Vonnie Stuth was 19 and newly married when she disappeared from the family’s basement apartment in Burien, Washington, on the night of November 27, 1974. Her husband Todd had left for a swing shift and returned after midnight to find the lights and television on but Vonnie gone. She had spoken to her sister earlier that evening and planned to bring a Jell-O salad to the family Thanksgiving gathering the next day.

Investigators initially treated the case as a missing-person matter and followed a vague lead about a man across the street who had offered her a dog. Several months later, former neighbor Gary Addison Taylor was arrested in Houston and confessed to abducting and murdering Vonnie. Her remains were recovered in a shallow grave near a house Taylor had occupied in Enumclaw; reports say she had been shot twice in the head during an apparent attempt to escape.

Taylor was extradited to Washington, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on April 30, 1978, and received a parole board minimum of ninety years. Vonnie’s family provided victim impact statements during parole proceedings. Does anyone have memories of Vonnie, the neighborhood in Burien at the time, or other information that could add context to the case?