Lexington County woman’s killing still unsolved 12 years later

For Gerda Willmeth, Mother’s Day 2005 was supposed to be spent gardening with her adult daughter. Instead, it was a torrent of phone calls to hospitals, jails and police agencies.

Diana Willmeth was last seen alive May 6, 2005. On July 7, 2005, two months after her mother and father, Marion, filed a missing persons report on Mother’s Day, the 36-year-old’s body was found in a wooded area of Gaston. She had been beaten and shot.

Twelve years later, there have been no arrests in connection with Diana Willmeth’s killing. Yet, Gerda Willmeth – who keeps an album containing pictures of her kids, which she calls her “security blanket” – finds some solace in at least knowing what happened to her daughter.

“Looking at the bigger picture, we found her,” said Gerda Willmeth, 72. “How many people are still missing?”

‘No Diana’

The photo album is part of what Gerda Willmeth calls “Diana’s bag” – a worn, red canvas bag filled with pictures, newspaper articles, posters and maps collected during the investigation into Diana Willmeth’s disappearance and, later, her death.

There’s also a card wishing Willmeth a happy Mother’s Day. A friend of Diana’s sends her one each year on the day many mothers celebrate with breakfast in bed, gifts or special dinners with their children.

Gerda Willmeth went to her daughter’s Forest Drive home near Gaston on May 8 after not being able to reach her by phone the night before. The house was unlocked, the lights were on, Diana Willmeth’s cellphone was inside and her truck was parked outside.

“We went to her house that morning,” Gerda Willmeth said. “No Diana.”

Diana Willmeth was last seen leaving the Lucky Leprechaun, a West Columbia bar, the night of May 6 for what her mother said was a job interview. A dog groomer who also took in stray animals, it was unusual for her to leave her more than 20 dogs with no food or water or to not ask a neighbor to feed them. She also took in strangers who had fallen on hard times or who needed help.

“She’d help people in exchange for (them) helping with the animals,” Gerda Willmeth said. “She’d give them a bed to spend the night in or some breakfast, or maybe a ride to work.”

‘Wrong person’

Gerda Willmeth said that in the weeks after her daughter’s disappearance, she drove thousands of miles in her truck, passing out fliers and looking for “disturbed” areas in the vicinity of her daughter’s home.

Another Lexington County woman vanished the same day as Diana Willmeth but was found a few days later in Richland County.

“This was one of the worst parts,” Gerda Willmeth said, pointing to a newspaper article about that woman being found safe. “She was found, and I kept passing out fliers. People said, ‘What are you talking about? They found her.’

“Wrong person,” she said. “I knew we couldn’t find her alive. We just wanted to find her to put her to rest. There is nothing worse than not knowing for sure.”

Diana Willmeth’s family got the tragic finality they had been seeking on July 7, 2005, when her body was found by four boys playing paintball near Jacques Haven Road. Her remains were so badly decomposed that investigators had to use dental records to make the identification.

Leads slow down over the years

At the time of Diana Willmeth’s killing, investigators believed their top suspect was a sex offender who shed his ankle bracelet near her home.

But they later learned he was in Tennessee at the time of her death, and his alibi held up.

“We’ve gotten sporadic leads. They’ve slowed down over the years,” said Sgt. Roy Mefford, one of the original Lexington County sheriff’s detectives assigned to the case. “We’ve looked at some different people over the years. We just haven’t had enough to build a case.”

Investigators are confident Diana Willmeth was abducted from her home.

Mefford could not discuss the results of any DNA or forensic testing but said it did not lead to the development of any suspects.

“Tips may slow down. That’s why it’s good to get it back in the news,” he said. “We never become discouraged. Somebody may feel comfortable coming forward now, or they may hear something that they didn’t hear back then.”

‘The killer’s still out there’

A retired special education teacher, Gerda Willmeth volunteers weekly with Turning Pages, a nonprofit that offers tutoring and adult education services. She finds comfort in reading poetry and in a support network at monthly meetings of the South Carolina chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.

Stephanie Greene, whose son was gunned down in Texas in 2012, said the group offers support to families of homicide victims “when everything has calmed down.”

“There’s a lot of support around you when everything’s going on,” she said. “But once the crowd dies down, you need that ongoing support because this is something you’re facing for a lifetime.”

At each monthly meeting, they read off the names of the people who were killed during that month through the years and light a candle for each name. Rather than anniversaries, Greene said these are called “angel-versaries.”

Holidays can be hard after the loss of a child, and Greene said the group holds potluck dinner events for bigger holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. For other holidays – Mother’s Day or Father’s Day – a phone call or a card with few kind words can mean a lot to someone who has lost a child to violence, she said.

“If someone picks up the phone and says, ‘I was thinking about you on this day. I’m calling to let you know I’m here for you,’ it can really change the dynamic of your day,” Greene said. “That stuff actually matters. They don’t realize it, but they don’t realize it because they’re not going through it.”

In many ways, Gerda Willmeth and her husband are still going through it.

Fliers with her daughter’s picture and information about the case are affixed to the windows of her truck that she drives around, and she keeps a stack of fliers to hand out to anyone who shows interest in the case. She contacts local media outlets each year as the anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance approaches.

“There’s absolutely nothing I can do except spread the word that the killer’s still out there,” she said. “I grew up with the idea that the day you were born and the day you die is set by God. She has no more pain, she has no more worries, she doesn’t have to worry about paying the bills. We still got a job to do.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2017 at 2:06 PM with the headline "Lexington County woman’s killing still unsolved 12 years later."