The Baffling Disappearance of Shelley Luty
By: Jenn Baxter
Tags: Nonfiction, History, True Crime, Pennsylvania, Unsolved Mysteries

The Baffling Disappearance of Shelley Luty

A waitress left work and vanished — and police have been searching for her and her car for almost forty years.

Photo by Ricky Singh on Unsplash

Shelley Luty was in a good mood when she showed up at work on August 23, 1982. The 19-year-old single mother had been working the 5:00pm-11:00pm shift at the Llanerch Diner in Upper Darby, PA for about a month. Because she was still in her probationary period, she was only working part-time at the moment, but her boss had been impressed with her work and was going to promote her to full-time the following month. Shelley had the kind of friendly, outgoing personality that was necessary to be a good waitress, and her good looks didn’t hurt, either.

Shelley and her two-year-old daughter, Jenny, had been living with Shelly’s mother and stepfather, Barb and Bill Skay, but that was about to change. Shelley had an appointment the following morning to sign the lease on an apartment. It would be the first time she and Jenny would be living on their own, and Shelley was looking forward to it. Jenny’s father lived in Texas and wasn’t involved in the young girl’s life, but Shelley’s life revolved around her daughter. Each night, she would call home on her break so she could talk to the little girl, and she always brought some kind of treat home with her.

Barbara, Shelley’s mother, also worked at the Llanerch Diner. She worked the overnight shift, coming in to start her work day at the same time Shelley was finishing up. Barbara got to work a little early that Monday night, so she was able to talk to Shelley for a few minutes before the change of shift. Shelley had driven her step-father’s mint green 1978 Impala, and she asked her mother if it would be alright if she took the car to visit a girlfriend when she finished up her shift. Barbara was sure it would be, but told her to stop home and check with her stepfather just in case. Shelley said she would. She had already purchased a pack of M & M’s candy for Jenny, she could drop them off at the same time.

As Barbara was preparing to start her shift, she took note of a customer who looked as if he was trying to talk to Shelley. Barbara described him as being in his 20s, and he was blond and athletic-looking. As she watched, he grabbed ahold of Shelley’s arm to get her attention. Shelley pulled away from his grasp, but didn’t appear overly concerned. She spoke to the man for a few moments, and he then left the diner. By this time, Shelley’s shift was over. She left the restaurant, and witnesses would later say they had seen her speaking to a man in the parking lot of the diner. From the way they described the man, it was likely the same person Barbara had observed inside the diner. Whoever she was talking to, the conversation was brief, and Shelley came back into the diner just a couple of minutes later. She collected her coat — a gray sweater jacket with a big blue bird on it — and headed for the door. After one final wave at her mother, Shelley was gone. What happened to her after she exited the diner for the last time would be a source of speculation for decades to come.

Shelley Luty (Photo provided by Upper Darby Police Department)

The parking lot at the Llanerch Diner was small, and usually filled with the cars of customers. There had been no empty parking spaces when Shelley had arrived at work earlier that evening, so she had parked her stepfather’s Impala across the street from the diner. Although the street was not very well-lit, it wasn’t considered particularly unsafe. The Llanerch was located at the intersection of Route 1 and Route 3, both busy roads that saw traffic 24 hours a day. When Shelley walked out of the diner, it should have taken her only a few seconds to get into the car and drive away. No one knows how long it took her to walk to her car, or if she even made it to the car. Neither Shelley nor the Impala would ever be seen again.

Bill Skay wasn’t overly concerned when his stepdaughter was late coming home. Shelley was a very responsible young woman, and he was sure she had a good reason. His wife had been a waitress long enough for Bill to know that there were times when it was too hectic for the waitresses to finish all their side work during their shift, meaning they would have to stay late to complete it. He assumed that was what had happened to Shelley. But as it got later, Bill began to get concerned. A quick call to the diner was enough to confirm that something was wrong. Shelley had left right on time when her shift had ended at 11:00pm. Hours had passed and there had been no sign of her. Bill called police and reported her missing.

For Bill and Barbara, the situation was very straightforward. Shelley was missing, and she never would have voluntarily gone missing, therefore something was wrong and the police needed to find her. But for the police responding to the call, it wasn’t that easy. Bill and Barbara were about to get a crash course in life as the parents of a missing adult. They were going through the same heart wrenching emotions that any parent of a missing child experienced, but because their child was legally an adult, police were much less inclined to look for her without definite signs of foul play. It had been a year since Adam Walsh had been kidnapped and murdered, and missing children advocacy groups were springing up all over the country. But there were no groups geared towards finding missing adults. Shelley’s parents were on their own.

Shelley was driving a car like this one (Photo via CarDomain)

Upper Darby Police Detective Nick Bratsis was in charge of Shelley’s case. He found no evidence of foul play, but there was something about the case that bothered him. He’d been a cop for more than 20 years, and he had learned to trust his instincts. Even as he explained to Bill and Barbara that Shelley was legally an adult and it wasn’t against the law for her to be missing, he knew that this case was more serious than a young adult simply taking off on vacation and not telling anyone. First there was the issue of Bill’s car. If Shelley had decided to simply take off, she would have expected that, at the very least, her stepfather would call police and report the car stolen. The mint green Impala was the kind of car that would stick out on the road, and it would be an unlikely choice for someone trying to make an anonymous getaway. But there was something bothering Detective Bratsis far more than the brightly colored car: Jenny.

