He’s a popular fraternity brother with a big heart highly talented a natural leader he’s very dedicated when he wanted to do something he did it a lapse in judgment trips him up but he soon gets himself back on track he seemed like he was doing really well in school
He was keeping up with school work one day he heads to campus and never returns it’s as if when that bus pulled away he vanished a cryptic note is his only explanation said my family’s given me a lot of opportunities that I just didn’t take advantage of his puzzling Secrets
Leave detectives and his loved ones baffled we think there’s somebody out there that can help us figure out what’s going on I don’t care why he left where he’s been I just want him to come home Tuesday night April 19 2016 19-year-old College sophomore James Martin Roberts who goes by Martin meets
With friends at a favorite appalachin State University hangout the kondik cafe it was a pretty busy night um pretty usual for kondik I mean fact that you can still walk around but it’s pretty hard you’re probably going to get your feet sted on or something Martin and his fraternity
Brother have come for the kondik big draw my group of friends we wanted to go to play trivia and so I texted Martin I was wondering if he was going to be there according to Martin’s friend Holly he’s true to form that night he would always just say funny things and just he
Would always be the guy that everybody wanted to hang out with I was just so mesmerized by Martin always like had such a huge crush on him that I didn’t even realize anything else was going on the son of parents who are divorced and estranged from each other Martin first enrolled at
Appalachin State University in Boon North Carolina almost a year and a half earlier he was really set on going to appalachin State and when that that acceptance came in he was really excited about it nestled in the foothills of the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains the school’s Vibe is unique the laidback atmosphere
Think it s some really well just it’s nice and calm there during Martin’s very first semester he been invited to pledge of fraternity on campus to camp at Epsilon known as te for short he knew people there already and they were invited to the Frat parties and immediately he was
Selected I know that he’s someone who thrives when he’s around his friends he wanted an opportunity to make friends quickly and that was the best way to do it I think he liked the Brotherhood he’ always played Sports and had his team and the fraternity was kind of the same
Thing even as a child in Kernersville North Carolina Martin was a natural athlete playing soccer playing baseball playing football he just he always loved Sports as the brown haired blue-eyed Dynamo got older he excelled on the soccer field he liked to compete he liked to play he liked to play to
Win Martin was pure hustle pure work and he did it calmly and quietly all the time he could walk off the field and be relaxed comfortable fun loving respectful kind caring he’s got a big heart people would look up to him and it made him feel really good about himself
In high school he was voted captain of his soccer team yet by the time he graduated he was ready for a change Martin was very very focused on something that interested him business finance things of that nature were something that he had said all along he thought he had an interest in
Academically Martin set his SES on app States business school he was smart he was very dedicated when he wanted to do something he did it Wednesday night April 20th the day after Martin was at the kondik cafe his father John Roberts who lives two hours away has been expecting a call from
Martin we were making plans for the you know coming weeks and for the summer and for next semester we were talking about the classes he was in and the grades that he had at that time two days earlier Martin told his dad he’d soon have his first paycheck from his new
Dishwashing job at the Daniel Boon Inn talk to he was going to call me back Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest and talk about how much money he made but according to Martin’s friends and family his phone was his Achilles heel he was just a not a great like texting Communicator phone Communicator
I feel like multiple times he always had a broken phone he refused to put it in a case ever would not put it in a case so he had multiple shattered screens on his phone by the next day Martin’s father still hasn’t heard from his son he tries
Reaching him yet again with no luck he seemed a little bit strange since he was so definite that he was going to call me back that same morning Martin is actually at his apartment getting ready to start his day he chats with his roommates over breakfast they all said that they saw
Him in passing on Thursday Martin tells them he’s heading to the library he took a water bottle and he put it in his backback and he he left probably about 10:30 that morning around lunchtime Martin’s cousin who also attends AB State runs into him on campus it was a complete chance meeting
She had uh forgotten something for her class the two have barely seen each other this semester they walked together to the nearby Apple CART bus stop the free bus service students and Boon residents used to get around town they had a conversation for 10 or 15 minutes and upbeat Martin tells her
About his plans for next semester and that he’s on his way to his fraternity house now when the bus comes she gets on and the cousins go their separate ways he started walking down the street and she didn’t think anything of it this brief casual meeting will soon take on far
Greater significance than his cousin ever imagined it really was some kind of coincidence if you believe in that kind of thing that they happened to meet up at that time at that place and it would be the last time that we’ve seen or heard from him at 4:00 that afternoon two of
Martin’s close friends and frat brothers stopped by his apartment to see him Martin hey Martin man you okay the day before he’d abruptly dropped out of their fraternity chat group he was the Freshman pledge class leader of that group those people reached out to Martin
Want to know why but Martin is not in his room and he’s no longer responding to the texts from his friends by Friday morning Martin’s father is increasingly worried about his son it’s been 4 days of radio silence they uh called the landlord for the apartment complex I said are you
Going to go by there anytime today this morning I need to check on bar the apartment manager started calling the roommates and saying hey can you go in his room see if he’s there here see if you can figure out what’s going on Martin’s roommate knocks on his closed
Door Martin and they didn’t know if he was in the room or gone Martin’s not inside but on his desk there’s a note reading it his roommate immediately realizes something is very wrong Friday morning April 22nd 2016 a roommate of college sophomore Martin Roberts has made an alarming Discovery in his
Room the roommate called me read me the note over the telephone I knew I had to get up there ASAP just dropped everything at work got home as quick as I could got my wife Abby and we headed to Boon as fast as we could get there the roommate’s second call is to
