Mary Shotwell Little Part 1

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Is on. Do you know?

Hey we're live. Hey do you know that song? Yeah. Wow.

I'm a two. Oh okay. Welcome friends. Welcome back.

I'm gonna tell you. So Hailey and I were you know I try and get my son to bed before Hailey comes because he's crazy if not so I had just got him to bed like five minutes before he was late. So she comes in and I'm like score we got away with this right and we're sitting there we had dinner together and my son comes in and stares at us like a deer in headlights and we stared him like a deer in headlights like do you you don't see us? We're all a dream.

I feel like every time it happens so I just freeze. She does. I don't move. I don't look.

I don't say anything. And I gently go hi, honey. What do you need? And he said I need some water.

He did sound park like a zombie. And I was like okay I'll get you some water. So I got a Paw Patrol cup and I filled it with water and I gave it to him and he took some very quick sips and choked up a little bit and I was like oh are you okay? And he was like I said are you ready to go back to bed?

Uh-huh. And then I put him in his bed and he went back to sleep and I was like but it was strange and I do wonder tomorrow if he's gonna say I dreamt that Auntie Hailey was here. Yeah I'm because I'm not convinced that he was fully awake. I don't think and that he even registered that I was there.

No because he didn't even say your name and he'd like Auntie Hailey's. Yeah and it would just be a thing. Yeah. So that was weird but we all looked at each other like deer in headlights like I felt like he caught us having an affair or something.

He's like you lovers here? I love her the same. Yes. Please don't look at her directly.

It was weird. Oh my god. Oh my god. I was gonna question.

Maybe. What's up with the crowbar over there? Just uh you really poorly tried to hide it. I died from my camp.

So what do you think she needs to do work? There's this large chair across from us where we're sitting in Holly's house and on this chair there is a crowbar that's like propped up on the armrest kind of in front of the crowbar there's a circular pillow that only covers the middle of the crowbar so the actual like the curved part is sticking out as well as the bottom piece. True. She's so I'm just curious.

Well why it's out here. I knew you were coming. Oh so. Had to have a weapon hand.

You never know. No. So actually my deck I have two decks. I'm a lower top deck and they are being completely redone and so my father and his crew are you know helping to do these decks and so he left some of his tools and my child um loves tools.

Yes. And he will find them. He will use them. He was using a hammer on my retaining wall.

So this kid will find any kind of tool and use it. So I saw that they had just left this crowbar and I was like oh crap. I've got to hide the crowbar before he sees it. Okay look I was doing it fast and the pillow's not large enough.

Okay. I was just trying to do it that if he came in here he didn't immediately see it. Like I mean it blends in with a color pretty well but it is a crowbar. It is a crowbar.

I will hide it in the garage somewhere. Very poorly. Yes of course because I knew he was coming out here to look at the deck and I was like oh crap so I tried to hide it and he didn't see it. So good job mom.

Good job. Thank you. A little respect. Yeah.

Yeah. It was what I could do in two seconds. Good job. And so yeah I feel like being his mom is like being in a chess game.

I have to stay five steps ahead of him because this kid is so freaking smart that he like things that I don't even know I have he finds. He was like oh where did we get this fill in the blank and I went to find that. Yeah. He was like oh I found it in the garage or I found it in here.

What in the heck? Yeah. So yeah. Yeah he's a bright kid.

He has which really is painful. Yeah. It's a little detrimental. He's excited.

Oh great. He makes smart kids. Wonderful. All right.

Well we are segwaying from my crowbar to this crazy story. I'm right. I found it is wild. And is this the is going to be a two-parter?

This is a two-parter. Okay. All right. So just so you all know I'm going to end it at a certain space and then we'll pick up on it next week.

Nice. All right. So this is the story of Mary Shotwell Little. Okay.

I've never heard the story. Sorry. I'm ready. So we are going to Atlanta, Georgia.

It is the early evening of October 14th 1965 when Mary shot well little. Tides up her desk and prepares to leave work for the day. Okay. Mary is a 25 year old secretary who works at Citizens and Southern Bank in Atlanta.

