CA CA - Mary Stuart, 32, & Fannie, 23 mo., & Jessie, 2, Honeydew, 10 Dec 1977

SheWhoMustNotBeNamed

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NCMC604549c1.jpg

Fannie Fawn Stuart

Endangered Missing -- Missing Since: December 10, 1977

Missing From: Honeydew, Califorina

Height: 2'4" -- Weight: 20 lbs -- Hair Color: Red -- Eye Color: Hazel

NCMC604549c2.jpg

Jessie Flo Stuart

Endangered Missing -- Missing Since: December 10, 1977

Missing From: Honeydew, Califorina

Height: 2'8" -- Weight: 26 lbs -- Hair Color: Blonde -- Eye Color: Hazel


Fannie and Jessie were last seen with their mother, Mary Stuart, who may go by the last name Danckert. They were last seen on December 10, 1977, when they left their residence to run errands. Approximately one month after they were last seen, their family station wagon was found abandoned a few miles from their home but their whereabouts remain unknown. Foul play is suspected in their disappearance.


NCMEC

Charley Project
 
I'm willing to bet the husband did it. I read somewhere that the husband was violent so maybe he killed her but she was able to shield the kids. I don't think the kids are dead.
 
I lived in Southern Humboldt county during that time about an hour or so away from where Mary and her girls disappeared. Although I don't remember too much about it from that time, when the case reopened in 2009, it caught my attention. It's heartbreaking to know that she has a daughter still hoping to find her.

Although all the accounts say that they lived in Honeydew, I really doubt that they lived in the tiny town. At that time, there were many young families going back to the land on acreage (as we did). The Mattole Road runs between Honeydew and Panther Gap through Windy Nip Gap, the areas that were searched. It's remote, and if you left the road to go to someone's home, you needed a map because of all the unmarked dirt roads forking off into the hills to other properties.

Not everyone had phones and it was, and still is, a marijuana growing area. Although it's very suspicious that her husband didn't report her missing, and I expect that he is the one who "disappeared her," no phone and illegal activity might have played a role in the delay (if he is innocent). Although he is dead, l would like to see a picture of him just to see if I had ever met him. So far, he is invisible online.

I have some more thoughts and links I'll put in other posts.
 
Here is a post from a FB page about the case. There might be interesting comments at some point. It does state that there is no connection to the bodies found in barrels in NH in 1985 and 2000 that have been in the news recently.

It also mentions that she may have been going by the name of Benson. This must be her previous married name. The Charlie Project link said she might have gone by Danckert. My research shows that this was her maiden name.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/...total_comments=1&comment_tracking={"tn":"R0"}

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/stuart_mary.html

And congratulations to me for hitting 4000 posts! Woo Hoo! :happydance:Or maybe that means I need to get a life. :dunno:
 
This summary from Porchlight International has the text of the original 1977 news story. I think this quote is interesting and I wonder if it means she was "carrying" a gun.

Stuart was reportedly heading for a television repair shop in Fortuna or Eureka and possibly was planning to go to an optometrist. She was carrying and was supposed to return before dark, according to Lt. Robert Richards.
BBM

http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/ar/t15814.htm
 
This 2009 article from the Times Standard was updated July 2015. I'm not sure what part is new.

http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20090819/cold-disappearance-case-reopened-by-das-office

Since there was no sign of a struggle near the car, I wonder if the car was placed there after she and her daughters were disappeared. She might have gotten home, been attacked by an enraged husband, and the car planted or hidden on the logging road to (successfully) confuse the investigation. Personally, I would not be surprised if their remains are somewhere quite near their home. I even wonder if the crawl space beneath their home was searched. Of course, if others were involved somehow, they could be anywhere in that remote country. I notice that the search area now includes Petrolia, out on the coast. JMO

The best outcome would be if those little girls are alive and grown somewhere, unaware of their history, and could be found.
 
[h=1]The Humboldt 35[/h] [h=2]Why does Humboldt County have the highest rate of missing persons reports in the state?[/h]
Only two children appear on the AG's list of missing persons for Humboldt County, Jessie and Fannie Stuart, ages 2 and 1 when they disappeared along with their mother, Mary Stuart, in December of 1977. Mary, who lived on a rural homestead in Honeydew, had driven into town on Dec. 10 to buy groceries and do laundry. Neither she nor the children were ever seen again, although the family's red station wagon was found on a logging road nearby. The Humboldt County District Attorney's Office reopened the case in 2009, saying it had new leads, according to an article in the Times-Standard. Byron Stuart, Mary's husband, remains the primary suspect in the case. Neighbors describe him as violent, erratic and often armed with guns. He died in 1996 and his homestead has since been subdivided, the site of many different cannabis grow scenes in the intervening decades. Although NCMEC continues to digitally age the photographs of tiny Jessie and Fannie Stuart, investigators seem to agree that they have been long since deceased.
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/the-humboldt-35/Content?oid=7775161
 
He may have been often violent and erratic, and even a possible danger to his wife; however, that doesn't always mean that he would hurt his babies. IMO he probably did do something to his wife, but perhaps gave the girls to someone in order to better make it look like Mary took off.