The Boon police department they contacted the police and said we need to report this young man missing when detective Kevin Wilson arrives at the apartment he reads Martin’s letter the note is so personal Martin’s parents have made only parts of it public it was the note that Martin left stating that
He was leaving I think it’s to the folks in I see and he said my family’s given me a lot of opportunities that I just didn’t take advantage of he was disappointed in himself I think he felt like a failure it’s really sad but it didn’t really say where he
Was going or what he was doing it doesn’t say this is a suicide note and I’m going to hurt myself nor does it say this is not a suicide note and I’m going to go away so when I saw it I thought this is not going to be
Good it’s going to be a difficult case Martin has also left important possessions behind his laptop his iPad his phone and his wallet I think you could be seen as the ultimate withdrawal Boon police reach Martin’s half sister Nikki and explain that they’re having difficulty locating
Martin I immediately got in phun with my mom and we let her know what was going on I left work went and got her and we went to Moon all the way up there I kept thinking he’s went off with a couple of his friends and forgot to tell somebody he’s to turn
Up according to Martin’s father and stepmother the 19-year-old had expressed disappointment in himself before 8 months earlier after a great freshman year Martin had just returned to Appalachian State as a sophomore his very first night back he ran into trouble he went up for the sole purpose of attending this fraternity party
He was a social drinker so I don’t think he was addicted to alcohol in any sort of way he drank with his friends who unfortunately drank a lot he made the decision to drive after he had had you know apparently too much to drink then 18 Martin pulled right out
In front of App State campus police they stopped him and then that evolved into a driving while and pared citation Martin was taken into custody that night I get a call from him I think it was like 2: a.m. 3:00 a.m. maybe and he tells me I need to come
Pick him up because he’s in jail and he got a DWI Martin’s girlfriend Kayan lived almost a 100 miles away from Ab State I don’t know why he didn’t pick sobody closer I think that calling his parents was definitely out of the question at that point he was nervous and scared and
Didn’t want to disappoint then Kayla says she drove two hours to Boon that night to help Martin when I arrived he was already out as soon as I got there he threw money at me as in like gas money he’s like I’m sorry you came all the way up
Here for nothing exhausted and emotional Kayla says they wound up fighting I was like I can’t do this I deserve a little bit better um someone who doesn’t disc considerer himself in decisions that he makes Caleb that night Martin lost his driver’s license and his girlfriend 24 hours passed before Martin
Got up the courage to call his father and stepmother that’s when he told us he had got a DUI and said he needed to come home that the situation he was in was not good for him and he needed some time away from that same day they brought him back
Home to Kernersville North Carolina we first thought maybe he was just going to come home for the weekend uh or maybe even a week but it wasn’t until he was home a day or two that he began to say I think I want to take a
Semester off I’d like to get away from the fraternity life Martin withdrew from Abate while home a friend of his family heard he was looking for work and I said well I’m be open up my uh store that semester so he’s going to be one of my first
Hunters according to Rich Miller Martin thrived at his new job in the restaurant much like he had playing soccer he’s a rare kid you see a kid that young that mature uh be able to handle business the consistency that he showed on the field is exactly what he showed when he sawed
Work for me Martin even put his business education to work to boost the restaurant’s bottom line the job helped repair his bruised self-esteem Martin did you know exaggerate some but he said that rich wanted to Grim him for management after Martin took a full semester off he returned to college in
January of 2016 he was ready to get not to be living with us again but according to his father Martin wanted to handle his education differently this time he was not living on campus in a dorm like he did his first year he was living in an apartment with three other fraternity
Brothers he seemed like he was doing well in school he was keeping up with school work I think he was glad to be back with his friends but we didn’t talk as much after he went back now just four months later Martin’s family and friends have been blindsided by his sudden
Disappearance during the 2-hour drive to Boon his father calls Martin’s cousin who’s on the appstate campus she was the one that said we ran into each other yesterday as a matter of fact at Martin’s father’s request she rushes to Martin’s apartment while talking with his roommates inconsistencies
Emerge they thought Martin was headed to the library Thursday morning which isn’t where his cousin ran into him Martin told her he was headed to the house where his teak fraternity Brothers hang out if he were to go to the te house he would have made a right Andross the
Street and the te house would be right up here but police find find no evidence Martin arrived there were people that were at the house that day around that time and they said he didn’t come by today we didn’t see him at all trying to determine where Martin went detective Wilson contacts the
City’s apple cart bus service there is video on the apple cart transit buses maybe the footage holds a crucial clue to where Martin really went we poured over video that night we were actually able after several to find him on video walking away from the bus stop April 23rd
2016 college student Martin Roberts was reported missing 15 hours earlier by his roommates his cousin was the last person to see him as they parted at a campus bus stop now police have just spotted him on video taken by bus security cameras it’s kind of grainy but it’s clear enough to
Tell that it’s Mark the front camera clearly shows him starting to walk away the side camera you can see him through the glass and then the back camera catches him as he’s walking away Martin’s on foot and heading toward a busy intersection he’s right on the edge of
Campus so the detective is hoping the video will reveal which direction he takes he’s on that video that last rank for approximately 17 seconds and he’s right at a street corner he looks One Direction and looks the other direction and then they don’t see him anymore it’s
As if when that bus pulled away he vanished hoping for leads on which way Martin had it boom police tried to access his phone but without his passcode it’s sealed tight as a drum but the unique thing to Apple products is if you haven’t opened your emails or phone calls or text
