Justice denied and mystery remains for 35 years.

Alicia Rust
6 min readMar 2, 2023

Sources consulted follow this article.

Friends Susan Smalley and Stacie Madison were last seen near the end of Spring Break March 19, 1988. They were students at Newman Smith High School in Carrollton, TX: Stacie a senior, Susan a junior. They were never seen again after that night. No bodies ever found, no suspects ever charged.

This is a cold case that haunts many of us, not only their families.

During this time, I was a seventh grader at Blalack Middle School along with one of Stacie’s sisters. My older brother was a junior at Newman Smith. The news of Susan and Stacie’s disappearance shook everyone. They were one of us: Carrolltonites, Newman Smith Trojans. They had plans and aspirations as we all did, and they were working toward their goals. Stacie, in fact, took her SATs just that morning.

Spring Break was coming to a close.

Stacie and Susan had plans together on that last night of freedom from academics, and Stacie would sleep over at Susan’s home. The timeline of their last night changes a bit depending upon the source, but they did visit friends at an apartment in Arlington, TX (28 miles from Carrollton) at approximately 10:00 pm. They also made it back to Susan’s home by midnight…

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Alicia Rust
Alicia Rust

Written by Alicia Rust

Writer. Lover of dark chocolate, coffee, tea, & being me. I’m an anxiety-ridden, chronic depression survivor.

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