Disappearance of Susan Smalley and Stacie Madison

Susan Renee Smalley (born September 19, 1969) and Stacie Elisabeth Madison (born June 17, 1970) were two young women from Carrollton, Texas, who disappeared on the morning of March 20, 1988. Madison worked as a receptionist and planned to study business at the University of North Texas. On the evening of March 19, 1988, Smalley, a close friend of Madison's, stayed overnight at her house.

The pair left the house together briefly in Madison's 1967 Ford Mustang convertible, a car painted in their high school's colors that Madison had recently purchased with money from her two jobs. They were seen attempting to buy alcohol at a 7-Eleven but were refused because they were minors. The two returned to Madison's house, where Madison made a phone call to a friend around midnight. Shortly after that call, the girls left the house again, and Madison's car was no longer seen parked outside. The last confirmed sighting of the pair was at the Steak and Ale restaurant, where Smalley worked as a waitress; an employee told investigators that Smalley was talking to a co-worker while Madison waited in the parked car.

Smalley and Madison were reported missing the following morning. Their Mustang was later found abandoned in the parking lot of a Dallas shopping center, with personal belongings of both girls still inside. At the time they were last seen, Madison was wearing white cotton pants, a white long-sleeved sweatshirt with a pink logo, and orange-and-white tennis shoes; Smalley was wearing a white sweater and blue jeans and was carrying a navy blue shoulder bag with camel trim.

Several months after the disappearance, Smalley's last boyfriend told a girl he was dating that he had killed Smalley and Madison and dumped their bodies in a local cemetery. After she reported this to police, the boyfriend took and passed a polygraph test. He subsequently relocated to Florida, moving between towns there for over a decade, and later attempts by investigators to contact him were unsuccessful. With few remaining leads, detectives at one point consulted a psychic, who described a blond-haired white male suspect between 28 and 34 years old wearing glasses and said the girls had been dumped near Grapevine Lake; a search of that area did not turn up any evidence.

In 2009, Shawn Sutherland, who grew up in Carrollton and was 24 years old when the girls disappeared, self-published a book titled "This Night Wounds Time: The Mysterious Disappearances of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley." According to Sergeant Joel Payne, the lead detective with the Carrollton Police Department, the book's publication prompted investigators to restart the investigation "from scratch," both in Carrollton and in neighboring Denton County. As of the most recent reporting available, the case remains open and unsolved.