Twenty-year-old Amanda Tusing, better known as Mandy to her family and friends, had a promising future ahead of her. She had just started working in a veterinarian’s office, and was hoping to one day become a vet herself. She had also recently become engaged to her boyfriend, Matt Ervin, and had already started consulting bridal magazines for ideas on their upcoming wedding. In fact, on the night of June 14th, 2000, Mandy had been to visit Matt in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
She left his home at about eleven-thirty p.m. to begin the hour-long drive back to her parents’ residence in the small town of Dell. The weather was particularly inhospitable that night, with violent storms, and Matt reminded Mandy to call him the moment she arrived home, so he could be sure she had gotten there safely.
Two hours passed, and Matt had still not received a call from his fiancée. Worried, he phoned Mandy’s parents, asking them if Mandy was home. Mandy’s mother Susan checked her daughter’s bedroom, but Mandy was not there. At that point, Mandy’s father Ed and her twin brother Andy got in their car and set out to drive along the route that Mandy would have taken, heading west from Dell. Meanwhile, Matt began driving east from Jonesboro on Highway 18, looking for a vehicle or any sign of his missing fiancée.
At a little before two-thirty a.m., Matt found Mandy’s 1992 Pontiac Grand Am, pulled over on the side of the highway, situated under a bright street light. The windshield wipers had stopped mid-cycle, and the radio was still tuned to Mandy’s station of choice. A still-chilled but partially drunk can of Coke remained in the cup holder. Mandy’s keys were still in the ignition, and her wallet and cell phone—this latter with a dead battery—were found lying on the front seat. The car was in perfect working order, still had gas in the tank, and there was no sign of a struggle whatsoever. It looked as though Mandy had simply parked the car, gotten out, and disappeared into the stormy night. She was reported missing shortly after her vehicle was found.
Sadly, three days later, the body of Mandy Tusing was found in a waterlogged gulley known by locals as Big Bay Ditch. There did not appear to be any evidence of sexual assault, and the coroner could not conclusively determine how Mandy had died, other than speculating that she had perhaps been suffocated. Initially, drowning was also put forward as a possibility, but because water was only found in Mandy’s nasal passages and not in her lungs, this was seen as less likely. It was also presumed that the heavy storms on the night of her disappearance had probably washed away a great deal of evidence. Mandy’s driver’s license was found in her pocket, though her family confirmed that this was where she usually kept it.
Several strange details about the case stood out. Firstly, Mandy’s body was discovered more than twelve miles away from her car, in the opposite direction from her course of travel. Secondly, no unknown fingerprints or hairs were found inside the vehicle, and the interior had not been wiped down, indicating that the killer had never entered the car. Lastly, the cold soda in the cupholder suggested that Mandy might have stopped somewhere along the route and bought a drink, though a survey of the few gas stations she would have passed on that stretch of highway yielded no results.
Because Mandy’s vehicle was parked normally beneath a street light, authorities surmised that the assailant may have been a police officer, or someone posing as a police officer, who had pulled Mandy over and then proceeded to abduct her. Strengthening this supposition was the fact that Mandy’s family had often drilled into her head that if she was ever driving alone and pulled over by police, she should drive to a well-lit area before stopping the car.
Following up on this theory, all law enforcement officers in the vicinity were given polygraph tests, but all passed. Likewise, Mandy’s fiancé Matt Ervin easily passed a series of three polygraph tests, and was quickly cleared of suspicion. Indeed, police believed that Mandy’s murderer was most likely a stranger to her, and perhaps even an experienced serial killer, given how little evidence had been left behind.
In 2007, authorities announced that they had received a promising lead from a witness who stated that they had overheard a conversation between people who seemed to know particular details about the crime. However, this line of inquiry seems to have hit a dead end. The FBI became involved shortly after the investigation sputtered out, and they produced a general profile of the possible assailant, who they suspect to be a while male in his fifties who lived in the area where Mandy’s body was discovered.
The case remains open and unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 