Gotcha. Mary has been employed at the bank for about three years and prior to her employment she was enrolled at the North Carolina College for Women now known as UNC Greensboro. Oh I'm a schooler. Really?

I didn't know that. I applied and got accepted and got accepted at honors college. Wow. I'm just going to go there and then ended up at our on the modern set.

But it was really like seems like a really great school. Yeah. It is really good school. And she was able to commute because she was born and raised in Guilford County.

Oh nice. I'm actually traveling to Greensboro in a couple weeks for a conference. Nice. So I'll be in that area.

How exciting? For one night only. So please step out and see her. She has a one woman show.

Wow. Yeah. Sounds boring. Yeah.

I think it's gonna be fun. But no. My one woman show. Oh yeah.

You need two women to make it fun. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

That's all that I say. Anyway. So yes. So she was from Guilford County which is around the Winston-Salem area not too far from Greensboro.

She majored in Secretarial Administration. That's very 60s. Wow. Graduated class of 1962.

I mean but that's pretty like I mean like a lot of women didn't seek higher education at that time. They didn't and there weren't as many you know majors that you know it wasn't like oh yeah sure you can get your degree in plumbing and you can get your degree in engineering. It was like okay honey you could be a nurse a teacher or a secretary. That was pretty much your options.

Yeah. And then you get married. Yeah. Pretty much.

Mary Thirly enjoyed her job and even made plans that evening to have dinner with one of her co-workers named Ila. I love that name. Mary was recently wed to Roy Little Junior who worked as a bank examiner for the state of Georgia. Roy himself came from a well-off Florida family and graduated from the Citadel in Charleston South Carolina.

The two had met at a Georgia Tech Alabama football game. Two. And after two years of dating they were married in September of 1965. So just a month prior to.

Yeah. This day they were talking about. So they moved into an apartment on the line street in Decatur. Mary and Roy had only been married for six weeks but by all accounts appeared very happy.

On the evening of October 14th Roy was out of town on business. He was in LaGrange, Georgia training to be a bank auditor. So this left Mary's evening free. Okay.

So after leaving the office Mary stopped by Colonial grocery store in Linux Square to pick up a few items for a dinner party that she was having the next night. So Linux Square and especially I don't really know what it looks like now but in the 60s I saw an aerial view of it. It's huge. Yeah.

It's massive. Even in the 60s it was massive. So she goes here picks up a couple things. She leaves the store with four brown paper bags of groceries and several glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

I love those glass Coca-Cola bottles. Those are really cool. I wish they still made those. I mean they do but like not.

Not really. Yeah. Not really. They're recyclable.

Yeah. Great. So Mary placed the items in her car and then she met up with Ila around 6 p.m. at the Picadilly Cafe.

Now there is some dispute. Was it the SNW cafeteria or was it the Picadilly Cafe? I've heard reports. I mean at the end of the day.

Right. They met up somewhere in April. But still. Yeah.

We all had a Picadilly in Asheville back in the day. We sure did. My mother and I had this whole conversation recently about it. Anyway.

So I know. So they're eating. They have a great time just enjoying good food, conversation. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

And they were just talking about their marriages. They were talking about how happy they were, excited for the future. They were talking about work. Just all those things that girls would get out about.

So once they finished dinner they were like, you know what we should do since we're here. Let's just go shopping. Like clothes shopping. Let's browse.

Let's go. Let's buy a new dress. And so they decided sure why not. So they started shopping.

And by 8 p.m. Mary looks at her watch and she's like, oh it is late. Like I gotta get going. Now for us.

That would be a bad time. Oh yeah. What? She said, listen, I've got to go because I've got to clean the apartment.

You know, my husband's going to be home tomorrow. We've got a dinner guest coming. I want everything to look really nice. And from my understanding, this was the first time that they were coming to the apartment like now that they're married.

So there's something to be said about wanting. Yeah. Like everything to look really nice and feel like. Yeah.

