A woman disappeared during a dispute with her contractor over an unfinished job at her home before her body was found in construction bags at a landfill months later, Florida authorities said.
Now, a jury has found 49-year-old Corey Binderim guilty of first-degree murder , burglary and tampering with evidence, the Office of the State Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida said Oct. 14.
McClatchy News reached out to Binderim’s attorney for comment Oct. 15 and did not immediately receive a response.
Susan Mauldin, 65, paid Binderim $12,000 to remodel her bathroom in Fleming Island in early 2019, Clay County Sheriff’s Office deputies wrote in an arrest affidavit.
Binderim then demolished Mauldin’s bathroom but never finished the project, failing to show up for work as scheduled and giving months of excuses, deputies said.
Mauldin fired him in fall 2019 and told him he owed her $12,000 or she would pursue legal action, authorities said.
He was supposed to go to her home Oct. 23 to drop off a check but didn’t show up, according to deputies. The next day, he went to Home Depot at about 7 a.m. and bought contractor demo bags and concrete mix before going to her home an hour later, prosecutors said.
He called her twice and she picked up both times in the last communication on her phone, which investigators believe was then turned off.
Cameras show Binderim backing up into her driveway at about 8 a.m., deputies said. He’s then accused of no longer sharing his location on an app and driving to his home, and then a landfill, before dumping about 300 pounds of waste and going back home.
Next, he went to a storage unit and dropped off tools that he had retrieved from Mauldin’s home, according to deputies.
Mauldin’s friend reported her missing the next day after all her calls went to voicemail and she didn’t answer her door, deputies said.
When law enforcement searched her home, they reported finding blood on the floor and lampshade in the living room, as well as blood in the kitchen.
The sheriff’s office put out calls for information to help find the missing woman .
Then, in late January 2020, about three months after Mauldin disappeared, investigators searched a landfill in Georgia where Clay County waste is taken and said they found her remains in contractor demo bags.
Binderim was charged with murder.
During the trial, broadcast by Court TV, Binderim’s defense argued no DNA evidence connects him to the killing, implying someone else killed her.
“The proof of that is the foreign DNA under Susan Mauldin’s fingernail. The nail that had no blood, the nail that was found with the body inside those bags,” his attorney said in closing statements. “Those bags that had no foreign DNA on them. That nail had the flesh, the skin, of whoever killed Susan Mauldin.”
He called it a “circumstantial evidence case.”
Binderim faces the death penalty or life in prison at his Oct. 16 sentencing hearing, prosecutors said.
Clay County is part of the Jacksonville metropolitan area.
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