Mary Shotwell Little: Georgia Secretary's Bizarre Disappearance Still Unsolved
25-year-old Mary vanished in 1965, leaving behind a bloodstained car
Bloody Scene in Missing Woman’s Car
On October 14th, 1965, 25-year-old Mary Shotwell Little bought groceries and had dinner with a woman she knew from work. The two parted ways that evening and nothing seemed amiss. However, when Mary didn’t show up for work the next day, a search for her was started.
They didn’t find the missing woman, but they did find her vehicle—abandoned in a parking lot, with her groceries still inside and blood smeared on the front seats, steering wheel and one of the windows.
The car had a light coating of red dust on it, as if it’d been driven down a dirt road, and an extra 40 miles on the odometer that couldn’t be accounted for. Strange sightings would place Mary in another state—with mysterious men—where her gasoline card was used, but after this her trail goes cold.
Shortly before she vanished, Mary had reportedly received a number of distressing calls at work. What she was overheard saying to this person suggested that she knew them, but the identity of the caller is still a mystery.
Decades later, answers of any kind remain elusive in this bizarre case.
What happened to Mary Shotwell Little?
Mary Wallace Shotwell Little
One of two daughters, Mary Wallace Shotwell was born on January 14th, 1940, in Guildford County, North Carolina, to parents Nathan and Margaret. After graduating from East Carolina University, the bright and reliable Mary moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and became a secretary at Citizens & Southern National Bank.
It was here that she would meet her future husband, Roy H. Little Jr., who was the same age as her and was employed there as a bank examiner. The pair hit it off and got married in September 1965—mere weeks before she vanished.
Perceptions of their marriage varied to a fairly significant degree. Depending on who you asked, the couple either had a very loving relationship or Mary was unhappy with Roy. He was often away on business trips, but it’s unclear if this was a source of strife in their relationship.
As previously mentioned, Mary was said to have been receiving disturbing calls at work shortly before she went missing. No one knew who she was speaking to, but each time she seemed to come away from these conversations unsettled.
“You know I can’t come over there,” Mary was allegedly overheard saying during one such call. “Roy is out of town. I don’t hold anything against you. You can come over to my house any time, but I can’t come over there.”
If this account is accurate, it sounds as if Mary knew this individual or even had a history with them. In another call, she reportedly said, “I’m a married woman now.” Was this possibly someone she’d had a relationship with in the past?
Furthermore, she received a bouquet of roses at work. The sender chose not to disclose their identity.
Mary told friends that she was afraid to be alone, especially while driving, but didn’t elaborate further. This was notable to those who knew her, as she had never expressed such fears before.
Shopping & Dinner in Lenox Square
On October 14th, 1965, Roy was out of town on business. He was supposed to return home that weekend, when the couple planned to have guests over. Mary stopped at Colonial Grocery in Lenox Square and purchased supplies for this party. Afterwards, she met up with Ila Stock, a friend and coworker. The two women had dinner at Piccadilly Cafeteria, also in Lenox Square.
Mary appeared to be in good spirits and Ila didn’t sense anything off about her demeanor during their time together. They parted company at approximately 8 p.m. After this Mary’s movements are a mystery.
When she failed to show up for work the following day, her boss—E. M. Rackley III—phoned her home and received no answer. Ila informed him that she’d last seen Mary in Lenox Square, so he called the security there and inquired as to whether or not her 1965 Mercury Comet was in the parking lot.
Sources vary on what happened next, but either the security guards didn’t locate her vehicle in the parking lot initially and Rackley was actually the one to find it when he went in search of her—or one of the security guards did find it in the Lenox Square parking lot around 12:30 p.m. Regardless of who made the discovery, one thing was certain: The state of her car set off alarm bells.
It appeared unlikely that Mary made it home the previous night (or perhaps she was accosted immediately upon arrival), since her groceries were still sitting in the Comet. A new pair of shoes, still in the box, was there as well.
