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15
RECONSTRUCTING THE NIGHT
The department’s next best alternative was to create a detailed inventory of Stacie Madison’s and Susan Smalley’s activities.
Regrettably, the missing posters, television news reports, and newspaper articles combined generated nothing in the way of information that police could use.
Instead, those efforts seemed only to spark calls from citizens that led police down blind alleys and towards dead ends.
Reflecting on the reaction the high profile nature of the case provoked, Captain Greg Ward recalls, “A lot of it was sightings. We got a lot of people wanting to help, people wanting to help search. A few weirdoes came out of the bushes, but they all meant well.”[1]
Among these oddballs were individuals who phoned police for no reason other than to promote their own pet theories regarding what had happened to the girls. Even Ida Madison and Carolyn Smalley were not immune from these types and endured their own share of calls from eccentrics offering everything from well wishes to conjecture. During this period, Ida Madison actually kept a log of what she termed “strange telephone numbers.”[2]
One such strange call came from an anonymous individual who refused to identify himself. His message was eerily sinister, and he had bragged that he could offer specific information regarding what had become of the girls. Yet his approach was so unsettling that it filled the mother who received the call with an immediate desire to hang up the telephone. Through the telephone, the man had shouted, “Look lady – if you don’t want to know what happened to your daughter,” as the distraught woman informed him that she was ending the call. The man never called again and was, by default, classified as a prankster.
Another presumed joker called police on an unrecorded line five days after the girls vanished and said, “Stacie and Susan are alright.”[3]
Carolyn and Ida and the police lost count of the number of calls such as these that came in. Yet for all the times the telephone rang, the two people from whom everyone was hoping to hear (Stacie and Susan) never called.
What had become of them?
“[T]hree things solve crimes,” says David Simon, author of the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, “Physical evidence. Witnesses. Confessions.” Of this “detective’s Holy Trinity,” as Simon terms it, “Without one of the first two elements, there is little chance that detectives will find a suspect capable of providing the third.”[4]
Meanwhile, Carrollton police faced the near impossible task of unraveling the mystery of the girls’ disappearances with no confessions, no physical evidence beyond Stacie’s Ford Mustang – which they had failed to fingerprint – and no known witnesses to the girls’ activities or whereabouts beyond their sighting in the parking lot at the Steak and Ale on Belt Line Road and Sakowitz Drive in the wee hours of Sunday morning, March 20, 1988.
Given the hand dealt them, the department’s next best alternative was to create a detailed inventory of Stacie Madison’s and Susan Smalley’s activities on the evening of Saturday, March 19, 1988 and the morning of Sunday, March 20, 1988. The hope was that, by cataloging the girls’ movements, the police just might get lucky and uncover that one witness with whom the girls had discussed their plans for later that morning, who they were meeting, where they were going or what they might be doing.
The Carrollton Police Department’s file on the Madison/Smalley case is rightfully off limits to me, as it is to all non-peace officers. Thus, the re-creation of the events of this pivotal night included here is created from the following sources: newspaper accounts gleaned from The Dallas Morning News, The Dallas Times Herald and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram; the limited information Captain Greg Ward and officers from the Carrollton Police Department were able to share with me; my interview with Carolyn Smalley; and my interview with Ida Madison during which the investigation conducted by the Madison family’s private detective was discussed to limited degree.
This, then, is my own reconstruction of Stacie Madison’s and Susan Smalley’s last known activities.
The reader will recall that Saturday, March 19, 1988, came very early for Stacie Madison, who had taken the SAT exam that morning in anticipation of her upcoming freshman year at what was then North Texas State University.
Ida Madison cannot recall where the test was administered or the time at which it began. It was apparently offered at a locale in or close to Carrollton, though, for Carolyn Smalley, who worked that day at her part-time job at the Dillard’s in Prestonwood Shopping Center, remembers Stacie and Susan together came to have lunch with her.
Afterwards, Stacie went home, where her mother gave her a home perm.
Then Susan had called to see what Stacie had planned for the evening.
According to Deanna Bowman Sinclair, there had almost been three girls on the town that night.
“Susan was a best friend to me,” Sinclair told me.
She and Susan had talked about getting together that Saturday night, but their plans had never gotten beyond the discussion stage.
“I was supposed to hang out with Stacie and Susan that night, but my parents would not let me go,” said Sinclair. “It was my Dad’s birthday, and I was so mad I could not go.”[5]
If Stacie knew Sinclair had originally been a part of the plans for that night, she apparently did not deem it significant enough to mention it to Ida Madison, who had never heard of Mrs. Sinclair until September 2009.[6]
When queried by me regarding what Stacie and Susan had planned for that evening, Sinclair told me, “I don’t remember that night being any different than any other…We never really set plans any night. We just went.”[7]
After her telephone conversation with Susan, Stacie washed the perm solution from her hair and dressed in her favorite white sweatshirt and white slacks.
