Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of murder. Reader discretion is advised.
Convicted serial killer Billy Mansfield Jr. recently confessed to the murder of Carol Ann Barrett in Florida in 1980. According to People Magazine, Mansfield admitted to abducting and killing the 18-year-old from Zanesville, Ohio, more than four decades ago.
Carol Ann 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, reported Law & Crime. The following day, a passerby found the teen’s body in a ditch along I-95 near Pecan Park Road in Jacksonville.
The outlet reported that back then, authorities ruled Barrett’s death a homicide after an autopsy. However, 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, a convicted serial killer, as a suspect in Barrett’s murder in 2020. Mansfield, now 68, would have been 24 years old when he committed the crime. In 2022, he admitted to being the suspect in the police sketch before confessing to the crime.
What was Billy Mansfield Jr. convicted of & where is he now?
People Magazine reported that according to First Coast News, Billy Mansfield Jr. was convicted of murdering five women in California and Florida. During an investigation into Mansfield, 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. But, in 2022, authorities identified a third victim as Theresa Caroline Fillingim, who disappeared from Tampa in 1980.
Billy Mansfield Jr.’s conviction for the four murders came in 1982. He received four concurrent life sentences on each count of first-degree murder. He received an additional five-year sentence on one count of attempted battery of a 12-year-old or older. Elsewhere, Mansfield also pleaded guilty to 29-year-old Rene Sailing’s murder in California, per Law & Crime. The killer had strangled Sailing, a mother-of-three, and dumped her body in a drainage ditch.
Fox News reported that Mansfield has been in prison since 1982. According to the California Department of Corrections, he is now serving time in the California Health Care Facility.
Billy Mansfield Jr.’s latest confession about Carol Ann Barrett’s murder came after more than four decades. Per First Coast News, a man entered the motel room where Barrett and her friends were staying on March 23, 1980. The man then 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.
Decades later, Mansfield confessed to the 18-year-old’s murder. Law & Crime reported that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office confirmed the news in a press release. The release said, “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 release also stated that he admitted to Barrett’s murder.
The State Attorney’s Office is not seeking to prosecute Mansfield, who has already received multiple life sentences.
