Melinda ’Mindy’ LaPree was 22 when she was last seen in the autumn of 1982 in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She and her boyfriend had moved to the Gulf Coast from Florida and worked as shrimpers. LaPree was seen getting into a car in the Carver Village area with a man later identified as Samuel Little. Three weeks after she was reported missing her body was found in a cemetery in what is now Gautier; an autopsy showed she had been strangled.

Investigators quickly focused on Samuel Little, who led a transient life and sold stolen goods. In November 1982 he was seen in Ocean Springs in a vehicle matching the description of the car LaPree entered; he was arrested but the district attorney at the time declined to prosecute and a grand jury did not indict. The case went cold for decades until cold-case work and new DNA techniques prompted renewed review. Pascagoula detective Darren Versiga helped link Little to LaPree’s murder, and Little later confessed to killing her while imprisoned.

Does anyone have memories of LaPree, the Carver Village area in 1982, or information that could add detail to the timeline?