Mary Little was a newlywed who vanished from a shopping center parking lot in Atlanta, Georgia on October 14, 1965. Her husband of six weeks had been out of town and was expected back home the next day. Mary had went to the grocery store to purchase items for a ‘welcome back’ dinner she was planning for him.
The next day, her car was found abandoned in the same grocery store parking lot. The groceries were still in the car, but the only sign of Mary were smears of her blood and underwear that had been folded neatly and left between the front seats.
The investigation into her case led to many bizarre clues, both leading up to and following her disappearance. There were unwanted calls and gifts that she received in the weeks before she went missing. In the weeks after, there were two credible sightings of her in North Carolina. Witnesses reported that she was bloodied and accompanied by men.
This may at first seem like a clear case of abduction, but there are some investigators who have reason to believe it may have been a staged disappearance. So, which was it?
Well, the case remains an unsolved mystery. As you read about the circumstances surrounding Mary’s disappearance, you can draw your own conclusions as to what you believe may have happened to her.
Mary Little: Life Before the Disappearance
Mary attended the North Carolina College for Women, which is now named the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she took secretarial courses. After college she got a job at a major bank in Atlanta, Georgia. She moved into an apartment home there with two of her friends.
Mary was re-introduced to her future husband, Roy Little, in 1964. Her ex-boyfriend introduced them, but they already knew each other from high school. They had been classmates at school in Florida before Mary’s family relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina for her father’s job.
Mary and Roy dated for less than a year and got married September 4, 1965. They moved into an apartment together in Decatur, northeast of downtown Atlanta.
The month after they were married, Roy had to travel out of town to take an exam for a job as an auditor with the state banking department. Mary was planning a ‘welcome home’ party for her husband and she was going to invite two couples that they were friends with and who had attended their wedding the previous month.
On October 14, 1965, the day before Roy was due back, Mary purchased groceries for the event at Lenox Square shopping center. Lenox Square was in safe, upscale area of Atlanta. At night, the shops and parking lot were well lit and usually still had many people around. At about 6:15 pm, an attendant at the grocery store helped Mary load her items into her car and she tipped him ten cents for his assistance.
After this, Mary met up with a coworker and friend, Isla Stack, and the two had dinner and went shopping in the same shopping center. When the friends parted for the evening around 8 pm, Mary told Isla, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and then she walked towards her car in the parking lot. This was the last time Mary was seen by friends or family.
What Happened to Mary Little?
The next morning, Mary’s coworkers became concerned when she didn’t show up for work. They first called her home phone number and when they received no answer they called her landlord. When the landlord noticed that Mary had not retrieved her mail or newspaper, he used his key to enter her apartment. There was no signs of a disturbance in the apartment, but the groceries she bought the previous day weren’t there.
The personnel director at Mary’s bank, Eugene Rackley, phoned her husband, who was still out of town. Roy had not heard from his wife either. Rackley learned from Isla Stack that Mary had been at Lenox Square shopping center the evening before. He called security for the shopping center and gave them a description of Mary’s car, a gray 1965 Mercury Comet. The security officer reported that he saw no car in the parking lot matching that description. Rackley then went to the shopping center himself and also was not able to locate her car. By this point Mary’s coworkers had contacted police. The police then called Roy and told him to come back to Atlanta.
Mary’s Car
Later, around noon, security found her car in the shopping center’s parking lot. They were sure it hadn’t been there earlier. Oddly, the car’s engine was cold, indicating that it had been there for some time. Upon closer inspection, police observed smears of blood on the front and back seats, as well as on the front passenger’s side window. It was a small amount of blood, suggesting that whatever the injury had been, it was survivable. Lab tests would later confirm the blood was Mary’s.
Neatly folded and placed between the two front seats were Mary’s underwear and stockings. Both pieces of clothing had blood stains on them and the stockings had been cut open. A cake and other purchases from the day before were still there in the backseat. Her purse along with the coat she had been wearing were missing.
The car was covered in a fine red dust, a clue as to where it had been driven. The grocery store employee that helped Mary put the bags in her car hadn’t noticed the red dust on it at that time. Roy mentioned to police that he kept a log book to track the mileage of the car. From his records, it was determined that the car had been driven 41 miles between the time it left the shopping center the previous evening and when it was found there the next day.
The Investigation into the Disappearance of Mary Little
A thorough ground search of the area was done with the help of the National Guard. Hundreds of people were interviewed. Any leads were taken seriously and followed up on. Mary and Roy’s lives were both meticulously examined. Media outlets everywhere covered the story. Roy sent out a plea on both radio and tv stations, asking for Mary’s safe return. In December the FBI became involved with the case. Still, there was nothing that led to Mary’s whereabouts.
A couple of days after Mary disappeared, a woman came into the Atlanta Police Department to report that she had been at Lenox Square shopping center that night. She claimed that she was being followed by a strange man in the parking lot. She hurried to her car, got in and locked it. She said that the man came up to her car door and tried to open it. He tapped on her window and told her that one of her tires was flat. The woman left the scene and went to a service station to have her tires checked. The tires on her car were fine.
Some believe that the man was specifically looking for Mary Little and had mistaken this woman to be her. Investigators were unable to gather enough information about the man to find him for questioning.
