The fittingly-named Carolina Beach is a beach town in far southeastern North Carolina, straddling the Atlantic Ocean fifteen miles south of Wilmington. While the origins of the harbor community’s name are clear, it harbors one of the Tar Heel State’s biggest mysteries.

On the evening of May 10, 1941, thirty-six-year-old Leila Bryan and her four-year-old daughter Mary left their Carolina Beach home and never returned.

 

Leila And Mary Bryan

Leila married Eddie “E.C.” Bryan in 1931. She had been a registered nurse before he secured her an office position with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, where he worked as a freight manager. Mary was their only child.

Eddie said he spent much of the afternoon of Saturday May 10, 1941, pouring concrete in his garage, while his wife and daughter enjoyed a day on the beach. They came home around 6:30 and Leila made supper.

At approximately 9:00, Eddie says Leila told her she was going to get groceries at a store and perhaps purchase a new brassiere at the local five and dime store. After giving Leila $2 in change, Eddie said she and Mary, who had asked to go with her mom, began walking to the store two blocks from their home, but they returned shortly thereafter as Mary had grown tired. They then left in Eddie’s black 1935 Ford Model A Coupe, which he thought was filled with less than half a tank of gas.

Leila’s brother, Berry Lewis, a deputy with the nearby Bladen County Sherriff’s Office, arrived at the Bryan home sometime later to discuss travel arrangements for the following day when they planned to visit their parents, William and Mary, in Bladenboro, seventy miles northwest of Carolina Beach. Eddie did not plan to accompany them as Leila’s mother, also named Mary, had disapproved of her daughter’s marrying him because he had been previously wed.

Finding he had just missed his sister, Berry drove to both stores as well as the beach but did not see Leila or her car. After roughly an hour he drove back to the Bryan home; upon finding Leila had not returned, either he or Eddie, who was sleeping when Berry arrived, phoned the police. No one at either store could recall seeing the missing mother and daughter nor had anyone seen them in the Bladenboro area.

Leila’s favorite rings, which she always wore when visiting family, were still at home, and Mary’s Sunday shoes had been polished in preparation for the Sunday outing. These findings, along with Leila wearing only a summer print house dress without stockings and carrying only the $2 in change when she left, seemingly indicated she had not planned to run away.

Mom And Daughter Depart And Disappear

Leila and Mary were reported seen in Clearwater in Pinellas County, Florida, the western boundary of Tampa Bay, approximately six-hundred-seventy-five miles south of Carolina Beach in July, two months after their disappearances. The sightings seemed credible as Eddie had family close by, but none had been contacted by Leila, and she and Mary could not be confirmed to have been in the area.

Later that summer, part of an automobile windshield was found roughly five miles north of Carolina Beach just off the shore of Snow’s Cut, a large canal connecting the Cape Fear River and the Intracoastal Waterway near United States Highway 421. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) determined the fragment could have been from a 1935 Ford, suggesting Leila may have had an accident in which her car wound up in the canal. The SBI, however, could not definitively state the glass was from such a vehicle and professional divers found no bodies or other car parts in the waters. Dragging of the Cape Fear River, the Inland Waterway, and multiple small inlets also produced no clues, and the windshield was discarded or lost sometime later.

Although no sign of foul play was found, some investigators suspected the Bryan’s were killed and their bodies dumped in a large Seer pipeline being dug at Carolina Beach.

Skeletons discovered by a Carolina Beach zookeeper along a road near the Cape Fear River in 1956, fifteen years after Leila and Mary’s disappearances, were proven not to be those of the missing mother and daughter.

Few substantive clues have surfaced in the disappearances of Leila and Mary Bryan.

Eddie Bryan remarried following his wife and daughter’s disappearances and moved to Florida, where he died in 1976. Although he was described as a good man, many pondered if he had killed and buried his family beneath the concrete he was pouring in his garage on the evening they vanished.

An AI Sharpened Image Of Eddie Bryan

In January 2009, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) detected three potential spots where bodies may have be buried in the concrete basement of the former Bryan home. All the sections were cut through and searched, but nothing was found.

The Bryan Home

Leila and Mary Bryan were declared legally dead in 1948. Leila’s black 1935 Ford Model A Coupe bearing the 1941 North Carolina license plate number 219-056 and the engine number 18-1833996 was also never found.

               

AI Sharpened Images Of Leila Bryan

Mary Rachel Bryan would today be eighty-nine-years-old. At the time of her disappearance, she was four-years-old, stood three feet tall, and weighed forty pounds. Her eyes and hair were dark brown and her front teeth protruded.

 

AI Sharpened Images Of Mary Bryan

If you have information relating to the disappearances of Leila and Mary Bryan, please contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at 919-486-1262 or 1-800-334-3000.

Mother And Daughter Gone

While scouring Carolina Beach for clues relating to the two-month old disappearances of Leila and Mary Bryan in July 1941, North Carolina SBI agents found a tin can and two pieces of plaster forming a mold for the manufacture of phony 50-cent pieces.

I could not find any source stating if the perpetrators were ever identified.

SOURCES: 

• Charley Project
• Charlotte Observer
• Doe Network
• Durham Herald-Sun
• Greensboro (north Carolina) News and Record
• NamUs
• Wilmington (North Carolina) Morning Star
• WTVD Channel 11 News, ABC Affiliate, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina