Back in the ‘70s, two teenage boys went missing in Walterboro, South Carolina.
More than a decade later, their remains were found on the property of the local airport.
To this day, no one knows what happened to them. Nearly 54 years later, people are still fighting for answers: What happened to William Huff and James Crosby?
William Huff was affectionately known to his family as “Bubba” or “Billy.” One of his sisters, Kaye Jackson, told Dateline he was one of nine children. “We were always outside playing,” Kaye said. “It was fun.”
Another sister, Charlene Preston, told Dateline that William was very sweet and kind. “He would do anything for you; all you had to do was ask him,” she said.
On November 1, 1972, 14-year-old William and 16-year-old James Crosby were dropped off at school and never seen again. Charlene doesn’t believe William would cut school. “He loves school. He wouldn’t cut school,” she said.
Kaye remembers their mother, Alberta Fillers, waiting for William to come home. “My mom just sat at the end of our driveway and waited for him to come home every night,” she said. “She never gave up. She just waited and waited. She never gave up hope that he would come home.”
Nearly 12 years later, on Easter weekend in 1984, partial remains were located on the grounds of the airport in Walterboro.
The remains belonged to William and James.
“I just broke down. I mean, it just destroyed me,” Kaye said. She couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to hurt her brother. Charlene couldn’t think of anyone, either. “He was quiet, he kept to himself,” she said.
The location where the remains were found was familiar to Kaye. “It’s near the school,” she said. “The kids hung out in there.”
Dateline spoke with Sergeant Steve Bazzle of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office. He was among those who went to the scene when the remains were found. “The area that they were found in was not far from their school,” he said. “I responded out, and started the investigation when the remains were recovered.”
“The area that they were in was a heavily wooded area,” Bazzle said. “Some of the thickest woods we have around here. And it was on a — kind of like on a down — downward hill, leading down to a swamp.”
Bazzle contacted a longtime employee at the coroner’s office and asked if he knew of any missing persons cases. The man remembered the case of two boys who vanished a decade earlier. “As far as he knew, it hadn’t — nothing had changed on that,” Bazzle said. “We contacted the family and talked with them.”
“The clothes were in unbelievably good condition, and the parents described the clothes that the kids were wearing the day they went to school. And [they] matched the description of what we found,” Bazzle said. The families confirmed the clothing belonged to the boys.
Bazzle says he looked into the original incident reports and found they didn’t include a lot of information. “It was basically a missing persons report,” he said. “They asked around and talked with some people, but I don’t think that there was a real extensive search of any areas or anything like that.”
After the discovery of the boys’ remains, they were sent to the medical examiner’s office. “No indication on the remains of any kind of trauma,” Bazzle said. The sergeant also confirmed they were unable to determine the cause or manner of death for either boy due to the length of time that had passed before the remains were found.
The boys’ clothing was later released to the families, as well as the remains for burial. It is unclear where the clothing is now. “I met with the family several times,” Sgt. Bazzle said. “They were very, very appreciative that the remains were recovered and returned. That gave them some type of closure.”
Bazzle feels his department did everything they could after the remains were found in 1984. “There were several people that volunteered information,” he said. The department tried to follow up on those possible leads. “But none of them ever led to anything.”
When asked if he believes William and James met with foul play, Sgt. Bazzle replied, “I have to consider that because they were young, they were in good health.”
About eight years ago, a local named Misty Thomas began looking into the cold case. She told Dateline she loves true crime and first heard about the case from a co-worker. “I wanted to dig more, ‘cause I wanted to know more about it and see what happened,” Misty said. Her co-worker didn’t even know the names of the missing people — just that remains were found at the local airport. “There was nothing. I couldn’t find anything.”
Misty says she thought maybe the case was just too old. Then, several months later, she went to a family function where her aunt-in-law was talking about true crime. “She brought up the story about her — it would’ve been her husband’s uncle, um, he went missing with his friend,” she said. The husband’s uncle was James Crosby.
With that little bit of information, Misty was able to find more. “In 1972, there were two separate small — very, very small snippets in the local newspaper, separate editions. Didn’t even mention that the boys were together,” Misty said. “That was it.”
Misty began trying to make contact with the detectives and the Huff and Crosby families. “I was like, ‘I need more information,’” Misty said. “So I just kind of kept going.”
She learned the story of what happened the day William and James disappeared in 1972. “They were dropped off at school that morning, and when their mothers went to pick ‘em up, they weren’t there, and they were told they never attended school that day,” Misty said.
In 2020, she met William Huff’s mother, Alberta, and they quickly grew close. William’s sister Kaye describes Misty as an advocate for their family in his case.
Misty told Dateline she has tried to obtain any case files she can on the case, but says she has met dead end after dead end. “There’s no case file, there is no medical records,” Misty said. “There’s nothing.” She did, however, get permission from Alberta to make requests on her behalf. “She signed a document giving me permission to ask for whatever I needed, so I got his school records,” she said. But that didn’t lead her any closer to answers.
Alberta was diagnosed with dementia in 2023, but “she still remembered him, and she still cried every time she talked about him,” Misty said.
The Huff/Crosby case is one of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office’s oldest unsolved cases. Sergeant Bazzle says there is no active investigation at this time due to age, as well as the lack of evidence and reports. “A lot of the case files were placed into an area, the temporary storage, and unfortunately, it was not a good place, and there was extreme water damage, and several case files were completely destroyed — including this one,” he said.
However, he would be thrilled if someone out there came forward with information to help solve the case. “I don’t know that we will ever be able to come up with anybody that had been involved in it. I wish that that wasn’t so, and I hope that maybe one day something will come up that will help us bring that to a close,” he said.
“I just want to know what happened to my brother,” Kaye Jackson told Dateline. “Maybe somebody’s out there that knows something,” sister Charlene Preston said. “It’s been all these years and ain’t nobody come forward yet, but I hope — hopefully they would.”
Misty Thomas won’t ever stop working toward closure for the Huff and Crosby families. “I’ve just been pushing ever since to get it out there because it just seems like everybody has forgotten,” she said. That’s why she reached out to Dateline to feature the story.
Alberta passed away last year. “Never got answers,” Kaye said. “I just promised my mom I’ll try.”
Kaye isn’t the only one who made a promise to Alberta. “I can’t let it go, ‘cause I feel like nobody cares, and I promised Ms. Bertie that, you know, I would do whatever I could,” Misty said.
Dateline reached out to James Crosby’s sister, who declined to speak, saying it’s still too painful for the family to talk about at this time.
The Colleton County Sheriff’s Office encourages anyone with information to come forward. You can call 843-549-2211 and ask for Lt. Laura Rutland in the public information office. You can also submit an anonymous tip online or contact them on their Facebook, X, or Instagram accounts.