I first read Mary Shotwell Little's story in the AJC Sunday magazine when I was a child in the late 1960s. Every few years, the AJC would run a follow-up to Mary's story - usually calling it Atlanta's most baffling unsolved crime.
In about 2007, I took an extended leave of absence from work. My mother was dying from ALS, but she was lucky enough to have a lot of good caregivers. I didn't have a lot to do except worry. I found myself with a lot of time on my hands, staying up all night, unable to sleep, and searching the internet. Increasingly my searches became focused on Mary and her story.
Looking back, I think Mary became a sort of rescue fantasy for me during that time - I couldn't save my mother - but I could work on Mary's case. And maybe do something good there; find a new clue; focus public attention on her case; help Mary's family find answers; something...
I spent about two year working on Mary's story. I had no clear plan - i just followed my instincts. I found and bought all Mary's high school and college year books online. I reached out to Mary's friends by phone, letters, and emails. I interviewed a number of Mary's high school friends. I found one of Mary's friends who had gone to Myers Park High School with Mary and who also ended up living and working in Atlanta in 1964 and 1965 before Mary disappeared - I'll call him "Woody" for the sake of his privacy. Woody and his wife at the time had socialized with Mary and Roy Little, in the months before her death.
Woody and I communicated on a regular basis for many months - Woody had cancer and our conversations were free-flowing. As with many of Mary's friends, I was struck by how fresh Woody's grief for Mary was, some 40 years on. Woody gave me so much background - he wanted so much to help. But in the end, he really had no solid clues as to who had kidnapped Mary. It's fair to say that Woody was haunted by Mary.
I developed correspondent relationships with about five of Mary's friends. I promised myself I'd work on Mary's story until I could write a short story, then I'd let it go. In the end, I wrote my story. My mother died. I got a new job, and I moved on with my life. But Mary's story stays with me.
I can't forget one of Mary's classmates, a women in her late 60s or early 70s at the time, and who by her own admission was not a particularly close friend of Mary's, breaking down in tears as she told me how she still felt guilt and anguish that Mary's life had been cut so short. It was a theme among Mary's friends - they were still experiencing survivor's guilt more than 40 years after Mary had disappeared.
Based on my work, I developed a clear picture of Mary year's in Charlotte at Myers Park High. I even found the modest house, where her family lived during her high school years at 117 Placid Place (how's that for irony). I got a sense of what her college life was like at UNC Woman's College (now UNC Greensboro). I even got some insights into what Mary's after college life was like when she moved to the triplex in the Emory area that she shared with Sandra Green, other former college classmates, and friends. I heard how excited Mary was to start to work at C&S Bank.
But I found no real clues to what happened to Mary. I didn't solve the case. Ultimately, I couldn't rescue Mary any more than I had been able to rescue my dying mother.
In the end though, I don't regret all the work I did researching Mary's life and disappearance. In a way, I felt as if Mary became a real person to me - more than just the victim of a lurid crime. She had a life cut short, but she had a life of many wonderful experiences, surrounded by friends and family who loved her.
I live in Greensboro, NC now, where my daily commute takes me past the campus of Mary's college - UNCG. On Autumn days when the leaves are turning and the students are crowding the sidewalks, I sometimes sit at a traffic light and I think of Mary. How much she was like the young women I see there now. And in seeing Mary's life with more fullness, with less emphasis on her death, I feel somehow connected to her and not so sad.