JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - New evidence in the murder case against Ronnie Hyde includes thousands of pages of documents, FBI records and hundreds of photographs of his homes.
Among the material photographed as it was removed by police investigators: six discs of apparent child pornography, a homemade display of sex offender mugshots, and numerous photos of his squalid homes in Jacksonville Beach and Jacksonville’s Eastside.
Hyde is charged with the murder and dismemberment of 16-year-old Fred Laster. The teen’s torso was found near a Lake City dumpster in 1994, but that crime remained unsolved for more than two decades.
Hyde was a youth pastor at the Strength for Living Church in Jacksonville, and friend of the Laster family. The teen’s disappearance was reported to police in 1994, but was not connected to the torso until 2016, when a tip to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children resulted in a DNA match with Laster’s family.
Investigators obtained a sample of Hyde’s DNA by going through his trash. They say it matched a second DNA sample recovered from a flannel shirt found with the discarded torso and other items.
Photos released May 11, 2018 in Ronnie Hyde case
Hyde has been in the Duval County Jail since March 2017 charged with murder, and has since been charged with possession of child porn. He has pleaded not guilty.
The discovery release also includes a list of "potentially relevant" other cases that includes two teens, Mark Degner and Bryan Hayes, who ran away from Paxon Middle School 13 years ago and have never been located.
Investigators believe evidence indicates Laster was probably killed at Hyde’s Jacksonville Beach home, but the FBI also searched property he owns at 2076 Thelma St. in Jacksonville.