Messages they’ll actually are visible on that phone there a lot of M text and Miss phone calls investigators follow up on every missed call and text as a result the news quickly spreads that Martin can’t be found it was just like the worst feeling you could ever have your heart just
Drops police begin scrutinizing Martin’s interactions before he went missing Thursday trying to understand his frame of mind a fraternity brother tells police that 48 hours before Martin disappeared he driven him to get a hair cut they actually took him to the bank because he had to go to the bank to withdraw cash
Money when Martin returned according to his roommates he’d also bought groceries he had a small refrigerator in his bedroom and when we were there the refrigerator was basically empty investigators wonder if Martin could have taken the food with him when he left Martin’s high school girlfriend Kayla
Tells police that in her case she’d grown concerned about Martin three days earlier when he withdrew from a high school chat group she sent him a text saying what are you doing do you not want to talk to me anymore in particular she didn’t know that that very night
Martin also withdrew from his fraternity chat group and then he he started saying things that made me question if he was okay it was things like no one can help me at this point there’s nobody I can talk to the next day Martin went missing it’s unbelievably alarming but uh you know we
Don’t know we don’t know what’s going to happen until until it happens then bone police are told about a possible sighting of Martin just an hour and a half after he left his cousin a bus stop we had a young lady come forward who stated that she had seen him walking
In an area not too far from town she knew who Martin was I think she described the like an unusual or a particular gate that she hey I know that’s Martin Roberts the exact location flry Fork Road between winklers Creek and paint Branch roads from there it’s possible Martin
May have been headed to a nearby Recreation Area called Trout Lake it is a well visited area by college students it’s easy to get to and there’s water there there’s walking trails you can hike in the mountains there police learn that Martin has been to Trout Lake
Before perhaps he packed some food for a hike and something happened to him here in the densely forested foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains the day after Martin was reported missing North Carolina State Highway Patrol provides a specially equipped helicopter to conduct a nighttime search for Martin in the area of the sighting
They have what’s called a Ford looking infrared radar if you’re walking in an area or if there’s an animal in the area they give off a lot more heat than the surrounding ground if Martin’s somewhere in the woods the sensors would see him PL as day but the infrared surge yields
Nothing as investigators pie together details about Martin from his friends and family a pattern begins to emerge they discover he’d been selectively revealing or hiding details about himself for months before he went missing after coming back to college his friends started to notice that there were times where Martin would come in
And and uh hey where have you been sometimes would say I was with my cousin well but we talk to his cousin he only has one cousin in Boon and she says I haven’t seen him we don’t hang out together Martin also hid something much bigger from his roommates and his mother
And sister that he wasn’t even attending appalachin State this semester we thought he was back enrolled in appach he was now enrolled in our local Community College we wanted to take classes online I think it was four or five classes at the community college when investigators get Martin’s academic records from the community
College there’s another Revelation he was doing fine he wasn’t failing anything but he just decided to stop going it had been nearly a month since Martin had logged on to any online courses he was you know telling me about his grades and his classes and extra
Credit and things like that and he had quit going that’s not all Martin had been hiding we called the places that he was telling his family members he worked at and they said we we have applications um I was actually able to find applications to all the places he’s talking about but
He never got hired at the time I thought and he is he’s working himself not to death you know now I know different but you wish I have known n but we didn’t know he was being mysterious or untruthful or hiding something from from just about everybody Martin’s mother and sister
Said he even liked to them about his DWI he told them he’d been ticketed while walking home he said that he was stopped by the police and for drunken disorderly I said well you know um you learn your lesson Le you weren’t driving but Martin was behind the wheel that
Night I was shocked I always thought we had the relationship that he could just talk to me about anything it just seems like he was trying his best to give out this picture to people that everything’s okay okay I’m doing fine uh when in actuality I wasn’t doing fine at All 19-year-old Martin Roberts has been missing from Boon North Carolina for 5 days in that time police have uncovered a trail of puzzling behavior that Martin left behind him disengaging from his networks and his friends and being so deceptive about things was very unusual it was not how he was everything that
Happened was pointing to his he was actually miserable and it wasn’t work tired it wasn’t School tired burnt out whatever he was just miserable or depressed or something Martin’s cryptic note now makes more sense to investigators they think he’d been telling people what he imagined they
Wanted to hear about him it seems to me that Martin was very much trying to keep up the facade that everything was going great for him in his note he alluded to being tired of that tired of his life not living up to expectations but police have no idea what Martin’s
Intentions were they look for clues in his possessions starting with his wallet as a result of his DWI Martin no longer had a valid driver’s license they take your driver’s license away from you physically his father says Martin did get a state issued ID card it’s now gone
His original ID was not in that room we assume it somewhere else or or on his person Martin didn’t take his bank card with him his parents had said you know he’s going to have a certain debit card and this is this is what banking through when police checked Martin’s banking
History there were no large withdrawals or suspicious purchases before he went missing there’s been no more activity it still hasn’t been any it at all this time Boon police also find something unexpected Martin Left Behind Some anti-depressant pills that Martin was not prescribed there there were quite a few of them I
Don’t know of any time that he has been treated for depression it’s not something that we see being bought and sold between students here police are never able to determine how Martin got the anti-depressants or why he had them in the first place 5 days after he went missing two
