The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office is charging two suspects, Michael McCombs and Steven Kimmons, both of Milton, in the 1998 homicide of Jewel Summerlin Melvin. Charges include first degree murder and burglary with assault or battery. However, the OCSO says the investigation is not over.
On May 15, 1998 the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) responded to the home of Jewel Summerlin Melvin at 2345 West James Lee Boulevard in Crestview according to reports. Melvin’s son Eddie had discovered her body, reports said, on her bedroom floor around 5:15 p.m. The 71-year-old victim was positioned between her bed and the doorway with the top mattress pulled off the bed to partially conceal her according to reports. In addition to OCSO and FDLE sworn personnel, OCSO and FDLE crime scene personnel were also sent to the scene.
Reports said there was evidence of beating and strangulation. Several drawers were pulled open and the bedroom ransacked, reports said, and her blue four-door Mercury Marquis was missing from the driveway.
Reports said the car turned up seven miles from Melvin’s home in a rural area west of Crestview, abandoned near Highway 90 and Wilkerson Bluff Road in Holt. A realtor looking at property in the surrounding area discovered the car, reports said, appearing stuck in sand and timber debris.
Beginning around May 28, 1998, reports said, McCombs became a person of interest in this investigation based on a witness who placed McCombs in the Baker community shortly after the discovery of Melvin’s body. The Baker community is relevant to this homicide investigation, according to reports, because of the short distance between where the victim’s vehicle was recovered and the location of where Michael McCombs was seen. On January 29, 1999, additional information implicated McCombs and “the Kimmons brothers,” as suspects involved with the murder. The information also identified the “Kimmons brothers” as being Steven and Timothy Kimmons, residents of
East Milton.
Over the course of a sixteen year investigation, the OCSO reported, numerous witnesses were located and subsequently interviewed. The information provided by witnesses further implicated and or identified McCombs and Steven Earl Kimmons as the persons responsible for the murder of Jewel Melvin. The information provided also coincided with the crime scene and the methodology leading to Mrs. Melvin’s death.
Beginning July 30 of this year, information, developed as a result of this investigation, was presented to a Grand Jury in and for Okaloosa County. August 1, a “True Bill” indictment was returned for McCombs and Kimmons for first degree murder and burglary of dwelling with person assaulted resulting in death.
Currently, 50-year-old Kimmons is being held in the Santa Rosa County jail by the Milton Police Department on a sexual assault charge with a victim 12 years of age or older without bond. McCombs, also 50, was transferred from the Santa Rosa County jail to Okaloosa County Jail Tuesday.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Milton men charged in ’98 cold case