This is our place. You know, like what a great little housewife. You know. So she says goodbye to Aila and she says, Hey, I'll see you at the office in the morning.

And Aila says, Okay, great. See you tomorrow. So the next day comes and Mary's colleagues found it strange because she didn't show up for work. And this is highly unlike her because she is always on time.

If she's going to be absent, she would call in and say, Hey, I'm sick or, you know, I'm late, but nothing. They're like, this doesn't make sense. So Mary's boss notices as well and asked Aila because she knew the two were, you know, gonna have dinner together. So she asked her like, was Mary sick last night?

Was she just not feeling well? Do you think like maybe she's at home and just, you know, and Aila's like, I mean, no, she seemed fine. She didn't appear to be sick. She told me she would be here today.

So some of Mary's coworkers tried calling her apartment, but nobody answered. So finally, Mary's boss reached out to the manager of the apartment complex. And he said, listen, you know, we're a little worried. Would you be able to like check the apartment, just make sure like is she ill?

Maybe she fell? Maybe she needs help? And you know, nobody knows, right? Hasn't that a town?

Yeah. So when the apartment manager went to check, he noticed that mail and the daily newspaper were still on the porch. All the things that Mary would typically get in the morning, like, you know, the mail would be taken in from the day before she would have taken in the morning paper. Right.

It appeared she hadn't been home. Oh, she'd never made a home. She never made a home. Correct.

Okay. And inside the apartment, she was not there. Okay. So manager reported back his findings to Mary's boss, who was like, okay, something is wrong.

Yeah. And so he made the agonizing decision to call the police and report her missing. Aila told Mary's boss that she recalled Mary parking in the yellow 32 section of the Linux where parking center. That is very specific.

Very specific. And did anyone think to try to get in contact with the husband? So, you know, you got to remember it's the 60s. Right.

Yeah. We even know where he is. Well, we know he's somewhere in Lagrange, Georgia. But I mean, we don't know what this is.

Like, is he at Colonial Bay? Because he had first citizens. You know what I mean? Like, we don't really know.

Yeah. So I think for them, details are important, but they probably didn't have all the, you know, and what is Roy's schedule? You know, what hotel is he's saying at? Like, they didn't know all those things.

So at least not at the time. So her boss called the Linux Square Security and gave them a description of Mary's car, a pearl colored 1965 Mercury Comet. When the boss spoke with security, they were adamant that Mary's car had not been there overnight. They had even patrolled the shopping center parking lot at 6 a.m.

And her car was not there. They were like, well, there's no way. No, there was no car here. So, you know, sorry.

And Mary's boss is like, something is wrong. So he himself was like, I'm going to go down here. That's pretty good boss. Yeah.

It's a boss who like really cares about their employees. Yeah, clearly. Yeah. So he went down there himself and he was thinking like, maybe security isn't paying much attention.

Maybe they're just kind of blowing me off, you know, now that it's probably busy. They're just like, whatever. Maybe they're mistaken. So at this point, it's about 1230 in the afternoon.

Her boss finds Mary's car parked at the yellow 32 section. So it was there the whole time. Well, the car hood was cold. Okay.

So I've been there for a minute. Yes. So indicating the car had not been running in several hours, because I did some googling, right? To see how long it takes a car engine to cool down once it's parked.

Yeah. From my research, it really has to do with the size of the engine. So cars nowadays take about 30 to 45 minutes, even an hour to cool down. But it's estimated that the car that large in the 1960s would have taken hours to cool down.

Oh, okay. So if the car had been moved and brought back, it would have been brought back hours prior to this 1230 finding. Okay. So that means Mary's car would have returned to the parking lot if it had been gone between 6.30 and 9.30 AM.

So it's pretty big window of time. Yeah, because the security people said they did their patrol at 6. Yeah. And they didn't see anything.

And they didn't see anything. Allegedly. And I think that would be pretty true because at that time of day, there would be no cars on the parking lot. And you would notice like a random car park there and they'd probably check it.

