Flashback Friday’s case (first time in awhile, I know) is Lilli Marlene Dunn, a 29-year-old Southgate, Michigan woman who was abducted from her own garage in the early morning hours of July 31, 1980. Two witnesses saw a man dragging Lilli, kicking and screaming, into his car, but they thought it was just a domestic quarrel and didn’t intervene.
It’s possible Lilli was a victim of the serial killer Coral Eugene Watts, but he was never charged in her case and he died in 2007.
The Charley Project Blog 
“Two witnesses saw a man dragging Lilli, kicking and screaming, into his car, but they thought it was just a domestic quarrel and didn’t intervene.”
Wait, what? I get not wanting to intervene if it’s two people screaming at each other. Every person with experience says you do NOT intervene if two women are fighting, because you’ll lose body parts.
But, please explain this one to me, what possible domestic quarrel involves a man kidnapping a woman? What the hell kind of marriages/partnerships were these witnesses used to seeing?
Yeah it is pretty horrifying.
I had a friend once who saw a man beating up a woman on the street and the woman was shouting “help, he’s not my boyfriend!” My friend thought she might have been a prostitute. He called the police.
I remember when he told me I felt sad at the notion that this lady thought maybe no one would help if they thought the guy was her boyfriend.
I guess the real reason these two witnesses did not intervene was they were scared
They could have called the police. That’s an intervention that doesn’t have any risk attached.
My girlfriend and I were at a Holiday Inn a few years ago when we were awakened by a a guy hitting and attempting to drag a woman (who, based on the yelling going on between them, were partners) from her car. I yelled out to the guy that police were coming, called 911 and my girlfriend called the desk clerk and told her to call police. The guy then ran to his own car and fled the scene as I was getting downstairs, before the police arrived. The victim wasn’t badly hurt, but unfortunately seemed hesitant about cooperating with the police.
Apparently we were the only guests who bothered to call 911. I think many people still tend to normalize domestic violence as just a private matter.
I saw a PSA video once where a guy repeatedly played on his drum set, very loudly, in his apartment at night. Neighbors called the cops with a noise complaint and an officer came over to tell him to stop playing the drums.
Then the guy played a recording, equally loud, of the sounds of a violent argument and a man beating a woman and her screaming for help and begging him to stop hurting her.
None of the neighbors called the cops about THAT noise, although they must have heard it too.