten miles from where Eileen was kidnapped in Riverview.

I believe this is the Franklin Smith charged with and acquitted of killing Eileen Mangold, but because of the common name, I cannot be certain.

A Franklin Alfred Smith From Florida Dies 

A man named Dale Carpenter has also been mentioned as a suspect in the murder of Eileen Mangold. He frequented the Kangaroo Convenience Store and lived in the neighborhood where her car was found. Carpenter also bore a resemblance to the composite sketch based on Susan Nowell’s description. No DNA or any physical evidence, however, links Carpenter to the crime. I could not find a picture of him.

Eileen had a good relationship with her former husband, Henry Neuburger II. Nothing I found suggested he is a suspect in her murder.

 

A Second Suspect

Eileen Mangold was murdered on September 19, 1989. No arrests have been made.

Following Eileen’s murder, local ordinances were passed requiring two clerks to be in convenience stores during the graveyard shift. The two-clerk law was dropped in 1993 when state laws were passed mandating video cameras in all-night stores in Florida.

If you have any information on her murder of Eileen Mangold please contact the Hillsborough, Florida Sheriff’s Department at (813) 247-8200.

 

Eileen’s Murder Spurs State Law Changes

Six days before Eileen Mangold’s murder, her daughter, Cheryl, gave birth to a son. He was Eileen’s first grandchild.

These are pictures of Eileen when she was younger. When her case was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries, these were the only photographs of her that were shown.

I found it odd that UM did not show any more recent photos of Eileen and that these younger photos were the only ones I could find in a regular Google search.

Younger Eileen

The Kangaroo Convenience Store from which Eileen was kidnapped is no longer in business.

 Where Eileen Was Last Seen

SOURCES:

• Orlando Sentinel
• Palm Beach Post
• Tampa Tribune
• Unsolved Mysteries