Susan arrived at the Madisons’ home to pick Stacie up around 5:00 p.m., and the two were soon heading towards the front door. Ida called for the girls to stop where they were and reminded Stacie that her midnight curfew was still in place, even if she was spending the night away from home.
“How will you know,” joked one of the girls, “if we’re there?” Ida’s response was, “Because you never know when I’ll call.”[8]
While reviewing a draft of some of the chapters of this book, Ida told me, “When I read about Stacie, sometimes scenes flash through my head of things that happened with her.” One such mental image was of:
I watched her go, and never, ever thought that could be the last time I saw her.[9]
From the Madisons’ home the girls caravanned to the Smalleys’ condominium, which was located just a few miles to the east.
Susan, who was working two jobs and saving money to buy a new car, had taken Carolyn Smalley to work that morning and then spent much of the day running errands in her mother’s car. Susan’s mother’s shift would soon be ending, and that meant it was time for her to travel to Prestonwood Shopping Center and pick up her mother. So, the girls parked Stacie’s car near the Smalleys’ home and drove to Prestonwood Shopping Center in Carolyn Smalley’s car.
While at the mall, Stacie spent most of what money she had on the purchase of a pair of shoes at the Lord & Taylor Department Store. Along with Stacie’s hot rollers, these shoes – still in the shopping bag - were discovered atop Susan Smalley’s bed a day or so after the girls disappeared.[11]
The purchase of these shoes is significant and is mentioned here because this act stands as evidence that Stacie and Susan had no plans to run away on the night they disappeared. Instead, it proves they were just two young girls intent on enjoying a random Saturday night.
Carolyn Smalley too had plans for the evening. She had a date for which she needed to get ready. So, upon arriving at the Smalley household, the three ladies set about getting dressed up for a night out.
Soon enough, Stacie and Susan were dressed and ready for their evening of fun.
“I told them to be careful,” Carolyn Smalley would recall, reflecting on her final moments with Stacie and Susan, “not knowing I'd never see them again”[12]
Carolyn Smalley told me, “I always look at March 19th as the day Susan disappeared, as this was the last day I saw her…if only you knew how often I wish I could go back to that night and change something, but I know I can’t.”[13] In this regard, Carolyn observes that, “Everyone should always leave their loved ones with happy or kind words, as you never know when it will be the last time you ever see them.”[14]
From this point forward, tracking the girls’ movements is at times simply impossible.
At only three points during this enigmatic window in time can the girls’ whereabouts be established with any certainty (i.e., at approximately 10:00 p.m., midnight and sometime around 1:00 a.m.). The details of the rest of the evening are a mystery written in invisible ink.
Consequently, where Susan and Stacie were during the early part of the evening and why they were there will most likely never be known.
One certainty, however, is that by approximately 10:00 p.m. the girls were visiting with friends in an Arlington apartment. This we know thanks in part to the persistence of Ida Madison.
“I can’t remember who introduced them,” says Ida of this unidentified young man. “I’m thinking we all went to Six Flags and he met us there through prearrangement with a friend we knew.”[16]
In 1998, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram described the individual in question as someone Stacie “may have been dating, a guy who told police he was trying to avoid Stacie before his girlfriend caught on.”[17] But as far as Ida can recall, this boy was but one of several with whom “Stacie maintained telephone friendships.”[18]
Regardless, Ida was convinced Stacie had telephoned the youth on the night of Saturday, March 19, 1988 and may have even traveled to his apartment.
“I called the boy who lived in Arlington,” says Ida, “and he denied to me that Stacie had been there, but did tell me she called. He said he didn’t know what time that was.”[19]
Suspicious now that this young man was not being honest with her, Ida requested that the Smalleys’ telephone records be checked. The inquiry revealed that someone inside the Smalleys’ residence, presumably Stacie Madison, had placed a call to the boy’s apartment at 12:01 a.m.[20]
Officers from the Carrollton Police Department, as well as a private investigator hired by the Madison family, interviewed the young man. Eventually, he admitted that Stacie and Susan had indeed visited his apartment that Saturday night for “a very short visit.”[21] He would also acknowledge, Ida told me, “He lied to me because he didn’t want to get Stacie in trouble, and he knew I wouldn’t have approved of her going over there.”[22]
The hour at which Stacie and Susan traveled to Arlington in Stacie’s Ford Mustang cannot be established. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram offers only that, “At some point during the evening, [Stacie and Susan] drove to Arlington and found an apartment full of people hanging out.”[23] According to Ida Madison, though, “As I recall, there were four boys who lived in the apartment, and they were the only ones there to my knowledge. The girls went over, but declined to stay long.”[24]
In 1998, Captain Greg Ward told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Stacie and Susan both “were just normal teen-age girls. They liked to go out on Friday, Saturday nights, drink a little, smoke, you know?”[25] But this is contested by some.
