Florida 1975 cold case solved — arrest shocks community

In the summer of 1975, Hollywood, Florida felt safe—warm evenings, kids on bicycles, and two best friends, fourteen-year-old Darlene Zetterower and Barbara Schreiber, walking toward what should have been a simple sleepover. That night, they stepped out of Barbara’s home and vanished into the humid darkness.

A witness later recalled seeing the girls near a van occupied by two men—details too vague to become leads in an era before surveillance cameras and digital records. No one realized the danger until hours passed with no phone calls, no signs of the girls, and two terrified families pacing their living rooms through the night.

The next morning, a family fishing near a canal off U.S. 27 made a horrifying discovery—two bodies lying side by side along the embankment. Darlene and Barbara had been shot. Their clothing was intact, their belongings untouched. The dumping site, four miles north of Andytown, suggested familiarity with the Everglades and a deliberate attempt to delay discovery.

Investigators searched the remote scene, but the swampy terrain held few clues. No shell casings. No tire tracks. No useful physical evidence beyond the girls’ clothing, carefully collected and stored according to 1975 standards—procedures that would prove crucial decades later.

Weeks passed. Leads evaporated. And like so many cases of the era, the murders slipped into cold storage.

For nearly fifty years, Darlene’s and Barbara’s families carried their grief in silence, keeping their daughters’ memories alive even as public attention faded. But forensic science did not stand still. By the 1990s and 2000s, DNA technology was transforming cold case units across the United States. Broward County eventually revisited old evidence boxes—including the one containing the girls’ preserved clothing.

When the samples were tested, investigators finally got what they had waited decades to see: a DNA match.

The first perpetrator was identified as Robert Clark Keebler—a man whose name had never appeared in the original investigation. DNA placed him in direct contact with the girls. But there was a catch: Keebler had died in 2019.

After confirming the first match, detectives pushed forward and identified the second man in the van: Lawrence Stein. He too was dead, having passed away in 2005.

Their deaths meant the case could never go to trial, but the science was ironclad. If the men had been alive, charges would have been filed immediately.

At the sheriff’s press conference, officials announced that the case was solved through DNA and witness reconstruction. Families received the news privately—relief, pain, gratitude, and frustration all woven together. After nearly half a century, they finally had names.

Justice would not come in a courtroom. But truth had been delivered—and truth mattered.

The case of Darlene Zetterower and Barbara Schreiber now stands as a reminder of how carefully preserved evidence and modern DNA analysis can speak long after the dead stay silent. Two young girls lost their lives, but their story finally found its ending.