images_sizedimage_093181556

It was 21 months after their sister’s disappearance that three Suwannee County siblings finally gave up hope of her return. A November 2002 Internet search of Social Security records revealed that the sister, Belinda Cartwright, was dead. It was a terrible moment, though it gave the family some closure. Cartwright hadn’t been heard from since February 2001, and they’d been left to wonder ever since. The real mystery was just beginning, however.

The Social Security Administration knew only that Cartwright was dead. She’d been receiving disability checks because of her paranoid schizophrenia, and now the checks had stopped. But the agency had no idea how, where or under what circumstances Cartwright had died. They didn’t even know where she was buried. Those answers wouldn’t become available for four more years.

Belinda Cartwright began to get sick in her early 20s, say family members. “She began to change,” said sister Cynthia Rogers of Live Oak. “You could see it in her eyes.”

“In the beginning of her illness she got angry, but she learned to cope with it,” said sister Lorissa Calloway of Branford.

Cartwright didn’t always stay on her medication and eventually lost custody of her two sons, Joey and Matthew. Then she began to travel.

“She was a wanderer”, said Rogers. “You couldn’t hold her down.”

Cartwright went everywhere. Usually in the cab of a big rig. She trusted truckers, as she’d grown up around them. Then, according to Rogers, “she met up with the wrong guy.” But the family didn’t learn that until last December.

Countless letters and phone calls had led nowhere. “We couldn’t find anything,” said Rogers. It was a wrong number that led to the truth.

Rogers called directory assistance for the number of the Georgia Bureau of Vital Statistics. She was given the number for a Decatur County agency instead. A woman named Wanda Cason answered the phone. Rogers realized this wasn’t the agency she had planned to call, but asked the woman for help anyway.

“It took her maybe 10 minutes,” said Rogers. “She came back to the phone and said ‘Honey, your sister died in Lowndes County’.” Cason gave her the number of the Lowndes County coroner’s office and soon all the pieces fell into place.

Cartwright had been on the road with a trucker when they stopped at Exit 2 near Valdosta on I-75. It was Feb. 22, 2001. Police say the trucker began to leave without her. “She jumped up on the truck and he wouldn’t stop,” brother Johnny Turner says he was told. “She was beating on the windshield because all her stuff was still inside. Then he hit a curb and she fell off and was hit.”

The rear wheels of the flatbed semi ran over Cartwright, killing her instantly. The trucker never stopped.

Because all her belongings were in the truck, Cartwright carried no identification. She was identified several hours later through fingerprints. What happened then is open to conjecture. In any case, no one ever notified the family of Cartwright’s death.

And no one ever found the trucker. According to the incident report filed by the Georgia Highway Patrol, the truck was reportedly black with the words “Young Brothers” painted on the side. The investigation has long since hit a dead end, though the family is hopeful the driver will still be found.

What her family remembers most about Cartwright is her kindness. Those Social Security checks she got? She’d cash them and give the money to the homeless, said Calloway. Now she’s in a pauper’s grave in Georgia.

Cartwright’s mother, Mabel Turner, a resident at Suwannee Healthcare and Rehabilitative Center in Live Oak, has had a stroke and doesn’t yet realize the family has learned Cartwright’s fate. When she’s well enough the family will tell her. And then, should she sufficiently recover, they want to take her to see her daughter’s grave.

There’s a simple headstone on it now, inscribed “Belinda Gail Cartwright, Jan. 19, 1965 – Feb. 22, 2001.” Underneath, in small letters, is another inscription, rich in understatement: “We miss you.”