FLORIDA
News4Jax
By Lynnsey Gardner – Investigative reporter , Jim Piggott – Reporter , Vic Micolucci – Reporter, anchor , Elizabeth Campbell – Reporter , Heather Leigh – Reporter , Francesca Amiker – Reporter , Erik Avanier – Reporter
JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. – Investigators announced Tuesday that a dismembered body found at a Lake City gas station 23 years ago was identified last year as a 16-year-old Nassau County boy who had been reported missing from Jacksonville and that they had arrested a Jacksonville Beach man in connection with his death.
Ronnie Leon Hyde, 60, is charged with the 1994 murder of Fred Laster, and the FBI and Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office began exhaustive searches Tuesday of Hyde’s homes on Fourth Street in Jacksonville Beach and Thelma Street in Jacksonville’s Talleyrand neighborhood.
Columbia County investigators have worked the case since the body of a young man was found outside a dumpster at a BP gas station at the U.S. 441 exit of Interstate 10. Using DNA technology, the remains were identified last February as those of the teenager.
Fred Laster’s family may have jump-started the investigation. Years after the teen disappeared, one of his cousins said she started searching cold cases online and, in 2015, she spotted the cold case poster and showed it to his siblings, who recognized the photos on the flier.
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