Ultimately, the possibility of two teenage girls engaging in behavior that is typical of nearly all teenagers is irrelevant when compared to the reality that Stacie and Susan have been missing for nearly 22 years. When it comes to the subject of drugs and alcohol, though, Ida Madison contends:
Stacie got drunk at a party one time. She came home, and I knew immediately that she had been drinking. She got so sick that she spent the night in the bathroom. She never drank again. One of her friends told me that at parties where liquor was offered, Stacie would take a drink and then pour it in the nearest potted plant. The police told me that when they were in Arlington at the boys’ apartment that night, the boys were drinking beer and offered the girls some pot. The boys told them Stacie did not accept either…I repeatedly told the police that if they heard something along those lines about my daughter, I wanted to know. I did not want to read something in the paper, as I did more than once, that I didn’t already know. They assured me they were telling me all they knew. I just had to resolve myself to that fact that, if I wanted publicity about the case, I had to deal with the untruths that popped up. We had a hard time with that, but for us that was a necessary evil when it came to finding the one person who had a real answer for us.[26]
In this regard, Michelle Bolig Huber offers, “I recall seeing Stacie and Susan at several parties in high school. They never got wild or crazy, so I was very shocked to hear about their disappearances.”[27]
Returning to the events of the night of Saturday, March 19, 1988, Stacie and Susan left the boy’s apartment in short order, saying that they intended to go eat a late dinner at a Chili’s restaurant. They also intimated that they might return to the apartment at a later hour.[28]
Meanwhile, in Carrollton, Jason Lawton’s evening shift at McDonald’s ended at 10:45 p.m.[29]
Stacie, Lawton says, had taken him to work earlier that day. His car, depending upon which story one hears, was either in the shop with a broken fly wheel or had been repossessed. Either way, Lawton presumed Stacie would be coming that night to give him a ride home after work. She never materialized.[30]
A confused Lawton called the Madison household – presumably from McDonald’s – and asked if Stacie was there. “Jason thought Stacie was coming to pick him up,” recalls Ida Madison. “I told him she was out for the evening when he called me, as [Stacie] asked me to do.”[31] Nevertheless, Lawton claims, he waited at McDonald’s for at least an hour in the hopes that Stacie might appear before walking home and going to bed.[32]
Around the time that Jason Lawton was allegedly walking home, Stacie and Susan were returning to the Smalley condominium after their trek to Arlington. This we know because at 12:01 a.m., a person within the Smalleys’ home placed a call to the Arlington apartment the girls had visited earlier that evening.
It is anyone’s guess why this call was made.
Perhaps the girls were calling the boy to let it be known that they would not be returning to his apartment after all, or maybe they were calling to report their safe arrival in Carrollton. We simply do not know.
Concerning their stopover at the Smalley’s home at midnight, Stacie and Susan may very well have had no intention of staying there for any length of time. Instead, the girls may have returned to Susan’s house for only a short interlude because – remembering she had insisted that Stacie’s midnight curfew was still in force and that they never knew when she might call – they anticipated Ida might be phoning to confirm they were actually where she wanted them to be at midnight. In this regard, said Ida, “It was the 12:01 a.m. call [to Arlington] that told me they did return to Susan’s, as I had told Stacie she needed to do.”[33]
It is unclear what exactly prompted Stacie and Susan to leave the comfort of the Smalley household well after midnight and venture out into the night once more. It was obviously prompted to one degree or another by simple teenage boredom, which often manifests itself in the belief that there is no such thing as having a good time at home. There is also no way of knowing, however, if the girls went out seeking something or someone in particular or if they simply went out driving around for its own sake.
In any event, once more we are left to speculate as to their whereabouts.
