A husband, a nanny and an unsolved killing: Cracking Georgia’s cold cases

Nearly 19 years after the killing, Jon Worrell was arrested at his home in Missouri on May 20, 2025, and charged in his wife’s killing. Though investigators said he didn’t pull the trigger, a Coffee County grand jury recently indicted him on three charges, including malice murder, felony murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Credit: Coffee County Sheriff's Office

Credit: Coffee County Sheriff's Office

New technology, new witnesses

The years-old homicide highlights some of the challenges faced by cold case investigators in Georgia and beyond.

Advancements in forensics and the ability to track someone’s location using cellphone data have made it easier to narrow down suspects in recent years, experts say. The influx of podcasts and true crime documentaries has also helped keep certain cases at the forefront of people’s minds.

But oftentimes, catching a break in a case that’s gone stale comes down to persistence and a little luck, said former Atlanta homicide commander Danny Agan.

“Cold cases that are brought back to life are not that common,” Agan said. “A lot of it is luck and a lot of it is recognizing something as being important when you see it.”

The longtime detective figures he was involved in about 800 homicide investigations over the course of his career — either as an investigator or a commander. That includes some of Atlanta’s missing and murdered victims, the child killings that roiled the city from 1979 to 1981.

Credit: Phil Skinner

Credit: Phil Skinner

Agan was there when another detective, Bob Buffington, discovered fibers on the body of a 14-year-old boy. It was that unique combination of carpet and other hairs that eventually led investigators to zero-in on Wayne Williams, he said. Williams was ultimately convicted of killing two adults and sentenced to life in prison, but investigators have long suspected him of many more. Williams has always maintained his innocence, however.

For over four decades, many of the victims’ families have urged police to further investigate the children’s deaths.

In 2019, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced police and prosecutors would reexamine evidence in the case. Two years later, citing advances in forensic testing, Bottoms said authorities had reviewed about 40% of the evidence to determine which items could be retested at a private lab in Utah that specializes in analyzing deteriorating DNA.

She also said authorities were taking another look at fiber evidence from 30 cases and expanding their timeline.

Credit: HANDOUT

Credit: HANDOUT

“There were murders of innocent children and young people in our city that went unsolved for many years,” Bottoms said, calling the killings a “painful time” in Atlanta’s history. “Part of my asking that this be reopened was in light of where we are with DNA testing some 40 years later.”

Authorities have said they’re still in the process of reexamining the case.

“The Atlanta child murders are still actively being investigated, and a team is working thoroughly on each case,” Atlanta police said in a statement. “Once all cases have been examined and investigated, an update will be shared.”

In Atlanta, another high-profile unsolved killing has seemingly left investigators stumped: the 2021 stabbing of Katie Janness and her dog, Bowie, inside the city’s busiest park.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

Janness, 40, was discovered just after 1 a.m. on July 28, 2021, about 100 yards inside the Piedmont Park entrance. She was found by her longtime girlfriend, Emma Clark, who tracked her phone when she never came home from her evening walk in Midtown. She’d been stabbed more than 50 times, and Bowie’s body was found about 100 feet away, police said.

As the four-year anniversary of her killing approaches, Atlanta police say they haven’t given up. The investigation is now focused on DNA evidence, police said, and they’re still working with the FBI in the hope of solving it.

“It’s still a very active case,” Atlanta police Chief Darin Schierbaum at a press conference in June. “We have not stopped in our efforts to bring that individual to justice that committed that crime and we’re confident we will.”

In recent years, DNA testing, genealogy databases and the analysis of previously untested rape kits have been instrumental in identifying remains and leading to convictions in previously unsolved crimes across the state.

In March, for instance, a DeKalb County jury found Kenneth Perry guilty of rape, murder and other charges in the 1990 deaths of 46-year-old John Sumpter and his sister, 43-year-old Pamela Sumpter.

Perry, 55, wasn’t suspected until the GBI submitted evidence in 2022 as part of its efforts to work through a backlog of pre-1999 rape kits. Investigators used forensic genetic genealogy, known as FGG, to link Perry’s DNA to a sample collected from Pamela Sumpter following the assault.

And last month, a Texas DNA lab helped to identify 15-year-old Kiyona Arnold, whose body was discovered in a shallow grave 30 years ago by children playing in a southwest Atlanta neighborhood.

Credit: Othram lab

Credit: Othram lab

Othram, the forensic laboratory specializing in complex DNA cases, has helped identify 23 people in Georgia alone.

A case that plagued a community

In the Worrell case, authorities said it was the cooperation of the couple’s former nanny that led to the breakthrough needed to finally make an arrest.

