In the early morning hours of September 13, 2013, Tiffany Whitton, (born January 30, 1987[2]), of Powder Springs, Georgia, United States, was observed apparently shoplifting by loss prevention officers at a Walmart in nearby Marietta.

[3] At the time, Whitton, who had a criminal record, was jobless, addicted to heroin and crystal methamphetamine, and in a difficult relationship with her boyfriend, Ashley Caudle, who was at the Walmart with her.

Caudle noted her failure to return that night, going to a nearby restaurant where she had previously worked to look for her, but did not contact the police or her family.

Due to Caudle's criminal history, false statements about events that night he made later, and his failure to inform authorities or Whitton's family when he was unable to locate her, he is considered a person of interest.

[2][3][4] Currently serving a lengthy prison sentence for drug and gun charges, he denies any involvement in Whitton's disappearance or knowledge of her whereabouts.

In 2016, journalist Tom Junod wrote an article about Whitton's disappearance in Esquire, seeing the media silence on the case as an exception to what is called missing white woman syndrome.

While Whitton is white, her troubled past and criminal record made her a less attractive subject to report on, he noted; her mother complained that some television shows that devote airtime to these cases had told her they were not interested in her daughter's disappearance.

Daniels recalls her as "happy-go-lucky" and "rambunctious" during her early childhood in Kennesaw, Georgia, a western suburb of Atlanta, but she also saw signs of her daughter's later issues.

Daniels practiced tough love, raising her granddaughter and telling Whitton she could not talk to her again until she overcame her addictions and turned her life around.

[2] After her release, Whitton was able to stay off drugs and get a job waiting tables at an International House of Pancakes (IHOP) restaurant in Marietta.

After one relationship ended due to her infidelity, and a roommate, Sheila Fuller, kicked her out for stealing, Whitton met Ashley "Red" Caudle, who was raising a young daughter on his own.

[3] At 2 a.m., Whitton wanted to continue the trip, but Caudle, in his account, told her he needed to be somewhere else, after which she angrily began heading for the cash registers while verbally acquiescing.

After Caudle paid for his items with some bills from a large roll of cash he was carrying, she abandoned the cart and the two began to leave the store.

At the exit, loss prevention officers confronted Whitton on suspicion of carrying $20 worth of stolen clothing; one grabbed the strap of her handbag to detain her.

[2][3] The video of the incident shows the loss prevention officers waiting at the door, expecting Whitton to return, as she had left her footwear and bag behind.

Later, however, he told people he had gone to the truck, where he was charging his phone, gotten a weapon—a gun or a knife, in different accounts—and confronted the loss prevention officers, who let her go, whereupon she escaped out the door.

Caudle also cleaned the truck, which later investigators took note of, but he insists he did that regularly due to the drug-related waste, such as used and discarded paraphernalia, left in it.

Lisa Daniels, who had not heard from her daughter since breaking off communications in August, was used to Whitton's long absences and expected she would hear from her eventually.

[2] Boyette knew too that Whitton often went on long drug binges, and that since she had been apprehended for shoplifting while still on parole from the 2011 charges, she was probably also trying to lower her profile for a time.

As she had feared, he cited Whitton's troubled past, telling Daniels that the case would likely be closed when her daughter either returned of her own volition or got arrested somewhere else.

[3] Moeller believed Whitton was probably dead, but the delay in reporting the case to police had made it difficult to mount an effective investigation.

After talking to Walmart, which had preserved the video as evidence in a possible prosecution or civil suit, and to Caudle, she came to believe he had been involved in Whitton's disappearance.

[3] In March, as a result of Moeller's investigation, a multi-jurisdictional drug-enforcement task force raided the Powder Springs house that had been Whitton's last known residence.

Eight people, including Caudle, were arrested on charges stemming from possessing those items; his daughter and another child were placed in the temporary custody of the local social services agency.

As a result of information developed from that raid, the same group of officers executed a search warrant in July 2014 on Caudle's mother's house in Marietta.

[3] The Georgia Department of Natural Resources brought in sonar and found a large object under 40 feet (12 m) of water below the bridge damage.

In it he waves around a copy of Whitton's missing-person flyer that Moeller had brought to him and holds it up to the camera, all the while speaking confidently, unlike the way Junod recalled him.

For him to have killed Whitton, either deliberately or accidentally, and then hidden her body so well in that brief span of time that no sign of it has ever turned up, would require "sadistic efficiency and nearly miraculous competence", Junod wrote.

I don't know what happened to her", Caudle told Junod, who notes the irony that the person widely suspected of killing Whitton is the only one who believes she is still alive.

In December 2013, the man, having an apparent psychotic episode, kicked down the door of a neighboring house at 4 a.m., insisting that he was being chased by armed men bent on exacting revenge on him for something they believed he had done to a woman, until he was taken away by the police.