Georgia Jessup was 16 and from Broward County when she was murdered on or around September 27, 1972. She and 17-year-old Susan Place had been hitchhiking together when they encountered a man later identified as Gerard Schaefer. Both girls were reported missing; their mutilated and decapitated remains were found in April 1973 in shallow graves near Blind Creek Beach on Hutchinson Island, near Fort Pierce, Florida.

Gerard Schaefer, a former Martin County deputy, had been arrested months earlier in July 1972 after two other teenage women escaped an abduction in which they were tied and threatened; he was charged with false imprisonment and assault and released on bail. Investigators noted similarities between that episode and the Jessup and Place case, and Schaefer was eventually convicted of Georgia Jessup’s and Susan Place’s murders and sentenced to life in prison. Authorities later suggested he may have been involved in many more killings; Schaefer was killed by a fellow inmate in 2005.

Did anyone in Broward or along the Hutchinson Island area remember Georgia or Susan, or have information about who picked them up that September?