More possible sightings of Martin are reported to police one near Trout Lake the other Wingers Creek Road bolstering the likelihood of the original sighting an hour and a half after he’ left the bus stop in that same general area uh around the same time frame and so
Uh for us that seemed to add credibility that they had seen Martin Roberts in that area still investigators check other modes of transportation Martin could have used to go in different directions the best we could tell he didn’t take a bus he didn’t take a cab he didn’t take
Uh you know one he’s a have based companies unless Martin hitched a ride this leads police back to square one the theory he was traveling on foot he definitely had the ability to hike and he was very active um had a lot of endurance and could do anything that he
Put his mind to but those who know Martin best question if he’d ever attempt anything more ambitious than a day hike he’s go outside and sweat for five minutes come inside and take a shower type person he just didn’t have a lot of experience proba hadn’t been camping five times in his
Life in the bus security video Martin certainly wasn’t dressed for a long journey I only had on with some cheap tennis shoes and a not even what I describe as a backpack even so investigators consider the possibility Martin might have wandered into the hundreds of miles of wilderness surrounding Boone perhaps attempting to
Connect to the nearby appalachin Trail we received a couple things said hey there was a kid out here definitely didn’t belong out here but it didn’t it wasn’t him somebody completely different Martin’s Family suggests another possible destination we’ve always been a beach family we’ve always gone at least once
If not two or three times a season to the beach a family favorite is o Isle Beach North Carolina 280 M from boom it’s just outside Myrtle Beach definitely a beach kind of person if so Martin’s two distinctive tattoos might stand out there on his left forearm he’s got an homage to
Appalachin State it’s kind of a a blended view of mountains which is definitely reflective of Boom on his right rib cage Martin has a tattoo of a lyric from Bob Marley’s song Zion train don’t gain the world and lose your soul wisdom is better than silver or
Gold over the next two months sightings of young men matching Martin’s description pop up along Coastal North and South Carolina but after investigation none turn out to be him a month into their investigation Boon police have followed numerous leads trying to locate Martin but there’s a fundamental mystery at the very heart of
His case we have these time periods where we don’t know where Martin was police find no answers in Martin’s digital footprint extracted from his laptop I would say I’ve went through 12,000 emails and actually read them and and tried to figure out what what’s he doing as an investigative Hail Mary
Boon’s chief of police appeals to the community for anything they may know about Martin when he was off the radar it’s almost an open letter to the public hey if you’ve got information about this good or bad or whatever here’s the chief’s office line you call me the appeal elicits no
Responses I’ve been doing this job 20 plus years and I’ve never had any case where you put a fraction of this amount of work into it and you get nothing back then after 4 months worth of dead ends detective Wilson receives an unexpected call from a coroner 350 M
Away in Indiana who’s investigating some unidentified human remains they had found from what I understood the lower portion of a leg with a foot but it was in a shoe not just any shoe a gray New Balance sneaker the same kind of sneaker Martin was wearing when he went
Missing so that coroner said that you guys are the first thing that popped up so I just called you with via reason he came here 19-year-old Martin Roberts has been missing for 4 months but a coroner in Indiana has just recovered human remains that potentially could be his Boon’s detective Wilson quickly
Discovers the sneaker found in Indiana is a size and a half larger than what Martin wears yet there’s only one definitive way to know if it’s Martin’s we had actually done parental DNA testing I had gone and met with his father and birth mother to do DNA
Samples the coiner said we’re going to send our stuff off and obviously if there’s a match you guys are going to get that neither one of them ended up being a match in June of 2016 Boon police investigate another potentially heartbreaking theory of what could have happened to Martin if
Martin’s decided to hurt himself we’re looking you know we’re looking for that with three reported sightings of Martin near Trout Lake immediately after he went missing police focus on that area and specifically in the water those bodies of water you know saw and com for folks to use those as a mean mechanism
To to commit suicide or to harm themselves extensive water searches are conducted of both trout lake and the nearby Boon Reservoir the North Carolina State Bure investigation they have a few dog teams of um hrd dogs human remains detection most folks know them as caber
Dogs the dogs are trained on the odor of human decomposition the gases are actually lighter than the water so they’re going to rise to the surface and so what we’re looking for when we’re doing the searches of the water is for the dogs to do exactly the same thing as they do on
The ground is to alert us when they smell those gases their searches also use sonar technology and divers to scan the bottoms of the lake and Reservoir afterward the dogs scour the land surrounding both bodies of water the searches yield nothing there nothing uh no change of
Behavior on the days that we searched for Martin in the water areas no animation nothing gave us any indication that there was anything There Moon police Circle back to try to understand Martin’s behavior and what he’d been silently struggling with before he went missing I did was search War to the college because they have a Counseling Center that that offers free counseling to the students laws protecting patient confidentiality make mental health records difficult to
Access even for law enforcement did he have some type of um mental illness happening did he have an addiction was he having problems with his sexuality or you know some type of identity issue or or or or whatever we never saw any signs or or never been any disc discussion or
Communication that he was having any issues with uh sexuality or gender identity and we’ve always told him if you have any problem you can tell us about it in our interviews with his friends which are our greatest source of information nobody can give us any information about any of that being a
Problem but Martin’s friends tell police they had noticed a marked change in him when he returned to school in January of 2016 he was less about always having fun and going and doing things with them there’d be times where he wanted to be alone I would have never known that he
Was struggling with anything he hit at home police find no evidence Martin ever sought mental health counseling at Abate months pass and boom police explore a host of theories for other places Martin could have gone they also enlist outside help to scrutinize his case we brought in experts in the field
