The Unsolved: Who killed Ocoee's Mary Zosel?

Ocoee’s Mary Zosel was the neighborhood mom.

She was a stay-at-home mom with two children, John and Cindy, who attended Ocoee Elementary School, Ocoee Middle School and West Orange High School, and always were inviting friends over to the house on Franklin Street.

“She was the mom who was there when the kids got off the school bus or got home,” Ocoee retired detective Michelle Grogan said. “She was the making-cookies mom. … She was always the mom who had food. She always loved Mountain Dew, so the kids could come over and drink Mountain Dew. She would sit at her computer at night or during the day and just anybody could walk in and out.”

She always left the doors open for friends and family. And that’s how Ocoee police detectives believe more than one individual entered Zosel’s home the night of April 30, 2016, and murdered Zosel in commission of an armed robbery. 

Since that night, the Ocoee Police Department has not been able to close the case, arrest the murderers and give justice to the Zosel family.

But the department, especially Grogan, who investigates cold cases for the department in her retirement, has not given up. 

A “targeted home invasion”

On April 30, 2016, Ocoee Police Department responded to Zosel’s home after her daughter, Cindy, called 911 stating there was something wrong with her mom. 

Upon arrival, officers found Mary Zosel on the floor of the master bedroom and began life-saving measures. She then was transported to Orlando Health — Health Central Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Officers at the time said it appeared Zosel, who was going legally blind, had sustained an injury to her head, and there was a lot of blood at the scene, but they weren’t certain of the injury until an autopsy confirmed blunt trauma to the head. It had been revealed she was beaten with an object numerous times.

“She was savagely beaten,” Grogan said. “This was not, ‘We just knocked her on the head’. This was savage. Nobody deserved to die that way in their own bedroom, in their pajamas and have your daughter find you.”

Her time of death was determined to be between 10 p.m. and midnight April 30, 2016.

After detectives spoke with Zosel’s husband, they discovered there were items missing from the home, including guns and ammo from a stand-up safe located just inside the back door and visible from outside the back French doors. A Centurion model CE12 safe — measuring about 5 feet tall, 21 inches wide and 19 inches deep — also was missing from the master bedroom closet, and it was not visible from outside the home. The safe contained $16,000, Social Security cards, jewelry, deeds and numerous firearms, some of which were antiques.

“It was a targeted home invasion,” Grogan said. 

Because of the safe’s size, police believe more than one individual was involved in the crime. 

In a tight-knit community where people felt it was safe to leave their doors unlocked, Grogan said Zosel’s murder shook the community. Grogan, a police officer at the time, said she couldn’t go anywhere in the community without someone talking to her about the case.

“We really tried to make our presence known, driving through neighborhoods, parking in neighborhoods, always being active, always being approachable to people,” Grogan said. 

Grogan said community members such as Debra Nix, the owner of Franco’s Pizzeria who has since died, kept a photo of Zosel in the window of the local eatery. Nix invited police to speak with individuals about the case at the pizza place, giving a slice of pizza and a drink to entice people to come forward and make them feel comfortable speaking to the police. 

“She wanted it solved just as much as anybody else,” Grogan said of Nix. “It is a tight-knit community of people that lived down there.”

Although some people came forward to share information, Grogan said others were unwilling to cooperate. 

What made matters worse, Grogan said, was members of the public turning on and blaming the victim’s family. 

“That was an unfortunate thing about this case; they blamed somebody in the family,” she said. “We see that with all kinds of crimes that here’s this grieving family and the public will turn on them. … The family has had to live with that, and we’re just trying to figure this out to give the family some peace.”

That’s when Ocoee Police Department’s Victim Advocate Michelle Norman works with the family to offer services and resources. 

Investigation continues

Just as she does with every cold case, Grogan first joined forces with others in the department to work as a team to go over all the evidence initially collected in the case. They determine what could be sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to be processed and tested using new technology. 

Grogan said she couldn’t disclose the type of evidence that was sent to FDLE, but they did find evidence containing DNA. 

Everyone in the family has been cleared as suspects. Zosel’s husband was at work, her daughter was out of the home, and her son was working as a long-haul trucker, Grogan said. Moreover, the family members’ DNA did not match collected evidence.

The new evidence is reinvigorating for Grogan, especially with new technology, such as genetic genealogy, becoming available over the past decade. 

The department worked with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to use sonar to search Starke and Deep lakes in August 2025.

As she and her colleagues wait for the evidence to be processed, they’re continuing down other avenues of the investigation. They’re speaking with officers at the scene then who now are supervisors in the department and speaking with people in the community again to see if they remember anything new. 

“We are hoping that somebody comes forward,” she said. “We do have some people that we want to talk to.”

Grogan also is working with an analyst from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI and she is hoping the analyst will be able to create a profile on the suspects.