On the evening of January 5th, 2000, a woman was driving along State Road 19 in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida when she spotted a large fire in a ditch by the side of the road, just south of the Taylor Memorial Cemetery. She reported the blaze to the police.
When officers arrived at approximately nine p.m. and extinguished the fire, they discovered that the flames were consuming the body of a young man who had been shot three times: once in his left bicep, once in the back of his left shoulder, and once in the head. All his clothes had been burned off, though investigators were unable to determine the accelerant used.
At first, authorities didn’t know who the victim was, but after releasing the detail that the dead man had an artificial leg, a woman came forward and identified him as her boyfriend, twenty-three-year-old Marlon Ricardo Nelson, originally of Orlando. He and his girlfriend had a two-year-old daughter together.
Marlon had a long rap sheet that spanned the previous seven years and included arrests for selling cocaine, weapons violations, and battery on a law enforcement officer. Because of his checkered past, detectives had a great number of leads to follow up on, but none of them ever panned out. One witness claimed they had seen Marlon in Orlando earlier on the day of his murder, accompanied by two men driving a blue Lexus. These individuals were never identified.
In August of 2000, the victim’s family announced they were offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the conviction of Marlon Nelson’s killer, but so far, there have been no takers.
Crime Immemorial 