DAYTONA BEACH -- It's a scary story first reported by the Daytona Beach News-Journal last year and picked up by national media. Could there be a serial killer lurking about?
Stacey Charlene Gage, a 30-year-old Holly Hill mother of two went out for a bag of ice the night of Dec. 11, 2007, and never returned home.
Her decomposed body was found Jan. 2, 2008, in the 1600 block of Hancock Blvd., Daytona Beach.
Here is Newsweek magazine's chilling report on the discovery of her corpse: "Police Officer Chris Reeder parked on a secluded dead-end road near an abandoned church to do some paperwork. He rolled down his window and 'smelled something bad.' About 15 yards in from the road, Reeder's flashlight fell on the nude, decomposed body of a young woman who was later identified by her fingerprints as Gage. Police say she was apparently killed within a day after her disappearance. And that's all the world at large would have heard about Stacey Charlene Gage, a former drum majorette who dropped out of high school in her senior year and had two children by the age of 21, except that her murder followed by almost exactly two years the unsolved killings of three other young women in Daytona Beach."
"It's eerily similar and has all the earmarks of the other cases," Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood told Newsweek. "I hope to God he's not back," he added, referring to the unknown killer, believed responsible for the deaths of at least four women in the Daytona Beach area. "But I'm afraid that's what we're looking at."
Courtesy photo. Cutline: Stacey Gage, 30, of Holly Hill, whose decomposed body was found Jan. 2, 2008, is believed to be the fourth victim of the so-called Daytona Beach serial killer.