Do you know what happened to Tina Sue Spencer? In the winter of 1976, a sense of unease began to creep into the life of seventeen-year-old Tina Sue Spencer, a white female from Nevada, Missouri. On January 5th, she left her home, and was reported missing by her family the following day. For a time, it seemed she had simply chosen a different path, as she dropped out of high school about two weeks later and was in contact with her family as late as March 5th, when she called them from Florida.
However, her journey took a dark and mysterious turn on the night of March 14, 1976. Tina found herself stranded at the Springfield Municipal Airport after a male friend she was supposed to meet never arrived.
Left with no other options, she called for a taxi. The driver, noting her predicament, took her to a residence in the 400 block of North Main in Springfield. According to the people at the house, Tina left on foot to use a nearby payphone to try and contact her friend again. She was never seen alive after that moment. A month later, in April, a small clue to her whereabouts surfaced when her billfold was discovered near McDaniel Lake, but Tina herself remained missing. The chilling answer to her disappearance would not come until eight months later.
On the morning of November 28, 1976, two rabbit hunters stumbled upon a grim scene in a wooded area near McDaniel Lake. They had discovered human skeletal remains. The remains were later identified as belonging to Tina Sue Spencer through a distinctive orthopedic plate on her hip bone, a remnant of a past surgery. Investigators determined that Tina had been the victim of a homicide. A knotted vinyl belt found near her neck strongly suggested she had been strangled. Her underwear was found near her feet, indicating a possible sexual assault before her death. Her body had been left in a shallow grave, concealed by the dense underbrush.
The discovery of Tina's body cast a shadow over the Springfield community, especially because her case bore haunting similarities to another recent tragedy. Just a year prior, the body of nine-year-old Shirley Jane Rose was found in a shallow grave only a mile from where Tina's remains were located. She too had been strangled. Despite the unsettling parallels, investigators at the time stated they had no concrete evidence to officially link the two murders. The Springfield Police Department conducted numerous interviews in connection with Tina's death, but no suspects were ever publicly named, and no arrests have ever been made. To this day, the murder of Tina Sue Spencer remains an unsolved cold case, leaving her family and the community with unanswered questions about who was responsible for the violent end to her young life.
