A couple of items have been added since the elderly hospital volunteer last lived there. A basketball goal stands in the front yard and a football helmet hangs from a wishing well outside.
But the light green paint on the home is the same. And many of the plants Sanford, 73, may have been watering the day she was murdered are in bloom.
Three days after she was last heard from, Sanford was found dead in her home, the door left unlocked.
The homicide was brutal, according to investigators. Sanford had been tied up, beaten and strangled to death sometime between Aug. 12 and Aug. 15, 1997.
"There wasn't anything she was doing to provoke any of this, as far as we know," said Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office Investigator Keith Matz. "To be strangled is violent."
Investigators still don't know when Sanford died or how long her assailant was with her. The killer remains unidentified.
"The whole thing just broke our hearts," said Jane Shirley, whose husband was the pastor of the church Sanford attended. "We just loved her so much."
'She wouldn't
hurt a flea'
Sanford was a widow with a predictable schedule. Tuesdays she went to Bible study, Wednesdays and Thursdays she volunteered at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center. Friends called her "Bell." Sanford attended Sanctuary of Praise Assembly of God Church on Racetrack Road for about as long as she'd lived in her home in Wright -- 30 years.
"She went to church every time the doors opened," said Faith Lechaton, secretary for the church. "She liked to work in her yard. She was a sweetheart. She really was."
When she was killed, Sanford had been a volunteer at the hospital for three years. She had donated about 650 hours of her time working in the mammography unit and distributing mail.
"That's how I met her," recalled Sanford's friend, Jane Jergenson, another volunteer. "She was very nice and easy to get along with."
Shirley called Sanford "spry," and said when they were neighbors she'd often see the slim woman taking walks around the neighborhood.
"She'd always have a stick with her to fight the dogs off," Shirley said. "Truth is, though, she wouldn't hurt a flea."
Sanford had three children, Sandra Roche in Pensacola, another daughter in Illinois, and a son in Texas.
Roche described her mother as self-sufficient. She said Sanford ran her own errands and had lived on her own for more than four years before her murder.
"It's a shame they never found who killed her," Jergenson said.
It was a violent death
Because she kept to such a routine, Sanford's friends noticed when she didn't show up for her Tuesday women's Bible study group on Aug. 12, 1997.
"My mother (Lilly Taylor) may have been the last one to talk to her before she was found dead," Lechaton said, adding that the pair called often to check up on each other.
Lechaton said Sanford had been tending to her plants outside before calling Taylor the morning of Aug. 12. Then something unusual happened.
"She cut her off," Lechaton said. "She said, 'I gotta go now,' and hung up. My mother thought it was really strange. She'd never done that before."
When one of Sanford's other friends drove by her home later that night, her car wasn't in the driveway.
"Every time she'd go out of town, she'd let someone know," Lechaton said.
Even though it was out of character for Sanford to leave without telling someone, those who knew her assumed she'd probably gone to run errands or visit one of her children out of town.
But after Sanford didn't show up for her volunteer shift at Fort Walton Beach Medical Center and Roche couldn't reach her by phone, Sanford's pastor sent his daughter-in-law to check on his parishioner.
With Sanford's car still absent, the woman found the door to the mobile home unlocked.
"She thought there was something horribly wrong," Judy Shirley said.
The woman found a neighbor for help and they called Sanford's nearest child, Roche. Roche called the Sheriff's Office. Just after 8 p.m. Aug. 15, 1997, deputies found Sanford dead -- strangled in her home.
"They told us she'd been beaten and raped," Shirley recalled. "They wouldn't let her daughter go in to see her.''
Neighbors reported not seeing anything out of the ordinary and not hearing any screams for help.
Sanford's hands had been bound behind her with her pantyhose in a series of knots and loops. There were bruises, cuts and swelling on Sanford's face and head indicating blunt force trauma, according to a medical examiner's autopsy report. She also had rib fractures and there was evidence she may have been sexually assaulted, according to the medical examiner's report.
Even with all those injuries, it was three loops of pantyhose around Sanford's neck that killed her.
The medical examiner wrote in his report, "... Pluma Bell Sanford died as a result of asphyxia secondary to ligature strangulation. The manner of death is homicide."
About 12 hours after Sanford was found dead, her gold four-door Dodge was found parked at the Wright Shopping Center at the corner of Beal Parkway and Racetrack Road. It was left less than a mile from Sanford's home and even closer to her church.
"It was a total shock to everybody," Lechaton said. "We couldn't believe it. Who would have done that to her?"
Even now, Shirley feels guilty about not checking on her friend sooner, especially because she was given the impression by investigators that even though she was last heard from on Tuesday, some time might have passed before she died.
Sanford's autopsy report conducted the Saturday after she was found stated rigor mortis wasn't present. The stiffening of the body begins to set in about three hours after death, but goes away after about 72 hours.
"She could have been in there alive," Shirley said. "Had she been in there all that time? Maybe we could have helped. I wish we had gone by."
DNA was no help
Investigators chased many leads in the months after Sanford's murder, but none panned out.
"Everybody back then had their own theories," Matz said. "Since then, though, there've been no leads at all. It's a shame ... nothing."
Matz has been working on the Sanford case since 2005. He's combed through all the evidence and witness statements time and again.
DNA evidence taken at the scene points to a male assailant, but investigators haven't been able to match the evidence to anyone.
"We've got people upon people we've gotten DNA samples from," Matz said.
But DNA taken from friends, relatives, neighbors and known criminals haven't returned any matches. And even though the DNA evidence has been re-evaluated to meet current standards, it hasn't matched anything in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database.
"He (the killer) just stayed clean after that, or hasn't committed a crime violent enough to have a DNA sample taken from him," Matz said.
Investigators have even sifted through evidence in a similar case to check for a connection.
Jewel Summerlin Melvin, 71, was murdered in mid-May 1998. She, like Sanford, lived alone and was found strangled to death in her Crestview home. The women shared the same faith and Melvin's car was also taken and later abandoned.
Despite the similarities, investigators see no definite link in the two unsolved homicides.
There are a few facts about the case Matz can't talk about, however. He said it is information that probably wouldn't jog any witness memories, but it will help investigators identify the assailant.
"There are a lot of people in jail who just want the notoriety," Matz said to explain the need to keep the information secret.
The unsolved case is frustrating to Sanford's friends and law enforcement.
"We know what happened. It's just finding that person to ask, 'Why?' " Matz said.
Lechaton said she's kept newspaper articles about Sanford in hopes that one day she'll add one about the killer being caught.
"It's very upsetting someone would do this to such a beautiful, wonderful lady," Lechaton said. "Her family deserves to know what happened. We all do."
Daily News Staff Writer Robbyn Brooks can be reached at 863-1111, Ext. 1445.
To see more of the Northwest Florida Daily News or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.nwfdailynews.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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