I will watch the video on my home computer this evening. My work computer doesn't have speakers so I can't do it right now.
I am trying to upload an attachment of what Westgate Mall looked like with different areas marked out. Let's see if this works. Okay, looks like it did. So I had some help with this from a local who remembers the mall and this is my understanding of the marked areas. The blue dot is the rear parking lot by the Piggly Wiggly. The red dot is the rear parking lot by the Big Apple. The yellow line represents Pio Nino where the vehicle was later found parked across the street by the Krispy Kreme and a tire store. The green line is the Eisenhower/Mill Irons road area and there was supposedly a steep drop-off there. Where the pink line is was also a steep drop-off into undeveloped land. Windows were mainly just in the front so if Carlene parked in one of the lots near the grocery stores it's possibly nobody would have seen her. I'm going thru all my saved info on this case and will upload more as I get it sorted. Maybe this will give a better idea of how the mall and parking lots were laid out.
bbm: OK, I THINK I finally get that you are saying, from your study and sleuthing of the case on various fronts, that the car was NOT in the Westgate parking lot at all, but across Pio Nono, in front of the Krispy Kreme on the Krispy-Kreme side (and not, as I have been thinking all this time, at the edge of the Westgate parking lot by Pio Nono, "in front" of the Krispy Kreme from across Pio Nono).
Wow. If that is the case -- that changes things, from my point of view. I will have to let that percolate around in my head for a while.
Sorry if I have been seeming really dense about this -- but all I really had to go on was the two-part article that says the car was found "right there at Westgate" and "in front of the Krispy Kreme". Guess, if you are correct, that "right there at Westgate" is meant in the sense of right there, in the area, not in parking lot, but a stone's throw away.
OK -- on to your graphic of Westgate:
First of all, this is based on an artist's concept, I think, of Westgate around the time it opened in 1961. At that time, yeah, there was LOTS undeveloped around the new shopping center -- in fact, it pretty much
was the "west gate" of Macon -- west of there, there was not very much at all. And that fountain in front ...? Wow, I don't remember that at all -- it must have disappeared fairly early on. (There were fountains inside though, within my memory.)
In later years (after 1961), there was much, much spread west -- shopping centers and plazas, etc., the Macon Mall in 1975, and on and on.
Pretty sure that by 1972, some of that had happened already -- so the immediately-surrounding area was, IMO, by that time, not really the almost-totally-undeveloped look that shows in the graphic. (Also, if you look at a Google image of the area from today, you can also see how much the construction/development of Eisenhower Pkw. encroached on the "green line" area in the graphic. There was and is a steep bank there, though, that's true.)
That said, there are a few stores/centers I am trying to find the schedule of development on, especially K-Mart and Zayre, which both sprung up really nearby Westgate -- I always get confused in my memory which was where (and it is more confusing because at least one, maybe both, of those also later MOVED further west out US 80/Eisenhower before finally closing. BTW, in hunting histories, I never know whether to use the US 80 designation or Eisenhower Pkwy, because I am not sure when Eisenhower came into existence exactly -- will try to check that out as well).
I THINK that maybe both K-Mart and Zayre were already in existence by 1972, but I want to confirm this -- I know there are Macon folks who could lay it out clear, probably, wish I had one handy!
At any rate, one of these stores/centers was built
across (north) US 80 (Eisenhower) from Westgate. I THINK that was Kmart.
The other was to the west, in the "back" of Westgate, on the same side of Eisenhower, yep, down a huge sort of wild-appearing (as I remember) drop, and faced Eisenhower.
When you read the accounts that Carlene stopped by "the plaza" to leave a note on her boyfriend's car at Winn Dixie -- that was at one or the other of these centers I'm talking about, I'm pretty sure. I THINK maybe the one to the west, just behind, Westgate, down the big old drop, which I THINK was the Zayre center...but again, not certain.
ETA: Just thinking -- all of what I've described above, etc., the dates of construction, etc., could also go toward answering someone's (I think maybe puzzleme's?) question about whether there was any construction going on in the area at the time. My guess would be, yes. It was a rapidly developing area around that time.
