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For the second time this month we feature the troubling, tragic, SAD murder of a young girl during the Christmas holiday season a long time ago.\xa0 This one is incredibly tragic because it\u2019s pretty clear who the killer is and he was never arrested.\xa0\xa0On December 26, 1980 six year-old Avery "Peaches" Shorts left her home in Knoxville, Tennessee with 58 cents in her pocket, bundled up by her mother Hazel, who asked her youngest daughter to walk to the local store to buy her a bottle of Coke.\xa0 It was a fifteen-minute round trip.\xa0 Little Peaches never returned.\xa0\xa0When 50 minutes had passed with no sign of her daughter, Hazel called the police \u2013 and immediately \u2013 before the night was through \u2013 dozens of law enforcement personnel were searching for Peaches.\xa0 And in the coming months the number of police and private citizens searching for her grew into the hundreds.\xa0 No success.\xa0\xa0It wasn\u2019t until 13 months later, in January 1982, that the body of Peaches Shorts was found \u2013 by hunters on an old farm buried under a cattle chute.\xa0 Her neck had been broken.\xa0 A wire was wrapped around her neck.\xa0 Her body was mostly decomposed, but her hair remained \u2013 still in pigtails with the ribbons Hazel had placed in it before she left the house still in a bow.\xa0 She still wore her jacket, buttoned to the top, just as it was when the little girl left to buy her mom a soft drink.\xa0 No evidence of sexual assault was present.\xa0\xa0 Peaches had simply been brutally strangled \u2013 with no evident motive.\xa0\xa0No motive, that is, other than pure anger and spite.\xa0 And the police had a perfect suspect to fill that bill \u2013 a longtime drifter and con man named Mitchell Reed.\xa0\xa0Seems Reed, who was more than twice the age of Hazel, had been dating Peaches\u2019 mom (along with at least two other local women), and had been nagging Hazel to let him move in with Hazel and her three kids.\xa0 Hazel didn\u2019t want that, and had continually put Reed off.\xa0\xa0On the day of Peaches\u2019 disappearance, Reed had yet again visited Hazel and had yet again pressured her to let him moved in \u2013 and once again Hazel had told Reed she\u2019d \u201cthink about it.\u201d\xa0 That did not sit well with Reed, who left in a rage.\xa0\xa0A witness saw Reed in the local store where Peaches was buying her mom\u2019s Coke.\xa0 Reed later denied ever seeing her there.\xa0\xa0And through all the questioning, all the investigations \u2013 no matter what the police did to break him, Mitchell Reed never did \u2013 he simply lit another cigarette and flashed a smile.\xa0 And there has never been enough evidence to arrest him or conclusively peg him as the murderer.\xa0\xa0Could someone be so cold and selfish as to brutally kill a beautiful young girl for no reason other than revenge at her mother for refusing his selfish request?\xa0\xa0Join Melissa as she tells this horrific tale of justice denied, possibly forever, and the toll it\u2019s taken on the family and the law enforcement personnel who, even to this day, can\u2019t \u2013 and won\u2019t \u2013 let it go.\xa0 If you think you may be able to help provide conclusive evidence of Mitchell Reed\u2019s (or anyone else\u2019s) involvement in the murder of Peaches Shorts, please contact Knoxville Police at (865) 215-7317.