In honor of Black History Month I’m profiling one African-American MP every day on this blog for the month of February. Today’s case is Emmetta Jean Dumas, a 32-year-old woman who disappeared from Fairfield, Alabama on August 1, 1980.
That day she had plans to meet with her estranged husband so they could go shoe shopping for their daughter. Emmetta’s husband said they did go out, bought the shoes, grabbed a hamburger and went back to Emmetta’s apartment, and she was alive and well when he last saw her. She had plans to have dinner with her ex-husband, who said she never showed up.
As my casefile explains,
When Emmetta’s sister drove to her home the next day, Emmetta’s car was in the driveway and her infant daughter was naked and crying, alone, on the floor inside. Nearby was an empty bottle and a dirty diaper.
Emmetta’s keys and a bedspread were missing from the home, and Emmetta’s sister smelled a chemical odor which she thought might be ether. The carpet had fresh stains, but police said the stains weren’t blood. The house was locked; the front door had to be locked with a key both inside and out.
That sounds…ominous. It sounds very much like the young mother was murdered that day, possibly in a domestic violence incident, but it’s been almost forty years and I don’t know if there will ever enough evidence to bring charges or if the person who did it is even still alive. I feel sorry for the little girl who had to grow up with no mother.
Unfortunately Emmetta is not, as of this writing, in NamUs or any other database that I know of, save my own.
The Charley Project Blog 