Levi Frady

Case background and investigation

Levi Frady was an 11-year-old boy living in Forsyth County, Georgia, described by those who knew him as an ordinary, friendly kid who loved riding his bicycle. On the evening of Wednesday, October 22, 1997, Levi was riding home along Little Mill Road after spending time with friends. He never made it back. His sudden disappearance triggered an urgent search that would end in tragedy and give rise to a case that has gone unsolved for nearly three decades.

The next day, October 23, 1997, Levi's body was found in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area in neighboring Dawson County, miles from where he had last been seen. He had been shot three times, once in the upper body and twice in the head. There was no obvious motive, no clear connection between the quiet Forsyth County neighborhood where Levi vanished and the remote wooded area where his body was recovered, and no witnesses who saw what happened to him.

The killing shook the community and drew the involvement of multiple agencies, including the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, the Dawson County Sheriff's Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI. Investigators developed sketches of two men seen in the area around the time Levi disappeared. One was described as a white male in his late 50s with a scruffy gray beard, seen walking along Little Mill Road at about 6:30 p.m.; the other, a clean-shaven white male between 45 and 55, was reportedly seen in Dawson Forest driving a light blue 1980s Toyota pickup with a white camper shell. Neither man has ever been identified.

Levi's murder had a lasting effect on Georgia beyond the investigation itself. The case helped inspire the creation of the state's child-abduction alert system, which was named "Levi's Call" in his memory, ensuring that his name would be tied to efforts to protect other children. Even so, decade after decade passed without an arrest, and the promise of the alert system stood in painful contrast to the lack of answers in Levi's own case.

More than 25 years later, no one has been charged in Levi Frady's death, and the GBI continues to list it among its unsolved homicides. Investigators periodically renew appeals for information, hoping that someone with knowledge of the two unidentified men or the circumstances of that October night will come forward. For Levi's family and the Forsyth County community, the murder of a child riding his bike home remains an open wound and one of North Georgia's most enduring and disturbing cold cases.