WA WA - Marla Thomas, 22, Anacortes, 11 Dec 1974

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Tuck said:
Eleven years after Marla disappeared, apparently another woman vanished from downtown Anacortes in 1985. I wonder if the cases are connected?
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I’ve always speculated that Marla’s case is connected to the abduction of Laurie partridge who vanished on December 4th 1974.
 
Mysteries1974 said:
I’ve always speculated that Marla’s case is connected to the abduction of Laurie partridge who vanished on December 4th 1974.
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That seems like a very plausible theory, because those two disappearances were only a few days apart. It would be great to know a bit more about Marla Thomas regardless, so that perhaps a more definitive link could be established between the pair.
 
The places where they disappeared are 5 hours apart
 
alb1on said:
I am confident the records in #3 above are referring to the correct Marla Thomas. There are also marriage records on Ancestry confirming the maiden name and the newspaper article confirms the location. It is an odd case. I can find no indications to suggest any suspects, other than the lawsuit (and it seems a stretch to think that even as venal an organisation as Bunker Hill - as shown in the book linked - would resort to murder). What does puzzle me is that the family seem so silent.
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I’m Marla’s niece Jess. The family hasn’t been silent. We’ve been looking for a body for years. It is believed in the family that her husband murdered her as he is a rapist and abused his family. The police at the time did little to no investigating and instead took his word that she just ran off with some Canadian man. Every time anyone in the family went to look up the case there was no answers. Her mother died and two siblings died never knowing what happened. Her daughter and granddaughter have never stopped looking. Though one of her daughters believes that she ran away. But the family doesn’t believe that she would ever leave. It seems likely that she was about 5 foot 4 as that is the average height of her sisters. It is also believed that when he dumped the body she was wrapped in a comforter.
 
Could she be this Jane Doe? Not much to go on....

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

Found in Olympus, WA, 1981 wooded area: White/Caucasian, no height/weight, color of hair/eyes... probable time of death between 1966-1979. PMI estimated 2 years.

Interesting is this: constructed cross of sticks fastened with shoe string found in general area.

Distance between Anacorte and Olympus is aprox. 2,5 hours drive.
 
Bit of hope said:
Could she be this Jane Doe? Not much to go on....

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

Found in Olympus, WA, 1981 wooded area: White/Caucasian, no height/weight, color of hair/eyes... probable time of death between 1966-1979. PMI estimated 2 years.

Interesting is this: constructed cross of sticks fastened with shoe string found in general area.

Distance between Anacorte and Olympus is aprox. 2,5 hours drive.
Click to expand...

Thread for this case

WA - WA - Thurston Co, WhtFem UP8886, 20-30, cranium and bones in wooded area, Oct'81
 
Bit of hope said:
Could she be this Jane Doe? Not much to go on....

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

Found in Olympus, WA, 1981 wooded area: White/Caucasian, no height/weight, color of hair/eyes... probable time of death between 1966-1979. PMI estimated 2 years.

Interesting is this: constructed cross of sticks fastened with shoe string found in general area.

Distance between Anacorte and Olympus is aprox. 2,5 hours drive.
Click to expand...

According to family Marla is probably killed by her husband. I think this Jane Doe is put there by a spouse and got somehow remorse, making the cross.
 
Sunday, September 26, 1993 This older article gives a good overview of the terrible incompetent state the Anacortes Police Department was in back in the days. Some quotes:

Anacortes: The City Of Unsolved Murders -- As Its Combative Chief Steps Down, The City's Police Force Hopes To Restore Credibility And Trust With The Community

The Chamber of Commerce says this is an All-American city, but some locals know it as the town where you could get away with murder.

Carrie Nibarger, daughter of an ex-assistant fire chief, tells the not-so-funny community joke: "You can kill anybody in Anacortes and get away with it, but have two beers and they'll nail you. The police are good at DWIs."

Nibarger and Symonds don't trust the local police because, between them, they knew three women who were murdered. Add a 79-year-old man with organized-crime connections who was stabbed to death in 1981, and Anacortes had four unsolved homicides in the 1980s - a lot for a town with a population of barely 12,000.

Even when the cops got their killer they sometimes pulled amateurish stunts. A woman who beat her husband to death was allowed to retrieve a shovel - always a possible murder weapon - after police had roped off the scene. She said it was an item "dear to her," the police report stated.

During the Lippe years, while Anacortes increased 31 percent in population and 50 percent in area, the City Council agreed to add only two officers, bringing the force to 17 "We were operating like `Welcome to Mayberry,' " he <patrolman John Taylor > said, referring to a TV comedy about a small-town police force.

In February 1981, when Anthony Palumbo was found dead on the floor of his Anacortes apartment by a visiting relative, Lippe was the first officer on the scene and, along with the medics, assumed Palumbo had died of natural causes. The chief - a friend of Palumbo's half-brother - says he figured the blood, actually oozing from the knife wounds under the 79-year-old man's bathrobe, was from a voice box that doctors had installed in his larynx.

Nine days before Palumbo was murdered, a hairdresser named Carolee Christina Van Luven disappeared from her Anacortes home while her daughters, 11 and 14, slept.

The next day, her friend, Nibarger, told detectives that Van Luven wouldn't leave behind her children, car, purse, clothing and cigarettes, and she says she pointed to a bloodstain on the woman's bed.

She discounted the policeman's assumption that it was her "time of the month," since she knew it wasn't. Investigators made no mention of the blood in follow-up reports, and in a recent interview Officer Rod Dodge said he didn't recall the blood. Dodge said the place was cleaned up before officers arrived, but the police report at the time said officers found Van Luven's clothing "on the bedroom floor."

 
JCoffey said:
I’m Marla’s niece Jess. The family hasn’t been silent. We’ve been looking for a body for years. It is believed in the family that her husband murdered her as he is a rapist and abused his family. The police at the time did little to no investigating and instead took his word that she just ran off with some Canadian man. Every time anyone in the family went to look up the case there was no answers. Her mother died and two siblings died never knowing what happened. Her daughter and granddaughter have never stopped looking. Though one of her daughters believes that she ran away. But the family doesn’t believe that she would ever leave. It seems likely that she was about 5 foot 4 as that is the average height of her sisters. It is also believed that when he dumped the body she was wrapped in a comforter.
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Did law enforcement check the house (especially if there is a basement) or other properties belonging to the husband? They can even use ground penetrating radars.
 
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