Hand them the case File and see in two days and just let them just go through it with fresh eyes and try to point out anything that we didn’t do well enough or didn’t do it all or anything that they can come up with Martin’s Family holds tight to the
Hope that investigators can find him they’re offering a reward for up to $10,000 for information on Martin we think there’s somebody out there that knows something that can help us figure out what’s going on Martin’s father and stepmother have set up a Facebook page called help find Martin Roberts to heighten the
Visibility of their cherished missing son there also to try to communicate directly with Martin how much we love him and we miss him and we want him back we just want to know you’re okay nearly two years have passed since the day Martin disappeared leaving behind troubling
Questions I had to have no clue what was impacting him I just feel so bad that I didn’t see it the one thing that we know for sure is we don’t know anything for sure but somebody does in August of 2017 Martin would have turned 21 for his family the pain of his
Absence is excruciating the plan had always been that Martin was going to walk me down the aisle after I got engaged to asked him he said yeah the day that I went and picked out my wedding dress he said I can’t wait for the wedding sis but after
Martin disappeared she had to decide if would proceed and he wasn’t there we want to get him back home and be a part of the family again I don’t care why he left where he’s been I just want him to come home if you have any information about James Martin Roberts or his
Disappearance you can confidentially contact the Boon police department at 828 268 6900 or High Country Crim Stoppers at 828 268 6959 a funloving teenager leaves for school and never comes home so I knew then something was wrong cuz she was always on time throwing her parents into a living nightmare I didn’t want to know that this was really happy that was really hysterical a puzzling piece of evidence leaves investigators baffled
There was a note with initials on it indicating like it was someone maybe the tablet they had a crush on and disturbing theories surrounding her disappearance deep in the mystery this lady said have the police look at this man because he had my daughter leaving her family in agony it
Has been an emotional roller coaster since St one I would drive around looking for her couldn’t find her you B drove me crazy it’s the morning of April 29th 2003 in East Nashville Tennessee 13-year-old seventh grader Tabitha tutors is preparing for the school day she was a good student she
Made straight days I would help her with her math homework when I was in school I was pretty good at math he was better at math than me so I sent her to him had a good relationship with her dad Tabitha is by far the youngest of
Three siblings her brother Kevin is 25 and her sister Jamie is 21 my wife was about to hit 30 she wanted another child so we we had a little she was a little sported she was our last child we sported her TAA was always the Entertainer I
Think when she was a younger baby she would always have this like little funny face that she would make and she would like breathe in and out and of course it got the entire room laughing play hide-and go seek or read joke books constant laughing and we’ had fights
Too but yeah she wanted to be just like a tight-knit family the tutors make it a priority to spend their time together T loves going to the RAC track every Saturday we would not miss a race Tabitha is especially close to her mom Tabitha wasn’t a particular 13year
Old she was more like an 8-year-old she would hung on me like a Lee my car would couldn’t even roll out of the driveway without her wanting to be in it so she went everywhere as I went she was a cut up always cutting joking she got there
From her daddy it wasn’t from me she get in the car and she be singing to the music she likes singing Tabitha is an enthusiastic member of the choir at the tutor Family Church she said she was going to be a singer whatever my wife is doing tab
Come in and and do her and my wife even t t how to homemade biscuits and have the fix them for us one time and we ate them that was that was real good according to the tutors their hometown of East Nashville is an upand cominging neighborhood with a few rough
AES in 2003 East Nashville was not the place that you really wanted to call home but for me I grew up here I’ve always felt safe here there’s loud music in people’s cars when they they drive down the road Breakin but for us we never had any
Issues we’ve lived here 30 years and we’ve never had no trouble I mean nobody ever bothered us and we don’t never bother nobody else nonetheless the tutors worry about their youngest child safety I think my parents were more protective of her she was the baby their last one um growing
Up every night Tabitha sleeps on the floor in her parents bedroom she’ll start out in her bed and then when I wake up in the morning she to go to work she’s at the foot of my bed and I asked her one time I said why
Did you do that and she said CU I want to be close to you so I never stopped her the morning of April 29th begins like any other morning for the tutor’s family Tabitha’s mother gets up for work early while her daughter is still sleeping I worked with Metro scho in the
Cafeteria I got up at 5: I got ready for work she was laying at the foot of my bed and then I stepped over her and went and got ready for work and at 7:00 woke Tabitha up and told her uh get on up baby so you get ready for
School some morning she would eat breakfast here and then if she has homework that she didn’t finish she would do it that morning before she left Tabitha was in good spirits after getting her school report card the previous day it had all a on it she was excited
About it I was proud of her her father Bo heads to work at 7 a.m. and Tabitha spends the next few minutes reving in her good grades I said I love you s said I love you too Davy that’s well I’m leaving at 7:50 a.m. Tabitha heads out the
Door her bus stop is one block away at boscabel Street and 14th Street now I told her you know don’t leave the house until like 10 to 8 cuz the bus run at 8 I said 5 minutes to walk up the hill and 5 minutes to wait on that
Bus Tabitha’s mother has told her that if there are no other children at her bus stop at 14th Street in boscabel she should walk down one more block to 15th Street where more kids will be waiting I’ve always told her you don’t sit up there on that wall by yourself to
Go down to the second bus stop later that afternoon with his mom returns home from work then when I got home at 1:30 she gets home at 4:00 and then she never come home on time so I knew then something was wrong because she was always on time she was never
Late almost immediately Deborah goes out to look for her daughter I allowed her 10 minutes for the bus to be late and then I went up there she wasn’t up there and then there’s kids up there said they didn’t see her so I came back home I drove up
