By Caitlin Farmer
There’s a lot Chad Dollar doesn’t know about his mom. Her favorite color or hobbies, her favorite song to dance to and what movie made her laugh are among the questions Chad Dollar can’t answer.
Though this is in part due to his young age during the years his mom was alive, the things he’s heard his entire life appear to be less reflective of who she was, but rather who she was killed by.
Perceptions muddy the story and stray focus from the facts. Memories shift into the reconstruction of others’ personal truths. This story that has been told for the last four decades is riddled with assumptions, inaccuracies presented as facts and over-saturated with opinions. The story Chad Dollar has waited to tell since childhood is different.
“The whispers,” as Chad Dollar called the rumors surrounding his mom’s death, began to echo the morning after her disappearance, and haven’t subsidded in the nearly 42 years since. Faye Dollar tucked her boys, Chad Dollar and Cameron Dollar, into bed and kissed them goodnight, unaware it would be the last time.
Though it is unclear when Faye Dollar was reported missing, Chad Dollar said Gloria Jones, a close friend of hers and relative, was adamant that she went missing about six days before her funeral on Dec. 9, 1980.
Chad Dollar admitted things weren’t perfect growing up, but the circumstances weren’t either. Struggling financially at times and without the presence of a mother, Chad Dollar said he was affected in many ways, but regardless, people never stopped speculating.
“The story I want to tell you is this: My dad raised two kids, me and my brother —two African American kids at that — in a single-parent home,” Chad Dollar said. “He did a hell of a job raising me and my brother.”
The whispers neglected to pause and recognize their impact on a young boy, and now man, who had his mother taken from him.
Missing pieces
Faye Dollar was born and raised in Madison, Georgia, and was the youngest of nine children. She attended Fort Valley State College and Atlanta University, where she was eventually introduced to Donald Dollar by her nephew Milton Jones.
Faye and Donald were married in Madison, Georgia and had two sons, Chad and Cameron. In the fall of 1980, Faye and Donald Dollar divorced and she gained custody of her two young sons.
In 1972, Faye Dollar began her teaching career in Fulton County at Riverwood High School before becoming a math teacher at Feldwood High School, now known as Benjamin Banneker High School, in College Park, Georgia, when it opened in 1976 following her return from maternity leave in 1975.
Chad Dollar never realized the significance of holidays. Christmas, birthdays, Mother’s day and anniversaries were just another day for him spent playing basketball, Chad Dollar said.
Raised by his dad following his mother’s death, Chad Dollar immersed himself in basketball influenced by his father, Donald Dollar, being a prominent Atlanta basketball coach at Frederick Douglass High School, Carver High School, Clarkston High School and Morehouse College.
His time spent playing basketball led to a collegiate and now professional career, as Chad Dollar is the University of Cincinnati Men’s Basketball associate head coach. Cameron Dollar also played collegiate basketball before coaching at several universities including Seattle University where he worked alongside his father.
Teachers, family and friends had tried to step into the role Chad Dollar and his brother needed, Chad Dollar said.
Upon getting his first serious girlfriend, Chad Dollar said he was shown the way many women approach holidays, which he previously lacked perspective on. Through her, he began to see how Christmas meant more to her than putting up a tree and opening gifts before playing basketball.
Yet the empty space appears to be a forgotten and familiar element within the decades of whispers and writings about his mother’s killer. There is an empty space in the prison where her killer could sit, an empty space in the hearts of her loved ones and empty space in the decades of family photos.
But ultimately, there appears to be too little empty space and too many unfounded answers below the following questions: Who was Faye Jackson Dollar and what really happened to her?
‘Writing’ the wrongs
“The website fucked up, I know that much,” Chad Dollar said in reference to the Atlanta Police Department’s Cold Homicide Cases page.
According to APD’s Cold Homicide Cases page, 22-year-old Faye Dollar was reported missing on Dec. 1, 1980, and was killed on Dec. 4, 1980. APD’s website said she wasn’t found until Dec. 4, 2014, in the trunk of her car parked at the Admiral Benson Inn.
Her headstone, located in the Madison Historic Cemeteries’ Fairview plot, said Faye Jackson Dollar was born on March 8, 1942, making her 38 years old at the time of her death.
Her disappearance and discovery were chronicled by The Atlanta Constitution, now known as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, helping shed light on the inaccuracies currently displayed on APD’s website, but ultimately raising more questions surrounding the coverage of such crimes during that time.
“Faye Dollar, a College Park schoolteacher last seen Saturday night, was found Thursday night stuffed into the trunk of her 1972 Monte Carlo auto in a hotel parking lot,” Gail Epstein, a Constitution Staff Writer, said in a Dec. 5, 1980 article.
Faye Dollar was reported missing by her ex-husband, Donald Dollar, after their sons awoke on Sunday to find their mom and her car gone, the article said. Jones told Chad Dollar she recalled seeing Donald Dollar at the police department when she went to report her missing, Chad Dollar said.
APD’s website has the hotel address correct, but Faye Dollar was found in the parking lot of the Admiral Benbow Inn, not the Admiral Benson Inn. The Savannah College of Art and Design acquired the Inn sometime after its Atlanta campus opened in 2005 and converted it to a student housing residence, currently known as Spring House.
So where did the year 2014 come from?
