SBI may have answers to a 1941 cold case

Nearly seventy years ago, a Carolina Beach woman and her daughter disappeared. Now, thanks to new technology, the State Bureau of Investigation may have the clues it needs to give their family some closure.

What happened to Leila and Mary Rachel Bryan is still a mystery, but SBI investigators are hoping a radar ground scan will help crack the cold case. What lies beneath 214 Raleigh Avenue may unlock the secrets of a cold case more than half a century old.

Leila and her four year old daughter, Mary Rachel, were last seen May 10th, 1941. The two got in the car, around eight or nine o’clock to go to the dime store; never to be heard from again. The same night Bryan’s husband, Edison, was seen laying a concrete slab under the house.

Lewis Smith, the victim’s nephew said, “I can remember my parents trying to get a court order to dig up the floor, and a judge wouldn’t allow it.”

Many theories surround how and why Leila and Rachel disappeared; murder, suicide and even running away. The case has taken many twists and turns.

Without their bodies, any theory was difficult to prove. At the time, Edison Bryan wasn’t really considered a suspect, though the prevailing theory was, and still is, that he murdered his wife and daughter and buried them under the house.

“I think he murdered her,” said Smith.

Edison Bryan died in 1976. Now in 2008, the SBI investigators performed a radar ground scan under the Raleigh Ave house.

The results are encouraging for the family. It revealed three hits; one of them reportedly has a piece of metal over it. The hope is that it could help answer questions that have lingered for decades.

WWAY stopped by the Raleigh Ave house today, but no one was home. We were told that the homeowners have been very helpful in trying to get the Bryan family some closure.