If Only the Trees Could Talk: The Cold Case of a Missing Honeydew Woman and Her Children

Cold cases grow cold because their stories stop being told. Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office published an interactive map and timeline last year with over sixty missing and murdered people whose cases remain unsolved. We have taken on the task of writing about each and every one of those cases, to keep their stories alive and hopefully find justice for the victims and families. Remember, as Jean Racine, the French playwright once said, “There are no secrets that time does not reveal.”

When we think of people vanishing, our brains frequently impose the oft used cinematic effect of images shifting to mist. Unfortunately, the peaceful, albeit haunting imagery of the vanishing is not reality. When people go missing, in the best-case scenarios, they walk away of their own volition, two solid, earthly feet making the decision to leave everything and everyone behind–with family and friends left with only memories and questions.

Sometimes, the missing person is deceased, their passing unmarked by witnesses or evidence, their loved ones left to wonder and hope. At times, the only witness to a death may be persons that have every reason to keep their passing buried deep within; the truth as damning to their freedom as it would be liberating to those left with agonizing questions.

Mary Elizabeth Stuart, and her two daughter, Jessie Flo, and Fannie Fawn, vanished from Honeydew, a remote community in northern California, nearly 45 years ago. Despite speculation and countless hours of searching and investigation, no solid leads have emerged.

Mary lived with her husband Bryon, 29, in the rural community west of Highway 101 with their two daughters, Jessie Flo and Fannie Fawn, reddish-blonde haired toddlers just a year apart.

On December 10th, 1977, Mary packed up the girls and their car with their television set in need of repair and headed toward Fortuna and Eureka for a day of errands including laundry, grocery shopping and maybe even a stop at the optometrist’s office. Mary was reported to have $200 in cash on her when she left. Often, people that live remotely will take a single day to run errands, stocking up on supplies before heading back into the remote hills where weather, distance and convenience prevents them from making the trek more often.

Mary, Jessie and Fannie were said to have left the family’s home around 10 a.m., Bryon expecting to see them before nightfall which comes early in the late-fall season.

Three days later the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office in Eureka was notified that Mary and her girls were missing. The call did not come from a worried husband, but rather, one of Mary’s concerned friends.

While it was strange that Byron was not the one to report his family missing, investigators had no evidence that anything untoward had happened to Mary and the girls. According to a Times Standard article on December 20, 1977, Lieutenant Roy Simmons, head of the HCSO detective division, stated that of the hospitals, tv repair, and optometrists that were interviewed, no one had any recollection of Mary visiting their establishments.

With no leads or sightings, investigators had to consider the possibility that Mary had left of her own volition. The same December 20 Times Standard article titled ‘No sign of foul play found in case of Honeydew woman’ quoted Lt. Simmons as saying, “It could be that she just made up her mind to go someplace else and didn’t want to be found. It happens sometimes.”

As small communities do, one can imagine the gossip and speculation that occurred in the weeks that followed Mary’s disappearance. Surely adding to the speculation was Byron’s reputation for a quick temper.

Christmas came and went with no sign of Mary and the girls.

Three weeks after his family’s disappearance Byron was behind bars for attempted murder. The charge was not in connection to Mary, Jessie Flo or Fannie Fawn, but instead a New Year’s Eve night of revelry that ended with a barroom brawl that law enforcement responded to. After being thrown out of the Hideaway bar, Byron retreated to a nearby residence. When a Humboldt County Sheriff’s Deputy, Dennis Dinsmore arrived, Byron allegedly fired at the deputy with a rifle. Neither Dinsmore nor his patrol vehicle were struck.

Perhaps the incident allows for insight into a man upset that his wife had left him, taking his two daughters in tow. Or perhaps Byron’s actions the night of January 1st gave insight into his potential capability of harming another. At the time of his arrest, his wife and children’s disappearance were mentioned stating Simmon’s earlier statements that no sign of foul play was found, and that Mary could have decided to leave the area without telling anyone.

The attempted murder charge against Byron was dropped in March when a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to go to trial.

