ATLANTA — The FBI is adding to a reward for information on who killed Russell and Shirley Dermond nearly ten years ago.

Russell and Shirley Dermond, an elderly couple, lived for 15 years inside the Reynolds Great Waters gated community in Eatonton, Georgia, on the banks of Lake Oconee.

Russell Dermond was last seen on May 1, 2014, running errands around town. Just five days later on May 6, when the Dermonds never showed up to a friend’s Kentucky Derby party, the couple’s neighbors called 911 to report a gruesome discovery.

The body of Russell Dermond, 88, was found inside the garage of the couple’s 3,200-square-foot-home, slumped behind one of the couple’s cars. There was something else though – a detail that would propel this case into national headlines. Russell Dermond had been decapitated, and his head was nowhere to be found.

Shirley Dermond, who had been married to Russell for 62 years, was also missing. Her body would surface 10 days later, discovered about five miles from her home by a couple of fishermen on Lake Oconee. Mrs. Dermond’s body had been weighed down with 30-pound cement blocks.

An autopsy later revealed that Shirley Dermond, 87, was killed by multiple blows to the head with a blunt object.

At first, the murders appeared to be the work of professionals. Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said he initially assumed the beheading was meant to send a message. But the FBI couldn’t find any connections to the Dermonds in any of their investigations. The couple had no known enemies.

As the investigation got underway, Sheriff Sills soon ruled out the ‘profession hit theory’. His observation – Russell Dermond was most likely shot. There was gun residue on Mr. Dermond’s collar indicating that he was shot and the sheriff believes his head was removed because the killers knew the bullet could be traced. Russell’s head has yet to be found.

Every resident close to the Dermonds in the Reynolds Great Waters neighborhood has been questioned over the years and cleared of any involvement in the case.

The Dermonds had four children. In 2000, their oldest son Mark was killed in Atlanta in a drug deal gone wrong. Investigators have not found any connection between that crime and Russell and Shirley Dermond’s murders. Their other children – two sons in Florida and a daughter in North Carolina – all passed polygraphs, two of which were administered by the FBI, and nothing links them to the crimes.

“It must have just been a moment of horror, and probably a very long moment of horror, unfortunately,” the Dermonds’ son, Brad Dermond said, through tears during a recent interview with Channel 2. “From the moment that we were notified of this, we were in total horror.”

The FBI has confirmed that it has added $20,000 to the reward for information that leads to an arrest in the case. That brings the full amount for the reward in this case to $25,000.

The reward increase follows an announcement that new DNA evidence had surfaced in the investigation.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told Channel 2′s Mark Winne that he ordered more testing to be done, but the new evidence is the most promising lead in the case in the last decade. Winne spoke with Cox Media Group’s Nicole Bennett last spring about his time covering the murders at Lake Oconee. Listen to the full interview here.

“We’re still just totally in the dark as to why this took place,” Brad Dermond said.

Brad Demond said the new evidence is giving him a sliver of hope that his parents’ killer will be found.

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