GA GA - Nancy Hopson, 35, Augusta, 9 Aug 1976

On Aug. 9, 1976, the Beech Island woman’s beaten and badly decomposed body was discovered by Augusta police in the trunk of her car at Daniel Village Shopping Center...

Three days after Hopson’s body was found, her purse turned up in a mailbox off Walton Way – one of the few clues from a case that never resulted in charges... Polygraph tests had been administered to five or six people, he said. All came back negative, and no motive was established.

Raymond Hopson had reported his wife missing to the South Carolina State Patrol before finding out she was last seen at Daniel Village, according to police. He later found her car there with the keys locked inside.

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“This was an old city of Augusta case and we currently don’t even have the file on it,” said Sgt. Paul Godden, of the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office. The Augusta Police Department merged with the sheriff’s office during consolidation in the mid-1990s.

“A lot of unsolved homicide files were stored in the (sheriff’s office) basement of 401 Walton Way and were severely damaged by floods many years ago,” Godden said. “Also, both of the lead investigators on this case have since passed away”...

“The case is in limbo at the present time,” Capt. Williams said in a December 1976 interview. “The investigation more or less is at a standstill.”

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