Middle Georgia Cold Cases: Friday’s Fate

UNADILLA, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Agents with the GBI are still trying to track down the killer in a 25-year-old murder. It’s a Middle Georgia Cold Case.

15-year-old Shane Friday was strangled to death. His body was discovered in a ditch in Dooly County in September 1991.

A truck driver saw something in the bushes while he was getting off an exit near Unadilla.

“He thought it was actually a pile of clothing laying on the side of the interstate ramp,” Tori Peacock, an investigating agent with the GBI, said.

It wasn’t.

It was Friday’s body. Investigators found marks around his neck. Who killed him?

Several months passed before agents were able to identify Friday.

“Most of the time you would think it would be someone from around this general area, maybe Middle Georgia, maybe Atlanta,” Peacock said.

After several months of searches and articles in the newspapers nearby, agents got a lead on the name.

“For a boy to be all the way in Dooly County, Georgia all the way from Michigan, someone had to bring him there,” said Peacock.

According to reports in the investigation, Friday was a runaway from Flint, Michigan on his way to Florida to visit a friend.

His mother reported him missing a day before his body was discovered.

Peacock says the scene was unusual.

Friday was wearing a MC Hammer t-shirt, jeans, but his shoes were missing. Agents didn’t find any other clues.

“It would have been a lot easier to find out quickly who this child was. Now with the media and the Internet if a child, especially if they’ve potentially been abducted, then we would know about it almost instantly,” Peacock said.

Investigators say they think Friday’s body had been in that ditch for at least eight hours — an opportunity for whoever committed the crime to be long gone.

“Any evidence that may have been available, may not be available anymore,” Peacock said.

A frustrating feeling for agents looking to solve this unsolved mystery of the boy running from home who never made it to his destination.

If you have information on what happened to Shane Friday, call the GBI Perry Office at (478) 987-4545.