Mary Ann Coppola was 15 when she vanished from the Homestead area of southern Dade County in September 1975. On the morning of September 2 her mother took her to a counseling program for troubled youths; it was never firmly established whether Mary attended the scheduled session. Family and counselors described her as generally sweet and well liked but struggling with friends, family pressures and drugs. Friends also reported she had been seeing an unnamed man in his late twenties who sold drugs around her school and sometimes picked her up near the bus stop.

After nearly four months missing, scattered human remains found near a canal on January 1, 1976 were identified as Coppola’s. Decomposition and exposure destroyed much of the evidence; no obvious skeletal trauma was present and toxicology testing was not possible, so the cause of death remained undetermined. Her disappearance and death occurred during the same period as multiple canal and roadside killings in Dade and Broward counties sometimes called the Flat-Tire or Canal Murders, but no conclusive link to those cases has been established. No arrest or criminal charge has been publicly reported in her case.

If anyone knew Mary, the older man she was reportedly seeing, or observed her in Homestead that September, please share what is known.