Betty J. Dyer

• Missing Since 12/31/1972
• Missing From Mansfield, Ohio
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 08/28/1930 (93)
• Age 42 years old
• Height and Weight 5'2 - 5'5, 115 - 125 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A brown suede car coat, brown pants, and brown loafers with tassels.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Red hair, blue eyes. Dyer wore a full set of dentures at the time of her disappearance. Her previous married name is Bond.

Details of Disappearance

Dyer was last seen in Mansfield, Ohio on December 31, 1972. She was doing laundry at a laundromat on Park Avenue east at around 6:00 a.m. when she disappeared. She has never been heard from again and her car was found parked outside the laundromat with her clean clothes folded inside.

In 1995, Lawrence Davis pleaded no contest to manslaughter in Dyer's death. At the time, he was already serving a sixty-year prison sentence for rape and murder in Louisiana.

Police stated Davis had been a suspect in Dyer's case from early on, because in August 1972 he was charged with abduction for immoral purposes after he allegedly abducted two sisters from a Mansfield laundromat. Dyer disappeared while Davis was free on bond awaiting trial. The abduction case was dismissed in 1973 after he agreed to plead guilty to assaulting a third woman.

A photo of Davis is posted with this case summary. He lead authorities to a wooded area off Crystal Springs Avenue, saying he'd dumped Dyer's body there after an unidentified friend killed her, but police searched it and didn't find anything. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison in Dyer's case, to run concurrently with his Louisiana sentence.

Dyer's two husbands both died before she disappeared, and she worked as a beautician and lived with two of her six children in the 300 block of Newman Street. Her remains have never been found, but foul play is suspected in her case due to the circumstances involved.