Mary Coppolla was 15 when she arrived in Fort Lauderdale from Pennsylvania on October 17, 1975, staying with 27-year-old Marlene Annabelli at the Lauderdale Beach Club. Nine days later both young women were found in a dump site outside the city; each had been strangled with a rope.

The killings echoed a wave of South Florida murders from February 1975 to January 1976 later called the Flat-Tire Murders. That series involved mostly young white females found in or near canals, many sexually assaulted, beaten, or strangled. Investigators have long debated whether all the cases were linked; officials have said some incidents, possibly including Coppolla’s, might be unrelated.

Years later investigators named suspects in the broader series—Robert Clark Keebler (deceased) and, in 2025, Lawrence Stein (deceased)—based on DNA from other victims. No one was arrested or charged in Mary Coppolla’s death during the suspects’ lifetimes.

Did anyone who knew Mary or Marlene in Pennsylvania or Fort Lauderdale remember their trip or anything unusual during that week?