DAYTONA BEACH, Florida – Convicted serial killer Billy Mansfield Jr. recently confessed to the murder of Carol Ann Barrett in Florida in 1980. Mansfield, now 68, admitted to abducting and killing the 18-year-old from Zanesville, Ohio, more than four decades ago.
Barrett was visiting Daytona Beach while on Spring Break when an unknown assailant kidnapped her from the Treasure Island Motel around 2 a.m. on March 23, 1980. Her friends were in the room at the time of the abduction and helped police develop a sketch of the suspect. The following day, a passerby found the teen’s body in a ditch along I-95 near Pecan Park Road in Jacksonville.
Authorities ruled Barrett’s death a homicide after an autopsy, but the case went cold after a few years until 2017 when the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s Cold Case Unit reopened it. Investigators only identified Mansfield as a suspect in Barrett’s murder in 2020. In 2022, he admitted to being the suspect in the police sketch before confessing to the crime.
According to reports, Billy Mansfield Jr. was convicted of murdering five women in California and Florida. Florida investigators found four sets of human remains in his Hernando County home in March and April of 1981. They were able to identify two of four victims.
Mansfield received four concurrent life sentences on each count of first-degree murder and an additional five-year sentence on one count of attempted battery of a 12-year-old or older. He also pleaded guilty to 29-year-old Rene Sailing’s murder in California. Mansfield has been in prison since 1982 and is now serving time in the California Health Care Facility.
Mansfield’s confession about Carol Ann Barrett’s murder came after more than four decades. According to First Coast News, a man entered the motel room where Barrett and her friends were staying on March 23, 1980, and said he would take one of them so they wouldn’t call the police. Barrett reportedly volunteered to go, and the next day, a passerby found her dead body along Jacksonville’s Interstate-95.
In September of 2022, after multiple interviews spanning two years, Billy Mansfield advised that he was in fact the suspect in the police sketch completed following the abduction. He went on to confess to the abduction from the Daytona Beach Shores hotel. The State Attorney’s Office is not seeking to prosecute Mansfield, who has already received multiple life sentences.