Some days are Sunny, others are a B*tch

30 day Blogging-Nov 4, 2021

We've all heard of people who mysteriously 'go missing'. Tonight, write about a person who 'goes missing'. Someone that you read about in the newspaper or online, but nobody seems to know them, or remember them.


The following story was truly the end of innocence for me. It happened 2 days before my 12th birthday (October 14, 1965) and in my city. It happened at Lenox Square, an almost new shopping mall in the upscale Buckhead district. People went there to browse in exclusive shops and eat in nice restaurants. It was well-lit, and even at night it was usually full of people. My Mom had just started working there at Rich’s department store and we used to eat at the S&S cafeteria where Mary Shotwell Little often ate lunch. When I was 16, I started working at Rich's also and I can remember thinking about Mary as I walked alone at 9 or 10pm through the covered parking to my car.

Mary was 25, an attractive hard-working secretary at the C&S Bank on Mitchell Street downtown who had been married to a bank examiner only six weeks. She was close to her family and had no enemies. And she was last seen in one of the safest public places in Atlanta. She vanished in an autumn haze of tantalizing clues: flowers from a secret admirer, a bloody car that allegedly had been moved in broad daylight, papers signed after her disappearance. Little even left a trail, stretching hundreds of miles into another state.

And with all these clues, sifted and re-sifted by an army of investigators, nobody ever learned what happened to her. It was the strangest disappearance in the history of the city. It frightened the public, embarrassed the politicians, baffled the best investigators. And it left the young woman’s loved ones broken-hearted.

The sensational mysterious story was on the local news every night, also on each of the three major public news broadcast in America. Every new clue was spoken about. Police and FBI agents always held to their initial hunch, that Little had been kidnapped and murdered. But they never found a body, never focused on a strong suspect, and most vexing of all, never came up with a coherent theory of what had happened. Conspiracies normally follow a pattern, and so do crimes of opportunity and crimes of passion. But the Little disappearance seemed to defy such rules of logic. It was in a class by itself.

A month after the disappearance, investigators got a lead that they expected to break the case wide open, but that instead led them to one of the strangest dead ends they had ever encountered.
They learned that Little's gasoline credit card had been used in North Carolina. According to records of an all-night gas station in Charlotte, Little's card had been used in the early morning of Oct. 15, just a few hours after she was last seen at Lenox Square. And the receipt bore what appeared to be her signature. And several hours later, in the late afternoon of the 15th, in Raleigh, the same card had been used again. The same signature was on it, and comparisons indicated it was hers.

The disappearance of Mary Shotwell Little became a part of Atlanta folklore. Every few years there would be a bogus lead, sparked more by the media than by police, and the strange story would be rehashed, but the lead would turn out to be a hoax or the product of an overactive imagination. Barring a deathbed confession or an accidental discovery, it is unlikely that Little's disappearance will ever be solved. The people who investigated the case are long retired, and many, like the main investigator Perry, are dead. So are many of Little's friends and relatives.

As time goes on, her name will become more legendary, but it will arouse painful recollections in fewer and fewer people. Memories will fade, and only the media clips will remain. On the Facebook page for "If you remember the Atlanta from 40 Years Ago..." , the case is often brought up.

But what of the vast police file on the case, one that filled a huge box? It met the same fate as Mary Shotwell Little. It’s been missing for years.