Avery Vernie "Peaches" Shorts

Published on 14 December 2024 at 14:48

On December 26th, 1980, little Peaches Shorts was sent to the store near her home, to never be seen alive again. Almost 42 years later, who killed Peaches is still unknown.

6-year-old Avery Vernie Shorts better known as Peaches, lived with her mom Hazel Smith and her 2 siblings in the Montgomery Village Housing Project Apartment 243 in South Knoxville, Tennessee. Peaches was the oldest of the kids, Hazel's pride and joy.

On December 26th 1980 Hazel was preparing dinner around 3:30pm when she decided she wanted a coke to drink, at this same time a man known to the family stopped by Mitch Reed, He asked Hazel if he could move in the home with them, Hazel asked him for the 58 cents for a coke and told him she would have to think about it. Mitch then left the home. Peaches put her coat on since it was a cold December day and laced up her Mickey Mouse tennis shoes, with Ribbons in her pigtails and headed out the door, telling her mom she loved her as she left. The last words her mom would hear from her.

The walk from the apartment to the store on Maryville pike should have taken about 15 minutes round trip. However, Peaches stopped to play then continued on to the store arriving around 5pm. Noticing it should not have taken Peaches this long, Hazel called the store, the clerk told her, Peaches had come in got a coke and left. At 5:50pm Hazel called the Knoxville Police Department to report her baby missing.

KPD asked for volunteers to help look for Peaches, the volunteer group reached around 100 people, they checked the woods near the home and store, the railroad tracks, and knocked on every door between the apartment and the store. Retired Lt. Jim Wilson was at home when he seen the news story about Peaches missing, KPD waited till December 27th before assigning detectives to the case. The search for Peaches went well past midnight, with no real tips to as where little Peaches went. In the very beginning police narrowed in on one suspect, Mitch Reed. A young boy had told police he seen Peaches outside the store, speaking to a man that looked like Mitch Reed in a Brown car. However, the boy later recanted this statement, police believe due to his parents pressuring him to change is story.

Mitch Reed was dating a woman who lived a few doors down from Hazel and her kids, He would give the family rides in his brown Cadillac and buying Hazel gifts like clothes and a camera. Reed even asked Hazel to be his girlfriend one time, and she told him no. Upsetting him to the point he made a statement to Hazel "I will get even". Mitch Reed did not have a stable living situation; he would bounce between his parents' home in Rockford and his girlfriend's apartment in the Montgomery Village. Mitch was 47 at the time little Peaches went missing, with an extensive criminal history.

Police Chief Bob Marshell assigned a 12-man task force to find Peaches, with Lt. Jim Wilson as the led. As the temperatures dropped down to zero, hopes of finding her alive started to drop also. Police spoke with Reed several times, noting he would laugh during every interrogation, never admitting to taking Peaches. 2 years would pass before they get any new clues.

On January 23rd, 1982, A Father and son were hunting rabbits out near University of Tennessee Extension Farm. When they walk up on an overturned cattle chute. As they got closer, they seen a human skull, and a pair of Mickey Mouse tennis shoes laying near the chute. The police were called. KPD Investigator (now retired) Randy York recalls what he seen that day, " There her little body laid with wire wrapped around her neck". "Her pigtails were there, where here head would have been, and her hair still had the ribbons in it." "She had her panties on, and a little coat buttoned all the way to the top.".

Forensic anthropologist Bill Bass, Identified the skeleton as that of Peaches Shorts. 6 days later her family was able to lay her to rest in a donated grave. Evidence at the scene was sparce, just a decomposed skeleton, a few items of clothes and a rusty 9-gauge wire. The wire came from the UT farm, brand being made in 1940s. No fingerprints were found on the wire and any blood had dried long ago.

Peaches body was found about 15-minute drive from Montgomery Village and only a mile from Mitch Reed's parents' home in Rockford. Police had interviewed over a 100 people, including Reed. Lt. Wilson believes Peaches was strangled inside a car, before being drove to the cattle chute, believing the killer coiled the wire around her neck to make sure she was dead before disposing of her body. Wilson would later be taken off the case in 1982.

Police still believe to this day Mitch Reed is the killer. He was suspected in the strangulation of Emma Brewer a year earlier, he refused a polygraph, saying even if he was dying, he wouldn't let anyone hook him up to a machine.

As of 2024 no arrests have been made, police have tried speaking to Reed again over the years, but never admits to anything, He now lives in a Nursing home with a frail body and mind, hardly remembering anything, but if you bring up Peaches name, he remembers her. His Wife Mary took a polygraph passing, she has not knowledge if he did or did not kill Peaches.

Hazel Smith in 2010 outside the apartment building,

she still lives here, but not in apartment 243.

Mitch Reed in 2010, at the Nursing home.