Levi Frady was just 11 years old when he rode his bicycle toward home along Little Mill Road in Forsyth County on October 22, 1997, after spending the day playing with friends. He never made it. The next day, his body was discovered in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area across the county line in Dawson County, and the killing has never been solved.
Investigators say Frady was abducted, transported and killed in another county, according to a CBS News Atlanta report marking 29 years since the crime. The search for the boy began with the discovery of a red bicycle, as Forsyth County News has reported. Separately, the Dawson County News has reported that news accounts at the time said Frady had been shot three times and his body dumped in a rain-filled pit in Dawson Forest — details that remain part of the public record even as the case stays unresolved.
Two Men Investigators Still Want to Identify
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has asked the public for help identifying two possible witnesses connected to the case. Neither man has been confirmed as a suspect; investigators have described them only as people they want to locate for questioning. The first was seen walking along Little Mill Road on the evening Frady was reported missing, according to the CBS Atlanta report, at around 6:30 p.m. that day, per NewsChannel 9.
That man is described as a white male in his late 50s with a scruffy gray beard and a faded blue baseball cap, investigators say, and witnesses reported he walked with a stooped gait. The second possible witness was seen in the Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area itself. He's described by the GBI as a white male between 45 and 55 years old, clean-shaven, 6 feet to 6 feet 1 inch tall, slim, with white or gray hair, and he was believed to be driving a 1980-to-1985 medium blue Toyota two-wheel-drive pickup truck with a white camper shell over the bed.
A Case That's Outlasted a Generation of Investigators
The Dawson County Sheriff's Office, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office and the GBI's Cleveland Regional Investigative Office continue to seek leads in the homicide investigation, per the same NewsChannel 9 account. The case had previously been reopened by Forsyth County at an earlier point, according to the Dawson County News, though Frady's killer was never identified.
Georgia law enforcement officials created Levi's Call, the state's version of the Amber Alert system, after Frady's abduction and killing, a legacy that has outlived the investigation itself by nearly three decades. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation continues searching for Levi Frady's killer even now, with the case still formally listed among its unsolved homicides.
Anyone with information about the murder or the identities of the two men described by investigators is asked to contact the GBI's tip line at 1-800-597-8477 or submit tips online through the bureau's website. For a case that has spanned 29 years without an arrest, officials say even a small piece of information could finally help identify who was on Little Mill Road and in Dawson Forest the day an 11-year-old boy never made it home.
