Delvacchio Lanier was 12 when he and his 64-year-old grandfather, Isley McCullough, vanished from Gadsden County, Florida, on April 28, 1973. They were last seen about 3:00 p.m. in McCullough’s 1973 Chevrolet taxicab, accompanied by two unidentified African American men in their early twenties. Around 6:00 p.m. the taxi was found abandoned behind the Old Bethel AME Church on High Bridge Road with smears of human blood inside and a spent bullet embedded in the front seat. The cab’s money box, which should have contained $450, was empty though the box itself was in the trunk.

Delvacchio and McCullough were not at the scene. Two days later Delvacchio’s undershirt, a small wooden club, and a ball-peen hammer were found neatly piled under a tree on the old Belyeu property near a bridge. Investigators have treated the disappearances as a homicide and have considered an unconfirmed theory tying the case to local moonshine bootleggers; a still had been raided the day before the pair disappeared, but no definitive link was established.

Many potential witnesses have since died and some evidence was misplaced, and the case remains unsolved.