Jeffrey Charles McNerney, known as Jeff, was a 19-year-old college student from Pittsburgh who was killed during the Christmas holiday period of 1975 while vacationing in the Florida Keys. His body was found in an abandoned shack on Lower Matecumbe Key; investigators concluded he had been bludgeoned to death with a heavy digging tool.

The case went unsolved for several years. In 1978 John Edward Swindler, then 34, emerged as the prime suspect. Swindler had prior convictions for armed robbery and other violent offenses and was on a 10-hour pass from a rehabilitation center in Columbia, South Carolina, at the time of the killing; he overstayed and returned several days later. A partial fingerprint from the crime scene later matched Swindler, but he was never tried for McNerney’s murder.

Swindler was convicted and sentenced to death for other crimes, including the killing of a police officer in Arkansas, and was executed in 1990. McNerney’s death remains a painful chapter for his family and community. Does anyone have memories of Jeff or information about his time in the Keys that could help fill gaps in the timeline?