Documentary to highlight Atlanta’s most infamous missing persons case from 60 years ago

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Sixty years ago, Mary Shotwell Little left her job at Citizens and Southern (C&S) Bank, where she worked as a secretary. That evening, she met a coworker for dinner and shopping at Lenox Square, and the two parted ways about 8 p.m.

But Little never showed up for work the next day, beginning one of metro Atlanta’s most infamous missing persons cases of the 20th century.

On Nov. 12, “The Vanishing: The 60-Year Unsolved Disappearance of Mary Shotwell Little” will premiere at the SCADshow Theater on Spring Street in Midtown. The film was produced by Monument Motion Picture LLC, a company headed by founder/CEO/producer Steve Kendrick, producer Bill Vanderkloot, executive producer W. John Fedack and associate producer Pamela Pennamen.

“Mary’s story is not a footnote,” Kendrick said. “It’s a mirror. When cases like Mary’s go cold, it’s not just evidence that goes missing. It’s accountability. We’re reopening this conversation because her life mattered, and still matters, today.”

Shotwell graduated from the North Carolina College for Women, now UNC Greensboro, in 1962 with a degree in secretarial administration. She then moved to Atlanta, got her job at Citizens and C&S Bank and in September 1965, married Roy Little Jr.

On the morning of Oct. 15, 1965, police were called after Little didn’t show up to work. Officers found her car still in the Lexnox Square parking lot.

The vehicle had blood specks on the interior and exterior, some kind of red dust and women’s undergarments covered in blood. There were also about 40 unaccounted miles on the odometer.

About a month after she went missing, Little’s credit card was used at gas stations in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Producers for “The Vanishing” said the film is designed to delve deep into Little’s disappearance, retrace her final hours and shed new light on what may have happened that night.

Producers also said the film weaves archival materials, new reporting and first-person testimony to confront the unanswered questions and systemic blind spots that left a Little’s story unresolved for six decades.

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