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in: Florida, 1990, Disappearances,
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Deborah Poe

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Real Name: Deborah Deann Poe
Nicknames: Debbie
Location: Orlando, Florida
Date: February 4, 1990

Bio[]

Occupation: Clerk (Orlando Sentinel and Circle K)
Date of Birth: August 3, 1963
Height: 5'2"-5'3"
Weight: 100-105 lbs.
Marital Status: Single
Characteristics: White female with curly, dark blonde hair and blue eyes. Deborah’s hair was streaked at the time of her disappearance. She wore minimal makeup, and her ears are triple-pierced. She has a burn scar on her left shoulder. She may have been wearing a half carat round diamond ring with diamond chips in the shape of a leaf, and a sapphire-colored ring. Shortly before her disappearance, she underwent experimental eye surgery to help improve her vision.

Case[]

Details: Twenty-six-year-old Deborah Poe grew up in northern Virginia and had dreams of becoming a professional dancer. In October 1989, she moved to Orlando, Florida, with her friend and roommate, Lori Tillman. Deborah worked during the day as a clerk in the retail sales department at the Orlando Sentinel. At night, she worked at the Circle K convenience store at the intersection of Hall Road and Aloma Avenue in Orlando.
At 4:30am on February 4, 1990, sheriff's deputies responded to a call at the store. Two customers had found the all-night market open, but curiously unattended. No one was minding the store. One of the customers was a friend of Deborah's. Deputies immediately searched for any sign of her. Behind the counter, they found her work smock neatly folded. A cup of coffee and a carton of chocolate milk were on top of a stack of house plans on the floor behind the counter. The cash register was locked, and there was no evidence of a robbery.
According to Detective Riggs Gay of the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the store appeared to be abandoned. There were absolutely no signs of any struggle. With the exception of Deborah herself, nothing appeared to be missing from the store. Her vehicle, a red Toyota Celica, was parked in its usual spot. It was locked, and her purse was sitting on the back seat. Her paycheck and car keys were still inside the purse. There was no evidence to suggest that someone had tried to open the vehicle.
Lori says that she and Deborah were very close, like sisters. She says they had a very unusual friendship. They could fight and ignore each other like sisters do. But they were there for each other. If they ever needed anything, they could count on one another.
The most dangerous time for convenience store employees is the graveyard shift. This was Deborah's shift. Five nights a week, from 11pm to 7am, she was behind the counter alone. Some of her loved ones had begged her to quit, but she thought nothing bad would happen to her. Her boyfriend, Scott Iaggi, was so concerned that he began staying with her during the night shifts to help keep her safe.
Lori says that, despite the risks, Deborah needed to work because she had a brand new car to pay for. Deborah also wanted to save enough money to buy a house and start a catering business. Lori says if that meant that Deborah had to work two full-time jobs that she really did not like, then that was what she did.
Just after 11pm on the night Deborah disappeared, a friend of hers dropped by to discuss some house plans with her. Scott also visited her and left around 1am. Police verified that she waited on customers from the time Scott and her friend left until 3:05am. Another friend drove by the store at 3am and saw her standing behind the counter. Everything seemed fine. But when the first friend returned at 3:50am, she was nowhere to be found.
Tracker dogs traced Deborah’s scent to the rear of the store, through a wood slat fence, and to the parking lot of the nearby Shoals Apartment Complex, suggesting she left in or was forced into a vehicle there. An extensive search of the area turned up no trace of her. Investigators do not believe she left voluntarily; they have concluded that she was probably abducted. They soon discovered that she was not the first store clerk in Florida to disappear on the graveyard shift.
Six months earlier, on August 6, 1989, twenty-nine-year-old Donna Callahan disappeared from a convenience store in Gulf Breeze, Florida. As in Deborah’s case, there were no signs of struggle at the scene. Donna was three months pregnant and left behind a two-year-old daughter. Five weeks later, on September 18, thirty-six-year-old Darlene Messer was abducted from a Lake City convenience store. Two days later, her body was found in a nearby creek. She had been bludgeoned to death.
The three victims were all single females in their twenties or thirties. And they all had vanished while working the graveyard shift alone. Investigators believed that the cases were linked but had no suspect. Then, three days after Deborah’s disappearance, they were contacted by a young woman who read about the case in the local paper. She came forward after realizing that she may have stood face-to-face with Deborah's abductor.
The woman says that she stopped by the store at around 3:30am that night to pick up a pack of cigarettes. She says there was only one person in the store: a man behind the counter who appeared to be the clerk. Looking back on it, she remembers that he did not know where the cigarettes were, which is not uncommon if the clerk is new. She says she had to point out which ones she wanted. When he handed her the cigarettes, he said, “You really shouldn't smoke, you know.” He then used the cash register and made change for her.
Detective Gay says that investigators have been unable to locate anyone else who was in the store that night who remembered seeing the man. He theorizes that the man may have been a customer who walked in and was looking around for the clerk. The man might have taken the opportunity to shoplift but was caught by the woman. Or, he might be responsible, or at least partially responsible, for Deborah’s abduction. Regardless, police want to identify and question him.
Detective Gay says there is a good possibility that they are dealing with a serial abductor/killer. Deborah is officially listed as missing. Lori says if they find Deborah and she is deceased, then they can at least put her to rest, give her a decent funeral service, and go after her killer.

