ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The Orange County Sheriff’s Office has discovered how a 41-year-old woman was killed in her Pine Hills home, four years later.
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Deputies had been called back in August 2018 after a passerby spotted a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old wandering alone on Pipes O the Glen Way near Indian Hill and North Pine Hills roads, OCSO spokesman Jeff Williamson said.
The children led the woman to the home, where she discovered the body of Denise Hayes near the front door, Williamson said.
The crime scene showed that Hayes was shot once in the head with a 9 mm handgun that was found in another room in the home, according to investigators.
Read: Man sought in slaying of woman in Pine Hills arrested in Tampa, deputies say
An autopsy of Hayes ruled that her cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, and the manner of her death was a homicide, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Joshua Stephany said.
Investigators said that Hayes’ ex-boyfriend, Bobby Lee Story, 56, was identified as the suspect after his fingerprints were found at the scene.
Story was involved in a romantic and domestic relationship with Hayes for a year before her death.
Read: Woman’s body discovered at Orange County home after toddlers seen wandering alone
Deputies said that he had been incarcerated in state and federal prison for about 28 years at that time.
He was arrested a month later in September 2018, by Tampa police on charges of attempted murder, burglary and resisting arrest.
Investigators said Story stabbed a man in the face a month before Hayes’ murder.
Read: Police investigate homicide inside Conway-area home in Orlando
He has now been charged in Orange County for second-degree murder with a firearm.
Story is currently serving a five-year sentence in the Florida Department of Corrections for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
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