Roy kept track of the mileage on the car—not an uncommon practice at the time—and it was discovered that the odometer had an extra 40 miles on it which couldn’t be explained. This suggested that it had been driven away from Lenox Square and brought back later—but when?
Blood was smeared around the interior. A slip, a bra and a bloodstained pair of panties—all believed to belong to Mary—were found inside. Despite the alarming appearance of the bloody scene, it was the belief of Dr. Larry Howard that the amount of blood was equivalent to no more than what might be produced by a nosebleed and not indicative of a serious injury. Some officers speculated that the scene had been staged.
Her purse and keys were missing and have never been located. A bloody fingerprint—not Mary’s—was on the steering wheel, but the person to whom it belonged remains unknown.
Roy was contacted and he said that he had no idea where his wife was and that he’d come home as soon as possible to aid in the search.
An extensive search was carried out, in woodland areas, vacant buildings, construction sites, bodies of water, and vacant lots, but to no avail.
Disturbing Sightings
The most important development in the case so far occurred when investigators found out that Mary’s gasoline card had been used in the early morning hours of October 15th in two different cities in North Carolina—Charlotte and Raleigh (each of which is hundreds of miles away from Atlanta).
Handwriting experts determined that the signatures on the receipts were likely Mary’s. Detectives traveled to these gas stations and questioned the attendants.
The Charlotte gas station attendant stated that Mary had been curled up in the front seat of the car and attempted to hide her face using a road map. She had blood on her clothing and appeared to have sustained a head injury.
There was an unknown man with her. The attendant found this encounter disturbing and noted down the license plate number of their car, which turned out to belong to a vehicle that had been stolen shortly before she vanished.
Though Mary had family in Charlotte, none of them had seen or heard from her while she was apparently in the area.
The attendant in Raleigh gave a very similar account, except that he claimed to have spotted two men with Mary, not just one. According to him, she had a towel wrapped around her head and had blood on her. The mystery men were said to have been “commanding” her, though exactly what these commands were is uncertain.
The authorities were unable to track them—or the stolen car—any further and Mary’s trail once again went cold.
Detective Superintendent Clinton Chafin:
“We are working on all possibilities of what could have happened. Because of the evidence, it appears that foul play is the best theory available now—but that’s only a theory.”
An Aloof Husband & Bank Allegations
Roy’s alibi was quickly confirmed and he was ruled out as a person of interest in his wife’s disappearance. Though he hadn’t been in the area when she vanished, this didn’t eliminate the possibility that he’d hired someone to abduct her, but no evidence to support this theory was ever found.
While investigators didn’t necessarily believe that Roy was responsible in any way, they reportedly found his manner disconcerting. He was “cold and aloof,” they said, and “strangely unperturbed” by her disappearance.
The FBI also joined the investigation.
“You had to drag everything out of Roy,” said Jim Ponder, the FBI’s liaison with local law enforcement. “He didn’t volunteer anything.”
Others believed that Mary’s job was in some way connected to her disappearance. Allegedly, there had been rumors of a prostitution ring being run from the bank, as well as “lesbian harassment” (whatever this means). Was she silenced because she knew too much?
And even if those allegations were untrue, it’s important to reiterate that Mary had received the strange calls and a mysterious bouquet of flowers only while at work, not at home.
Additionally, another woman who had worked as a secretary at Citizens & Southern National Bank (more on her case later) would be murdered two years later, so Mary’s place of employment could be a significant piece of the puzzle.
Police officers questioned the local florist who had handled the order for Mary’s roses, but they couldn’t recall who had placed it, unfortunately. Investigators also considered the possibility that a jilted lover had sought revenge against her.
For his part, Roy didn’t think that his wife had been involved with another man during their marriage. Not only that, he said, but she had never had a serious relationship before she met him either.
She was friendly and polite to others, Roy said, but that was as far as it went.
“She was one of those wonderful girls who liked people, and they liked her.”
