The final news from the murder case that haunted Anna Maria Island for seven years is grim.
The hands of Sabine Musil-Buehler were crossed behind her back before she was buried in a sandy grave, according to autopsy results released by the District 12 Medical Examiner.
The autopsy also indicates Musil-Buehler was beaten, strangled and murdered — and that blunt impact to her torso compressed her sternum from front to back.
“The hands are noted to be located behind the back and crossed at the midline as if previously held/bound by ligature, which is likely decomposed,” associate Medical Examiner Daniel L. Schultz stated in a March 23 report released April 28.
William J. Cumber III confessed Oct. 15, 2015, to the Nov. 4, 2008, murder of Musil-Buehler. She co-owned Haley’s Motel, 8102 Gulf Drive, Holmes Beach, with estranged husband Tom Buehler.
Facing life in prison, Cumber took a plea deal for a 20-year sentence in exchange for a statement about the murder and where to find Musil-Buehler’s remains.
In his taped confession, Cumber said he acted alone, hitting his girlfriend “just two times” in the head in their apartment in the 200 block of Magnolia Avenue. Cumber said he choked Musil-Buehler “until she wasn’t moving.”
He said nothing about tying her arms behind her back or hitting her in the chest.
Cumber said they’d been arguing about his smoking and drinking and that she was attempting to end their relationship.
He stated in his confession that after strangling her, he rolled her in a sheet, placed her in the back seat of her Pontiac Sunbird convertible and drove to a beach access near Haley’s Motel.
Cumber picked up a shovel at the motel to bury the body after carrying it from the car to the beach.
About fractures in Musil-Buehler’s neck bones, Schultz reported, “Whether this represents trauma or not is unclear given the condition of tissue.”
The autopsy also indicates the possibility of the rib fractures occurring after she died.
The remains of Musil-Buehler were “an anatomically intact set of bones,” “fully skeletonized” and “infiltrated by sand and shell debris,” according to the report.
As to the evidence related to her body — including the Sunbird convertible recovered after being stolen from the Gator Lounge in Bradenton — the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office lead investigator on the case, John Kenney, now retired, said there was “quite of bit” of blood in the back seat and high speed blood traces on a wall in the Magnolia Avenue apartment.
Whether she was still alive when placed in the sandy grave, Kenney said, “We assumed she was dead, but we’re not sure.”
He said the back seat of the Sunbird was cut out, presumably to conceal the amount of blood where Cumber laid her.
The MCSO and Kenney conducted several searches on beaches in Anna Maria and near Galati Marine on the north end of Anna Maria Island after Musil-Buehler disappeared, but did not look in Holmes Beach.
Cumber led authorities to the skeletal remains near the 81st Street beach access the day he confessed.
The beach access is a block from Haley’s Motel where Cumber worked as a handyman off and on in 2005 and 2008.
An arson at Haley’s Motel destroyed a two-story building Nov. 16, 2008, less than two weeks after Musil-Buehler’s disappearance. The motel’s tools and a shovel that was likely used to bury Musil-Buehler, were stored there, according to Haley’s staff.
Cumber was a suspect in the arson but the state fire marshal’s office closed the case in 2011.
The arson case — with a 4-year statute of limitations — was not a topic of questioning for the plea deal and confession.
Cumber is at Lake Correctional Institution near Orlando with an earliest possible release date of October 2029.