Missing persons case reopened after 67 years (Hope new technology can help find remains)

Investigators hope new technology can help find remains correct the address and the occupancy status of the house.

State investigators returned to Carolina Beach on Thursday, 67 years after a mother and her young daughter disappeared.

They brought with them ground-penetrating radar – modern technology they hope will finally solve a case that stumped the agency in 1941.

After Leila Bryan, 36, and her 4-year-old daughter Mary Rachel disappeared on May 10, 1941, agents with the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement officials tracked leads from New York to Florida looking for them, according to old newspaper articles.

On Thursday, Carolina Beach Police Chief William Younginer said the SBI reopened the case recently after a relative of the missing mother and child saw the new radar technology used on a police television show.

The SBI used the equipment on Thursday to scan a concrete slab below a home at 214 Raleigh Ave. in Carolina Beach with the hope of finding remains.

Younginer said Thursday the SBI had reopened the case but that he didn’t know many specifics of the decades-old disappearance.

He did say Leila Bryan’s husband E.C. Bryan, who is now deceased, had been a suspect at one time. Younginer also said Bryan had laid concrete beneath the home, which had been on stilts, and then left soon after.

But a story about the case, called “The Incredible Disappearance,” by Pat Clausen, which is posted on the Internet, includes newspaper clippings from the early 1940s.

According to an article in the 1941 issue of the Wilmington Morning Star, Leila Bryan and Mary Rachel left home around 9 p.m. on May 10, a Saturday night. They headed to a nearby grocery store in a black Ford Coupe and were never seen again.

The next day, Carolina Beach police with the help of New Hanover County sheriff’s deputies searched the woods between Carolina Beach and Wilmington.

In the days that followed, police used a private airplane to search the county’s back roads for Bryan’s Ford, and police dragged the Cape Fear River as well as inlets off the inland waterway.

But the investigation didn’t stop there as Leila and Mary Rachel’s disappearance continued to make headlines across the state.

Six weeks after the disappearance, the SBI director telegraphed the War Department in Washington, D.C., and asked for 200 troops to help comb the swamps. The articles don’t show whether the request was granted.

Later that summer, authorities in Florida searched part of that state’s west coast after receiving a request from the Star-News, according to a clipping from an unidentified Florida newspaper.

In the summer of 1942, the Raleigh News & Observer called the Bryan disappearance “the most baffling mystery” the SBI had ever tackled. The few newspaper clippings found from the time of the disappearance say E.C. Bryan reported the pair missing three hours after they left, but do not say he was a suspect.

At one point, a year after the disappearance, authorities hoped technology would lead them to Leila Bryan’s Ford. Authorities used an “electric submersible detector” to search the inland waterway near U.S. 421, according to the News & Observer<.

Now, decades later, police are once again hoping modern technology brings the break they need.

In the coming days, the SBI will analyze images they took Thursday with the ground-penetrating radar, Younginer said.

The result of the analysis will decide whether officials return to the home and smash concrete to look for remains. Younginer said the work wouldn’t cause irreparable damage to the home. And the present owner has been cooperative.

Younginer also said it would be interesting if new technology could solve an old mystery.

“Lots of things have changed in police work,” he said. “It would be nice.”

Interesting. I hope that they find the remains and I would check that concrete slab very carefully.

I have been following the Caley Anthony disappearance while hoping that they can find the little girl's remains. What would really be wonderful would be for them to find her alive. Very, very little hope of that, I fear.

Interesting. I hope that they find the remains and I would check that concrete slab very carefully.

Forensic Files had an astounding program about a guy who killed a gal back in the 60s (I think). He buried her in his back yard and poured concrete over her. His mix was pretty sloppy and, get this, the forensics people poured some stuff into the opened part of the concrete and got a death mask of the woman, which they showed on TV and which resulted in her identification.

Not only that, they got FINGERPRINTS out of the concrete which backed up their identification. Those guys should have gotten some kind of award for that bit of work. Oh yeah, they tracked down the murderer, only to find him in a home for retards. He dove/fell out of a three-story window and landed on his head. Major brain damage that left him a veggie. Cops said it was poetic justice, which was true, for our goofy legal system would have given him something like 20 years, at worst, which meant out in five or six with "good behaviour".

it sounds like a waste of government resources.

It's probably pretty minimal, expensewise....and perhaps good training.

This reminds me a bit of a story here in California a couple of months ago. Authorities are now sure a teenager who was murdered 40 years ago is buried in an area where a freeway was being constructed at the time.

They tried some high-tech scanning stuff, but didn't find any sign of a body.

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