Charlotte Jean Loomis, age 14, went missing from Eatontown, New Jersey on September 1, 1972.
Charlotte was having problems at her family home in Oscoda, Michigan, where she lived with her mother, step-father and several siblings. She went to stay for the summer with her older sister Carole and her husband, who lived on Fort Monmouth army base in New Jersey.
On or around September 1, 1972, Charlotte was scheduled to depart from Newark International Airport in New Jersey, and arrive back home at Saginaw Airport in Michigan. Charlotte’s luggage arrived in Michigan, but Charlotte, according to her parents, was not on the plane. It’s thought that she may have had a layover in Ohio, but this is not known for certain.
The exact circumstances of when she was last seen have never been confirmed. One can only assume that Carole and her husband took her to the airport, but even that is not known for certain. So we don’t really know for sure that it was Charlotte herself who checked the luggage, or if she was actually seen boarding the plane. Back then, security at airports was much more lax, so it was common for family to accompany travelers to the gate, but she could have just been dropped off outside.
It’s really hard to narrow down what could have happened to her – did something happen to her in Eatontown, or at Newark Airport? Or in Ohio during the layover? Or did she make it back to Michigan in spite of her parents claiming otherwise?
Carole and her then husband, Thomas Fryday, are both deceased, as are Charlotte’s parents, but Charlotte has many other siblings who are still living. They are divided on whether their sister Carole had anything to do with her disappearance. Some believe Charlotte made it back to Michigan and that her step-father may have played a role.
The idea that Carole and her husband “hid” Charlotte or helped her avoid going home doesn’t seem incredibly likely to me. The biggest reason I say this is because it doesn’t appear that her parents made much effort to find her, and it seems that Carole could have just said “She’s staying here” and probably wouldn’t have met much resistance. Taking her luggage to the airport and checking it in seems a bit extreme, especially since Charlotte would likely have needed the items in her suitcase.
On the other hand, it seems like a pretty risky move for Charlotte’s parents to claim she never got off the plane, if it wasn’t the truth. Had she been on the plane, enough people would have seen her, that their story could easily have been proven false.
That leaves me leaning strongest toward the idea that she was either harmed in New Jersey, or that she did run away from the airport. Another of the many things that are in question is Charlotte’s history of running away.
One of Charlotte’s nieces has said she remembers hearing that Charlotte ran away all the time, while a good friend of hers from school said Charlotte would talk about running away a lot, but never actually did it. If she had indeed run away several times before, I could find it much more likely that she did it again. Perhaps she became involved with someone while on the base in New Jersey.
Of course, I have several questions on this case – were Carole and her husband ever questioned? Whose fingerprints were on the handle of her suitcase? Did the flight crew remember seeing her on the plane?
Unfortunately, we will probably never get the answers to these questions. Any police report that may have been filed at the time is long gone, and it hasn’t been confirmed that one ever existed. Charlotte’s siblings are interested in learning what happened, but it wasn’t until they became adults that they began searching. Their memories are fuzzy since they were children themselves at the time, and it wasn’t discussed much over the years. One sibling recalled how they were told to “drop it” when they started asking questions.
As I was getting my data together to prepare for this post, I stumbled across a plea from someone only identified as Rick, who believes she was last seen in Virginia, in 1974 – at Fort Lee, another army base.
Were Carole and her husband living in Virginia in 1974? Did Charlotte ever attend high school in Virginia? It happens to be the state where Carole and Thomas had married, prior to relocating to New Jersey. It gives me a small hope that Charlotte may be alive and well somewhere.
On a side note, Pamela Hobley and Patricia Spencer vanished from Oscoda, Michigan in 1969. They were high school students at the time. Normally, I would not find that super odd, and I don’t at all believe the cases are related, but Oscoda currently has a population of about 900 people. With Charlotte having at least ten siblings, I’d be surprised if the families weren’t acquainted either through school, or just from living in such a small town.
A 20 year old male named Harold Covey also vanished from Oscoda under suspicious circumstances in 1976. He also remains missing to this day.
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this looks like a possibility
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/20ufnj.html
We did not live in Detroit. We lived almost 300 miles north in the town of Oscoda
Yea that’s stated where she lived in the article ….other missing people from that town are mentioned…..didn’t you read the whole thing?
Do you know the location of her home in detroit at the time she went missing. It is very important.
I don’t have that information – however, this thread at websleuths http://www.websleuths.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-44613.html contains information on her family members. You could probably ask a library in or near Detroit to look it up in an old city directory.
She didn’t live in Detroit. The plan landed in Detroit. We lived about 3 hours north
OK-This is a very strange sick case. Charlotte was 14 years old and who ever her mother was married to at the time was molesting the child. I feel the mother was aware of the problem and was jealous of her own daughter. Charlotte I feel did not go missing in NJ. She arrrived home and was picked up by a man at the airport. She was taken into a wooded area not far from where they lived. It had a long dirt road. I can see a shed and a well that had something to do with the rapes. He raped, killed and buried her in this wooded area. She said she was going to tell on him. It cost her her life. Charlotte’s sister and husband had nothing to do with her disappearance. In my opinion her mother had a lot to lose if this was discovered. This man, her step father I am guessing, was a piece of work. He had a very bad temper as was her 2nd husband who was NO BETTER. I do not like mother’s that do not protect their children.Rose hated both of the men, but she needed them for support. They should search in the surrounding areas for her remains. It has been a long time but they might get lucky.