Or, if he killed his wife, he also killed the girls, simply not wanting to shoulder the burden of sole caregiver of two babies who would need a lot of work and attention.
 
It says that the groceries were in the car when it was discovered. What condition was the groceries? Had meat thawed, was the milk warm? Also, where was the laundry that she was going into town to do? Was that in the car? If not, could that had been a ruse to leave her husband? Could she have started over somewhere else? Where was her other daughter during this time? Just thinking out loud.
 
It says that the groceries were in the car when it was discovered. What condition was the groceries? Had meat thawed, was the milk warm? Also, where was the laundry that she was going into town to do? Was that in the car? If not, could that had been a ruse to leave her husband? Could she have started over somewhere else? Where was her other daughter during this time? Just thinking out loud.
It was a month before the Opel was found. The groceries would have been in the "advanced science experiment" stage by then.
 
Mary Elizabeth Danckert Benson Stuart
DOB: 25 April 1945
5 Feet 5 inches tall
135 pounds
Caucasian female, with fair complexion
Light brown shoulder length hair
Blue eyes
Maiden name Danckert
Former married name believed to be Benson
Mary had older daughter from prior marriage

Jessie Flo Stuart
Estimated DOB: 1 January 1975
Reported age two years old
(Actually about 35 months.)?
Caucasian female, with fair complexion
2 feet 8 inches tall
28 pounds
Blonde hair, hazel eyes

Fannie Fawn Stuart
Estimated DOB: 1 January 1976
Reported age one year old
(Actually about 23 months.)?
Caucasian female
Red hair, hazel eyes
2 feet 4 inches tall
20 pounds
 