Prior to the charges being dropped, the investigation into his family’s disappearance took on a different tone when Mary’s red, 1969 Opel station wagon was found by a timber surveyor on an unused logging road about one mile from her home on January 17, 1978, thirty-eight days after their disappearance. Investigators searched the vehicle for any sign of foul play, but none was found.

Inside the vehicle, Mary’s purse, money and belongings remained, along with the groceries she had went to town for, the laundry and a repaired tv indicating the 32-year-old had carried out her day as she had planned contrary to no one stating they had seen the missing woman at the time of her disappearance.

The car was found to have a broken fuel line leading to the theory that the Mary and her girls had found themselves stranded on their trip home. Search parties including the Sheriff’s Mounted Posse, Marine Posse, and the Humboldt County Four-Wheel Drive Search and Rescue Team were unable to locate the missing trio. Hampered by weather, searches were often delayed but law enforcement continued to search, bringing in bloodhound dogs from Sonoma County to no avail.

It is possible that Mary’s car broke down as she made her way home late in the evening, deciding to walk the short distance home with Jessie Flo and Fannie Fawn, only to find herself turned around in the unforgiving terrain; lost to the elements, their bodies obscured by the rugged terrain.

Yet questions surround their disappearance; particularly about the location of Mary’s red Opel station wagon found 1.5 miles from the main road. On January 19, 1978, a Times Standard article stated the unused logging road would have eventually led to the Stuart residence, perhaps Mary was taking an alternate route when the car broke down. However, if that was a road used to access the home, why had no one searched it when the family first went missing? If it wasn’t a usual route, why would Mary have driven the road at all? Did Byron have anything to do with his family’s disappearance?

If Byron did have anything to do with the disappearance of his family, he took those secrets with him to the grave when he died in 1996 at the age of 48, five years after an AIDS diagnosis in 1991.

In 2009 the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office reopened the case of Mary, Jessie Flo, and Fannie Fawn’s disappearance. At that time, it was reported that investigators interviewed people that had not spoken to law enforcement during the initial investigation leading them to believe that Mary and her girls were the victims of murder.

A 2018 article by the North Coast Journal stated, “A neighbor, Joe Paff, told the Journal that in the week after the disappearance of his family, Stuart was behaving erratically, using drugs and saying that Mary and the children had been taken by aliens.”

Byron continued to have run-ins with the law after his family’s disappearance. On May 17, 1978, six months after his wife and daughters vanished, Bryon was involved in an altercation at a Eureka residence. Charges were filed against the Honeydew resident for assault likely to produce great bodily harm, burglary, carrying a concealed weapon, and possession of a narcotic for sale.

The Honeydew man appeared to be making positive strides by year end when he started his own business, ‘Earth Works’.

However, Byron was arrested again in September 1981 and extradited to New York for weapons and possessions charges stemming from that state.

In the years before his death, Byron was respected in his community, an activist for needle exchange programs and a Sonoma County AIDS commissioner. He won a Jeremy Bell Award for his AIDS activism.

Mary, Jessie, and Fannie could have been victims of a troubled man during tumultuous years or Byron’s tumultuous years could have been the result of the disappearance of his wife and young children, or Byron’s own troubled existence could have been completely independent of his family’s disappearance.

Byron was the prime suspect in the disappearance of Mary Elizabeth, Jessie Flo, and Fannie Fawn, though the case remains unsolved, and no charges were ever filed in their disappearance.

We may want to imagine Mary and her daughters could be living elsewhere, now 77, 47 and 46 years old, having lived full lives far from those that seek to discover their whereabouts; picturing Mary masterminding her disappearance, leaving the disabled car along the unused road, tucking her toddlers into an awaiting car, intent on a new life.

That hope is slim, though not impossible; A preferred image rather than the more likely scenario that the remains of Mary Elizabeth and her two daughters lie in an unmarked grave in the remote hills of Northern California, their stories awaiting to be unearthed and secrets unfurled if for no other reason than closure for those that knew and loved them.

Investigation efforts are focused on finding a possible burial site.

Perhaps one day soon, the trees will reveal what happened to Mary Elizabeth and her two young daughters in the remote hills of Honeydew.