Still A Mystery - Fifth Season

Door open, lights on, engine running,

she's nowhere.

They searched this county from one end to the other.

But there was no Rhonda.

This is the most infamous murder in Jeff Davis County history.

I'd never in my life, in 40 years of law enforcement,

heard of anything as crazy as that.

There's a mystery in South Carolina

that we can't seem to get to the bottom of.

Our phone lines would ring off the hook

with theories about Shelton's whereabouts.

The story really made no sense.

What possibly could've happened?

And, then, all of a sudden...

And he was like, "How do I explain getting rid of a body?"

In Jeff Davis County, Georgia,

a high school senior,

a couple of weeks before her graduation,

disappears from her car on her way home from a party.

Her car had been found,

the car was running, the door was open

but there was no Rhonda.

She would not have ever pulled over

if she didn't know who that was behind her.

I started looking for emails, anything like that

that mentioned Rhonda's name or Rhonda's case

and what I got back completely blew my mind.

Born in 1972, in Hazlehurst, Georgia,

Rhonda Sue Coleman is the only child of Gayle and Milton.

Loved by friends and family,

Rhonda is known for her bubbly personality.

She loved to meet people, talk to people.

If you came by and said, "Hi, Rhonda, how are you?"

You better be ready for a conversation.

And growing up in Hazlehurst,

I think she had a wonderful childhood.

She loved the outdoors.

She loved horseback riding, she rode motorcycles.

She was just outgoing, outspoken.

Just a loving person.

She infected people with her happiness

and with her love that she had for life.

In May, 1990, Rhonda is eager to graduate high school

while getting ready to start at Georgia Southern University in the fall.

She was very excited, and she wanted to be a nurse,

to work in the nursery with the babies.

Rhonda would have made a perfect nurse.

She was compassionate.

Thursday, May 17th,

Rhonda gets ready for a night out

with her senior classmates.

We didn't approve of her going out on school nights

but that night was going to be special.

She went to a flag painting party

which was something that the outgoing senior class

did every year.

It was a rite of passage.

We told her what time to be home

and we knew she would be home.

She was supposed to be home at 10:30.

We had a curfew.

"Something happen, you can't be home by that time,

pick up a phone and call me."

She always did it.

We hugged and kissed,

she said, "I love you."

And I watched her as she walked to the back door,

and I was looking at that blonde hair and how she had it fixed.

Said, "Daddy, I love you," I said, "I love you, baby."

She left, and that was the last time we saw her.

Rhonda leaves the party at 10:00 p.m.

Friends drop her off at the Suwanee Swifty convenience store

where she'd left her car.

Well, I woke up at 11:20 or 11:25, and she wasn't home,

when I said, "This ain't like her."

If there was something that came up,

or she was going to be 5-10 minutes late,

she would call.

Her dad got up, and said, "I'm going to go look for her."

I knew something was wrong.

I knew in my heart something was wrong.

A friend of Rhonda's

driving along Bell Telephone Road

sees Rhonda's car pulled over.

Lights on, engine running, door open.

And as she passes, she gets a closer look

and realizes that that's Rhonda's car.

So she pulls over, and she searches around the area of Rhonda's car

and she's nowhere.

Rhonda's friend calls the police,

and 30 minutes later, the sheriff and a deputy arrive at the scene.

And I pulled up right behind them

'cause I seen the blue lights and I seen her car.

The deputy was walking up to the car

and there were three sets of footprints,

the deputy's footprints, Layla's footprints and Rhonda's footprints

where she walked away from the vehicle.

Rhonda's footprints stopped beside another set of tire tracks

and then disappear.

But this vital evidence is jeopardized by the crush of responders.

When I arrived, there were probably 15 or 20 people

walking on the dirt road near where Rhonda's car was.

So, they were right by where footprints would have been.

And I thought that was kind of bad

to have compromised the crime scene at that point from a missing person.

Sheriff Mark Hall came to me and told me to get out of his crime scene.

Despite the chaos, the clues raised some clear questions:

Why did Rhonda stop her car?

Did someone pull her over?

And did she drive off with that person?

There was no sign of a struggle.

She would not have ever pulled over like that and stopped

if she didn't know who that was behind her or it had a blue light on it.

Immediately, Rhonda's family and investigators

turn their attention to Rhonda's ex-boyfriend, Greg.

He and Rhonda had been broke up for a while.

He had just got so possessive of her.

He didn't want her hanging out with her friends.

One time he had told her not to wear her bikini

out there in the pool at our home around her daddy.

It got to the point where Milton had to tell him,

"Stop harassing her, quit calling her."

At about 1:00 in the morning, the night of her disappearance,

Rhonda's father, Milton, and one of the deputies

went to that ex-boyfriend's house.

Rhonda's ex-boyfriend, Greg, he didn't come to the door.

His mother answered and said he had to get up for work in the morning

and she wasn't going to wake him.

First thing the next morning,

Greg goes to Rhonda's parents' house.

He's quiet and says he has no idea where Rhonda is.

Friends and family are now engaged in a desperate hunt.

They searched this county from one end to the other,

every little dirt road, up in the woods, everywhere.

That was a great response from the community.

There were volunteers that rode everywhere looking for Rhonda.

There was aerial search.

There were canines.

As hours turn into days,

the hope of finding Rhonda alive begins to dim.

The statistics show if they're not found within 48 hours,

usually, they're not found alive.

On day three of the hunt for Rhonda Sue Coleman,

there's news no parent ever wants to hear.

The sheriff come up and told me she had been found and she was gone.

And I just about passed out, lost it.

Your life goes away.

Rhonda's body is found 50 miles away

in neighboring Montgomery County in a wooded area,

some of which has recently been clear cut.

She was wearing the same clothes

as she had been when she disappeared,

and had been there, apparently, for three days.

From what investigators can piece together,

she was strangled.

And then she was set on fire.

The fire was concentrated around her head and her hands.

I think that somebody was trying to destroy any kind of evidence.

I thought it very strange

that Rhonda's remains were located

where they were actually located.

And it's not a place that a person

that doesn't know the area would go.

If she had lost her life in a vehicle accident

or she got something wrong with her,

we could have understood it.

It is very painful to have to bury your own daughter.

Especially, under these circumstances.

We thought, two or three days,

they would have arrested somebody.

It was like, "Okay, well, it won't be long,

we'll get answers,

we'll find out who did this to Rhonda."

A tangled mix of law enforcement agencies,

police from Rhonda's hometown of Hazlehurst,

deputies from Montgomery County where her body was found,

and the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation

are all looking for answers.

But it's Mark Hall, the sheriff of Jeff Davis County

where Rhonda's car was found

who insists on controlling the investigation.

Normally, a homicide case

is worked from the location where you discover the body.

So, very strange that the criminal investigation

was brought back to Jeff Davis County.

Tire tracks found near Rhonda's abandoned car

and at the location her body was found

provide a promising lead.

Police took a mold of one of the tire tracks.

The unique thing about that tire tread is it came off a truck.

But in 1990, in rural Georgia,

in a farming community, everyone had a truck.

Another important clue:

the mixture of oil and gasoline found on Rhonda's body,

the kind used in lawn mowers and chainsaws.

Rhonda's ex-boyfriend, Greg, carried a gas can in the back of his truck.

Maybe he did follow her.

And I can see Rhonda getting out of her car to go tell him,

"Leave me alone."

Rhonda was hot-headed.