Debbie Collier case: Investigators consider Georgia woman’s death may not be homicide, sources say
Georgia investigators are beginning to explore the possibility that it could be disturbing The death of the Athens office manager According to law enforcement sources, Debbie Collier may not have been a murder as initially suspected.
They have no evidence linking several key people close to Collier, including her husband, daughter and daughter’s friend, to locations anywhere near the crime scene between her disappearance on September 10 and the discovery of her remains the following day, according to two sources. Find out the investigation.
The sources said that the evidence at the scene indicated that her death may have been accidental or a suicide.
Collier was last seen alive at the Family Dollar Store on September 10, where she purchased several items that were found cremated near her remains. Sources indicated that she also stopped at Chick-fil-A beforehand.
Georgia lady killer Debbie Collier remembered as beloved matrioch ‘full of joy and beauty’
Stephen Collier was seen on videotape between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. working on parking at a Georgia Bulldogs game on the day his wife disappeared. She was last seen at 3:20 p.m. in a store a 90-minute drive north of the city, and he called 911 to report her missing from his home in Athens at 6 p.m. the same day.
(Debbie Steve Collier/Facebook)
Collier was found dead and naked on 9/11 in the Chattahoochee Oconee National Forest south of Clayton, a 90-minute drive from her home in Athens. Her husband, Stephen Collier, Reported missing About 6 pm the day before. She was discovered a few feet from the site of a small fire, with burns to her stomach, soot in her nose, and stuck to a small tree.
When Fox News Digital visited the place earlier this month, it was clear that in the heart of the burns, there were no signs of a wood-fuel fire, although many of the items it was carrying were found burnt to the ground, including That blue tarp she just bought and a little leftover Bulldogs jersey she was last seen wearing.
The missing person’s report came after Venmo sent her daughter, Amanda Bearden, an odd amount of nearly $2,400 with the encrypted message: “They won’t let me go I love you, there’s a key to the house in the blue vase by the door.”
Amanda Bearden and her boyfriend Andrew Tyler Gegrich are seen outside their residence in Atlanta, Georgia on Friday, September 23, 2022. Bearden’s mother, Debbie Collier, was the victim of a brutal murder, whose body was found on September 11, 2022.
(Mark Sims for Fox News Digital)
The Collier Debbie Case in Georgia: Timeline of Events in the Murder of a Burning Office Manager
How much did Bearden get? Sources told Fox News Digital earlier this month that the day her mother disappeared was “very close” to the amount that Bearden’s friend, Andrew Gigrich, owes in probation fines. They said the math could be scrapped a bit because of the extra fee.
Two days before Collier’s disappearance, her daughter Amanda Bearden and boyfriend Andrew Gegrich returned to Athens from Maryland, where they were living with her brother, Habersham County Detective George Casson told reporters earlier.
Gegrich told Fox News Digital that the couple were not involved in the crime and that they were “scared,” sleeping behind fortified doors as the case remained unsolved.
Authorities have not yet published the autopsy report, toxicology results, or the official cause and method of death.
On Friday, local radio station WCHM reported that an unnamed “senior member” of the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office said it “would be a good assumption” that investigators were no longer focused on Colliers’ immediate family in connection with the investigation.
The entrance to the crime scene where Debbie Collier was found dead on September 11, 2022 is marked with a temporary memorial in the shape of a cross.
(Mark Sims for Fox News Digital)
John Kelly, the psychoanalyst and criminal profiler who follows the case, said there are some questions he still wants answered.
“Why was she driving there? Why is she trying to drag herself (after she fell down a hill in the woods)?” He said on Monday. “She looked like she was getting ready to go to the back, dressed up to have fun–not to kill herself.”
Anyone with information on Collier’s condition is asked to do so Contact the Habersham Sheriff investigators Cal Garrison or George Casson 706-839-0559 or 706-839-0560 respectively.