To the school and I banged on the door and banged on the door one of the teachers gives her some alarming news Tabitha wasn’t on the bus that morning and she never made it to school trying not to panic Deborah heads home and calls Tabitha’s friends to see
If she’s at one of their houses but no one has seen her all day I got home but probably 10 minutes to I had I was in a panic cuz you know I didn’t know didn’t know what that it was I received a phone call about 5:00 maybe
My mom asking what my sister had on that morning and I told her I didn’t know because I didn’t I didn’t see her why and uh she said well your sister never made it home we’re calling the police at 600 p.m. a now frantic deborra calls the police to report Tabitha
Missing by the time the police recalled she had already been gone for eight or nine hours uh from her bus stop the tutors tell police officers that they just found out Tabitha wasn’t in school all day and hasn’t been seen since the morning if she were
Abducted that gives a suspect you know 8 to 10 hours Head Start we didn’t know if we were looking for her in the Nashville area or she could have been anywhere in the country just about in the time Frame they wanted to know what she was wearing that day and I just was folding her clothes the day before so I looked through her clothes to see if I could figure out what was missing and I believe she had on a blue top with blue jeans and white
Sneakers investigators an initial search of the tutor’s house they went through some stuff fingerprints they took her hair brush her toothbrush to do a DNA I had told them that her money was still here and even her door key was still here she didn’t take her door key
That morning cuz I was always here when she got home Tabitha has left behind all of her clothes and makeup and $20 in cash with no clues as to her whereabouts early on it was it was just unknown you know if she left the house they just didn’t know what
Happened due to the lack of evidence and ttha age investigators suspect that she may be a runaway so they don’t issue an amber alert for an amber alert to be listed there needs to be some type of reasonable belief that a child has possibly been abducted was in danger
There was a possibility at least that Tabitha had left of her own free will and there was no information that she was seen with a dangerous individual or that she was abducted but the tutors insist Tabitha would never have left home of her own valtion yeah tapa wasn’t a re rebellious
Child my parents they were pretty laidback with us yet they were strict so we walked a straight line TAA was afraid to get in trouble I think so I knew that she hadn’t ran away or skip school I tried to explain to the police that she wasn’t a
Runaway I told them they didn’t know my daughter like I do whether 13-year-old Tabitha is a runaway lost or missing police know that time is of the essence they execute a search along a 5m radius touching the nearby Cumberland River and sh Park they did a pretty substantial
Search that night concerned people from the tutor’s neighborhood pitch in to help they were all searching everything with flashlights and then the whole Community came together when they found out about it and help look for her I mean it was people I a even never seen before
Come out to look and they searched and searched I didn’t go out and search for her I was I was really hysterical I didn’t want to go nowhere unless she came back home it’s been 24 hours since 13-year-old Tabitha tutors went missing on her way to the bus stop in East Nashville
Tennessee they want to know that that this was really happening I was trying to stay strong for my wife and my other two children we were you know hoping that she was just going to come down the street or somebody was going to drop her off on the corner and she could come
Home after a sleepless night the tutors still have no news about Tabitha officers return in the morning to do an in-depth search of her bedroom and discover an intriguing clue there was a note with initials on it indicating like it was someone maybe the Tabitha had a crush on the note is
In Tabitha’s handwriting with the initials tdt n MTL Tabitha’s initials are tvt Tabitha Danielle tutors but Tabitha’s parents say they don’t have any idea who MTL could be while detectives continue to dig an unrelated tip surfaces involving a possible eyewitness to Tabitha’s disappearance there was a child that went to school with her
Um he told police that he seen her get into a red C the 11-year-old classmate of Tabitha says that he was waiting at the second bus stop at 15th Street in boscabel when he saw Tabitha walking toward him from Forin Street and then a car appeared next to
Her he said the car came down osal from 14th headed toward 15th he didn’t give a very detailed description of the car but he did say it was red the boy tells police he got a good look at the driver of the vehicle he said that it was a male black driving the
Car and that she got in the car and the car went back out the way it had come in he said that was in the car he don’t know if she got in on her own or if somebody pulled her in or threatened to make her get
In and he just said it was a dark skinned guy with a baseball hat but the tutor say Tabitha would never willingly get into a stranger’s car I always told her you know don’t ever get in the car with nobody my best friend asked her to take
Asked to take her to school one day she wouldn’t do it she said my mama says no and she wouldn’t go based on the boy’s account investigators believe that Tabitha got into the car somewhere between the two bus stops on 14th and 15th streets detectives decide to use tracker
Dogs to learn more about her movements they were given a article I think some stuffed animals of tabius from tabius house and they went out the front door they went to the right went up to Hill and they crossed 14th at BOS pool and went down to the third or fourth house
Might Circle and come back and they stopped the dogs lose Tabitha’s scent in the middle of the block between 14th and 15th Street it’s the exact route that the boy described seeing Tabitha walk that morning before getting into the car I believe based upon uh the dog
Sense um she went to the first bus stop and and and halfway down um is when she was picked up investigators look for the African-American male the boy described picking up Tabitha and the red car he was allegedly driving I was trying to figure out who
Had a red car and I couldn’t figure out if we knew anybody had red car and we didn’t know anybody that had one in the meantime police discovered that Tabitha’s classmate wasn’t the only one to have seen her that morning there’s a woman that lives on
The Corner House she saw T walk into her bus stop the morning that she disappeared there was a man who saw her at the intersection of 14th and bosal there was another lady who drove through who was familiar with Tabitha and she saw her in that same area there were at
Least two of Tabitha’s schoolmates who saw her crossing over 14th to B school so there were at least four people that said they saw her the people that saw taba that morning said she was holding something in her hand looking at it and were assuming it
