Polk County will finally give Mack Lavelle Proctor a dignified funeral after he was murdered and went 52 years without a name. Proctor was buried in a pauper’s grave while detectives worked to identify him. His remains was found by a fisherman between Lake Lulu and Lake Ship in 1972. According to WFLA, detectives from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office used cutting-edge forensic genetic genealogy procedures earlier this year to make the breakthrough identification of Proctor.
At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Polk Sheriff’s Charities, Inc. and Gentry-Morrison Funeral Home will have a headstone-accompanied funeral ceremony at Lakeside Memorial Park. As pallbearers, Detectives Jason McPherson and Matthew Newbold of the PCSO Cold Case Homicide Unit, who solved the case, will pay their final respects to a man whose life was cruelly taken for decades without a name or a backstory. Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement published by the Tampa Free Press and Winter Haven Daily, “Thanks to the efforts of our detectives and DNA samples from his family, we can now bring peace and closure to Mr. Proctor’s family now that he has been identified.”
Sheriff Grady Judd will also speak during the service, and a PCSO chaplain will oversee the ceremony. Even though Proctor’s 77-year-old son is unable to attend the service because of health concerns, he has found some comfort in the solution to this long-standing riddle. Judd went on to say, “His son is finally at peace knowing what happened and where his father is located,” on WFLA. It has been said that the local community’s kindness has been crucial in making sure Proctor’s memory is properly remembered.
Proctor was shot twice in the head and left unidentified along a canal, according to details surrounding his death, which portray a somber image of his final moments. According to WFLA’s story, Proctor was last seen by his family in Georgia between 1969 and 1972, yet he was mysteriously not reported missing to the police. His killers were eventually found to be Edgar Todd and Clarence Ingram, both of whom are now deceased.
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