In the summer of 1979, in East Liverpool, Ohio, sixteen-year-old Evelyn Louise Davis, who often went by her middle name Louise, was looking forward to the birth of her second child. Four months pregnant, she was at her family's home on June 21st, sunbathing in the backyard. Around 2:00 p.m., a man named Robert L. Wooten, the 21-year-old husband of one of her friends, arrived at the house. He told Louise that his wife, who had been out of town, had returned and wanted to see her.
Happy to see her friend, Louise willingly left with Wooten, telling her mother she would be home by her 10:00 p.m. curfew. She was last seen wearing blue jeans that had a red mark on the back and a V-neck T-shirt with yellow and white horizontal stripes. Evelyn Louise Davis never came home.
The day after she vanished, concern turned to alarm for Evelyn's family. Her father and sister encountered Robert Wooten while running errands and asked him where she was. Wooten told them that Evelyn had run away and that they shouldn't expect her to come back. He later claimed to investigators that he had simply assisted her in her plan to run away, stating he last saw her getting into a truck with a man named 'Frank Grimm.' However, investigators could never identify anyone by that name. Evelyn's family found this hard to believe, as she had left behind all her personal belongings, including her makeup, her purse, and a significant amount of cash, estimated between $300 and $500. For a young, pregnant girl to leave without these essential items and money seemed entirely out of character and pointed away from the theory of a planned runaway.
The case took a dark and tragic turn just a few days after Evelyn's disappearance. Police questioned a mutual friend of both Evelyn and Wooten, a woman named Debbie Taylor, who was also Wooten's sister-in-law. Initially, Taylor denied even knowing Evelyn, but later admitted they were friends, though she claimed to have no information about her whereabouts. Two days after this police interview, on June 25, 1979, Debbie Taylor and her two young children, ages five and three, were found brutally murdered in their home. Robert Wooten confessed to this triple homicide and was subsequently sentenced to three life terms in prison. Despite his conviction for these murders, he has consistently denied any involvement in Evelyn's disappearance. A year after she went missing, an anonymous letter sent to the county prosecutor claimed Wooten had killed Evelyn and revealed the location of her clothes. Police searched Wooten's former residence and, hidden between a wall and the floor in the basement, they found a paper bag containing the jeans, tank top, and bikini top Evelyn was wearing the day she was last seen. While foul play has long been suspected in her case, Evelyn Louise Davis remains a missing person, her case unsolved and her family still waiting for answers.Last Seen: Jun 21, 1979