“I have no idea,” Chad Dollar said. “I really don’t, I have no idea, I don’t know, I don’t know the answer.”
However, the most widely-known mistake is forever printed on the front page of The Constitution. The photo published along with the Dec. 5, 1980 article announcing the discovery of Faye Dollar, had been taken soon after APD had found her, exposing her unclothed body as she lay in the trunk of her car.
The Constitution issued an apology in the following day’s paper, but it had already been distributed and seen by many, including family members.
Today’s easily-accessible information regarding Faye Dollar’s death is not remotely as graphic but is still damaging. Unless knowledgeable on how to search for the correct information, it can’t be found. Anyone unfamiliar with her case from the 1980s doesn’t know almost anything that’s true.
Faye Dollar in the Feldwood High School yearbook in 1980. (Courtesy/Fulton County Schools Archives, Hapeville, Georgia) 
The photo of an unknown woman that is listed on the APD website as being Faye Dollar. (Photo/Caitlin Farmer)
In fact, even the photo along with the description on APD’s page is wrong. The woman pictured wearing blue is not Faye Dollar.
“The picture is 100% wrong,” Chad Dollar said. “There’s so much wrong information I get to the point where I don’t even know what’s wrong or what’s right to be honest with you because I was young.”
Chad Dollar said he was eight years old, though it was reported he was nine, and his brother, Cameron Dollar, was four when their mom was killed.
Dr. María Len-Ríos, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, said that when covering crime, it should be covered in a way the writer would want their own family talked about, especially in communities of color.
“There has been a longtime criticism of the way that the news media historically has covered communities of color,” Len-Ríos said. “Historically, people of color and I know there are many different terms we could use, BIPOC but mainly Black, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, people have not been treated as humane. If you look historically on the literature of news coverage of lynchings back in the day, right, that the humanity of people was not displayed equally.”
Journalists need to be conscious of the historical background and context in their stories, Len-Ríos said.
“I would say that, that we also have to take care of with how we cover that [crime] and remember the humanity of the people that are in our stories,” Len-Ríos said.
If there is anything that has been consistent, Chad Dollar said, it’s the opinions surrounding why her case remains unsolved.
“Everybody believes in some form or fashion, that the missing and murdered children, was some of the reasons why the case never got solved,” Chad Dollar said. “Because so much attention was devoted to that.”
House of cards
About five years ago, Chad Dollar said he received a phone call from a childhood friend who was in a Georgia prison and said he had seen a photo of his mom.
“They make cold cases cards, like cards they play with,” Chad Dollar said. “He saw my mom’s picture on one of the cards.”
Vince Velazquez, retired APD cold case homicide Detective and co-host of ATL Homicide, a television show detailing his and his co-hosts previous investigations, said he remembered looking into Faye Dollar’s case about 15 years ago. He struggled to remember many details of her case but, did recall her and found her photo in the files he kept.
“We actually created playing cards to be distributed throughout prisons in Georgia with cold cases on each card,” Velazquez, who retired in 2017 after 22 years with the APD, said over text after sharing the photo he had of Faye Dollar. “Her case was featured.”
Though there isn’t much information out there about these cards, the company that produces them, Priority Marketing, advertises its efforts to help solve cold cases by creating the cards alongside law enforcement agencies to hopefully get information on missing persons and cold cases from inmates, according to their website.
“5,000 Cold Case Playing Cards decks are circulating the prison system,” according to a May 2010 post on their website. “The Fulton County Cold Case squad, which initiated the program in Georgia, has stated it hopes to expand the effort statewide.”
The cards are made for distribution in Georgia prisons with help from the APD.
Chad Dollar couldn’t recall specifics regarding his mom’s card and is unsure of whether or not the information on the card is correct, but an advertisement on Priority Marketing’s website displays a piece of what appears to be the photo of Faye Dollar shared by Velazquez.
Making mom proud
A college basketball player-turned-coach with a resume of former positions at schools like Louisiana State University and Georgia Tech, Chad Dollar said coaching at UGA was a goal he had accomplished that he knew his mom would be proud of.
Coaching at UGA for three seasons, Chad Dollar lived about 40 minutes from the place he spent his last holiday with his mom and where she rests today.
Living in Athens, Georgia from 2018 to 2021, Chad Dollar was the closest he had been to his mom since his childhood, and finally visited her grave like he always wanted to.
“For me to be so close to her burial site was a significant thing from an accomplishment standpoint,” Chad Dollar said.
Chad Dollar’s younger brother, Cameron Dollar, has had major accomplishments of his own too. Burying his mom on his fifth birthday, he spent the majority of his formative years with his father.
Cameron Dollar also went on to pursue a career in basketball, where he played for the University of California, Los Angeles, Bruins and led the team to a National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball national championship win in 1995.
Now, he runs a nonprofit in Seattle, Washington, aiming to help youth in disproportionately impacted communities through academic assistance and sports, after leaving a collegiate coaching career where he spent several seasons coaching alongside his dad.
Too many questions
The whispers haven’t stopped and the questions still remain.
Why is so much about the case wrong after 42 years? What really happened to Faye Dollar on the night of her disappearance? Will the killer ever be found? Will the whispers finally stop?
Despite all of the inaccuracies and unknowns, one thing is for certain: Faye Dollar’s family and friends will never stop asking questions.