DIANE ELIZABETH MARKLAND - 17 yo - (1981) / Charged: Roy Clifton Swafford - Ormond Beach, FL

“The perseverance and determination of our investigators kept this case alive all of these years, and we’re extremely pleased that the advances in DNA technology have helped us bring this tragic death one step closer to resolution,” said Sheriff Ben Johnson. “Just because the defendant has already been condemned to death row doesn’t mean this case should be put on a shelf somewhere and forgotten. Dianne and her family deserve closure, and we’re going to give it to them."                                          


http://www.volusiasheriff.org//press/2003%20Press%20Releases/May/030059.htm

Dna Test Could Be Link To Teen's Killing In 1981



A Persistent Volusia Sheriff's Captain Had Promised The Girl's Mom He Would Solve The Crime.


April 5, 2003|By Alicia A. Caldwell, Sentinel Staff Writer

DELAND -- For 22 years Patty Markland waited for Dave Hudson to fulfill his promise to find her 17-year-old daughter's killer.

This week Hudson, now a Volusia sheriff's captain, called Markland at her Georgia home and told her that her wait was over.
Hudson announced Friday that DNA evidence recently tested links death-row inmate Roy Clifton Swafford to the kidnapping, rape and slaying of Diane Elizabeth Markland on Valentine's Day, 1981.


"It's an enormous comfort," PattyMarkland said in a phone interview Friday morning. "This brings an enormous comfort that my daughter is not just another statistic, is not forgotten."

Knowing the long-dreamed-of break in her daughter's case would be announced Friday, Markland prepared a statement to help her deal with reporters' questions. Her tears flowed nonetheless as she read it.

"We have worked together to date and all of these years to bring this senseless, brutal, violent atrocity . . . to a conclusion. . . . However, the painful void for all who knew my daughter will never my concluded."

Diane's suspected killer has been in prison since 1983, but for Markland that has been of little comfort.

"I hate the fact that he is living and my daughter is gone," she said.

Investigators said Swafford was in Volusia County for the Daytona 500 when he killed Diane in 1981. He returned the next year and killed another Volusia woman, they said. That second killing put him on death row, and he was within two hours of being executed in 1990 when a federal appeals court intervened.

Now investigators are trying to figure out if Swafford is responsible for other killings. They are speaking with police throughout the Southeast whose jurisdictions include a NASCAR track.

Hudson said Friday that he always knew Swafford, 55, killed Diane, a Spruce Creek High School senior.

"I told Patty a long time ago, `That's the guy that killed your daughter, and I'm going to do whatever I can to prove it,' " Hudson said.

But only recently did science give him the tools he needed when a state database of inmates' DNA samples was completed.

Investigator Steve Poncharik said Swafford has not been charged in this case because they are awaiting additional DNA tests to confirm the first findings.

Swafford became the prime suspect in Diane's death after he was connected to the killing exactly one year later of 27-year-old gas station clerk Brenda Rucker. She also had been abducted, assaulted and shot. Her body was discovered in a wooded area near the Old Sugar Mill ruins in Ormond Beach on Valentine's Day 1982, within a few miles of where Diane's body was found.

The similarities leaped out at Hudson. "He might as well have signed his name," he said.

Hudson said his work to solve the case, which Sheriff Ben Johnson said has "haunted" Hudson, would not have ended even if Swafford had been executed in 1990.


"It wouldn't have bothered me if he had been killed," Hudson said. "I would have run the DNA if he was dead."

Markland said she does not know if she or her son, Chris, now a police officer in South Florida, will attend Swafford's trial. But an arrest and conviction, she said, would help her finish the "final chapters" of a book she has written about her daughter's death and the search for Diane's killer.




http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2003-04-05/news/0304050403_1_hudson-swafford-dna

Former death-row inmate charged in second murder


Orlando Sentinel


11:56 p.m. EST, January 16, 2014

• 
  

A former death-row inmate who was granted a new trial two months ago was charged Thursday in a separate murder.

A grand jury indicted Roy Clifton Swafford, 66, in the 1981 killing of 17-year-old Spruce Creek High School senior Diane Markland. Swafford is charged with first-degree premeditated murder in the girl's death.

Nearly 11 years ago, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office announced that DNA had implicated Swafford in Diane's February 1981 rape and killing, but he was not charged then.

Swafford was awaiting execution for the February 1982 fatal shooting of Brenda Rucker, a gas-station clerk. He also was convicted of raping Rucker, whose body was found in woods in the Ormond Beach area, a few miles from where Diane's body had been found.

Both women were shot "multiple" times, including once in the head, with a .38-caliber handgun, the Sheriff's Office said.


In November, however, the Florida Supreme Court vacated the death sentence, 5-2 and ordered a new trial. Newly discovered evidence cast doubt on the rape conviction and therefore on the entire case, which relied on circumstantial evidence, they wrote.
A court hearing is scheduled for Friday in Daytona Beach.

Swafford was two hours from execution in 1990 when a federal appeals court spared his life.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-death-row-inmate-charged-murder-20140116,0,4040027.story?track=rss

Roy Clifton Swafford: Killer gets life terms for slayings on Valentine's Days

January 17, 2014|By Rene Stutzman, Orlando Sentinel
DAYTONA BEACH — Former death row inmate Roy Clifton Swafford, who two months ago won a legal victory that erased his murder conviction, nullified that Friday by pleading guilty to that murder as well as a second.

On two successive Valentine's Days in the early 1980s, Swafford abducted and killed an attractive young brown-haired woman whose body would be found several hours later in Tomoka State Park. Each was shot in the head.

Swafford, 66, said little during Friday's 40-minute hearing. He did not confess in court but through his attorney pleaded guilty to the murders.

As part of a plea deal, he was then sentenced to back-to-back life terms.

His first victim was Diane Markland, a 17-year-old Spruce Creek High School senior. According to prosecution paperwork, he raped and killed her Feb. 14, 1981. He shot her four times, including once in the head at close range.

At the hearing, Markland's brother, Robert Christopher Markland, called Swafford "an evil good-for-nothing punk" who went to clubs, abducted women, then raped and killed them.

"Does that make you feel like a real man?" he asked. "You clearly do not deserve to breathe the air that we breathe."

The other victim was Brenda Rucker, a 27-year-old gas-station clerk. She was killed Feb. 14, 1982. She had been shot nine times, according to prosecutors.

Swafford was sent to death row in the Rucker case and had spent more than 30 years in prison when in November the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new trial. Newly discovered evidence cast doubt on whether Rucker had been raped and therefore on the entire case, which relied on circumstantial evidence, they wrote.

That new evidence was the absence of seminal fluid in Rucker's body, but there was evidence of a sexual assault, according to prosecution paperwork, including lacerations and blood.

With the appeals court reversal, Volusia County prosecutors were faced with having to decide whether to retry Swafford.

In the meantime, they had compelling evidence against Swafford in the Markland case. His DNA was found on her clothing in 2003, but prosecutors had elected not to file charges.

The appeals court ruling in the Rucker homicide changed that. Prosecutors on Thursday presented evidence to a Volusia County grand jury, which indicted Swafford on a charge of first-degree murder in the Markland homicide.

That set the stage for Friday's two guilty pleas.

Prosecutors agreed to forgo the death penalty in exchange for the pleas.

read more:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-01-17/news/os-roy-swafford-murder-teen-girl-20140117_1_life-terms-roy-clifton-swafford-brenda-rucker

The most evil, the monsters who show no mercy for their victims, are the ones who whine and beg for mercy.  A bit disgusting.