Improved forensic technology, persistence combine to solve cold case
By Mike McCombs
The Island News
Benjamin Franklin once said, “energy and persistence conquer all things.”
With a little help from science, Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) Cold Case Investigator Bob Bromage appears to have proven Franklin correct.
The BCSO held a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 19, 2025, to announce that almost four decades after the murder of 34-year-old Margit Schuller in 1987, 76-year-old Cortez Sabino Lake of Beaufort has been arrested and charged in connection with the killing.
The arrest is a direct result of the BCSO’s Cold Case Review and improved forensic technology over the past 38 years.
Investigators served Lake with an arrest warrant for murder on Tuesday, Nov. 18. He remains in custody at the Beaufort County Detention Center with a bond hearing pending with a Circuit Court judge at a later date.
The victim
Margit G. Schuller was born June 21, 1953 in Gardony, Hungary. A cardiac nurse, she married Jozsef Schuller and they had a daughter. The family immigrated to the United States in 1982.
When Jozsef Schuller joined the U.S. Navy, the family moved from Alabama to Beaufort, where he was stationed at Parris Island.
At the time of Margit’s murder, Jozsef Schuller, a Navy corpsman, was on assignment in San Diego.
The crime
At around 8:45 p.m., on Sunday, Nov. 1, 1987, BCSO deputies responded to the Palmetto Apartments in Burton where Schuller had been found shot to death near the complex’s laundry room, where she had been last seen folding laundry.
When Schuller’s 12-year-old daughter went looking for her after she was late coming back to her apartment, she found her dead in a pool of blood under a nearby tree, shot to death.
“She was shot actually inside the laundromat and crawled her way out,” Bromage said.
A second blood trail diverged from Schuller’s blood trail back toward the end of the apartment complex indicating to investigators that the killer had been wounded, as well.
“We’re not sure how he was wounded at this point, but we know he was injured as he left a blood trail,” Bromage said.
Investigators developed persons of interest but could definitively link no one to the crime.
The weapon
Two years after her murder, the French-made .22 caliber pistol that was used to kill Margit Schuller was found by construction workers at the future site of a hotel on U.S. 21 near Robert Smalls Parkway.
Discovering the murder weapon brought investigators no closer to solving the crime.
According to Sheriff P.J. Tanner, the gun wasn’t a common make with no criminal record tied to it. Apparently, the manufacturing plant where the gun was made no longer even exists, having burned down years before the crime.
As years pass, the science gets better
Investigators collected critical blood evidence from the scene, even though it would be years before they could do much more than determine the killer’s blood type.
“Now, back in ’87, there wasn’t DNA [testing],” Bromage said. “There was blood typing, so that was not a specific and sensitive as the technology we have today.”
Slowly that changed.
Before 1999, Bromage said, you needed a lot of blood to develop any sort of DNA profile. But by 1999, “you needed only a minute amount of DNA to be able to produce a robust profile.”
A Ph.D. at the State Law Enforcement Division lab, Gray Amick, told the BCSO, “I see the blood, but I can’t develop a profile. I don’t know why, but if you resubmit it in a few years, we should have better technology.”
A few years later, Amick was then in charge of the Richland County Sheriff’s Office in Columbia. He told Bromage, “I want another try.”
The BCSO resubmitted the evidence in 2005, and Amick developed a robust profile belonging to an unknown male. It was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
Eventually, all original persons of interest in the case were eliminated based on DNA evidence.
In 2019, investigators sent DNA evidence to Parabon Nanolabs for advanced analysis. Through its advanced analysis, Parabon developed composite sketches of what the suspect may have looked like at ages 25 and 55.
Parabon also began to analyze potential connections due to familial relations.
The Cold Case Committee
In 1999, when P.J. Tanner took office as Beaufort County Sheriff, he started reviewing cold cases with a committee, headed up by Bromage, now a reserve deputy and the public safety director for Hilton Head Island.
