VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — A plaque now stands in a wooded area off I-95 in Port Orange. It reads, “She had a voice of an angel.” It displays a photo of a young woman who was missing until this year.
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Investigators have now identified homicide victim “Jane Doe 1980″ as Pamela Kay Wittman.
She was just 25 years old when investigators say serial killer Gerald Stano murdered her.
A work crew found skeletal remains on the side of I-95 on Nov. 5, 1980.
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Up until recently, investigators didn’t know whose remains those belonged to, but they had an idea of who her killer may have been.
“I have not done anything to harm your daughters. I am not the one,” Gerald Stano said in one of his last interviews before execution.
The Ormond Beach man originally confessed to 41 murders in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida. He claimed several of those murders happened in the Daytona Beach area, according to Sheriff Mike Chitwood.
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Victims’ families spoke to Eyewitness News after they watched his execution in Florida State Prison in 1998.
“I was looking to see if there was any bit of remorse or guilt for his crime. I made eye contact with him. He was a coward until the end,” one man said.
“He didn’t have the guts to look at us. And when the switch was pulled, my comment was ‘die you monster.’ And then he died,” another victim’s family member said.
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Even after his execution, investigators continued to identify possible victims they suspected Stano was connected to. It included a woman Stano confessed to murdering in Volusia County. He claimed he met the unknown woman at a Main Street bar, murdered her, and left her in a wooded area off I-95 in Port Orange.
“Until we could find her identity, the path of solving the case was cold,” said Investigator Bill Weaver.
Volusia County Sheriff’s Office worked with FHD Forensics to help positively identify the woman as Pamela Wittman. The testing was funded by nonprofit Genealogy for Justice.
Weaver says she had moved from Indiana to start a new life in Daytona Beach.
Weaver was able to connect with Wittman’s half-sister to break the news.
“Her half-sister had been looking for decades for answers to nagging questions that kept her literally awake and sleepless nights,” Weaver said. “She told me she said that she felt that a weight had been lifted off her. She’s lived her whole life with. That’s pretty deep.”
Investigators were able to determine Wittman was murdered around February 1980, about nine months before her remains were discovered. Stano was arrested in April 1980 after he was caught attacking a woman.
Weaver and Sheriff Mike Chitwood said Stano would prey on women walking because he felt they were “most vulnerable.” He would frequent bars, strip joints, and areas where bikers hung out. Chitwood says despite the case remaining unsolved for 43 years, detectives always looked for new technology to help bring closure to victims’ families.
“You actually get to really touch people’s lives,” Weaver said.
Wittman’s half-sister traveled to Florida for an emotional reunion where the Volusia Sheriff’s Office gave her her sister’s remains. Wittman will now be laid to rest in her final resting place in Indiana.
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