Poe sketch

A composite sketch of the man

Suspects: The man who was behind the counter around the time Deborah disappeared is considered a potential suspect in her disappearance. Police are not sure if he was actually involved, or if he merely went behind the counter to shoplift and was caught by the woman. She described him as a white male, at least 5'10" with a muscular build, between nineteen and twenty-five (in 1990), with long, stringy, black (possibly shoulder-length) hair, and dark eyes.
The man was wearing a wire earring of a cross in his right ear, a skull ring, and a black t-shirt with the name "Megadeth" across the top and a dragon spitting fire. He apparently drove a black van with a Megadeth mural airbrushed on the side of it. No employees at the time fit his description, and he has never been identified.
Deborah's boyfriend, Scott Iaggi, said that men, some of whom were drunk or "weird", frequently bothered her while she worked the night shift at the store, and he was concerned for her safety. Detective Gay suspects that one of the customers may have become infatuated with her and decided to abduct her. The police also looked into Scott as a possible suspect. He said he went home after he left the store that night. He passed a lie detector test.
Two weeks prior to Deborah's disappearance, she reported that a naked man had jumped over the counter and chased her around the store a few times. She ran outside to the gas pumps, and he followed her. Fortunately, she was able to re-enter the store and lock the door before he was able to re-enter. It is not known if this incident had anything to do with her disappearance. The man has never been located.
The police questioned a man that Deborah had previously dated. She stopped seeing him because she was afraid of him and thought he was "mentally unbalanced". After they stopped dating, he began to harass her. He told the police he was home sick that night. It is not known if he is considered a suspect.
The police also questioned a woman who came to the store drunk at around 8pm that night after she found Deborah's name and work number in her husband's wallet. However, she had an alibi for the time Deborah disappeared.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the November 6, 1991 episode.
  • It was also featured on The Trail Went Cold and Trace Evidence podcasts.
  • Some sources spell Deborah’s first name as "Debra", her middle name as “Deanna”, list her eye color as hazel or blue/green, list her birth year as 1964, and state that Scott left at midnight or 12:30am.
  • It is possible (but not confirmed) that the friend who visited Deborah that night was actually Scott. His name was not mentioned during the broadcast.
  • To protect her identity, the witness at the store was filmed in silhouette.

Results: Unsolved - In November 1996, police announced that they believed the man behind the counter was the boyfriend of one of Deborah's coworkers and was merely a witness in the case. However, they were never able to locate or question him. According to some reports, they now believe he was a customer and was not connected to the case.
In February 1998, Deborah was declared legally dead. In March 2002, police announced that they had a suspect in her case. Although the suspect was not named, it was reported that he was a friend of hers. Around the same time, investigators searched an area of land near Chapel Hill Baptist Church in Orange County. It was five miles from the store and close to the home of the suspect.
The police said that a re-examination of the case evidence led them to the suspect and that area. Cadaver dogs were brought in and detected the scent of human remains there. However, nothing was found. Interestingly, Scott used to live across the street from the church and had once been a pastor there. Some have speculated that he is the suspect mentioned by the police. However, this has not been confirmed.
Donna’s case was solved in 1996; William Alex Wells confessed to killing her and led police to her body in a remote area near DeFuniak Springs, Florida. Wells then implicated his half-brother, Mark Riebe, in the murder. Both were convicted and are serving life sentences. They are considered potential suspects in Deborah’s case as well.
Deborah and Donna both disappeared under similar circumstances. Wells and Riebe were together the weekend of Deborah's disappearance and had a close relative in the area. The female eyewitness picked Wells out of a photo lineup and identified him as the man she had seen in the store that night. Wells, however, denied being involved in the case, saying he was under house arrest at the time. Neither he nor Riebe have been charged in connection with it.
Sadly, Deborah's father, Alvin, and brother, Stephen, have since passed away without seeing resolution in her case. It, as well as Darlene’s, remain unsolved. Her mother, Nancy, is still searching for her.
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