Was her report card and she’s proud of her her her all her A’s and B’s and I guess she was just looking over it again although the new eyewitness accounts give detectives a more precise timeline of when and where Tabitha was last seen none of them reveal anything out of the
Ordinary but within hours investigators have a breakthrough closer to home they learn of a man familiar to the tutor’s family who matches the description of the driver of the red car investigators started kind of taking a look at Jam’s boyfriend at the time my boyfriend at the time was a black gentleman they
Lived with Jamie in the tutor’s home some months before Tabitha went missing they just questioned him because of the dark color skin with the ball hat and he wore ballheads detectives find that Jim’s boyfriend was aware of Tabitha’s routine and where she got on the bus each morning the investigators started trying
To determine where he was on the morning that she disappeared and try to create a timeline and also find out what potential vehicle he might have been in Jam’s boyfriend tells police that he and Jamie weren’t together at the time and he hadn’t stayed at the tutor’s home for months
And they find no connection to a red car in fact Jim’s boyfriend didn’t own a vehicle of his own but was said to have sometimes driven Jamie or driven different relatives Vehicles there was really no direct link he obviously knew Tabitha and at one time they had a really good
Relationship Jaime’s boyfriend also has an alibi for that morning a friend he’d been staying with confirms they’d been together the morning the Tabitha disappeared he passes a polygraph and investigators find no evidence linking him to Tabitha’s disappearance with Tabitha now missing for 48 hours investigators are once again on the hunt for a
Lead they turn their attention back to the paper found in Tabatha’s room containing the initials MTL they canvas people in the neighborhood and in Tabitha’s school and soon find a potentially promising match to the initials the 18-year-old son of a couple who are friends of the tutors but when police question him the
Hopeful development quickly falls apart the young man was in school the morning Tabitha went missing there was no reason to believe that he had anything to do with her disappearance investigators find no other evidence related to the note or the initials MTL but within a few hours a classmate of tabias comes
Forward with new information one of Tabitha’s friends had indicated that at least on one Saturday she and Tabitha had gone to the library in East Nashville and they’ve gotten on a computer and gotten on uh apparently some chat lines or some chat rooms the young girl was able to take
Investigator to the library and show which computer they used that computer was taken and thoroughly examined forensically by our department while detectives anxiously wait for the results forensic investigators scour the computer looking for evidence of Tabitha’s chat history then later that same day a local woman comes forward with an unrelated
And disturbing story that police hope could lead them straight to Tabatha this lady went to Mrs tutors and said you know have the police look at this man because he had my Daughter two days after 13-year-old tapa tutors mysteriously went missing while walking to her school bus stop police zero in on their most hopeful development yet a Nashville mother with two young daughters has just come forward with a troubling story about a man named Paul Davis she says that seven years earlier in
1996 he appeared to take an inappropriate interest in her 10-year-old child she met this individual speaking to her daughter at school he would have been in his late 20s I guess maybe 28 years old and inquired with her daughter you know why you talking with this older
Man and she said oh he’s his kids go here or his nieces nephews go here you know he’s fine despite her daughter’s lack of concern the woman tells Bel that she continued to have a bad feeling about Davis year later in 1997 she says that the situation got worse when her older 13-year-old
Daughter ran away from home the mother’s first thought was that Davis might have had something to do with it when she realized that her daughter had left she went up to her room and started searching through her things and she found this individual’s name written on several notes or her
Love letters written to him the woman’s daughter came back home two days later but her mother was was convinced that Davis had had inappropriate contact with her daughter police track Davis down and bring him in for questioning they find that he has a history of spending time with underage
Girls most of them around Tabitha’s age and blonde 6 years earlier in 1997 he was convicted of statutory rap and received 5 years probation so he became a a pretty big Person of Interest detectives find that when Tabitha went missing Davis was living just 3 and a half hours away in
Kentucky they also discover that he had made a trip to Nashville around that same time he come to Nashville earlier in April of 2003 he was seen at the market the four-way Market which is only a half a block from the tutor residence it just seems like it fit um
Considering his back history and hanging around in our neighborhood wanting to talk to young girls but when investigators construct a complete timeline for Davis they realized that he has an aliy for the 29th of April 2003 the day Tabitha went missing he was eliminated based upon his
Sister given an alibi for him saying that he was in Kentucky inv instigators have no evidence against Davis so the once promising lead is Dead over the next few weeks nothing new develops the tutor’s family suffers every day from the devastating loss of their little girl I would go down to the river and I will walk through the river banks from one end to the other just to see if she was down
There I said I’m walking the river bank I would drive around looking for her couldn’t find her it but drove me crazy my Dad cried a lot they cried a lot together we did have a lot lot of people step up and help out um in the
Beginning but after a while some of our friends stopped coming around as much because they didn’t know how to comfort us or what to say or you know it’s just it’s a tough situation so they choose just to stay away despite their suffering the tutors do everything they can to get exposure
For Tabitha’s case we tried to keep the media informed of you know everything with neighborhood but we found different uh things to try and get her name out that was our first button I think we made these ourself we just kind of popped them in
There um and then we figured out that we could order them for from a company uh so we had these made uh the bracelets say bring tab at the home I wanted people to look and and see what um you know what my shirt said and this one
Still missing is what it says on the bottom to let everybody know that she’s still missing and it says help me find my sister they’re they’re worn out like the picture on the picture on this one is is almost gone picture yeah over the next few months numerous tips
