Vanished in Georgia: Dr. Melanie Nadler Litt Disappears
Atlanta-area dentist vanishes while husband is out of town
Dr. Melanie Nadler Litt, age 52, has been missing since at least Tuesday, October 14, 2025. A dentist at Family Dentistry at Seven Hills in Dallas, Georgia, she didn’t show up for work that day, alarming friends and colleagues. With her husband’s permission, police reportedly conducted a welfare check that only heightened worries. While her vehicle and wallet were also missing at the time, her phone was found at Nadler’s residence.
Dr. Nadler’s car was then found abandoned in a parking lot on Barrett Parkway in Cobb County, GA.
According to her bio on Family Dentistry’s website, Dr. Nadler grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and attended Tufts University in Massachusetts. She and her family have lived in Marietta, GA, for more than 20 years. Additionally, “Dr. Nadler has been an active participant with the Atlanta 2-Day Walk for Breast Cancer since 2009. For the past several years, her son has joined her in walking 30 miles to help raise funds for breast cancer.”
Atlanta’s Fox 5 reported that Nadler’s husband, Lesley Litt, “was out of the state visiting their son in college when his wife disappeared. Litt declined to appear on camera.” He did give the TV station a quote: “We all want to see her home and safe, and we love her dearly.”
The online true crime machine, as it often does when the person in question is white, a woman, and blonde, has picked up on Melanie Nadler’s disappearance faster than most news outlets. It makes sense, though—people with her known public profile don’t just vanish every day. Such stories pop out of the news cycle in great part because they press an unconscious, “wait, what?” kind of button. Few of us can imagine the typically put-together, focused, often well-off people we meet in professional environments, like doctors’ offices, in peril. We tend to assume their life is cushioned by education and money, protecting them from the worst that could happen. So there’s an implied assumption that if someone in that position disappears, it could happen to anyone.
There’s already a Websleuths thread three pages deep. I’ve been a member of the site for over twenty years and am too well aware of all the pitfalls in sleuthing anything online in general, but frequently folks do come up with context and background that you can’t find in regular news coverage. Locals, for example, sussed out that the dentist’s car was found at the Cobb Place Shopping Center.
Another poster found Dr. Nadler’s Facebook profile, where she uses her full married name. The most recent posts are all from friends intensely worried about her vanishing, like dental hygienist Brooke Thomas Cason, who posted the following along with a flyer on Thursday, October 16th:
This hits home. We have worked together for years. Our hearts are shattered. Please help us find our friend. If you have seen her, or know anything about her whereabouts, please contact Cobb County Police Department. Please help us pray for her safety and her return. Please share.
The dentist mostly posted photos of herself with her family, friends, and colleagues, but included no recent commentary that might provide additional insight into her personality. That’s not unusual—my own wife is an educator with a doctorate, and her social media is similarly professional and carefully presented.
It isn’t hard to find the social profiles of Lesley Litt and the couple’s son, Stephen, but I’m not linking either, because to my knowledge, they aren’t suspects right now—even though it’s absolutely true that the vast majority of cases like this often come down to the missing person’s family and social circle in general. It is likely Lesley Litt knows this and may have even received legal advice about it, which could explain his reticence to appear on camera.
Lesley Litt’s profile on Facebook doesn’t tell much about him, other than that he appears to be very close to his son. He owns a flexible packaging business that uses a home address. A Google Maps search for that address reveals a typical large suburban area in North Atlanta, full of McMansions and superbly manicured lawns.
Stephen Litt, however, won national recognition while still in middle school for a fascinating scientific discovery. In the article titled “7th-grader’s science project finds cancer-fighting chemicals in green tea,” CBS reporter Jennifer Earl wrote that Stephen “discovered evidence that chemicals in green tea may have cancer-fighting potential.”
His father added context:
“It’s not a cure for cancer,” his father, Lesley Litt, who trained as a chemist and assisted with the project, told CBS News. “What he found is a way to prevent cancer in these worms from those specific carcinogens. Their DNA is not the same as humans, but a professor at Tufts and a few others, they want to know what’s going on — they want to help.”
As of the afternoon of Saturday, October 18, Dr. Melanie Nadler-Litt was still missing, with little public information available about the investigation. Thanks to the explosion of true crime-related media in the last 10-12 years, her disappearance is already being discussed on TikTok and YouTube, sources I would avoid unless they are posted by professional journalists. Rank and really reckless theorizing is the name of the game on social video, and some Nancy Grace wannabes attempting to become true crime famous have found themselves in legal trouble in recent years for accusing the innocent.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about the mystery surrounding an Atlanta-area dentist. I blogged quite a bit about the 2004 death of dentist Barton Corbin’s wife, Jennifer. Corbin was later convicted of killing her and a woman named Dolly Hearn. He took a plea deal to avoid the death penalty and is now serving life in prison. Late true crime legend Ann Rule contacted me after reading my writing about the case, and we became friends. She even included me in her acknowledgements of her book about Jennifer Corbin.
That was, on its face, a very different case, aside from the area, social class, and Bart’s profession. Still, depending on how Dr. Nadler’s disappearance turns out, both are classic fodder for news programs like Dateline and 48 Hours Mystery. Don’t be surprised if producers and journalists for those shows are already keeping track.
As far as the public knows, anything could’ve happened, including an intentional disappearance—those happen, but they are rare, and in a hyper-connected world, it’s very hard to stay completely gone for long. Additionally, Atlanta is not without its share of random violent crime. But I lived in Roswell, GA—not far from the locations mentioned above—for eight years, and neither my wife nor I ever felt unsafe.
Anyone with knowledge about Melanie Nadler should contact the Cobb County Police at 770-499-3900.