This week’s Flashback Friday is John Jay Ashley Jr., who was addressed by his middle name. He disappeared from Wilmington, Delaware on December 14, 1971, at the age of eighteen and a half. Unfortunately I don’t have much on the circumstances of his disappearance, except for a curious thing: another boy, aged seventeen, disappeared from Wilmington on the same night. He turned up, drowned, in February 1972.
It would be interesting to see if authorities believe Jay Ashley also drowned, or if his case is connected to the other one. From what little information I have, it seems unlikely that they were. Yes, it’s a bit strange that two boys almost the same age disappeared from that city on the same night, but the other boy’s death doesn’t seem to have been foul play, and Wilmington’s not exactly a tiny hamlet or anything. I found this chart that says the population in 1970 was 80,000 and change.
So what happened to Jay Ashley on that cold night over forty years ago? I doubt we’ll ever know.
The Charley Project Blog 