Every major news outlet had the headline, “The Golden State Killer Arrested.”
Using genetic genealogy, Joseph DeAngelo was caught in 2018 for a slew of killings that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.
At about the same time, Jacob Cockcroft started to consider an other issue that was close to his heart.
Jacob told Dateline, “I began seeing things about genetic genealogy and the Golden State Killer.” Hey, maybe that applies to our situation, I thought.
Hazelle Fenty, Jacob’s grandmother, was discovered dead at a church in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1992.
They had killed her.
In retrospect, I see that I became quite fixated on true crime. Jacob stated, “Her case is the reason I’m so interested in it.”
For over 30 years, Hazelle’s case has remained unresolved. Like the families of the Golden State Killer’s victims, Jacob hopes that his grandma will eventually receive justice.
Fleta, Paul, and David were the three children Hazelle reared in her hometown of Daytona Beach, Florida.
Jacob’s father is David Cockcroft. He is Hazelle’s youngest child.
In reality, she had three marriages. He was the father of Fleta and Paul, and he passed away from throat cancer during her first marriage. My dad was born to her and her husband, James Cockcroft, who was my paternal grandfather. According to Jacob, she later got a divorce from him and wed a man named Walter Fenty.
Jacob said Hazelle was quite self-sufficient. She had two young children when her first spouse passed away. She attempted to attend college, but the children simply prevented her from doing so. She then began working at a company in Daytona Beach as an accountant or bookkeeper. And, he said, she ended up earning a living doing it. She was also actively involved in the church and highly religious.
After raising her kids, Hazelle finally got married and left Daytona with her youngest child, David. Jacob was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he and his spouse had made their home.
Jacob’s recollections of seeing his grandmother are hazy. He recalled that he had visited her home multiple times, made excursions down there, and stayed with her. She collected a lot of things. She gathered these vintage dolls, known as Kewpie Dolls.
Jacob spent fourteen years traveling to Daytona to see Grandma. 1992 was the end of it.
Jacob recalled, “I was in my room in our house listening to music when I heard a commotion downstairs. I went downstairs and saw my father pacing back and forth on the phone.” Everyone was rather perplexed and unsure of what was happening.
Sandy, Jacob’s uncle, was on the other end of the line, informing his father that their mother had been killed.
December 4, 1992
For Hazelle Fenty, December 4, 1992, was not a typical day. She was seventy-six years old. Jacob told Dateline that his father had informed him she had phoned him earlier in the day, they had spoken, he had wished her a happy birthday, and she was in a generally positive mood.
By then, Hazelle was living alone in Daytona after her divorce from her husband Walter.
She served as a secretary and an appointed deacon at Daytona’s Indigo Lakes Baptist Church. Jacob claims that that afternoon, Hazelle visited John Nichols, the pastor, and had lunch with him and his spouse. After that, Hazelle returned to the church to work with the pastor.
Police reports state that the pastor departed the church at 4:15 p.m., while Hazelle remained to make copies, according to Jacob.
Sandy, Hazelle’s oldest son, called the pastor that evening with some alarming information. She hadn’t attended the supper for her birthday. They phone the pastor at 7:00 p.m. and –. The church is extremely near to the pastor’s home. He offers to go check on her because he lives about five minutes away by car, Jacob added.
When the pastor pulled into the church, he saw that the lights were on in the nursery, which was not the proper location for them. Jacob stated that her body was located in the nursery.
Since then, Pastor Nichols has died.
Detective Jimmie Flynt of the Daytona Beach Police Department verified Jacob’s account of what happened when Dateline spoke with him. She was lying on her stomach when the police got there. According to Flynt, there was blood on the floor near the head. She had taken off her jeans and underwear and was dressed in a T-shirt, top, and bra. She had not taken off her shoes.
According to the detective, Hazelle had been sexually raped and had her neck cut. He said, “We don’t think robbery was the motive because nothing had been disturbed as far as her purse.”
According to the authorities, Hazelle’s murder was an opportunity crime. Det. Flynt stated, “We think the sexual assault was the motivation.”
That is among the most unsettling aspects of the case, according to Jacob Cockcroft. According to him, sexual homicides of the elderly are extremely uncommon, which makes this case extremely strange. The violence is astounding.
The U.S. Department of Justice reported in 1997 that the rates of major violent crime were 17 times greater for people between the ages of 18 and 21 than for those 65 and older.
According to Detective Flynt, there was one person of interest who went the church during the original investigation, but nothing could be shown that he did this in reality. He also had a fairly solid alibi.
At the time of the killing, there were several rewards offered. There was a lot of press coverage and, you know, we still weren t getting a whole lot of information, Flynt said.
In an effort to generate leads, the Daytona Beach Police Department has included Hazelle’s case in its Cold Case Playing Cards program, which features unresolved cases on playing cards given to prisoners. Hazelle s s case is featured as the nine of diamonds.
Despite numerous efforts, Hazelle s case eventually went cold.
A hopeful future
Following his grandmother s murder, Jacobs says there was a cloud of confusion and grief over their family. Nobody had a vendetta against her. She was this old lady who donated her time to the church and crocheted and collected Kewpie dolls, he said. Like, she didn t have any issues with anybody.
He recalls the pain of laying his grandmother to rest. I remember being at the funeral and, and [my father] sitting next to me and crying very hard, he said. He never showed very much emotion usually, so it definitely sticks out in my memory.
Throughout his childhood, Jacob says his grandmother s death was rarely talked about. It was just painful, so we just kind of just kind of — kind of buried it, he said. I mean, I wondered, but I didn t know very much about the case.
That is, until he decided to do his own digging in 2018 and connected with Detective Flynt. When I got in touch with Detective Flynt, he told me that they had this small amount of DNA and they were in the process of trying to see if they could get it tested, Jacob said. And so, I ve been talking with him back and forth through that process, as they have sent it off to the lab, waited for the results.
Detective Flynt confirmed to Dateline that several pieces of evidence were collected at the scene and, in recent years, DNA was sent off to the lab. He said nothing came of the results, but he s hopeful new technology will provide them with a solid suspect. As DNA technology changes from year to year we re hoping that ll be one of the things that help solve this case, he said.
The detective also confirmed there are currently two persons of interest in the case.
Jacob is also hopeful new technology will help solve his grandmother s case, the grandmother who, throughout this process, he s learned so much about. I ve learned so much about her and her life and I had no idea that she was so independent, strong, resourceful, he said. She was just a really neat person.
He believes Hazelle s case will be solved one day. I want it to be solved soon. I want it to be solved while my father s still alive, while my uncle is still alive, he said. I think it will be solved. The question is when, I think, if nothing else.
Anyone with information about Hazelle Fenty s case is asked to call the Daytona Beach Police Detective Jimmie Flynt at 386-671-5123 or [email protected]@gmail.com.
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