For most of their lives, Courtney Patterson and Amanda Benton weren’t familiar with one another, until a common connection brought them together. Their mothers, who share the same first and middle name, unexpectedly went missing when they were young. Both daughters came to speak in Chapel Hill over the weekend, still seeking answers.
Amanda Denise, the host of “Cold and Untold,” a true-crime podcast that explores unsolved cases, led a live discussion at the Varsity Theatre Saturday night. The panel included the two daughters and part-time cold-case detective for the Greensboro Police Department, Mike Matthews, who shed light on why cold cases can be so challenging for law enforcement to solve. The discussion’s title: “Where is my mom? The Missing Debras.”
Benton reached out to Patterson after seeing the latter’s story featured on Fox 8 WGHP, and the two bonded over their shared histories. The three became connected after Denise interviewed Patterson in 2023. Denise started her platform because she believed cold cases weren’t receiving the media attention they deserved, and she got to work planning the event, which she said took months.
“I'm glad that people came out to support because I didn't know how many people were going to show up, but I knew that we were going to give it our all regardless of the number," Denise said. “And I'm just glad that people came out to actually hear these stories for these daughters, because at the end of the day, I did this for them and their moms.”
Patterson’s mother, Debra Jean Asbury (sometimes referred to by Debra Jean Marlowe), went missing in September, 1994, when Patterson was two years old. Patterson said that she didn’t understand her mother’s disappearance until she was about 15, when she began to notice that other kids around her had mother's present, but she didn’t.
When she realized her mother was a missing person, Patterson said her life became challenging, and she began to ask questions about her mother’s disappearance, wondering where could she be, if she ran away, or if she just gave up. Patterson believes, however, that she didn’t, because of her family.
“If she made her world about us [her children], grandkids: they do something, and if she knew that three of us have two kids, one of us has three," Patterson said to the audience. "That’s a lot of grandkids. She would have come home."
Amanda Benton’s mother, Deborah Gean Quigley Moore, was last seen in 2002. In 2007, at 15 years old, Benton attempted to file a police report. She said that because she was a minor, she was not taken seriously. Her mother was not listed as missing until 2009 — 9 years after she initially went missing — when Benton filed another police report at 18.
After the two women shared their stories, Denise opened the floor for audience questions. One of the attendees who inquired of the two was Suzanne Marin, Benton’s former therapist who attended the discussion with her daughter-in-law. She said she couldn’t imagine what her kids would have experienced without a mother.
