On December 4, 1999, a man collecting aluminum cans in a strip of woods behind a business in the 2800 block of South Orlando Drive in Sanford, Florida, found the body of 50-year-old Sherry Holtz. Near her lay a folding lock-blade knife with human blood on it.
Detectives had a suspect within days. Holtz’s live-in boyfriend, Gary A. Durrance, had a documented history of domestic disputes with her; his roommates said he had thrown her out of the house two days earlier, and could not account for his whereabouts between roughly 2:30 and 7 a.m. on the morning she was found. Durrance told detectives he had not seen her since December 1. Holtz had last been seen on the evening of December 3, at a bar on Park Drive, less than half a mile from where her body was discovered.
What investigators did not have was proof. The biological material on the knife was human blood, but in the year 2000 the samples were too small for the available forensic technology to turn into a usable profile. So the knife was sealed into an evidence locker, and the case went cold.
It stayed there for 24 years. In May 2023, cold case detectives at the Sanford Police Department resubmitted the preserved knife to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. This time the lab could read it. The primary blood profile matched Sherry Holtz. A secondary profile matched Gary Durrance.
An arrest warrant was issued on July 18, 2024, and Durrance was arrested in Volusia County. He ultimately confessed. On June 10, 2026, after a three-day trial, a Seminole County jury deliberated for eight minutes before convicting him of second-degree murder. On June 19, 2026, at the age of 75, he was sentenced to life in prison.
The full documentary is below.
Sources
- Office of the State Attorney, 18th Judicial Circuit of Florida — press release, June 20, 2026 (primary source).
- WKMG / ClickOrlando — coverage of the Sanford Police Department press conference, July 18, 2024, including remarks from Chief Cecil Smith and communications manager Bianca Gillett.
- Contemporaneous reporting from NBC News, FOX 35 Orlando and the Sanford Herald.
- Photographs of Sherry Holtz and the booking photograph of Gary Durrance were released publicly by the Office of the State Attorney, 18th Judicial Circuit. Remaining imagery in the video is clearly credited illustrative stock and public-domain material, not depictions of this case.
Related reading
No well-reviewed book has been written about this case specifically. For readers who want to go further, here is a search for coverage of the case and the region: Sherry Holtz / Sanford, Florida cold case on Amazon.
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