The committee, made up of retired law enforcement officer and others from all walks of life, meets regularly and picks at unsolved cases from as many different angles as they can, trying to shed new light on any details that may lead to the resolution of a case.
“[We] started the cold case review in 1999,” said Bromage, a retired Major. “Since [then] we’ve solved four cases and have a partial resolution in another case from 1995., I will say this — stable, progressive leadership leads to the successful resolution of these cases. Changing leadership, it may have gotten lost in transition. So having an active cold case program for 26 years now has been very effective. And I want to acknowledge Sheriff Tanner’s leadership and the leadership of Mark Orlando, the Hilton Island Town manager for supporting this program.”
Bromage enlisted the help of one of these cold case volunteers to dig into potential biological connections in the evidence that might connect someone to the crime.
“I have a particular volunteer that … you talk about volunteerism, I mean, it’s amazing, the amount of hours, the countless hours, that go into this,” Bromage said. “She was able to identify Maria Telles-Gonzalez in 2022. She had been an unidentified murder victim for 27 years. Amazing. So, after that case, she goes, ‘Bob, I’d like to I’d like to try this case.’”
Eventually, after countless hours of research, the volunteer reached a conclusion in Margit Schuller’s murder – the killer was likely 76-year-old Cortez Sabino Lake of Beaufort.
Who is Cortez Sabino Lake?
Lake lived in the Battery Creek Apartments at the time of the murder in 1987, maybe 600 to 800 feet from the laundry room, according to Bromage. Originally from Illinois, Lake was a corpsman in the U.S. Navy serving in a dental clinic on Parris Island.
“He would have known who Margaret Schuler was,” Bromage said. “He would have had access to the laundromat. We were able to establish he did live there.”
Despite the fact that both Lake and Jozsef Schuller were Navy corpsmen, Schuller has no recollection of crossing paths with Lake while they were both in Beaufort.
After his separation in 1988, he was employed at Beaufort Memorial Hospital as a respiratory therapist, and retired after more than 30 years.
The arrest
Investigator Adam Drayson, the first partner Bromage said he’s ever had in a cold case investigation, went to speak to Lake about the crime. Bromage said Lake was surprised by the visit.
“Not to get into too much, but we did not receive cooperation from that that we were looking for,” Bromage said. “We brought him back in. This time I came over from Hilton Head, and we sat with the subject. Again, he did not want to cooperate, but we were able to obtain DNA, not with his cooperation, but we obtained DNA.”
Bromage wouldn’t go into detail about how the investigators got a DNA sample, but when they did, they submitted it to the BCSO Forensic Services Lab. He said several days later, the lab called and asked if they were buying lottery tickets, saying, “he’s it!”
Bromage and Drayson obtained a search warrant from a circuit court judge to obtain to compel Cortez Lake to provide DNA. Once again, the BCSO Forensic Services Lab found Lake to be a perfect match to blood from the 38-year-old crime scene.
Drayson obtained a warrant for Lake’s arrest, serving it Tuesday, Nov. 18. Investigstors believe sexual assault was the motive in this case.
“There was evidence found at the scene,” Bromage said, “and the victim, of course, her appearance when she was found would indicate sexual assault was going to be the motive.
Tanner said Lake, who lives with a woman, has essentially been hiding in plain sight for 38 years.
It’s possible he has committed other crimes, though he has virtually no criminal record.
“Lake has lived in Beaufort County ever since this incident occurred,” Sheriff Tanner said. “So we believe that there are people out there that would have information, so we really encourage people to come forward and tell us whatever they might know about him or anything that’s happened since the murder occurred.”
If there are other victims of crimes Lake may have committed, Tanner encourages them to come forward. Anyone with information is asked to call Cold Case Investigator Bob Bromage at 843-816-8013.
For those wishing to remain anonymous, tips can be submitted through Crime Stoppers of Beaufort County at the P3 Tips App (mobile) or online at tipsbft.com or at 844-TIPS-BFT (844-847-7238).
Mike McCombs is the editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
