COLD CASE INVESTIGATIONS PRESENTATION JULY 10, IN BRANFORD
Pictured L to R: Investigator Chuck Tompkins, Suwannee County Sheriff’s Office; Investigator Greg Burnsed, Lake City Police Department, and Katie Kaplan, WCTV-6 Eyewitness News.
UPDATE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Chuck Tompkins will not be presenting at this event. He will be replaced by Retired Det. Sgt. Randy Roberts of the Columbia County Sheriff's Office.
Submitted by Jason Futch, Suwannee Valley Unsolved Executive Director
BRANFORD, FL- On Monday, July 10th, Investigators with the Suwannee County Sheriff's Office and the Lake City Police Department will be teaming up to present to the public the ins an out of a cold case homicide investigation and how they are handled.
The event, hosted by Suwannee Valley Unsolved and the Suwannee River Regional Library System, will be presented as a two-part presentation. Discussed will be how a cold case investigation is handled and prioritized, and what it takes to work toward resolving a case decades later. It is an effort to allow the public inside the investigation and ask questions about it. It is also an opportunity for the public to see just how forensic technology has evolved over the years.
The cold case presentations will be handled by Investigators Chuck Tompkins of the Suwannee County Sheriff's Office and Greg Burnsed of the Lake City Police Department. Investigator Tompkins was recently assigned to investigate some of Suwannee County’s cold cases and has a lengthy career in law enforcement, including his time as an investigator for the Live Oak Police Department.
Investigator Burnsed’s career in law enforcement began in 1992 and has worked for agencies such as the Florida Department of Corrections and the Baker County Sheriff's Office. His interest in cold cases goes back to when he found out that a close friend of his had a sister that had been murdered in Jacksonville in 1987. Melissa “Missy” Ellison was murdered in a mobile home she resided in at Taylor’s Mobile Home Park off Coljean Road in Jacksonville. Her case remains unsolved. Since working with the Lake City Police Department, Investigator Burnsed has dedicated a portion of his time working to solve some of Lake City’s coldest cases.
Finally, a special presentation on the news media’s role in getting cold cases to the public will also be presented. Special guest Katie Kaplan, an award-winning investigative journalist with WCTV Eyewitness News in Tallahassee and host of WCTV’s “Unsolved” series will be on hand to deliver this presentation.
Mrs. Kaplan began her news television career in 2016 as an anchor for KFBB in Great Falls, Montana before going to KESQ in Palm Springs, California that same year. In 2018, she moved to Tallahassee and became an investigative journalist for WCTV. One of her locally known cases she covered in her “Unsolved” series is the case of Kelley Brannon, who disappeared from Live Oak in July 2020. It is a case that is still talked about by residents and kept alive by Mrs. Kaplan’s story and friends of Kelley’s that have maintained social media pages dedicated to her case.
After the presentations, a Q&A session will be held by Suwannee Valley Unsolved Executive Director Jason Futch, where the audience will have an opportunity to ask questions.
The free two-hour event will be held at Hatch Park Community Center in Branford, FL (403 SE Craven Street, Branford, FL 32008). The doors will open at 5:30pm, and the event is set to begin at 6pm and is planned to run until 8pm. There will be plenty of seats, and all are welcome to attend.
For more information regarding this event, please reach out to Suwannee Valley Unsolved at
