CHATTAHOOCHEE COUNTY, Ga. — A man, formerly of Richland, Ga., has been indicted in the 1982 murder of a U.S. Army private stationed out of Fort Benning, cracking open a decades-long cold case. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, it all started with a team of retired GBI investigators.
A Chattahoochee County Grand Jury indicted a man on March 28 for the murder of René Dawn Blackmore. Blackmore was 20 years old at the time of her death.
She was stationed at Fort Benning when she disappeared after leaving her barracks on the way to Columbus on April 29, 1982, according to the GBI. A month later, her wallet and sweater were found on a roadside near Cusseta.
In June of the same year, Blackmore's remains were discovered off a logging road just a few miles south in Chattahoochee County. Investigators determined that she was killed by a shotgun blast.
A suspect was identified within a year, but the investigation stalled – leading to a decades-long cold case. Flash-forward to 2020 and a group of former investigators were ready to pick up the pieces.
"There is no statute of limitations for murder, and that's because – of all the crimes on all the books – this is the one crime that takes from the victim that most fundamental right that we all have, which is the right to live out the rest of our lives that we have been given," Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Schwartz said in a press conference on Thursday. "We don't know what René Blackmore's life would have looked like. We know that she didn't get to celebrate her 21st birthday."
GBI Director Vic Reynolds established a cold case unit comprised of retired GBI investigators, tasking them with focusing on the Fort Benning soldier's murder. In tandem with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, the Chattahoochee County Sheriff’s Office and the Office of District Attorney for the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit, the investigators secured an indictment for their now 64-year-old murder suspect.
"There is no expiration date on that kind of evil. And there is no point and time when that crime is too stale to bring the perpetrator to justice, assuming the evidence is there," Schwartz said.
The suspect, who is serving a life sentence for an unrelated 1983 murder out of Stewart County, is now facing one count of malice murder and four counts of felony murder.