Serial killer confesses to 1980 murder of woman abducted from Daytona Beach Shores

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – More than 40 years after a woman visiting Florida on spring break was abducted from Daytona Beach Shores and found dead in Jacksonville, a serial killer incarcerated in California has confessed to her murder, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

Billy Mansfield Jr., 68, has told investigators that he kidnapped and killed Carol Ann Barrett, who was visiting Daytona Beach Shores from Zanesville, Ohio, with a group of high school friends.

Barrett, 18, was taken from the Treasure Island Motel by what was then an unknown assailant around 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 23, 1980, the sheriff’s office said Thursday on social media. A police sketch was soon completed following interviews with Barrett’s friends who had been in the room at the time of her kidnapping, yet a passerby found the teen’s body the next day in a ditch line along Interstate 95 near Pecan Park Road in Jacksonville, the post states.

An autopsy led to Barrett’s death being ruled a homicide, but the case went cold even after Jacksonville detectives had worked for years at solving it. Come August 2017, the case of Barrett’s killing was revisited and re-opened by the sheriff’s office’s Cold Case Unit, reviewing all evidence available.

[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]

Mansfield in 2020 was identified as a suspect in Barrett’s death, the sheriff’s office said, noting he would have been 24 years old at the time. After two years of interviews, Mansfield in September 2022 said that he was the suspect in the police sketch and eventually confessed to Barrett’s abduction and murder, the post states.

The State Attorney’s Office of the 4th Judicial Circuit will not seek prosecution in the matter, however. After being consulted by the sheriff’s office, the SAO determined it would not file charges in the more-than quarter-century investigation as Mansfield is to remain behind bars in California, serving a life sentence for murder and four concurrent life sentences in Florida for murder in separate cases. The post also notes Mansfield’s alleged cooperation with detectives in other jurisdictions regarding even more cold cases.

Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: