Small Town Disappearances

On October 15, 1973, Deborah Lee Tomlinson disappeared from Creswell, Oregon on the evening of her sixteenth birthday. A small town in Lane County, Creswell had few mysteries then and still has few answers now. According to public records and missing-person databases, Deborah left with a teenage female friend and was never seen again.

For decades, law enforcement officially classified her disappearance as that of an endangered runaway, which was a status supported by limited information in the public record and sparse news coverage at the time. In this week’s episode of Same Crime, Different Time, we cover what we know about her disappearance, the cultural context, and hope for a future solve.

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