Yet the police investigation into her background would reveal that Mary had been engaged once before, to another man in Atlanta, but the two supposedly split amicably before she’d started dating Roy. This man’s name wasn’t released to the public.
She had no known enemies and was well-liked, which only made her case more puzzling to law enforcement and her loved ones.
“She was what I would call a very fine employee,” remembered Rackley. “She was an excellent secretary. She took dictation as fast as I could talk. If I was going on a trip, she’d make reservations for me even before I asked her to. If she had a weakness, it was trying to do too much.”
Mary’s family was heartbroken and offered a reward in the hope that someone would come forward with relevant information.
“We’d give anything we have and possibly will get—home and everything else—to get her back,” said her mother. “Nothing we have means anything to us this way.”
An Unsettling Encounter in Lenox Square
A local woman named Carolyn Smitherman notified police of an eerie incident that had taken place on the day that Mary went missing. Carolyn, too, had been shopping in Lenox Square on October 14th and, after leaving the store, she noticed that she was being followed by a man. She hurried to her car and locked herself inside.
“If you think you’re going to get in my car, you’re crazy,” she told the stranger.
He knocked on the window and said, “Your back tire is low.”
Carolyn drove to the nearest service station and was told that her tires appeared to be fine.
Jim Ponder believed that the same man might have abducted Mary.
Shortly after his wife went missing, Roy got a phone call from someone demanding $20,000 in ransom money for the safe return of Mary. The FBI sent an agent who resembled Roy to the arranged meeting place, but the anonymous man was no longer there and the agent found only a blank piece of paper attached to a sign.
Roy never heard from this individual again and the authorities suspected that this was merely a hoax or the work of an opportunist who had no real connection to Mary’s disappearance.
A woman named Diane Shields took over Mary’s position as secretary in the wake of her absence. She also lived with the same roommates as Mary had prior to her marriage to Roy.
For unknown reasons, Diane eventually left that job and began working in an office downtown, but allegedly confided in a friend that she was working undercover to solve the case of a missing woman named Mary.
Then the 22-year-old vanished and was found murdered in the trunk of her car on May 19th, 1967. A scarf had been stuffed down her throat. She was fully clothed and hadn’t been raped.
Diane had reportedly received a bouquet of roses from an anonymous sender shortly before her murder.
The similarities between the two women led law enforcement to wonder if the same perpetrator(s) was responsible in both cases. Detective CJ Strickland believed so. Strangely, Mary’s mother supposedly asked Strickland to stop investigating her case.
“She told me she didn’t want the investigation into her daughter’s disappearance pursued any further,” he said.
But why?
Strickland speculated that Mary was still alive and that she’d made contact with her parents at some point. He encouraged the FBI to tap their phone, but they refused.
Conversely, Ponder said that Margaret actually never gave up on trying to find her daughter and was devastated by her loss.
“She calls from time to time. She gets pretty upset. She’s never gotten over it.”
Later Developments
The murder of Diane Shields is still unsolved.
Mary was never officially declared dead, but Roy eventually obtained a divorce and remarried (it’s not clear when, though).
The bizarre nature of her case has inspired a range of theories.
Some investigators felt certain that she was abducted and murdered, but others were less sure of this.
Homicide detective John Cameron:
“I’ve thought about this many, many times over the years. Based on my experience in these cases, I simply don’t believe she’s dead. Can I explain why she did it? No. But there must be an explanation.”
But her loved ones felt that there was no way she’d ever stage her disappearance and run away.
“I think she was abducted by a pervert,” stated Captain W. K. “Jack” Perry, who was the lead investigator of her case for many years, until his retirement.
Even after he had retired, he was still haunted by her disappearance and the lack of answers.
“There were times I thought we were so close. We’d get tips from people, but the leads really began to fade out around 1975 or 1976.”
Sadly, Mary’s parents and her sister Judy have all since passed away, never having found out what happened to her.
Much of the evidence and original case files have been lost as well.
The circumstances surrounding the strange disappearance of Mary Shotwell Little, as well as her fate, remain unknown.
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