The tragic case of Carol Ann Barrett, an 18-year-old who was murdered while on spring break in Florida in 1980, has finally reached a resolution after more than four decades. Billy Mansfield Jr., a convicted serial killer, has confessed to her killing.
This confession provides a somber closure to a case that remained unsolved for many years, leaving unanswered questions and untold grief in its wake.
Carol Ann Barrett’s spring break trip turned into a nightmare when she was abducted from the Treasure Island Motel in Daytona Beach Shores on March 23, 1980. Her body was discovered the next day in a ditch along Interstate 95 near Pecan Park Road in Jacksonville.
The cause of death was determined to be a gunshot wound to the back of the head, and the case was ruled a homicide.
For years, the case went cold, with no significant leads or suspects. However, in 2017, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit reopened the investigation, reviewing all available evidence. This led them to Billy Mansfield Jr., who was already serving a life sentence for one murder and four concurrent life sentences in Florida for separate murder cases.
In 2020, Mansfield became a person of interest in Barrett’s murder. After extensive interviews, Mansfield confessed in September 2022 to kidnapping and killing Barrett. He admitted that he was the individual in the police sketch related to the abduction.
Despite this confession, the State Attorney’s Office in the 4th Judicial Circuit decided not to prosecute Mansfield for Barrett’s murder, as he is already serving multiple life sentences.
This confession sheds light on a decades-old mystery and brings a measure of closure to a case that has haunted the Daytona Beach community and Barrett’s family for over 40 years. The resolution of this case underscores the persistence of law enforcement in solving cold cases and the importance of revisiting unsolved crimes with new perspectives and technologies.