Janis Adams had spent all of her life not knowing what happened to her mother. The only fixed memory she had of her was of the day she went missing.
A mother of two, Marlene Standridge was around 22 years old when she disappeared in the early 1970s. As a hippie, Standridge was described to Adams as a free spirit, always trying to live her life to the fullest.
After years of wondering if her mother’s lifestyle was the reason for her sudden disappearance, Adams was finally given answers in August.
“We grew up thinking our mom just abandoned us and she’s never coming back,” Adams said.
In 1982, human remains were found in some woods in unincorporated Stone Mountain, Gwinnett County police spokesman Cpl. Ryan Winderweedle said Thursday. At the time, police believed they had been there for six to 10 years. At the scene, officers located shoes, what appeared to be a blouse and a nylon rope, all of which were buried among leaves, the police report states.
Detectives were not able to identify the victim until they matched Adams’ DNA in March.
Before police knew of Adams, a friend of hers suggested she get a DNA profile done and upload the results to a database that law enforcement uses for genealogy records. After detectives sent the remains to the lab in March to generate a DNA profile, the results were matched to Adams’ DNA.
“As bad as it was to find out what happened to my mother, it was also closure, and I needed that,” Adams said.
Police contacted Adams to inform her of the match and that she may have been the daughter of the found remains. Five months later, Adams went to Gwinnett police headquarters to verify the match.
On Monday, the lab confirmed that Adams was Standridge’s daughter.
After the connection was made, even though missing holes are still prevalent in the case, pieces of Adams’ early childhood began to make sense.
She was told by family members that she and her brother were found in Piedmont Park alone after Standridge had taken them there the day she went missing. Police confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Standridge was likely kidnapped in the park while walking around with her two children. Adams and her brother, who were about 2 at the time, were found alone by a person walking through the park, police confirmed.
Through the years, she was often told her mother had run away. Adams is now glad she always questioned that story.
“It just never sat well with me. I know mothers don’t do that,” she said with a laugh. “I just had something in the back of my mind. Like something just doesn’t seem right about any of that.”
Gwinnett police consider James Willie Brown a likely suspect in Standridge’s killing due to his similar offenses in the 1970s. Brown was executed in November 2003 for the killing of Brenda Watson in 1975, but he is tied to at least two other killings. Similar to the site where Standridge was found, a nylon cord at the scene matched the one Brown had in his car after Watson’s body was found.
“It’s really interesting to me why he drove all the way to Stone Mountain to dump these bodies,” Adams said about Brown. “I don’t understand why he did what he did.”
Although Brown has been tied to the case and the disappearance has been partially solved, Adams still struggles with the fact that she has no memory of her mother and no photos of them together.
“I guess that’s the whole thing in my entire life,” Adams said. “My mother was like the one thing that if I could have found out about, I would’ve liked to have known.”
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