I do not know what goes on in Michigan, but I will tell you this. It had more serial killers, pedophiles and sick people than I care to talk about. One seemed to be hiding under every rock in the 60’s and 70’s. Who knows what it is like today.
You have two other girls missing from Michigan. Pamela Hobley and Patricai Spencer. Plus, the Oakland County Child Killers and the other pedophiles in the surrounding areas that were operating for years. No one would turn them in because they were upper class people. What do you call that???? I have information about the girls and the people responsible for the killing of the four children. I sent it off to the Police Chief of Oscoda. I hope he looks into the case NOW. I will also send my information to the father of Timothy King. Check out that story it will make you sick. Glad to help and happy to get justice for the ones that no longer have a voice.
This is such a crock of shit. Louis was my mothers 3rd husband not 2nd. They both drove to the airport to pick her up which was about 300 miles from their family home.
My sister Carole was arrested after Charlotte’s disappearance for trafficking. Her husband Tom, it was discovered later, used to run drugs from the base where he was stationed. He used to beat Carole fiercely.
It was brought to light in 2000 that Carole and Tom were letting men have sex with Charlotte when she was staying there. She never told our mom but did call and tell our brother DeWaine who was stationed at a different base. She went missing the next day.
Laurie, what do you think happened to Charlotte?
I mean, she just said what she thinks happened….
I was the target of an attempted kidnapping in September, 1972 in north New Jersey. I wrote an account of it on reddit, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/ghs0mf/arrival_unknown_the_disappearance_of_charlotte/ I am posting this here, in case this information is helpful to you.
There is a forum on your sister on websleuths… please chat with folks there. We all really want to help find your sister.
Yep, Michigan is also, in my experience, not very eager to investigate these cases. Sometimes I’ll be reading about a missing person on one of the national databases, and I’ll see something about evidence being thrown away or suspects that were never questioned, police refused to take a report, etc. and my first reaction is “Is this case in Michigan?” It’s frustrating to say the least.
she was not from detroit. she lived in northern mich. Oscoda
Might be a stretch…could she possibly be Beth Doe of PA?
A very interesting case. However, the Army base in New Jersey is never identified. We can assume it’s Fort Dix, but not verified.
Also, there are a number of U.S. Army bases in Virginia, such as Fort Lee and Fort Eustis are two that come to mind. Also, SSA, hopefully would have a record of issuing a SSN, to a female with her name and d.o.b..
There is a reference to the Army Base as Fort Monmouth. Then a poster on Websleuts that her sister was married to a guy named Thomas Eugene Fryday. Supposedly the sister did not marry Alvin until November 1975. Supposedly, Carole married this Thomas in Norfolk, Virginia, in April 1971.
Eatontown also is close to the Naval Weapons Station at Earle, New Jersey also. The lack of details is frustrating to me and others.
Yes, for a long time I thought that sister was married to someone else. It was only recently that I saw she was married to her first husband, Mr Fryday, at that time.
I did get in contact with his sister and found out he is deceased. I was so hoping he’d be able to recall something too.
Someone on Websleuths believes that Carole was married to a Thomas Eugene Fryday, who was born in 1926. They supposedly were married in 1971, in Norfolk, Virginia. All the previous stories mention Carole being married to Alvin Fleming, who served in the U.S.M.C., and died in Indianapolis, Indiana. Supposedly they got married in California in 1975.
So, this throws some assumptions about who was the husband at the time. Also Thomas Fryday, was born in Ellis County, Texas on January 24, 1926, and died in Louisiana on June 26, 1990. He was born almost a year before Carole and Charlotte’ s mother. I think this needs further research.
The other interesting thing is that Charlotte’s family may have had a farm in Oscoda, Michigan. Two high school age girls Pamela Sue Hobley and Patricia Spencer disappeared from there on October 31, 1969. They skipped their afternoon classes and were supposed to attend a party. Is there a connection?
We did not have a farm in Oscoda. We lived on a lake in a residential neighborhood
Laurie, did your mother or step father file a missing persons report with the police when Charlotte did not show up at the airport?
I searched Ancestry.com, and found that Carole Loomis Broner (27), married Thomas Eugene Fryday, Jr., born 1/31/1950 (21), on April 1971. This was her third marriage and his first. He was part of the Marine Corps Detactment at Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet.
Then she divorces him in 1975. There is no information on who was her 1st and 2nd husbands, when they got married and or divorced. Also,, I wonder if he actually was stationed at Naval Weapons Station in Earle, New Jersey, which was in the area.
I was on a submarine durng thiis same time period. Our support tender, used to sail down there every so often, from New London, CT.
The wives of crew members would show up like it was a big deal, for them to get underway. I used to say, they were only going to New Jersey.
I wonder if he is still alive. It would be nice to see what he knows about Charlotte’s disappearance. Something to research.