`On this Story Time Sunday, settle in for a case wrapped in rain, mystery, and silence — the unsolved disappearance of Mara Belle Dawson, the girl in the yellow raincoat.
She wasn’t famous. Her name didn’t make national headlines. But in the tiny town of Bellwood, Oregon, her memory clings like damp fog on glass.
The Last Night
It was Sunday, October 19, 2003. The rain had been falling for hours — a cold, steady drizzle that kept most people indoors.
Except Mara Belle.
At 17, she was sharp-tongued, quick-witted, and always dressed a little “offbeat.” That night, she left her job at Charlie’s Diner at 10:46 p.m., wearing a bright yellow raincoat and walking home — a route she’d taken hundreds of times before.
Security cameras caught her leaving the diner, umbrella in hand, raincoat belt swinging. She was never seen again.
The Investigation
The walk from Charlie’s to her house was exactly 0.8 miles.
But somewhere along the way, Mara vanished.
Her umbrella was found the next morning — broken and wedged in a storm drain.
Her phone was still on her nightstand at home.
Her yellow raincoat? Never found.
Dogs picked up her scent near the old lumberyard, but it stopped at the edge of the woods. No footprints. No struggle. Just silence.
The Town’s Theories
Bellwood turned into a boiling pot of suspicion.
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Some say it was a drifter seen at the diner earlier that day.
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Others believe it was someone she knew — a customer, maybe, or someone from school.
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One theory suggests she never disappeared at all — that she ran away, started over.
But those who knew Mara best say she wasn’t the type to vanish without a trace.
She loved true crime. She was sarcastic, loud, and stubborn. She planned to move to Portland, study forensic psychology.
The Journal Entry
One detail still haunts her mother.
Three days before she vanished, Mara wrote in her notebook:
“I think someone’s following me. Probably just my imagination. Or maybe not. If I go missing, start with the regulars.”
The notebook was tucked in her backpack, zipped neatly, untouched.
Twenty Years Later
It’s been over 20 years. No body. No confirmed sightings. No answers.
But the people of Bellwood still talk about her — the girl in the yellow raincoat — as if she might still walk through the mist one day, sassy and unapologetic.
And every October, someone leaves a single yellow flower on the bench outside Charlie’s Diner.
No one knows who.
Final Thoughts
Whether she was taken, lured, or lost to time — Mara’s story deserves to be told.
Because some stories don’t fade. They just wait for someone to listen.
Join Killer Thoughts and Twisted Plots every Story Time Sunday for eerie narratives, unsolved tales, and cold case stories wrapped in fog, memory, and mystery.
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