Mary Sue Kitts was 17 when she was last seen in Fresno in July 1974. Initially treated as a runaway for three years, her disappearance was later revealed to be a homicide tied to a burglary plot run by Clarence Ray Allen and carried out in part by his son Roger Allen and associates.

Kitts later confessed to Schletewitz that she had helped cash stolen money orders, and when Allen learned she had informed on him he ordered her killed. Eugene Lee Furrow strangled Kitts, her body was weighted with stones and dumped in the Friant-Kern Canal and has never been recovered. Furrow later confessed and implicated Allen; Allen was convicted in 1978. The murder conviction for Kitts was secured without a body.