Mysterious Events Leading up to Mary’s Disappearance
During interviews with her coworkers, investigators did make an odd discovery. They had noticed that Mary was disturbed by mysterious phone calls she would get at work. She didn’t discuss the calls with anyone, but one coworker did overhear Mary talking to the mystery person one day. The coworker stated that Mary seemed frustrated with the caller as she told the person “I’m a married woman now.”
It may seem like a simple case of unwanted attention from a person she had a previous relationship with, until the next words Mary spoke to the person. “You can come over to my house any time you like, but I can’t come over there.”
Police also learned that shortly before she went missing, Mary had received roses from an unknown person. They were able to find the shop the flowers came from, it wasn’t far from Mary’s home, but they were unable to determine who purchased them.
An old friend of Mary’s from school stated that Mary had recently expressed fear of being alone at home, and oddly, fear of being alone in her car. The friend said that was unusual behavior and Mary had never acted fearful that way before.
A Break in the Case
Finally, a month after Mary disappeared, there was a lead in the case. Two receipts were found, showing that Mary’s credit card had been used in North Carolina. It was first used at a gas station in Charlotte during the early morning hours of October 15, the day after she went missing. Charlotte was Mary’s hometown, which at first may have had people thinking that she simply needed a break and went to see family in the area. When investigators interviewed the gas station attendant, that theory was disproven. The gas station employee described the car she was in as a 1956 or ’57 white and blue Buick. He also said that a man was with her.
The second receipt was from the same day, but later in the afternoon. Mary’s credit card had once again been used at a gas station, but this time in Raleigh, North Carolina. The gas station employee there said that she was accompanied by two men who seemed to be giving her orders. He stated that she seemed to be trying to hide her face behind a road map she was holding. Though she was trying to go unnoticed, he could see that she had blood on her and what appeared to be a head injury.
Mary’s family confirmed that it was her signature on both the receipts. Her credit card was never used again after that. The gas station employee had written down the license plate of the car she was in. When police looked at their records, it was found that the plate had been stolen there in North Carolina.
Investigators believed there had to have been more than one person involved in Mary Little’s disappearance. At the time the car was parked back at the Lenox Square shopping center, Mary had already been spotted in North Carolina.
Her parents who lived in the area where she was seen in North Carolina were interviewed, but they had heard nothing from their daughter. The case was at another dead end.
Further Developments
A Related Case?
In May of 1967, a woman named Diane Shields was found strangled to death in the trunk of her car in Atlanta. Curiously, Diane was the person hired at the bank to replace Mary after her disappearance. To make things even stranger, Diane had also received flowers from a mystery person. Despite the odd similarities between the two cases, it was found that they are unrelated.
The person who sent the flowers to Diane was found, interviewed by police and cleared of having anything to do with her death. Diane had been a babysitter for this person and they had sent the flowers to thank her. Diane Shields’ death remains unsolved.
Tips
Over the years, police have received what they believed to be credible tips concerning the whereabouts of Mary Little’s remains. They have followed up on all tips and have dug in multiple places in search of her remains or evidence related to her case, but nothing has ever been found.
Theories
Abduction?
At first glance, this seems to be a likely abduction case. Mary’s car found abandoned with smears of her blood. Her being seen with men who appeared to be giving her orders. But there are also things about this theory that don’t make sense.
If she was abducted and raped and/or murdered, as the blood and underwear found in the car suggests, why was she driven two states away and forced to pay for gas for a stolen car? The risks for the perpetrator seem too high. They could have been stopped by police on the journey there. Someone who saw her bloody at either gas station could have called police right then. The first gas station they stopped at was in her hometown, what if she had been recognized?
Rackley, Mary’s boss at the bank, has always believed that she met with foul play. “She was a fine, fine person. She could never have done her family that way,” he said in a 1988 interview.
Did Mary Little Stage her Disappearance?
Shortly after the murder of Diane Shields, Mary’s mother contacted Detective Strickland, who was working on her case, and asked him to halt the investigation. Strickland was interviewed in 2004 and stated that he wondered if Mary had contacted her family and that was the reason behind the phone call from her mother. The detective tried to convince the FBI to put a tap on the parents’ phone, but they refused.
Another detective on the case also believes that Mary set up her disappearance. In an interview he says, “Based on my experience in these cases, I simply don’t believe she’s dead.”
Another interesting detail that supports this theory is that no one in Mary’s family has ever been willing to provide DNA that can be compared to unknown remains that are found.
Will We Ever Know What Happened to Mary Little?
At the time of this writing, it has been almost 57 years since Mary Little disappeared. As with most cases of this age, many of the detectives that worked on it have either passed away or long since retired.
The same is true with Mary’s family members, many are no longer here to keep her story in the public eye and remind detectives to keep her in mind when they find unidentified remains.
For that matter, the perpetrator, if there is one based on what theory you believe, may no longer be around to be held accountable even if we were able to figure out who it was.
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Sources:
https://thesouthernvoice.com/unsolved-mystery-the-mary-shotwell-little-disappearance/
https://thesouthernvoice.com/the-mary-shotwell-little-case-chapter-two-the-experts-weigh-in/
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