Local

Husband ran off to Costa Rica with nanny after wife’s south GA murder, GBI says

NOW PLAYING ABOVE

COFFEE COUNTY, Ga. — Nearly 20 years after Doris Worrell was shot and killed inside the business she ran with her husband, he has been charged with murder.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now releasing more details about the days leading up to and after Doris Worrell, then 39, was killed in September 2006.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

The GBI says that before she died, Doris and Jon Worrell, now 58, were having marital problems, many of which stemmed from Jon Worrell’s “inappropriate relationship” with the live-in nanny.

Investigators say that instead of going through a divorce and potentially losing his children, Jon Worrell began looking into having his wife killed.

When Doris Worrell was found shot to death inside Jon’s Sports Park, the business the couple ran together in Douglas, Ga., Jon Worrell claimed that he left to go run errands and when he returned, his wife was dead.

TRENDING STORIES:

The GBI says that when the community began suspecting he may have been involved, he moved the family to Fernandina Beach, Florida. A short time later, they say he moved to Costa Rica.

At some point, the nanny was deported to Venezuela. But after the family moved to Costa Rica, she was able to join them there.

The GBI says Jon Worrell and the former nanny raised the children there. But when the couple ended their relationship, Jon Worrell moved back to the U.S., where the children attend college.

He was arrested in Maryville, Missouri, where he currently lived, and is awaiting extradition to Coffee County, Georgia.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

1