Newly released autopsy results confirm that a Lanett woman found dead alongside her boyfriend this week died from strangulation, Chambers County officials announced Thursday.
The victims have been identified as 47-year-old Jessica Folds of Lanett and 44-year-old Daniel Robbins, 44, of Macon, Georgia. Chambers County District Attorney Mike Segrest confirmed the pair were in a dating relationship at the time of the deaths.
Investigators now believe Robbins strangled Folds and was moving her body when a sudden heart attack killed him at the scene, according to officials who reviewed the autopsy findings.
The grim discovery unfolded Wednesday afternoon when Chambers County deputies were called to a wooded stretch near County Road 86, just off Highway 50 in Lanett.
Dispatchers received the call at 12:20 p.m. after someone reported spotting two unresponsive people in the brush near the roadway.
Arriving deputies found Folds and Robbins lying near one another just off the road, partially concealed by dense vegetation.
Sheriff Jeff Nelson said investigators do not believe the wooded site was where the killing actually took place, but rather where Robbins intended to leave her body.
A Ford pickup truck sat abandoned nearby in the roadway, its headlights still shining and the driver’s door left wide open — a detail investigators say points to a scene interrupted mid-act.
According to Nelson, deputies noted that Folds’ hands were positioned above her head when she was found, while Robbins’ body was curled into a fetal position just beside her.
A drag path leading to the bodies further supported investigators’ theory that the remains had been transported to the location rather than killed there.
Remarkably, the person who first discovered the scene and contacted authorities said he initially believed he was looking at two mannequins rather than human bodies.
Folds had lived only a short distance from where her body was ultimately found, placing her within her own community at the time of her death.
Robbins, on the other hand, was not a local resident and had traveled to Alabama from south Georgia before the killing occurred.
His ex-wife later told investigators that Robbins had a documented history of heart problems, a detail that lines up with officials’ account of his sudden collapse.
At the request of the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office, special agents with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s State Bureau of Investigation were called in to open a formal death investigation.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has since taken over as the lead agency on the case, working in coordination with both local deputies and the FBI.
As of Thursday, authorities had not disclosed a possible motive behind the killing or detailed what led to the fatal encounter between the couple.
No additional suspects have been named, and investigators have given no indication that anyone beyond Robbins is considered responsible for Folds’ death.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has not announced a timetable for when the investigation will be completed or when further updates will be released to the public.
Officials say the case remains open as agents continue working to reconstruct the events that preceded the discovery of both bodies along the rural roadway.