Like anybody in here kind of thing. Right. So that feels valid. Okay.

So when police arrived, they searched the car and they noticed that Mary's keys were missing. So who never returned this car, kept her keys. Okay. They also noticed a layer of red dirt on the outside of the vehicle, which made it seem as if Mary or someone else had recently driven through a muddy or like rough terrain area.

Okay. Which Mary didn't live or work. She lived in the city. That's weird.

Yeah. So as they looked in the car, there were several blunt droplets on the driver's side door, front seats, passenger side window, and smeared on the steering wheel. On the headset of the passenger seat, they found grass clippings stuck to the seat along with tried blood. Okay.

This led investigators to question if Mary or her perpetrator of some kind had, you know, attacked her on the back of the head or, you know, she had heard her head or something. But the grass almost seems like she fell to the ground and grass would have been stuck to the back of her head, you know. Yeah. Was were the groceries still in there?

I'm going to get that. Okay. So as a note here, the blood was tested in the lab and confirmed to be Mary's. So we know it hers in the back of the car.

They found the four brown paper bags filled with groceries along with the bottles of Coca Cola. They also discovered bald up panties. I hate that word underwear in the backseat, a slip and a girdle. So remember back in the 60s, women bore girdles.

Yeah. Police also found a pack of Kent cigarettes, which was the kind that Mary smoked. Not uncommon to find in her car cigarettes, you know. Yeah.

One, let's see, I guess on the floorboard was one stocking that appeared to have been cut and a lacy, um, brassier. So her bra, one stocking, her cigarettes, you know, they found her slip, her girdle, her panties. Yeah. I don't like where that's going.

There were some light blood splatter on these clothing items. Yeah. Um, all other belongings, her coat, her dress, her hat, her keys, her purse, nowhere to be found. So she's out there somewhere with a dress, no underwear, one stocking and a coat.

Shoes and shoes. And shoes. Yeah. Yeah.

So investigators did dust the car for fingerprints, but it appeared that either the assailant used gloves or wiped down the car completely because they weren't even able to find Mary fingerprints. Dang. I made a lecture down. Absolutely.

Because in your own car, of course, you're going to have fingerprints everywhere. Everywhere, exactly. Another odd thing about the car. It had a North Carolina license plate on it, but Mary lived in Georgia and her car was registered in Georgia.

So somebody changed the plate? That's what it seems like. That's weird. When police dug further, they discovered the tag had been stolen off of another car in North Carolina around the same time as Mary's disappearance.

Additionally, Mary's car speedometer had 40 extra miles on it. Speedometer. Oh, Dominic. Oh, Dominic.

Oh, Dominic. Oh, Dominic. Yeah. Wait, that doesn't make sense.

Oh, Dominic. Oh, Dominic. Oh, Dominic. Got you.

40 extra miles on it. How they knew it had 40 extra miles. I don't really know. Unless it was, I don't know.

So you would have to know her starting mileage. Yeah, that's kind of when she came to the restaurant. So I really don't know how they figured this out. Unless she was talking to her coworker, I don't know.

Like, hey, Haley, I got 6,234 miles on this baby. Right. I mean, it's just very strange. Like, the things that are significant, like, oh my gosh, Haley, I just hit 100,000 miles on my car.

Like, that's different. Yeah. If she had one of those little oil change things and it just got done and it said, right, that would make sense. But I don't exactly know how they figured this out.

The police began a widespread surge of Linux Square and the surrounding area hoping to find Mary. Fliers were released throughout the area noting Mary's height. She was 5 foot 6. She weighed 120 pounds.

She had short brown hair and hazel eyes. Mary had been wearing a dark green dress. It was long sleeves with tiny little white flowers. She was wearing a white London fog raincoat and ballet flats.

Sounds very elegant. She's really cute. Yeah. So in regards to her jewelry, she was wearing a platinum wedding band and a gold diamond ring on her left hand.

And on her right hand, she had on a North Carolina college for women class ring along with a small bracelet on her wrist. She also carried a brown leather designer handbag. Seems like she was very put together. I mean, way better than us.

