The Mystery Of Marjorie Wilson's Disappearance

Marjorie Flewellin Wilson, a petite 66-year-old, went missing from a parking lot over 40 years ago. Her case has never been solved. On the evening of Saturday, December 4, 1976, Wilson and her husband, Robert, decided to go out for dinner with friends at the Lake Monroe Inn in nearby Sanford, Florida. Dinner began normally enough, but just after Wilson received her meal of shrimp just after 9 p.m., she told the group that she was not feeling well, according to a Reddit post made by u/unsolvedbb1. Her husband took her back to their car, a light yellow 1973 Chevrolet Impala with a brown vinyl top, where she rested with the engine running while he went back inside to finish his dinner. However, when he came back outside just 15 minutes later, Wilson and the car were both gone.

Almost immediately, Robert suspected something was amiss. Wilson rarely drove at night, so it seemed even more unlikely she would have simply driven herself home, no matter how unwell she was feeling. Uneasy, Robert called a taxi, which arrived after over an hour of waiting. He arrived at their home just 10 minutes away in the 1000 block of Persian Drive in Deltona, Florida, after 10 p.m. There was no trace of Wilson at the couple's home. She was last described as wearing a lavender pantsuit with a peach-colored blouse, orange shoes, and dark-rimmed glasses. She had less than $40 in her purse, per the Charley Project.

After investigating, the authorities suspected foul play was involved in Marjorie Wilson's disappearance, and she was classified as an endangered missing person, according to the Charley Project. The car, which had just a half tank of gas in it when she went missing, was never recovered. However, eyewitnesses reported seeing another car in the area that had been sideswiped and some of its paint scraped off. While some suspected perhaps it was Wilson's car that was responsible for the collision, her husband claimed she was always a very careful driver, so she must have either not been driving the car or been under extreme duress to have hit another car while behind the wheel.

The fact that the car has never been recovered leads many amateur online sleuths to suspect that she may have accidentally driven into Lake Monroe, which ran alongside the road heading toward her house. "People can behave very irrationally when they're unwell, and especially older people. Even simple conditions like urinary tract infections may cause delirium — this could potentially explain an otherwise cautious daytime driver deciding to drive home at night, without telling her husband, and making mistakes leading to a collision (and possibly driving into a body of water)," u/Sunscreen-Indoors mused on Reddit.

However, authorities ruled the water theory unlikely, as Lake Monroe is fairly shallow, meaning a car — particularly one as large as a 1973 Chevrolet Impala — would have had a hard time remaining hidden under the water. Other theories include that she was the victim of a carjacking, robbery, or abduction gone wrong. There had been some previously reported carjackings in the area, so some theories claim that a robber may have seen the car running with the key in the ignition and saw it as an easy target. She may have been killed by the attacker, or suffered a heart attack or stroke while being kidnapped, only to have the abductor dump her body somewhere. 

"I think carjacking and the car and Marge ending up in a body of water aren't mutually exclusive. If I stole a car and needed to get rid of it, a body of water isn't a bad option. It's an even better option if there's a body inside of it, even if you didn't kill the person," posited u/cait_Cat. "The lake was supposedly too shallow, but is there other water she could've ended up in? Florida is full of lakes and canals and stuff. Could she have taken a detour to buy some Pepto-Bismol or something and gone into the water on the way?" another Reddit sleuth suggested. 

No additional clues to Marjorie Wilson's whereabouts, her body, or the car have turned up since.