By Ex Cathedra
One case of missing people I’ve studied for quite some time is the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Tiffany Whitton.
A young mother that disappeared nine years ago at 26, was last seen in her local Walmart in Marietta, Georgia in 2013.
She was a person with weaknesses, having to overcome drug addiction (heroin and crystal meth), and also carries a criminal record for robbery.
Part of what made Tiffany’s story interesting was her background and the way the news media treated her disappearance.
Drug addiction and a criminal record made her story less appealing to the mainstream news for coverage. Some news stations even denied her mother’s plead for help in publicizing Tiffany’s disappearance.
Is the background of a person important enough to stop caring? No lost soul deserves our ignorance, since time heals and makes people better.
This story covers the bizarre disappearance of Tiffany Whitton of Marietta, Georgia.
The Mysterious Disappearance
Tiffany is missing for over nine years (since September 3, 2013), after last observed shoplifting in her local Walmart together with her boyfriend, Ashley Caudle, a person many still believe is the main suspect.
She was then spotted running away from the security guards outside of Walmart, who confronted her and tried to search her purse for stolen items.
Tiffany left her purse, phone, and shoes at the entrance, running away from the Walmart personnel who didn’t chase after her.
As they were leaving the store, two employees stopped Whitton, they as they suspected her of shoplifting. Whitton ran away from them into the parking lot, passing Caudle, leaving behind her purse and her shoes.
While there is CCTV footage of the incident, I have only discovered these images released in the public domain.
Plenty of older articles regarding the disappearance of Whitton are now removed from the news sites hosting these stories. Research is difficult without all the publications available, and many URLs are excluded from the internet archive.
A person of interest in the case is Ashley Caudle, her ex-boyfriend who was with her in Walmart that day.
Tiffany Whitton was on parole for burglary, and this detail added hope to her family. She may be still alive, but even this scenario is difficult to process after so many years have passed.
She had been missing for a couple of months before, staying low and not contacting anyone. This was the reason her family didn’t immediately contact the police.
It’s been over nine years, so the statute of limitations has probably expired. The city has no power to press charges for most crimes after five years and, as we understand this case so far, Tiffany Whitton was a felon but not a class-A one.
The family is afraid something horrible happened, perhaps an accident that lead to Tiffany’s death or a violent encounter.
Many suspect her ex-boyfriend as well (Caudle), who seemed uninterested in her disappearance. The police searched his home months later and questioned Ashley Caudle. However, they discovered no indications of wrongdoing, although they arrested him.
Caudle was sentenced to 10–20 years in prison for drug possession, distribution, and for bearing a firearm while not allowed as a felon. He is still serving time today.
“A meth trafficker he had been prosecuting had heard from some of his friends that some time after Tiffany disappeared Caudle and some friends had driven up to Lake Allatoona north of the Atlanta area and thrown a concrete-filled barrel off the Bethany Bridge”
The Cobb district attorney provided this new information in 2015. However, divers that searched the river were not able to locate the barrel.
Independent investigator and content creator ExploringwithNug scanned the river with a sonar device while searching for Tiffany Whitton, following this lead.
Still, he did not find the barrel either, which might be a difficult task nine years later, and a new search should cover a larger area around the bridge.
Caudle has added to the complexity of this mysterious disappearance with his aggressive behavior, and the lack of interest in helping with the case.
Instead, his attitude keeps increasing suspicions. He was also inconsistent when describing the details of the incident.
After the Walmart incident, Caudle somehow got hold of Whitton’s mobile device, which he showed to a friend of Tiffany (Fuller) outside of IHOP (a restaurant Tiffany was working at) at 2 a.m. the same day.
Yet, he claimed he tried to call Tiffany from his phone while leaving Walmart, basically suggesting he called the mobile device he was already carrying.
The police found no calls from Caudle’s number to Tiffany, although it appears he had contacted several hospitals in the area.
On another mysterious detail in this story which is still left unanswered (at least to the public), Tiffany’s half-brother Blake mentioned he had received a message from Tiffany after her disappearance, and four months later a phone call from an app with “a weird return number” and he was convinced this was his sister talking to him on the phone.
Police did not examine this clue from the start of the case since Tiffany’s brother only revealed the incident in 2016 after a journalist interviewed him. Perhaps this was an IP number difficult for the police to trace since there is no more information about this event available online.
Tiffany’s mother suspects it was Caudle who sent the messages trying to create the impression Tiffany was still alive.
The Cobb County district attorney said it would try to obtain Blake’s phone records
If Tiffany actually called, why didn’t she contact anyone from her family again?
There is a missing link in this case. One single clue will be sufficient enough to solve it, and the investigation should not end without re-examining the main suspect and any other clues.
There is hope for a solution, although I don’t want to raise false hopes for her loved ones as nine years have already passed since this incident.
Conclusion
Tiffany Whitton wasn’t an outcast and hadn’t committed such outrageous crimes for the news or a community not to care when she was gone missing.
She is a victim of the drug pandemic, a plague devastating our societies with hard substances like heroin and meth, hazardous, deadly, and difficult to overcome.
The Marietta community exhibits strong reflexes and support for Tiffany and her family’s struggle. The initial bureaucratic reaction of the police may have lost significant time here. Reflexes in these cases should be instant.
My reason for writing this article is the Facebook page Find Tiffany Whitton created by her family, that never stopped all these nine years looking for her. Moreover, the Facebook page shares other stories from missing people creating awareness of similar incidents.
I tried to think of any possibility and come up with a probable solution, but unfortunately, I could not solve this case, and the family has no closure, no peace.
If anyone knows any detail they should contact the family or authorities, as ending their suffering will be an act of kindness that will allow Tiffany’s loved ones to move on.
Content published in this article is used for research purposes and falls within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If you are, or represent, the copyright owner of images used in this article, and have an issue with the use of said material, please notify: Ex Cathedra at medium.com and legal@rounderlife.com.
