On a Friday afternoon in the fall, thirteen-year-old Sharon Lynn Pretorius vanished from her Dayton, Ohio neighborhood. The date was September 28, 1973. A freshman at Fairview High School, Sharon was known for being a responsible and intelligent student. That day, she returned home from school, had her weekly piano lesson, and then set out to collect money for her newspaper route with the Dayton Journal Herald. She was last seen by her brother as she left her home on Cornell Drive.
Dressed in a yellow long-sleeved sweater, blue jeans, and white sneakers, Sharon never made it to a single customer's house. She seemingly disappeared without a trace, her collection book in hand.
The initial hours of Sharon's disappearance were marked by a procedural delay that was common for the time. Her mother, Marycarol, contacted the Dayton Police Department around 10:30 p.m. that night, but was informed that a missing person report for a child could not be filed until 24 hours had passed. This policy, intended to account for potential runaways, meant that a formal search did not commence immediately. However, those who knew Sharon, including her family and friends, were adamant that she would not have run away. She was described as a studious and modest girl who was active in her church and the school band. The community quickly rallied, with her school's marching band canceling a performance to help search for her.
As the investigation unfolded, a few leads emerged, but none led to a resolution. A witness reported seeing a girl matching Sharon's description struggling with a man near a dark blue 1965 Ford sedan at the corner of Cornell and Philadelphia Drive around 5:30 p.m. on the day she went missing. The man was described as white, between thirty and forty years old, with a full beard. This sighting was never definitively confirmed to be Sharon. The police also received a call from a man claiming to have kidnapped Sharon and demanding a ransom, but the call was ultimately dismissed as a hoax. Over the years, authorities pursued hundreds of leads, but each one turned into a dead end. In 1976, a tip from an inmate led police to excavate a vacant lot where a house once stood, but no remains were found. Despite the passage of time, the case of Sharon Pretorius remains one of the most perplexing and widely publicized unsolved missing person cases in Dayton's history. Her family held a memorial service for her in 2006, but without any definitive answers, her disappearance continues to be a source of unanswered questions and enduring sorrow.Last Seen: Sep 28, 1973
