Delayed Justice for Julie Love

Ask any person who lived in Atlanta in 1988 if they remember Julie Love and I guarantee you’ll get an answer in the positive. While today the news is saturated with missing persons and general negativity, in 1988 such cases seemed more isolated and the general belief was they certainly didn’t happen in safe neighborhoods.

Julie Love was a 27-year-old fitness instructor, a teacher of children, a former cheerleader and gymnast, on July 11, 1988. She was newly engaged (only weeks) to her longtime boyfriend and both lived in Buckhead, an affluent neighborhood of Atlanta. She had run out of gas after attending a business meeting that Monday evening and left her car , a red Mustang convertible, on Dover Road. Since she was only half a mile from both her fiancé’s residence and a gas station she set out on foot for one or the other. She never reached either.

Her family and friends quickly banded together to speak to the media and pepper the area with posters of a smiling Julie captioned “Have You Seen Julie Love?” The entire city seemed to be in lockdown, everyone desperately searching to find Julie and bring her home. There was also an underlying cold fear, one that led women to look over their shoulders and go everywhere in pairs or groups. If Julie Love could go missing on a warm summer evening while it was still light outside, in a safe and well-to-do area of town, no one was safe.