Yeah. You know, like slackers. We look homeless. We do.

I'm not gonna find it. It's reused to it. Yeah. Mary was also very attractive.

She had full lips, a strong jawline. She was very stylish, you know, kind of at that time. She's sort of the, you know, his girlfriend A type, you know, like worked in the office, very presentable, very put together. So her bank that she worked at put together a $1,000 reward offered to the public if Mary was either found alive or any like information was found about Mary.

So remember, this is 1965. So $1,000 was an amount of money. And by today's estimates, that's about 10,000. Yeah.

So police spent time interviewing Linux where employees, friends, coworkers, and of course, Mary's husband, who had been out of town for work. Now we all know who to investigators tend to look at first. The husband usually the husband. So this is true in this case.

The husband Roy was conveniently out of town. So police wondered if he was a culprit or, you know, had hired somebody. So when police informed Roy about his wife's disappearance, it didn't really have much of a reaction from him. Okay.

I mean, I would have been like, what? Yeah. But he's like, huh, weird. I'm too busy with my banking.

I mean, I don't know. Yeah. So he appeared kind of cold and aloof and not, you know, not that everybody's reactionary. Well, in the 60s too.

Right. Right. That's a different. Let me think about it.

I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Right. At this point, I still think though you should be like in the honeymoon phase, right?

Were you kind of obsessed with each other a little bit? But Roy's lackluster reaction didn't sit too well with investigators. I can see why. She'd be like, the love of my life.

And he's like, huh, interesting. That's weird. Let's have a cocktail. So I do want to say here that the people do react differently.

Oh, yeah. So, you know, maybe he's just trying to like take it in and process it. It's probably a huge shock to him. So there's no certain way that one person can react.

But it is kind of odd that there wasn't even a like, oh my gosh, you know, let's put out flyers. Let's do something right or let me come back immediately, you know. So when they finally got Roy in for an interview, he barely spoke and police had to drag any information that they could out of him. He was very tight-lipped and really wouldn't even comment on his life with Mary.

Like they asked those things like, are you having problems? Like, are there affairs? Like, you know, anything that we should know? Yeah, like money issues.

Exactly. You know, family issues and nothing. Yeah. So investigators tried another tactic.

They took Roy to the Forensics lab where they had Mary's car. They showed him the blood splatter, the grass clippings, the North Carolina tag. But Roy just kind of shoved his shoulders in a kind of way. Geez.

Your loved one is missing and you're kind of like, yeah, whatever. I'm pretty cold and I'll lose sometimes. But if I were missing. If you were missing, I was thinking about my partner.

Well, him too. If he went missing, um, he'd be like, oh, good a break. Not to be like, all right. I would night to myself.

Let's watch Netflix and chill with Bailey. Yeah, that's, I mean, that would be pretty like, okay, what are we doing? I mean, particularly when they show you the car and what they found, that would be alarming. Very.

I would be asking them questions like, what are you all doing? Yeah, what's the next step? Where's the printing place that we need to put out these flyers? Do I need to do something on, you know, little news?

Yeah, the newspaper. Exactly. What do we need to do here? What kind of information do you need?

You know, nowadays it would be like, do you need a DNA sample? Here's his hair brush, you know, whatever. Yeah, so it's just very strange. Like the one thing that Roy did say, he asked how long the car was going to be impounded because he was going to need that back.

Oh, it's, I mean, Haley, it's a brand new car. So we're just going to need that back. Okay. So obviously his love for the car versus his wife did not look good to the police.

No, it doesn't look great. It doesn't, it doesn't feel good. All those things. So when police interviewed friends and family, they asked them their feelings on Roy.

Well, what do you think about Roy? What's your relationship like with Roy? Most of them replied that they didn't really care for him. Yeah, they felt that he had a bad temper, that he was overall unfriendly.

Her family tried to encourage her not to marry Roy as they felt that he lacked personality and really didn't match Mary's gregarious outgoing bubbly personality. They also found him slightly controlling and just rude. Oh, like that. Yeah, I don't either.

