Tiffany Michelle Whitton

Case background and investigation

Tiffany Michelle Whitton was born on January 30, 1987, and was a 26-year-old mother of a young daughter living in the Marietta and Powder Springs area of suburban Atlanta. By 2013 her life had grown chaotic: she was jobless, struggling with addiction to heroin and methamphetamine, had a criminal record, and was in a turbulent relationship with her boyfriend, Ashley "Red" Caudle. Friends and family later said the couple fought frequently and intensely, at one point being evicted from a residence over their conflicts. The circumstances of her disappearance were captured in unusual detail on store surveillance video, yet more than a decade later almost nothing is known about what became of her afterward.

On the night of September 12, 2013, Whitton and Caudle went to a friend's house and used drugs. Shortly after midnight on September 13, they borrowed a truck and drove to a Walmart Supercenter on Cobb Parkway, U.S. Route 41, in Marietta. Loss prevention officers watched on camera as the couple wandered the store with a shopping cart, and Whitton appeared to be under the influence. When employees suspected her of shoplifting and moved to confront her near the exit, a brief struggle ensued and she broke free, fleeing barefoot into the parking lot around 2:04 a.m. She left behind her purse and shoes and ran out of range of the security cameras. That footage is the last confirmed record of Tiffany Whitton.

From the outset investigators suspected foul play, and attention centered on Ashley Caudle, who was with her that night. Caudle claimed to have no knowledge of what happened to her, but police said he made false statements about his actions that evening and was agitated and angry about the situation at the store, behavior evident on the Walmart video. He has consistently denied involvement while remaining the primary person of interest. In 2015, Caudle pleaded guilty to unrelated charges of possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, and was sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison, a term the judge reportedly linked in part to a belief that he was not cooperating fully in the Whitton investigation.

The Marietta Police Department pursued numerous leads over the years. Roughly ten months after the disappearance, investigators searched and excavated the backyard of Caudle's mother's home but found no significant evidence, and later efforts included sonar searches of area waters such as Lake Allatoona. None produced a trace of Tiffany. Her mother has publicly stated her belief that Caudle knows what happened, though authorities have never gathered enough evidence to bring charges. The case drew wider notice through national media coverage examining why missing-persons cases like hers often receive limited attention. More than a decade after she ran out of that Walmart, Tiffany Whitton remains missing, and her disappearance is unsolved.