Christina Lynn Carter, 3, lived with her single mother Janet Gail (Calhoun) Carter in Hueytown, Alabama. Her parents had gotten divorced around 2 months prior and her father was seeking to obtain custody of Christina.
It’s thought that Janet went into hiding with Christina because of the custody battle that was about to erupt.
September 17, 1973, was the last time that anyone can remember seeing Christina, or her mother.
On October 7, 1973, a nude body of a woman was found inside a duffel bag on Clingman’s Dome Road (Bryson City, NC) in the Great Smoky Mountains. She’d been suffocated only hours before the discovery of her body. It took the FBI and local authorities nearly a month to identify Jane Doe as Janet Carter through dental charts and x-rays. This means they honestly had no idea that there was a child that was also involved. Once they made the identification an extensive search of the park began, but there was never any evidence located to suggest Christina had been there.
Could Janet have given Christina to someone for safekeeping? That’s one of the theories regarding what could have possibly happened to her. However, there’s been no sign of her since 1973.
Janet’s murder has also never been solved.
On the popular website, Websleuths, one of the users (MartieLee) says she is Christy’s cousin, by her father. After doing more digging on the internet I was able to locate more information and I believe she truly is who she says she is. All that out of the way, she made an interesting post regarding Janet, which I’m going to just copy and paste so you can see it in its full context:
“Forgive me for being sketching about some things, but I’m trying to protect the privacy of the family.
Her father (my cousin) is waiting to give the DNA sample. I’ll be sure to post here when that happens. Plans are to also contact Christy’s biological grandmother (in another state) for a sample.
We’ve always felt like we knew who killed her mother Janet. She was dating the (married) man and talked to her coworkers about being excited about going to the Smokies with him. Lots of details I can’t go into, but at the time we all assumed they did just that, went to the Smokies. When her body was found there later, we felt sure that he was involved. We do know he was in the area the night/morning she died but his wife provided an alibi for him. He died a couple of years ago, so we’ll never get the true story of that night/morning.
What we don’t know is (if he is the one who killed Janet) What did he do with Christy? Did he kill/dispose of her and wild animals got to her body? Or give her to someone? Or abandon her alive with her mother’s dead body and someone kidnapped her? No trace of her or her clothing
Unfortunately, the identity of Janet’s body was not known until a month after her death, so no one was looking for a dead child near the place where she was found. No one had a reason to suspect that Janet or Christy
I wonder who the married man was she was seeing at the time of her disappearance, it’s unfortunate to think that someone would give him a false alibi, especially knowing a woman had been murdered and her
Was Christina abandoned with her mother’s body after she was murdered? Or was Christina murdered and her body just hasn’t been found yet? Another theory that has since been debunked was that Christina was Sharon Marshall. Sharon was,
If you have any information regarding Christina’s disappearance or the murder of Janet, please contact the Hueytown Police Department @ 205-491-3587 or the FBI Field Office in Charlotte, NC @ (704) 672-6100.
Websleuths
Unidentified Wiki
The Charley Project
Geneology.com
NamUs
03/21/2021 – no updates available.
03/31/2022 – no updates available.
