TALLULAH FALLS, Ga. – Four years after Debbie Collier’s burned body was found in the woods of northern Habersham County, Sheriff Robin Krockum says he remains confident in the investigators who worked a case that began as a suspected homicide, drew national attention and ultimately ended with a finding of suicide.
Krockum said he is proud of the work done by the investigators who spent more than two months trying to reconstruct Collier’s final hours.
“The evidence and autopsy results simply revealed that Mrs. Collier’s death was a result of suicide,” Krockum said.
The sheriff also expressed sympathy for Collier’s family and the loss they suffered.
That conclusion was far from where the investigation began.
Mysterious discovery in the woods
Collier, a 59-year-old Athens woman, was reported missing on Sept. 10, 2022. Less than 24 hours later, deputies searching near her rented Chrysler Pacifica found her body down an embankment in the woods off GA 15/US 441 near Tallulah Falls.
The initial scene only deepened the mystery.
The rented van had been located after SiriusXM helped authorities track it to the area. A Tallulah Falls police officer told investigators he had seen the van parked at the pull-off the previous afternoon, but vehicles commonly stopped there and it had not raised suspicion. A later search led deputies and a K9 into the woods, where they discovered a red tote bag, a partially burned blue tarp, evidence of a fire and eventually Collier’s body.
Store video and a troubling message
Investigators soon traced some of those items back to a Family Dollar store in Clayton.
Surveillance video showed Collier entering the store at 2:55 p.m. on Sept. 10 and purchasing a reusable red tote bag, blue tarp, rain poncho, refillable torch lighter and paper towels. She appeared calm, and investigators said video showed she was alone. Collier left the store at 3:09 p.m. and remained in her van for about 10 minutes before driving south.
At 3:17 p.m., while Collier was still believed to be in the parking lot, her daughter, Amanda Bearden, received $2,385 through Venmo along with the message: “they are not going to let me go love you there is a key to the house in the blue flower pot by the door.”
The message helped fuel speculation that Collier had been abducted or killed.
Investigators pursue a homicide theory
On Sept. 24, then-Chief Deputy Murray Kogod said investigators had found no evidence supporting either kidnapping or suicide. Six days later, during the sheriff’s office’s only press conference on the case, lead investigator George Cason said investigators were treating Collier’s death as a homicide.
Kogod went further.
“At this time, the investigation is leading us to the proposition that Mrs. Collier’s death was personal and targeted,” he said, while assuring residents there was no indication of a random killer in the area.
Cason, now a lieutenant with the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office, recalls just how complicated the case became. The investigation stretched across multiple counties, involved a difficult crime scene deep in the woods and required investigators to thoroughly pursue numerous possible explanations for how Collier ended up there.
The FBI eventually joined the investigation. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab processed evidence, while investigators worked with Athens-Clarke County police, the State Fire Marshal’s Office and other agencies. The sheriff’s office later said investigators reviewed information obtained through 26 search warrants and subpoenas and conducted more than 20 interviews with family members and potential witnesses.
Evidence shifts the investigation
As evidence accumulated, the direction changed.
By late October, sources close to the investigation told Now Georgia, formerly Now Habersham, that Collier’s death may have resulted from an accident or suicide. An arson analysis detected gasoline on her clothing, and investigators determined through an experiment that a plastic gasoline container could have melted in the fire. Investigators later recovered what appeared to be remnants of a burned gas can.
Family members voice differing views
The changing narrative also created friction with Collier’s family.
Her son, Jeffrey Bearden, filed a formal complaint against then-Sheriff Joey Terrell on Oct. 27 after a phone conversation about alleged leaks from the investigation. Bearden accused Terrell of laughing and snickering as he expressed his concerns and said the sheriff threatened to hang up on him. He wrote that he no longer had confidence in the sheriff’s office investigation and asked for another agency to take over the case. Terrell declined to comment on Bearden’s allegations at the time.
Collier’s daughter took a different view, publicly praising Cason for taking her mother’s death seriously and defending the investigators working the case.
Medical examiner rules death a suicide
On Nov. 18 — 69 days after Collier disappeared — the sheriff’s office closed the investigation with a relatively brief public explanation. While the agency outlined the volume of records, interviews and forensic evidence investigators reviewed, it did not provide a detailed public reconstruction explaining the dramatic shift from a suspected “personal and targeted” homicide to suicide.
The final determination, however, was unequivocal.
The GBI Medical Examiner’s Office determined Collier died from inhalation of superheated gases, thermal injuries and hydrocodone intoxication. Her manner of death was ruled suicide.
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