Everyone the police interviewed told them the same thing. Shelley was a wonderful mother, completely devoted to her daughter, and she never would have left home without her. Detective Bratsis believed them. Shelley may have been an adult, but she wasn’t the type who would simply walk away from her entire life without looking back. Although the detective admitted that he still had no evidence that foul play was involved, he was beginning to believe that Shelley had not left under her own free will.

Police interviewed all of Shelley’s friends, family, and co-workers, looking for any clue that might bring them closer to discovering what had happened on that humid August night after Shelley left the diner. She mentioned to her mother that she was planning on meeting up with a girlfriend after work; it was why she wanted to borrow the car. Police confirmed with one of her friends that they had made tentative plans to meet that night, but Shelley never showed up. Everyone who knew her was at a loss. It was as if she had simply vanished, taking Bill’s car with her.

Police released a composite sketch of the man who had been seen talking to Shelley at the Llanerch on the night she disappeared, hoping that someone would be able to identify him. They stressed that he was not a suspect in Shelley’s disappearance, but since he had been in the area on the night she went missing they believed he could have seen something that could assist the investigators. Unfortunately, they were never able to determine who the man was.

Police sketch of the man seen talking to Shelley (Photo provided by Upper Darby Police)

Shelley’s parents told the detectives that their daughter had previously fractured her skull, and she had a history of epilepsy as well. She had been on anti-seizure medication for years to keep her epilepsy under control. Concerned that the medication might increase the possibility of birth defects, she stopped taking it when she was pregnant with Jenny. She had remained seizure-free throughout her pregnancy, so she had not gone back on the medication after Jenny was born. Many children who suffer from epilepsy eventually outgrow it, and Shelley hadn’t had a seizure in years. Was it possible that she had a seizure on the night she went missing? Seizures can cause a variety of side effects, but some of the most common include problems with vision, confusion and a loss of awareness or blacking out. If Shelley had become disoriented due to a seizure, there’s no telling where she could have ended up. A few wrong turns would have had her heading for the Delaware River, but it seems unlikely that she would have been able to make it that far without getting into some kind of an accident. The streets she would have been on were fairly busy at all hours of the day. Someone probably would have noticed if she was swerving all over the road. It’s possible, but not likely.

Her mother told detectives that she was unsure how Shelley would be affected by stress. If someone had abducted her or gotten into a physical confrontation with her, perhaps this could have triggered a seizure. No one heard any cries for help that night, but maybe Shelley was too incapacitated to cry out.

Upper Darby detectives continued to investigate Shelley’s disappearance, and the FBI soon joined in the investigation as well. It was a very unusual move for a missing adult case, and most likely had something to do with the fact that both Shelley and the car were missing. Neither the FBI nor the Upper Darby Police Department would comment about what it was that triggered the FBI’s involvement.

Detectives investigated every lead that came that way, but nothing seemed to be bringing them any closer to Shelley. They interviewed dozens of people, even going as far as tracking down one of her ex-boyfriends who was stationed in Germany. They asked some of the people to take polygraph examinations, and everyone cooperated with them. No one that was administered a lie detector test showed any signs of deception.

One of Shelley’s former boyfriends saw a model in a magazine that he thought looked like Shelley, and when he showed it to some of her family members, they agreed. It looked like a possible break in the case, but when detectives tracked the model down, it wasn’t Shelley. The woman did bear a remarkable resemblance to Shelley, but had spent her entire life living in California and had never heard of the Lutys.

In October of 1984, the FBI closed their investigation into the disappearance of Shelley. Their exit from the case was just as abrupt and shrouded in mystery as their entrance had been. Upper Darby detectives continued investigating the case, but they were running out of leads to follow and the case soon went cold. They sent Shelley’s dental records to a number of different jurisdictions that were seeking to identify an unidentified body, but there were never any matches. It was good, in a way, because it meant that Shelley could still be alive, but for her family, nothing was worse than the pain of not knowing what had happened to her.

Bill and Barbara had essentially taken over the role of parents for Jenny, and she even began referring to Barbara as her mother. She had been so young when Shelley disappeared, and had precious few memories of the mother who had loved her so much. Shelley remains classified as a missing person, and Upper Darby police are hopeful that one day someone will finally come forward and give her family the answers they deserve.

Shelley Diane Luty was 19 when she vanished after leaving an Upper Darby diner. She is a white woman, with reddish brown hair and blue eyes. She was 5’3” and weighed about 125 pounds. She has a small scar on her nose, and a triangular-shaped scar on one of her arms. She had chipped her upper right front tooth, and it was capped at the time she disappeared. When she was last seen, she was wearing her waitressing uniform that consisted of a white shirt and dark pants and had a gray sweater coat with a big blue bird on it. She was driving a mint green, two-door 1978 Chevrolet Impala. Right before she went missing she was seen speaking to a white male, 25–29 years old, about 5’10” to 6’0” tall, with blond hair and an athletic build. If you have any information about Shelley, her car, or the man she was last seen with, please contact the Upper Darby Police Department at 610–352–7050.