At 3:00 in the morning on February 13, 1969, a neighbor named Ben Lino was walking home from work on Warren Street in Venice, Los Angeles. As he approached number 809, he noticed a man standing outside the Lozano family home next door. The stranger was positioned near the sliding glass door, peering inside. That door led to the children’s bedroom, where four small children were sleeping.

Lino watched the man for more than a minute. It was 3:00 a. m. The neighborhood was dark and quiet.

The man made no move to knock or announce himself. He just stood there, watching. Lino deliberately made a noise. The stranger turned, looked at him, then disappeared around the back of the house.

Lino waited a few minutes. The man did not return. Deciding the stranger had left, Lino went into his own home and went to bed. He did not knock on the Lozanos’ door to warn them.

He had no idea what was about to happen. Inside the house at 810 Commonwealth Avenue, the four Lozano children were sleeping in one room: David Jr. , 5, Mary Elizabeth, 4, Michael, 3, and John, 2. Mary and David Jr.

shared a bed. The family had moved to Venice from Nevada only about a month earlier. Their father, David Sr. , was 26 years old.

Their mother, Ramona, was 24. Both were working, David as a nurse at Southern Memorial Hospital while also running a taco truck nearby with Ramona. Helping with the children was Ramona’s sister, Freddy Bevers, 26, who was disabled and used a wheelchair. About a week before the disappearance, Ramona had received medical care of some kind, though no details about why or for what have ever been made public.

At 9:30 p. m. on Wednesday, February 12, Freddy put the four children to bed. Mary was wearing a yellow nylon shirt and light blue capri pants.

Freddy checked on them around 2:15 a. m. and all four were in a deep sleep. David and Ramona came home at about 2:45 a.

m. and went to bed. About 30 minutes later, their daughter’s screams cut through the house. David heard her and did nothing.

The children had colds recently and sometimes woke up crying, and they always went right back to sleep. Ramona heard nothing at all. Freddy heard Mary calling out faintly, “Mama, papa, help me, help me. ” She assumed the child was having a nightmare and that David would check on her.

No one checked. The screams stopped. Everyone went back to sleep. Mary’s three brothers, sleeping in the same room, apparently slept through the whole incident.

Those cries were the last time the family ever heard her voice. Around 8:00 a. m. , Ramona returned home after driving David to work and discovered that Mary was missing.

The sliding glass door in the children’s bedroom, which already had a broken lock, was open about six inches. The family kept it locked at night with a wire coat hanger. The hanger was bent completely out of shape. The Los Angeles Police Department was notified.

It was then that the family learned about what Ben Lino had witnessed at 3:00 a. m. Lino described the man as a Latino male, 18 to 21 years old, about 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 150 to 160 pounds, wearing dark pants and a brown long-sleeved shirt. The authorities believed this man had taken Mary.

The case was treated as a suspected kidnapping. Police searched the immediate area, the surrounding neighborhoods, and even the nearby beach. They interviewed residents and anyone who might have seen something unusual. No one reported seeing anything that could help.

Given the circumstances, police suspected a child molester and began interviewing known sex offenders in the Venice area. One man questioned was a 22-year-old family friend of the Lozanos who reportedly matched the description of the man seen outside the home. Little information about him has survived, but he was eventually cleared. Police also questioned a 15-year-old runaway with a history of voyeurism, who was found hiding in a shed five buildings away.

The teenager was reportedly cleared after a polygraph examination. Whether the polygraph was reliable is another question entirely. By February 17, investigators said they had run out of new leads. Police refused to tell the public whether they had found any fingerprints in the home, and it is unknown whether any physical evidence was collected or preserved for modern testing.

No other credible suspects have ever been publicly identified. The police asked the public for help. There was no ransom note, no confirmed sightings, no one ever identified as responsible. Mary Elizabeth Lozano was never found.

As the years passed, the case went cold. There is very little public information about how the investigation proceeded over the following decades. No substantive updates about new suspects, no forensic discoveries, no major developments have ever surfaced. The case remained listed in missing persons databases, including those maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the California Department of Justice.

Years ago, an age progression image was created showing what Mary might look like at about 48. In 2025, another was produced, this time showing her at approximately 61. These images are never exact representations, but they can still generate leads, especially in cases involving children who vanished decades ago. They give the public a chance to recognize someone they may have met later in life.

There was one physical trait that might help identify her. Mary was born with two extra toes, which were surgically removed. She had scars on the inside of both feet near her big toes. If she is alive today, those scars could still be there.

They might be the very thing that makes her wonder if she is the missing girl from all those years ago. There has been very little media coverage of Mary’s case over the past 57 years, most likely because there were so few developments to report. It is not even clear whether there have ever been any alleged sightings of her, at any time, anywhere. Many questions remain.

What happened to Mary after she was taken from that room? Was she taken by a stranger who had been watching the family, or by someone who knew the house, or just by someone who saw an opportunity that night? The most important question of all: did Mary survive? With no remains ever identified as hers, it is at least possible that she grew up under another identity, unaware of her own past.

There have been striking cases where people discovered, through home DNA tests from genealogy services like AncestryDNA and 23andMe, that they were actually missing children kidnapped as babies. Unexpected matches can reveal decades-old abductions, false family histories, or the truth that a person was raised by people who were not their biological parents. Mary was only four when she vanished in 1969. If she survived and lived under another name, a DNA test taken by her, or by one of her children or grandchildren, might finally reveal her true identity and provide answers after all these years.

As of October 2026, Mary Elizabeth Lozano would be 61 years old. She would turn 62 on December 6. She has now been missing for nearly her entire life, if she is still alive. Her case is still classified by the Los Angeles Police Department as a non-family abduction.

There is also the question of the man seen outside the house that night. If the neighbor’s approximate age estimate was correct, that man would be in his late seventies or early eighties today. But it is worth remembering that the only person who reportedly saw him was the neighbor, Ben Lino. Because of that, many have wondered whether Lino was actually responsible.

No information has ever surfaced about whether the neighbor was investigated as a potential suspect. From what has been read about the case, it seems that if he was ever considered a person of interest, he was cleared. There remains another detail that investigators and online commenters have found odd. According to missing persons databases, Mary was wearing a yellow nylon shirt, light blue pants, and white tennis shoes when she disappeared.

The tennis shoes are what strike people as strange. Mary was asleep in her bed when she was taken. Children do not normally sleep in their shoes. It is unclear whether this was an error that crept into the records over the years, or whether her shoes were actually missing from the home as well.

Perhaps the person who took Mary picked up her shoes on the way out. There is no way to know. The case officially remains open. The LAPD still asks anyone with information to come forward.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children continues to list Mary Elizabeth Lozano in its database, hoping that someone, somewhere, knows what happened to the four-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom in Venice in the early hours of February 13, 1969.