After remaining unidentified for 52 years following his murder, Mack Lavelle Proctor will finally receive a proper burial in Polk County. Proctor, whose body was discovered by a fisherman in 1972 between Lake Lulu and Lake Ship, was originally interred in a pauper's grave as investigators struggled to uncover his identity. The breakthrough in identifying Proctor came earlier this year, when Polk County Sheriff's Office detectives leveraged advanced forensic genetic genealogy techniques, as reported by WFLA.
Polk Sheriff’s Charities, Inc., and Gentry-Morrison Funeral Home will host a burial service complete with a headstone at Lakeside Memorial Park, set for 10 a.m. on Tuesday. The detectives from the PCSO Cold Case Homicide Unit who cracked the case, Detectives Jason McPherson and Matthew Newbold, will serve as pallbearers, giving a final tribute to a man whose life was brutally taken without name or story for decades. "We can finally bring peace and closure to Mr. Proctor’s family now that he has been identified due to the hard work of our detectives and DNA samples from his family," Sheriff Grady Judd stated in a sentiment obtained by both Tampa Free Press and Winter Haven Daily.
The service will also be accompanied by words from Sheriff Grady Judd, with the ceremony itself officiated by a PCSO chaplain. While Proctor’s son, now aged 77, is unable to attend the service due to health issues, the resolution of this long-standing mystery has provided him with a measure of solace. "His son is finally at peace knowing what happened and where his father is located," Judd further explained on WFLA. The generosity of the local community has been cited as instrumental in ensuring that Proctor's memory is honored appropriately.
Details surrounding Proctor's demise paint a grim picture of his last moments: shot twice in the head and left without identification near a canal. Proctor had last been seen by his family in Georgia sometime between 1969 and 1972, but was inexplicably unreported as missing to law enforcement, as WFLA details in their report. Suspects Clarence Ingram and Edgar Todd, who have since died, were later identified as his murderers.