Investigators initially believed Doris Worrell had been the victim of a robbery gone wrong at her husband’s popular entertainment park, GBI Special Agent-in-Charge Jason Seacrist said. But suspicion quickly shifted to Jon Worrell after authorities learned of the couple’s marital issues.

“Part of these issues included Jon’s inappropriate relationship with his then-live-in nanny,” Seacrist told reporters last month. “Jon was concerned that if he divorced Doris he would lose his children, and it’s those thoughts that led him to begin recruiting someone to murder his wife.”

Coffee County Sheriff Fred Cole said Doris Worrell’s killing was a case that plagued investigators and residents alike.

“It’s been 19 years and it weighed on our whole community,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was a very big case for us. The community wanted to see it solved, we wanted to see it solved and we just never gave up on it.”

Doris Worrell’s sister never gave up hope either, saying an arrest was something she and her family spent years waiting for.

“We’ve cried lots of tears,” Tuggle said. “Our lives were shattered. Why her? She was the nicest, kindest person in the whole world.”

From the outside, the couple seemed to have a picturesque life. They had two daughters and a son, were active in their church and built a home on a golf course in Douglas that Doris Worrell quickly went to work decorating.

They opened Jon’s Sports Park, a bustling entertainment center with batting cages, go-kart racing, miniature golf and a skating rink.

But underneath the surface, things were far from perfect, according to Tuggle.

She said the relationship began to unravel when the family took in a teenager from Venezuela who helped look after their children. Before long, it became clear that Jon and the nanny had gotten involved romantically.

“My sister knew it. Her friends knew it. I picked up on it,” Tuggle said, recalling late-night phone calls she’d get from her sister about her husband’s involvement with the teen and what she should do.

“There have been so many times when I wanted to hop a plane to Costa Rica, or go in search of him,” she said through tears.

Authorities said Jon Worrell and the nanny raised Doris’ children as their own, but that he returned to the states after they broke up. In April, investigators said they traveled to Costa Rica and spoke to the nanny, who reportedly gave them enough information to finally make the arrest.

Cole would not disclose what she told them, but said they do not consider her to be a suspect.

Jon Worrell, now 58, was extradited back to Coffee County last month. He has not made any statements to law enforcement about the case, according to Cole, who traveled to Maryville, Missouri, with GBI agents to make the arrest.

Worrell’s attorney, Travis Griffin, said he looks forward to defending his client.

“We are eager to get this case resolved and we’re looking forward to Mr. Worrell’s day in court,” Griffin said.

A dedicated cold case unit

In 2023, the state legislature passed a law allowing victims’ families to ask the original investigating agencies to take another look at homicides that have gone cold.

The Coleman-Baker Act, named after two homicide victims, also led to the creation of a dedicated cold case unit within the GBI.

Special Agent Brian Whidby, who heads the unit, said the GBI has about 600 open homicide cases, some of which date back to the late 1960s.

His unit is currently taking a second look at about 50 cases, but each poses it’s own set of challenges. That includes reluctant witnesses, no witnesses or a general lack of evidence.

“You’re looking for that needle in a haystack,” Whidby said. “A lot of these cases, if they could have been solved then, they would have. It’s not like 10 years ago nobody cared. They did. They’re just difficult cases.”

While technological advancements have led to more breakthroughs in recent years, Whidby said one of the biggest barriers to solving decades-old homicides is that DNA wasn’t always collected from crime scenes.

“That science just wasn’t there yet,” he said, referring to cases from the ’70s and ’80s. “There have been advances in DNA that helps us solve some of these cases, but I also try to caution people that not every case has DNA.”

Agan, the former homicide commander, said the inability to solve certain cases can be frustrating for detectives and families alike.

“It’s just a fact of life. You don’t solve every case that you’re going to get,” he said. “It’s not like TV. Everything doesn’t get solved in an hour. It’s frustrating, but that’s just the way it is.”

Getting closure

In most cold cases, Whidby said victims’ families just want to know their loved ones haven’t been forgotten.

He said one effective tactic when relooking at a case is sending eight or 10 agents into a town and having them re-interview dozens of people over two or three days.

“That usually gets the community talking about the case again,” Whidby said, and often leads to new information coming to light. “You never know what that little piece will be that will bring it all together.”

Finally being able to crack a case and bring a grieving family that long-awaited sense of relief is a wonderful feeling, Whidby said.

While she’s grateful an arrest has been made in her sister’s killing, Tuggle said there’s still a long way to go as the case works its way through the legal process.

“This is only the first part of the journey,“ she said. “I hope that all of this leads to closure and I hope it doesn’t take another 19 years.”