Angela Stoldt Arrested, Charged With Second-Degree Murder Of James “Jimmy” Sheaffer’ Law enforcement officials in Deltona, Florida, handle numerous missing person cases each year.
But they were unprepared for where the search for 36-year-old James “Jimmy” Sheaffer would lead, they told “Floribama Murders,” airing Saturdays at 9/8c on Oxygen.
After vanishing on April 3, 2013, Jimmy’s live-in girlfriend, Candy Medina, reported him missing. Their 16-year-old son, Tyler, had been receiving texts from his dad’s phone, where Jimmy wrote that he owed people money and needed to make himself scarce, according to detectives.
But Jimmy’s family questioned the disappearance and the validity of the messages. Candy and her three children relied on his limo driver salary and his monthly disability check to pay the rent.
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Angela Stoldt Arrested, Charged With Second-Degree Murder Of James “Jimmy” Sheaffer
Investigators went to the limo company, where Jimmy worked part-time. Jimmy had been headed there on April 2, according to Candy. They ound that Jimmy’s truck was parked at the business, but a search of the vehicle revealed no clues. Jimmy’s boss, Pete Harrington, told investigators that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
But John Brochu, a limo mechanic, told investigators that he happened to catch Jimmy getting into a vehicle around 3 a.m. Brochu told police that he heard someone in a black sedan tell Jimmy to get in. He claimed he heard other voices as well.
According to Brochu, Jimmy had a gambling problem and had racked up debt. He also admitted there was bad blood between him and Jimmy — he had threatened to kill Jimmy during an argument a week earlier.
“I hated his guts. He hated my guts,” Brochu is heard saying in a recorded interview with detectives. But investigators found no evidence to connect Brochu to Jimmy’s disappearance.
Using information from Jimmy’s limo GPS tracker, investigators visited all of the places he stopped during his last ride.
“It was like Jimmy fell off the face of the earth,” said Det. John Brady, of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department.
For Jimmy’s family, their concern for him was exacerbated by the fact that their landlord kicked them out of their home.
“He would never leave me,” Candy told producers. “I know that.”
Jimmy’s cell phone records turned up a lead a week into the investigation.
“His phone was active,” said Sgt. Jessica Paugh, of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Department. It was pinging in the city of Sanford.
The phone records also showed that Jimmy had been texting with his neighbour, Angela Stoldt. When investigators questioned her earlier, she had said she didn’t even know Jimmy.
When she was questioned again, Stoldt said she was helping Jimmy out with his finances, according to “Floribama Murders.”
Jimmy didn’t have a bank account. He gave Candy what he earned from his job, but his Social Security disability check would go into an account handled by his neighbour. Stoldt would then dole out money to Jimmy.
Investigators got Stoldt’s permission to search her home: “It was probably the most horrendous house I’ve ever seen,” said Brady.
There was no sign of Jimmy amid the squalor.
But as detectives pressed her about the recent texts, Stoldt admitted that Jimmy had been to her house to get money since he’d gone missing.
Detectives kept close tabs on Stoldt as they continued to work the case. On April 20, Stoldt’s sister called Volusia County Emergency Services. Stoldt was threatening suicide. In compliance with the Baker Act, Stoldt was brought into custody, where she told Det. John Brady about a “late April fool’s joke gone bad.”
She said she and Jimmy were just platonic friends. She acted as a sort of custodian of his finances. He had trouble with money and was in debt because he gambled.
“Jimmy ultimately kept over drafting the account,” said Det. Joe Riley, of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office. As a result, Stoldt was financially responsible for covering his debt.
Jimmy had recently asked Stoldt’s father for a loan of a couple of thousand dollars, so she came up with a plan to get back at him, according to “Floribama Murders.”
The night he went missing, Jimmy met Stoldt at the limo company. She was in her car with her teenage son and daughter. Those were the voices Brochu reported hearing.
At Stoldt’s house, the kids went to bed. She fixed drinks for her and Jimmy — a concoction of vodka, peach schnapps, and Flexeril, a muscle relaxant that causes drowsiness. She claimed he stirred it into the cocktail because it added to the buzz.
Jimmy pressed her about the loan, so she drove him to a cemetery near her father’s house, where they waited for her father to get up.
Parked at the graveyard, she revealed she wasn’t getting money for him. In a recorded interview she said she asked Jimmy, “How do you feel about being lied to?’”
She then claimed Jimmy had attacked her, so she fought back. She grabbed an ice pick in the car and stabbed him in his right eye. She then reached for a cord and strangled him. To make sure he was dead she plunged the pick into his other eye.
She alleged it was in self-defence.
“I was completely shocked. I had to play a good part and not let my jaw hit the ground,” said Brady.
Stoldt then said that she had to get him home and dispose of his body, cbsnews.com reported.
“She described in fairly graphic detail how she dismembered him,” investigators said. She then confessed that she “was gonna try to cook him. Cremate him.”
Instead, she put body pieces in plastic bags, and with her kids’ help, she disposed of the bags in dumpsters and other sites around Volusia County.
Investigators needed to corroborate Stoldt’s tale. She led police to locations in Central Florida, where she claimed to have dumped parts of Jimmy’s body.
In a wooded area in the small town of Osteen, investigators found bones and body parts in garbage bags.
“We did recover clothing then matched what we had been told Jimmy had last been wearing,” said Assistant State Attorney Heatha Trigones.
Stoldt also led detectives to a location in Stanford, where she’d buried Jimmy’s cell phone. Stoldt said she would periodically go there and put the battery in to keep up the illusion that Jimmy was alive.
Stoldt was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
Investigators hoped that a coroner’s report would provide forensic evidence of how Jimmy was killed, but the autopsy was unable to determine the actual cause of death. DNA did confirm the body parts were Jimmy’s.
After hearing the lurid details of the case, the grand jury elevated the charge to first-degree murder.
No charges were filed against Stoldt’s children. There was no evidence they knew they were aiding in a murder, as they believed they were getting rid of parts of a dead deer.
On December 1, 2014, Stoldt’s trial began. Attorneys learned that an hour before the murder she had purchased rubber gloves, plastic wrap, and saw blades. Prosecutors presented the motive as greed. As long as the Social Security Administration thought Jimmy was alive, $900 monthly checks would be direct-deposited into her and Jimmy’s joint account, according to “Floribama Murders.”
On December 5, 2014, Stoldt was found guilty. She was sentenced to life in prison.
