On October 17, 1975, 15-year-old white female Mary Coppolla arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from Pennsylvania alongside 27-year-old Marlene Annabelli. The two had rented a room at the Lauderdale Beach Club for a one-week stay. Nine days later, their bodies were discovered by a motorcyclist in a dump site outside the city. Both victims had been strangled with a rope.
The brutal nature of the crime and the location of the bodies bore similarities to a string of unsolved homicides in South Florida during that period, later dubbed the 'Flat-Tire Murders.'
The Flat-Tire Murders were a series of killings that occurred between February 1975 and January 1976, primarily in Broward and Dade Counties. The victims—mostly young white females—were often found in or near canals, and many had been sexually assaulted, beaten, or strangled. The name of the case stemmed from the belief that the perpetrator deflated the tires of victims' cars to lure them into accepting help. In total, over thirty-five murders were suspected to be connected, though not all were conclusively linked.
In August 2023, law enforcement made a breakthrough in the case. Using DNA evidence collected from the clothing of two other victims, authorities identified a deceased felon named Robert Clark Keebler as a suspect. Keebler had died in 2019. Investigators believed he may have had an accomplice, and in May 2025, they named a second suspect: Lawrence Stein, another felon who had died in 2005. Despite these developments, officials expressed uncertainty about whether all the murders attributed to the Flat-Tire case were committed by the same individuals. A sheriff's deputy publicly stated his belief that some of the cases, including possibly that of 15-year-old white female Mary Coppolla, might be unrelated.
The murder of Mary Coppolla remains emblematic of the fear and confusion that gripped South Florida during the mid-1970s. Although suspects have now been named in connection with the broader series of killings, no one was ever arrested or charged during their lifetimes for the death of the 15-year-old white female from Fort Lauderdale. Her case, like many others from that era, continues to echo as a chilling reminder of a time when a serial predator—or predators—operated with impunity.
