On July 9th, 2001, the decomposed body of twenty-seven-year-old mother of three Frances Lunsford was discovered behind an abandoned mobile home in Tifton, Georgia. The victim had been strangled to death.
According to Frances’s mother, Sandra Purvis, she had last spoken to her daughter two days before the remains were found. Family members told the media that Frances had been involved with drugs and had voluntarily given up her children to social services while she attempted to get her life back together, but they had no idea who would want to kill her.
In an eerie and lingering coda to the unsolved case, relatives reported that an unidentified person was periodically leaving red, pink, and yellow long-stemmed roses, and sometimes stuffed animals, on Frances Lunsford’s grave. The “gifts” started appearing about a month after the victim’s death, and continued until at least 2006, and possibly later.
Frances’s sister Rhonda Shaw told The Tifton Gazette that at first she thought the roses were left by someone who had loved Frances, but as time went on, began to speculate that perhaps a killer with a guilty conscience was responsible. She reportedly did some sleuthing on her own, locating a nearby convenience store where the roses were purchased. The clerk at the convenience store said that there was an older man who sometimes came in and bought roses, and though Rhonda left her contact information with the clerk, the man—whoever he is—has failed to respond to Rhonda’s multiple messages.
Family members have urged local police to stake out Frances Lunsford’s grave to see who might be leaving the flowers there, but at this writing, it does not appear that this has yielded any progress toward solving the case.
Crime Immemorial 