BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – For weeks a slew of seemingly mysterious deaths - from a suspected suicide found on the banks of a scenic riverside neighborhood to a body found lying in the middle of a roadway in a residential area of Port St. John - have turned up across Brevard.
In the world of social media - and in the vacuum of information from some law enforcement agencies - wild, ghoulish speculation sprouted up that a serial killer may have been stalking residents across the Space Coast.
Recommended Videos
But Tuesday, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey took to Facebook to knock down various accounts about a prolific killer being on the loose or targeting random victims, News 6 partner Florida Today reported.
“These rumors began to circulate in various forms after several unrelated deaths occurred over a period of several days,” Ivey wrote in a social media post that appeared on Facebook late Monday.
“The various deaths were isolated incidents that were either by natural causes, drug overdose, or suicide, however, they had nothing to do with each other and were not deemed to be suspicious in nature,” he said.
Some of the unproven suspicions began picking up online after the body of a 21-year-old Matthew Robineau was discovered Feb. 12 in the Indian River Lagoon after a night out with friends in Downtown Melbourne. Before that other bodies turned up in the river with the last three months, including a West Melbourne man and another in Titusville.
In Palm Bay, police initially did not release information about the badly decomposed body of a man in his 50s found Jan. 15 in a wooded area off Biddle Street in the northeast section of the city. Detectives are working to determine if foul play was a factor. By the time the Melbourne case involving Robineau was reported by police, speculation began to run rampant that something odd was happening with the multiple deaths, authorities said.
“There was some scuttlebutt online about our case,” said Cmdr. Marc Claycomb of the Melbourne Police Department. “Let’s just say, all of the talk came on our radar,” said Claycomb, who also said there was no evidence of a serial killer being at work in the area.
At the same time, Cocoa Police were also working a missing person case involving a 31-year-old mother of four whose body was discovered in a remote wooded area in Osceola County. The case is a homicide, however, Cocoa police were focusing on it being an isolated incident.
Then last week, investigators across the county found themselves dealing with three unrelated deaths in public spaces within a six-hour time frame. Another body, this one badly decomposed, was found not far from the Brevard County Jail but believed to be a suicide, Tod Goodyear, spokesman for the sheriff's agency reported Tuesday.
There were no initial reports or communications from the agency about the death, however, even as photos from the scene turned up on Facebook.
Much of the internet speculation was bandied about on a number of Facebook-connected crime watch pages. Details of the deaths, locations, were shared repeatedly. Tuesday, Ivey responded.
“Again, please know that there is absolutely no truth to these rumors and if there were to ever be a critical incident of this type or need for concern, our agency would immediately share the information with our community so we could do everything possible to keep our citizens safe,” Ivey said.