When I asked her if she had any inkling as to why Stacie and Susan might have gone out again that last time, Deanna Bowman Sinclair, who had almost joined Stacie and Susan on their night on the town, said:
I do not know that there were any specific plans for that night that would have been any different than any other night…I have no idea why they would leave the house. That would be out of character for Susan and what I know of Stacie. They had to be meeting someone they knew…Susan was always careful. That is what is so puzzling. I know she would not go with someone she did not know…It had to be someone they knew to go out at that time of night.[34]
Shortly after midnight, according to a clerk at an Addison, Texas 7-Eleven store, two girls matching Stacie’s and Susan’s description attempted to buy beer, despite being underage. However, because 1988 was well before the advent of reliable security cameras, the exact identities of these girls cannot be confirmed.[35]
After this possible stop at 7-Eleven, at some point between 12:30 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., Stacie and Susan were positively identified as being in the parking lot of the Addison Steak and Ale where Susan worked as a hostess. Insofar as anyone can tell, the girls stopped there so that, while Stacie waited in the car with the top down, Susan could visit with a “co-worker who told police that Susan had been trying to date him.”[36]
Here this reconstruction ends.
Beyond this brief interlude in the Steak and Ale parking lot – with the exception of a possible sighting on Forest Lane around 1:00 a.m. – Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley have never been seen or heard from again.
For all intents and purposes, like a scene from a science fiction film, it is as if the girls slipped through a portal into another dimension. Life in what the Bible describes as a fallen world, however, reminds us that such was not the case. Instead, we know that Stacie and Susan encountered evil at some point in the wee hours of that Sunday morning.
Based upon the location where Stacie’s car was later located, we can safely assume the girls parked Stacie’s car in front of the baseball card shop on Forest Lane at Webbs Chapel Road, with every intention of returning to it later, and accepted a ride from persons unknown who were driving another vehicle.
Where the girls went with this person or persons and why, the extent to which they knew them, and the circumstances under which they presumably got into this person’s car are the missing pieces to this puzzle.
It is possible the girls went to watch the races on Emerald Street in the hours after 1:00 a.m. At least two witnesses have come forward since 1988 to report they saw two “girls matching the descriptions of Susan and Stacie” at the races early that morning. According to Captain Greg Ward, these witnesses stated that these particular girls “appeared to be intoxicated and were starting the races by flashing their breasts.”[37]
An alternate version of this story involves a blonde in a blue dress who was starting these races by raising her skirt. This particular story was quickly disproven by Ida Madison, who discovered Stacie’s blue dress still hanging in her daughter’s closet.[38]
Either way, Ida Madison and Carolyn Smalley both discount salacious stories such as these, as does Captain Ward.[39]
When I asked him if the girls in question could have been Stacie and Susan, Captain Ward told me, “There’s a lot of blondes and brunettes, and from what I know about these girls, that wasn’t exactly their character.”[40] My opinion of such allegations, based upon what I have learned while researching this book, corresponds with those held by Carolyn, Ida, and Captain Ward.
Regardless, as with allegations that they were “party girls,” whether it was Stacie and Susan baring their breasts is ultimately irrelevant.
True or not, the act of being intoxicated and the baring breasts would not have justified whatever fate befell Stacie and Susan. And to insinuate that there is any correlation or connection between the two events, or that the girls somehow brought their destinies upon themselves in any way, is an insulting manifestation of the “blame the victim” mentality.
Moreover, such lurid gossip detracts from the real issue, the real question at hand, which is what happened to Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley on the morning of Sunday, March 20, 1988?
[1] Greg Ward, June 16, 2009.
[2] Ida Madison, August 3, 2009.
[3] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[4] David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, Houghton Mifflin, 1991, p. 73.
[5] Deanna Bowman Sinclair, September 28, 2009.
[6] Ida Madison, September 28, 2009.
[7] Deanna Bowman Sinclair, October 2, 2009.
[8] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[9] Ida Madison, September 8, 2009.
[10] Carolyn Smalley, July 14, 2009.
[11] Ida Madison, June 20, 2009 and August 3, 2009.
[12] The Dallas Morning News, August 19, 2001.
[13] Carolyn Smalley, September 22, 2009.
[14] Id.
[15] Ida Madison, June 30, 2009.
[16] Id.
[17] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 19, 1988.
[18] Ida Madison, June 10, 2009.
[19] Id., June 18, 2009.
[20] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[21] Ida Madison, June 10, 2009.
[22] Id., June 18, 2009.
[23] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[24] Ida Madison, June 18, 2009.
[25] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[26] Ida Madison, June 9, 2009.
[27] Michelle Bolig Huber, August 10, 2009.
[28] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[29] Id.
[30] Jason Lawton, July 15, 2009.
[31] Ida Madison, June 18, 2009.
[32] Jason Lawton, July 15, 2009 and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[33] Ida Madison, June 18, 2009.
[34] Deanna Bowman Sinclair, October 1, 2009.
[35] The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 1998.
[36] Id.
[37] The Dallas Morning News, August 19, 2001.
[38] Ida Madison, August 3, 2009.
[39] The Dallas Morning News, August 19, 2001.
[40] Greg Ward, June 16, 2009.