A 31-year-old Marathon man has been arrested and charged with a previously-unsolved murder from 2008, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release on June 5.
Keith Devon White stands accused of killing 48-year-old Beth Neumeier when he was just 15 years old.
Following an extensive investigation in partnership with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Office of the State Attorney, Sheriff Rick Ramsay told the Weekly the suspect’s DNA was found on both a used condom and the shovel they believe was used to beat Neumeier to death.
Neumeier was known to have worked as a prostitute in Marathon before her death, the sheriff’s office said. Her body was found on May 4, 2008 buried underneath a mulch pile in a vacant lot on 24th Street in Marathon. She was identifiable only by fingerprints due to damage to her face.
“I hope this brings some closure for the people who knew her and appreciated her as a person,” Ramsay told the Weekly. “(White) was someone we looked at as a person of interest way back then, and that never changed. In the last few years, we’ve closed three or four long-term cold cases that were solved either due to new technologies or constantly working on these cases.”
White has an extensive arrest record in Monroe County, including a 2011 armed robbery charge and felony charges filed in January 2024 for lewd and lascivious behavior with a corrections facility employee present while he was already serving time for driving without a license.
White is currently being held in the county jail without bond. His arraignment date and legal representation were not immediately available.
