Carey Norton has been missing from Homosassa for three years, and the Citrus County Sheriff's Office says it still wants to hear from anyone with information about what happened to him. Norton, now 50, was last seen sometime between August 5 and August 9, 2023, in Homosassa, but he wasn't reported missing until September 10, 2023 — a gap of about a month that remains one of the case's unresolved questions.
The sheriff's office marked the anniversary of that missing person report with a public appeal, according to the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, which is actively investigating Norton's disappearance. Anyone with information is asked to call the agency's Major Crimes Unit at 352-249-2790. Tipsters who prefer to remain anonymous can instead contact Crime Stoppers of Citrus County at 1-888-ANY-TIPS (269-8477), and may be eligible for a reward for information that helps investigators.
Norton is described in official law enforcement missing person records as a 6-foot-2-inch, 150-pound white male with blue eyes and a bald head, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. He has distinguishing tattoos, including barbed wire on his right arm and a Grim Reaper design on his right ankle — identifiers investigators hope could still help someone recognize him or recall a sighting.
Truck Found Abandoned Deep in State Forest
A significant break in the investigation's geography came weeks after Norton was reported missing, when Citrus County sheriff's deputies located his vehicle abandoned inside the Withlacoochee State Forest near Inverness. The truck, a white Ford F-350 pickup bearing Florida license plate KPFM21, was found in September 2023, as reported by 352today. The discovery shifted investigators' focus away from Homosassa and into remote forest terrain many miles from where Norton was last known to be.
The Withlacoochee State Forest is not a small place to search. The forest spans approximately 157,479 acres across four Central Florida counties, and its Citrus Tract alone covers nearly 50,000 acres of dense, scrubby sandhill terrain near Inverness, according to Visit Florida. That scale presents real operational challenges for any search-and-rescue or forensic effort, and it remains unclear from available records whether investigators recovered forensic evidence or personal items from inside the truck, or whether search teams conducted a full grid search of the surrounding forest.
Case Logged Under Florida's Missing Person Statute
Norton's disappearance is logged under Citrus County Sheriff's Office case number 2023-8512. Florida law does not allow agencies to sit on missing person reports: under Florida Statute 937.021, law enforcement agencies statewide are required to accept and investigate missing person reports without delay and to treat all missing individuals as at-risk until information suggests otherwise, per the Cocoa Beach Police Department. That standard applies regardless of jurisdiction, meaning there's no mandatory waiting period before a report like Norton's should trigger an active investigation.
The sheriff's office has resources dedicated specifically to cases like this one. Its Cold Case Volunteer Unit pairs trained citizen volunteers with sworn major crimes detectives, having them comb through online databases and organize archival records to generate new investigative leads. The agency also draws on the Florida Sheriffs Association Cold Case Advisory Commission, a statewide collaborative body where regional homicide and missing person experts share resources and re-examine unresolved cases together.
An Older, Spread-Out County Complicates Tips
Citrus County, founded in 1887 and headquartered in Inverness, has been led by Sheriff David Vincent since he took office following his August 2024 election. The county had an estimated population of 171,666 as of 2025, and residents under 18 make up only about 14% of that population — an older, rural demographic spread across unincorporated communities like Homosassa and Inverness. That geographic spread can complicate tip-gathering in a county where neighbors and potential witnesses may be scattered miles apart.
Norton's case is one of thousands the state is still trying to close. As of February 2025, more than 3,200 individuals were actively registered as missing or endangered in Florida in the National Crime Information Center database, according to figures released by the Citrus County Sheriff's Office. Anniversary appeals like the one issued for Norton are one way agencies try to pull a single name back into public view among that much larger pool of open cases.
Norton's case isn't the only long-unsolved Citrus County disappearance involving an abandoned vehicle; Hoodline has also covered a 30-year Dunnellon mystery under similarly suspicious circumstances. Anyone with information about Carey Norton's disappearance is urged to contact the Citrus County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Unit or Crime Stoppers of Citrus County.
