Jeffery Lamar Mathis was 11 when he disappeared in Atlanta on March 11, 1980. He had been sent by his mother, Willie Mae Mathis, to a nearby service station; witnesses later placed him getting into a blue car with two men. That was the last confirmed sighting.

In February 1981 Jeffery’s skeletal remains were found in a briar-covered patch of woodlands in southwest Atlanta. The body’s condition after nearly a year outdoors prevented a definitive cause of death, but the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. His funeral was held at Westhills Presbyterian Church.

Jeffery’s case was investigated as part of the larger Atlanta Child Murders inquiry. Wayne Williams was arrested in June 1981 and convicted in 1982 for two adult killings; police publicly attributed a number of the child victims to him, though Williams was never formally charged or tried for Jeffery Mathis’s death and the state did not officially name him as Jeffery’s killer. The cases were reopened by Atlanta police in 2019 for further forensic review.

Did anyone in Atlanta in 1980 remember Jeffery, the blue car, or the service station he was sent to?