I am going to analyze the information in the above links, and synthesize it into a scenario of the Stuart family's last day, when they disappeared. I will include local knowledge and reasoned observations. My effort will be aided by Doctor Occam, of Occam's Razor fame. In other words, the simplest of a choice of explanations for an event is the truth.
There are a number of theories advanced to explain the disappearance of the Stuart family. They are:
Someone had tampered with the Opel's fuel line so that it would eventually conk out and strand the family.
Mary fled her marriage because of domestic abuse.
Mary took off while lost in a fit of delusion.
Mary and her kids died of misadventure after abandoning her car.
Mary committed suicide, leaving the children to perish.
Mary and the girls was murdered.
The family was abducted by aliens.
We will consider all these possible theories as we develop the scenario below.
On Saturday, 10 December 1977, in the hamlet of Honeydew, California, at about 10 AM, 32 year old Mary Elizabeth Stuart loaded her two small children into the family station wagon. Mary was taking Jessie Flo and Fannie Fawn on a day of errands. It was chilly, at 35 degrees, though the day would warm to low 50s. However, there was no wind and there hadn't been any precipitation for at least a week. It was another fine clear day in the wilderness of northern California.
Mary planned to be home before dark; with about seven hours remaining daylight that day, it would be dusky by 5 PM. She was probably gun-shy of driving rugged Humboldt County's twisting narrow two-lane roads in the dark, even in the dry. Her small red German Opel station wagon, tags 4546-AII, was a distinctive and unusual vehicle (sample shown) compared to the giant 4x4s, pickups, and American sedans of the era.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Opel_Kadett_B_Kombi_BW_2011-09-03_13-38-00.JPG
On the day's agenda was the grocery store, laundromat, tv repair shop, and optometrist's office. Mary's errands were slated to take her to Fortuna, CA, about an hour and a half away,and/or Eureka, 20 minutes further north. (One source said Fairfield instead of Fortuna, but Fairfield is over a 9 hour drive from Honeydew. Nonsense.)
A map of her projected shopping route: خرائط ‪Google‬‏‏
Other than grocery shopping, the day's activities of Mary and her toddlers are unknown, with travel taking up at least three and a half hours of the seven hours of daylight. However, when the small German wagon didn't come home that night, Mary's husband, Byron McCray Stuart, didn't report his family missing. Nor did he call the cops on the 11th or 12th. On the 13th, a friend of Mary's filed the missing persons report.
While a search party of 25 volunteers searched the approaches to Honeydew, deputies interviewed Byron. Stuart was suspected of domestic violence and was a known drug abuser, which may or may not have accounted for his insistence that his family had been abducted by aliens. Given his reputation for hotheaded and erratic temper fits, his ongoing drug use, and his penchant for firearms, law enforcement was more than a bit skeptical. A neighbor verified Stuart's drug use and flakiness during the week following the disappearance, including raving about space aliens.
There is no information given whether law enforcement checked Eureka and Fortuna stores and shops for anyone who might have seen the young mom and her two kids on the 10th. They must have eaten, somewhere, sometime, but it isn't mentioned. The ongoing search failed to elicit clues.
The Opel was finally found abandoned on the 19th of January, 1978, on a logging road near her Honeydew home. Groceries were in it. Obviously, the little family had made it to town, then returned to Honeydew with the groceries. There's no mention of laundry, whether clean or dirty, nor a TV set, nor new glasses or contact lenses. There was also no sign of mother or children, nor signs of a struggle.
The little Opel was disabled by the steel fuel line's breakage, probably by the car bottoming out on rock. A severed fuel line stops supplying gas to the engine in under a minute, and the engine can't run until the fuel line is mended.
The rugged country around the stalled station wagon was searched, again with no sign of the Stuarts.
With the Stuarts' daily scenario complete, let's consider the possible theories of disappearance listed above.
First, if someone tampered with the car's fuel line during the journey, it would have quit running at the spot. At the site where it did quit running, tampering would be blatantly evident. Then, too, why would someone be lurking on an uninhabited road to cut a fuel line? And Mary wouldn't interfere with the tampering? Doc Occam snorts disdainfully at the possibility.
Now consider the flight from domestic violence theory. There's absolutely no evidence of it. Alright, is the cynical rejoinder, it went unreported, as domestic violence usually does. Fair enough. Maybe. But why would an abused woman leave the safety of the county seat, with its police force and services for abused women, to return to an obscure village just so she could bug out again? Nonsense, says Doc Occam. So, two theories dismissed.
There is no evidence Mary was deluded in any way. She was rational enough to drive, shop, and navigate that day—at least until she left the paved road on her return trip. However, there is no evidence she veered off her course either. So much for the third theory, that of a delusional runaway.
Then there is the theory of death by misadventure. A usual sub-theory is death by animal attack, even though a human is more likely to die by lightning strike than animal predation. However, as Doc Occam points out, why would Mary drag her kids into the wilderness in near-freezing weather, when they could retrace their route back down the logging road to pavement? Not that that would have been easy, given the rough footing in the dark of the moon, the temperature dipping, and the youth of the toddlers, but it's more inviting than the woods. However, neither remains nor signs of passage along the road or in the woods were reported.
Mary's death by suicide is also unlikely, for again, no remains, no signs, no predisposing symptoms.
This leaves murder as the only likely theory. There is evidence pointing to the most likely suspect—husband Byron McCray Stuart. And here Doc Occam agrees. When we search for the motivation for murder, as well as access to the victims, statistics (as well as the current facts) point at Byron Stuart. Most domestic murders involve a spouse.
A neighbor reported Stuart as being drugged and delusional for the week following his family's disappearance. His space alien fantasies were proof of delusions. Then, too, he didn't report his family as missing. There is no information that he even searched for them. There's no one else known to have a motive to harm Mary and her kids. And the Opel was found near his home, in a spot likely known to him.
Furthermore, there is no actual evidence that Mary and the girls were even in the car when it stalled out. There is no way of knowing who actually was driving the Opel wagon when it crapped out. But it was awfully conveniently located for Mr. Stuart. He might have even walked home from the Opel after he ditched it.
If we pay attention to Doc Occam, Mary Stuart and her daughters were murdered. Byron Stuart has since died. But the questions still asked are, Where are the remains? Did he have accomplices? Are they still alive to answer for their crimes? These are still open questions, and this is still an open case.
The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office is the investigating agency in this case. Their anonymous tip line is 707-268-2539. Murder should out.
 
Byron McCray Stuart
Age 28 at time of disappearance.
Hot tempered, erratic, known to carry guns.
Delusional drug abuser.
Diagnosed with AIDS in 1991. IV user. Using drugs at time of disappearance.
Died 3 October 1996 from hepatitis and AIDS in Santa Rosa
 
Rereading this, I realize that I didn't emphasize that there were no reports of Byron Stuart's arrest, indictment, or trial. It seems he died an innocent man.
 

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