I will say opposites attract. So, you know, the more aloof personalities tend to attract the ones who are like, yeah, you know, like you and I. Yeah, that's why we get along well. Yeah, because I'm cold and aloof and you're bubbly.

It's the opposite. It's the opposite. It's my first time just trying to get our attention. But yeah, that's why we get along.

But yes, they did not like him. And Mary's close friends even objected to the marriage and some even chose not to attend her wedding because of it. That's a pretty big sign. Like if your friends don't like your partner, yeah, like there might be something to do that.

And we all have moments where maybe they said something that struck you the wrong way or you just do that. But I mean, it's another thing to be like, I at my core think they're bad person. Think they're bad person. I am completely opposed to this union and I'm not going.

That's right. Right. That's pretty big. And I wonder how Mary felt about that.

You know, that had to have hurt. Like you want to kind of examine that a little bit. Exactly. But you know, something about Roy is Roy was going somewhere as far as his career.

And so maybe that's what was appealing. You know, she was very career minded as well. So maybe something the two of them had in common, I don't know. So please continue to dive into Roy.

Roy went to a military school and was raised in a stern household. So any reaction was too much of a reaction. Yeah, I can see that. So staying stern faced was kind of the norm.

Yeah. And what he sort of knew. So they checked to see if Roy was set to inherit a life insurance policy. You know, maybe there was a rationale here.

Yeah, maybe. But he wasn't. They had no life insurance policy on either of them. And from all accounts, it appeared that their six week marriage was relatively happy.

No one could attest that there had been any fights. No one had heard about any arguments or any, you know, I'm leaving kind of thing. Right. It's very strange.

So investigators, yeah, they were rubbed the wrong way by Roy. But at the same time, there's no motive. There's really no evidence the point that it's him. Right.

He's just kind of a loof dude. But everybody said that about him. Yeah. That's not really out of the norm.

Right. Characteristic wise. And they were able to verify that he was in LaGrange, Georgia at the time of Mary's disappearance. So the alibi checks out.

Yeah. So police are like, okay, back to the drawing board. So they went back to the family and friends. And co-workers stated that Mary had been getting unsettling phone calls for the last couple of weeks that had her feeling on edge.

She would tell the caller that she was quote married now and couldn't visit with them. But they were always welcome to come visit her and Roy. That's weird. Yep.

The co-workers had no idea who in head was calling, but did state that someone other than her husband had been sending her flowers. In fact, she had been sent five roses. Now, not a dozen as typical five roses. Why?

I don't know. That feels so methodical and specific. And I don't know. But five roses.

Like I could see, you know, six or 12. Right. 24. Yeah.

Any multiple of six really would make more sense. We just keep doing the math. Yeah. No, that's not right.

That's right. Is it 30? 30? 30?

30? 36. Because five times six is 30. And 24 plus six is 30.

Yeah. And then 36. And then 42. And then 48.

That's kind of where I stopped. 52, 58. So on and so forth. 54.

Not. Hey, we see this. 54 and then 60. Please allow me the girl math.

It is late. It is 9 p.m. 915 p.m. girl.

I am tired. Yeah. I didn't say that math was my major in college. All right.

I picked a degree specifically did not have to do math. Thank you for helping me work this out. You're welcome. So coworkers are like, we don't know who's in the flowers.

So these five weird roses strange fibrosis. So investigators were able to track down the florist who the flowers came from. And they noted that it was just a few blocks away from Mary's apartment. So okay, if it's near Mary's apartment indicator, why didn't it come to her house?

Why did it go to her office in Atlanta? Maybe they didn't know where she lived. But they had to have if the florist was in Decatur right near her house. Maybe they lived in Decatur and just like coincidence.

I mean, maybe, maybe it also gives off some like stalking vibe. Yeah, it's weird. Totally. It's definitely weird.

For sure. But maybe that this person knew she was married. So they didn't want to send it to the house or the husband with the fee. True.

