The Disappearance of Linda Mary Louise Garrison, November 1968

Linda Garrison, 19, was last seen on Tuesday, November 19, 1968 in Sumner, Pierce County, WA. She is not missing from tribal land. According to clippings posted to WebSleuths, Linda left home after a horse ride and hasn't been seen since. As of three weeks after the last sighting of her, her German shepherd, named "Checko," had apparently refused to eat since Linda's disappearance.

One month before her disappearance, Linda — who was 18 years old and living at 1522 Fryar Ave in Sumner at the time — was, "rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup [on] Thursday [October 10, 1968] for treatment of back injuries sustained when she fell to the pavement from a horse."

Linda is a white female with blond/strawberry hair and blue eyes. She was 5'1 and 125 lbs at the time of her disappearance. One newspaper clipping spelled her middle name as "Marie" rather than "Mary." According to the Washington State Missing Persons Database, Linda does have some sort of scar(s), mark(s), and/or tattoo(s); for more information, contact the submitting agency.

Linda's year of birth is 1949 according to the Washington State Missing Persons Database. According to NamUs, her age as of Oct. 30, 2024 would be 74 years old; as of March 22, 2025, her current age would be 75. This, combined with the information from the Oct. 11, 1968 clipping and her age at time of disappearance, puts her birth sometime between October 31, 1949 and November 19, 1949 (inclusive).

As of the latest date of updating this post — Nov. 17, 2025 at 8:45am EST — the "Current Age" displayed on NamUs for Linda is still 75 years old. From this it seems that Linda's date of birth is possibly between Nov. 18th or 19th, 1949. However, this seems strange to me, as neither NamUs nor the newspaper clipping reporting her disappearance mentioned her birthday at all. It seems entirely possible that the date for which NamUs is programmed to update Linda's "Current Age" counter is set exactly nineteen years before the date of her disappearance.

Because of this, my estimation of Linda's birth date should be based solely on the information from the newspaper clippings, not NamUs's Current Age counter. Linda was 18 years old as of Oct. 11, 1968, and was 19 as of Nov. 19, 1968. Double checking using this online calculator, this means that Linda's date of birth is sometime between Oct. 11, 1949 and Nov. 19, 1949.

I submitted all information that I could find (i.e., everything above) to the Doe Network; her case was added to DN on March 28, 2025. Linda's NamUs case, #MP75400, was created on November 7, 2020, and was last updated November 16, 2020. 

Linda has zero rule-outs on NamUs. She is classified as "Missing - Involuntary" on the WA State MP Database. Anyone with information in her case is urged to please contact the Sumner Police Department at (253) 863-6384. The agency case number is 1000448. Furthermore, according to the Sumner PD's website, the department's tip line is (253) 299-5678.

Sources

NamUs 

WebSleuths  

Doe Network 

Tacoma News Tribune 10/11/68, 12/14/68 

Washington Missing Persons Public Database 

Note: While this write-up was originally published on June 26, 2025, I regularly revisit cases, fix any typos or formatting errors, check for updates, hyperlink new posts, ensure that I have exhausted all sources, etc., and then make note of when I last did so, no matter how minor. When edits are extensive, I re-post the write-up entirely. This post was last updated on November 17, 2025.