Member-only story
30-year-old Cold Case Solved with Help of Suspect's Family
John Stagner was murdered in 1992 by a long-time family friend
It was around 5 AM on August 10, 1992, when Donna Stagner went to wake her husband, fifty-three-year-old John Stagner. The Stagner family lived in Orange County, Florida. John was a maintenance worker for the county, and the family lived in a home on the Orange County maintenance property and served as live-in caretakers for the equipment housed there.
John had been called out the previous evening to repair a powerline that had come down in a storm. When Donna had gone to bed, John had just come home and started watching TV in the living room. The couple slept in separate bedrooms in the summer because Donna preferred to sleep with the air conditioning, and John didn’t.
She entered the bedroom John slept in and tried to wake him. She hadn’t turned on the lights yet and touched his arm, only to notice he was cold to the touch. She turned on the lights and made the horrific discovery that her husband had been violently attacked. He had been severely beaten to death.
Donna called 911, and law enforcement came out to the property.
Detectives secured the scene. DNA evidence, while in its infancy in 1992, care was taken to find as much evidence as…