So if they send it to work, right, I don't know. This is strange. All right. So the person paid cash for the flowers.

So there's no real trail of like who it could be. But they're like, okay, here's my, I don't know how much it costs back then, $3. For this fibrosis. On a weird note, because this story isn't weird enough, Mary had told friends and colleagues that she was scared to be in her apartment by herself.

And she was scared to drive alone. Now, she didn't tell them why exactly, but on the night that she disappeared, her husband was out of town. So like, Mary was okay just driving her car home and being in the apartment alone, because she would have been. I mean, it makes sense that she made dinner plans.

Right. Because she was free. And, you know, it was part of that socialization. She wouldn't be alone.

Yeah. Like chunk of time. So kind of leaves me to wonder what someone's stalking Mary, watching her every move. So days prior to her abduction, she told coworkers that she had something very important to tell them this information was never shared because she went missing.

Always tell somebody. Tell somebody. I don't care who it is. So tell somebody the information.

Tell somebody Mary. Or write it down. Murray, Murray, my car. Tell somebody.

My car. Sorry. That's Jimmy Stewart. So investigators continued to scour the crime scene.

They even hired private pilots to fly over wooded areas in an effort to provide an aerial search because, you know, back then, they didn't really have police helicopters. Right. Yeah, it wasn't wasn't a thing. Yeah.

So even if you were looking, though, from a plane, I mean, unless there's a great deal of space between these trees, I imagine in the 60s, it would be very hard. Yeah, I have probably like, you know, maybe like a little like a crop plane or something, where you can be kind of low, but then you're still like with your binoculars. Like, yes, exactly. Like strapped into the side there.

It's not great. Hey, I'm a good, you're a knock. That's what I'm envisioning. It may have been more high tech than that.

I'm envisioning we're strapped into the side of some like crop plane. You know, like that. We've got our binoculars. I think that's what it was.

And to be like random pilots, the police need your help. You fly a crop plane? Come on. You're in.

Get the chemicals out the back of your plane. Straps somebody with binoculars in. Get in, Haley. Hop on in.

So investigators started looking at Mary's credit card purchases. So back in the 60s, you know, people on credit cards, and that was a paper trail, even then. So they discovered that her gas card had been used twice since her disappearance. Weird.

Once the next day of her disappearance, October 15th, around four o'clock in the morning. So this would be about eight hours after she went missing in Charlotte, North Carolina. So the gas card was used in Charlotte, North Carolina and was again used about 12 hours later. So about four p.m.

in Raleigh, North Carolina. And Haley, who signed the gas card receipts? Mary. Mary.

What's she still alive? No. We're police looking for her in the wrong place. Should they have moved northward into North Carolina?

And you know, Mary is from North Carolina. So that's not a crazy stretch that she might be visiting family or something. But no, I'm betting somebody just signed her name. Did she?

Well, no, this was her handwriting. I'm never finding it. So did Mary decide screw it? I'm done with this life.

I don't I'm out. What's she kidding out? That one. Oh, I did.

Was there other kind of family friend foul play that was involved? You know, we don't know, but we will find out more in next week next week. Yes. So next week, we're going to talk about those gas receipts.

We are going to talk about some of those gas attendants who they have seen at Mary. And we're also going to talk about another woman who filled Mary's position that something untimely happened to all in next week's episode. Can't wait. Well, I'm excited for next week.

I'm glad. Yeah. Well, if you would like to get in touch with us, you can do so by emailing us at mountainistories.applelatchin at gmail.com. Find us on our Facebook at mountainistories.tales from Appalachia.

Check us out on Instagram mountainistories.applelatchin and check out our Patreon. Patreon.com.com. And I'm going to give a shout out to Charlotte, North Carolina because Charlotte is our biggest area of listeners. I've noticed at least for last week's episode.

Oh, well. So yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. So thank you Charlotte.

Thank you Charlotte. And we'll be talking about you next week. Yeah. All right.

Thanks, Cheryl. Bye. Bye.