Come in claiming that Tabitha was spotted in different Nashville neighborhoods police check out each and every one but none of them go anywhere until September 12th 2003 5 months after Tabitha vanished when news comes in that suggests extremely disturbing circumstances in her disappearance a man named Millard Earl
Smith has just been arrested in Nashville and charged with rape Millard Smith I heard that he uh he lived on v Lane which is about four miles from here they thought that me he was out doing this that he might have had something to do with cap he actually made the
Statement that he is a predator on September 19th 2003 5 months after 13-year-old Tabitha tutors went missing Nashville police arrest a man named Millard Earl Smith and charge him with the rape of a 17-year-old girl the circumstances of the crime make detectives wonder if smth could be involved in Tabitha’s
Disappearance he was on his motorcycle and he came across a young couple it was raining he offered him a ride he told him that he would have to take them separately obviously being on the motorcycle he ended up taking the boyfriend in one place and took the girl
To this trailer and raped her Mill Smith lived on fess’s Lane which is about 4 miles from here although though he doesn’t match the description that Tabitha’s classmate gave of the driver of the red car Smith had been convicted of kidnapping as well as solicitation of a minor in the past
Year when Smith is brought in for questioning detectives discover something that deepens their interest in him he did not own a car but we did find out that he was helping his brother-in-law some in East Nashville who worked on different cars so he could have had access to a a red
Card while police dig into Smith’s background and recent whereabouts results come in from the forensic exam of the library computer that Tabitha used to chat online they were able to determine that Tabitha’s user name had been used on that computer but they weren’t able to find anything to determine what rooms
And what she had done on the computer there have just been so many people that have used it since that that it kind of covered up the data if there’s any evidence on the computer that could help police find Tabitha it appears to be lost forever in the meantime Millard Smith
Denies any involvement in Tabitha’s disappearance he says he was on a camping trip with family at the time though his Alibi is never confirmed by police Smith passes a polygraph test and investigators can find no evidence linking him to Tabitha but he remains a person of interest he was investigated thoroughly interviewed
Polygraphed and he really cannot be completely eliminated as a person of interest for the tutor’s family as time passes the lack of answers becomes more and more of an emotional drain we had a lot of tip that have gotten her hopes up some were like oh
This is it like this is the lead this is what’s going to bring her back home um and then others it’s like what are they even talking about it has been an emotional roller coaster since day one months pass and the first anniversary of Tabitha’s disappearance comes and goes the Nashville police investigations
Unit still works tirelessly exploring every tip that comes in then I have a 13-year-old at home and I couldn’t imagine her disappearing and me not having any idea what had happened to her I feel like the burden is on me to try to get answers for the tutors Happ had several different
Detectives on her case I can’t tell you the the the number of detectives um and now currently we have detective Jolly we feel that detective Jolly is going to be the man to solve this case three more years pass and the investigation goes cold again leaving the tutor’s family living in an
Excruciating state of limbo I could drive in my car you’re not going to hear her singing every day like I don’t know how long when I get in my car she was with me I could hear her I can see her she be sitting there like she’s real and she be singing to
Me I get to laugh and I I know people probably thought I was crazy going down the road laughing because she made me laugh all the time in 2008 on the fifth anniversary of her disappearance police asked local newspapers to print a story about tatha to put her case back in the public
Eye the strategy Works in June an unexpected tip comes in that contradicts eyewitness reports that police have been working with for years my wife’s niece said that she had an employee let T OFA did not get into a red car that morning she had got into a grain
Car 5 years after tabith the tutors went missing Nashville news outlets publish a plea for new information and a brand new tip comes in directly to the tutor’s family my opened up a tattoo shop and U this guy came in there and was telling her that t the had gotten into a green
Car he was riding his bike and he stated that chap did in fact get into a green car that morning he said it was parked at the bus stop at 15th in bosal it’s unknown why the witness waited so long to come forward but this detail takes the cas
Face in a whole new Direction investigators saturate social media with the new tip detective Jolly immediately picks up on any tips and runs with them F in the days and weeks that follow no new information comes in nor are police able to track down a vehicle matching the witness’s description it’s another devastating
Blow to Tabitha’s family I blame myself you know if it wasn’t for my kids and my grandkids and my mom I don’t know what I would to do my grandkids is really what killed me going the investigation goes Stone cold8 years pass with no new developments those cried a lot with me
And at night when we go would have it we would talk about her every night and everything before we go to sleep and then we talk about her every day then on February 10th 2016 13 years after Tabitha’s disappearance the long silence breaks when detectives finally get a lead about the green
Car a local woman tells police she just realized she knew someone who owned a car fitting that description back in 2003 the young lady contacted me and said that she knew of a Hispanic male that lived within just a few blocks of the tutors that lived in a duplex uh and
Drove a green car the man’s name is Juan and police recognize that over the years this isn’t the first time that name has come up in the investigation T of the new uh Man by the name of one that was 19 at the time she disappeared that lived down the street
From her and that she would sometimes go down there while Bo was taking a nap in the afternoon and that uh she allegedly smoked cigarettes with him so when this particular tip about Juan came in it caught my attention and police also learned that Juan was well aware of Tabitha’s
Disappearance a woman said that her daughter was married to a man his name was Juan and he had gotten emotional and told his friend that he worked with that he he own a car like that and he was afraid that they were going to be looking for him and supposedly made
Comments about it wasn’t supposed to happen that way detectives find that Juan now lives just 3 and a half hours from Nashville in Louisville Kentucky we interviewed and interrogated and polygraphed extensively detectives confirm that one used to drive a green car owned by a friend but the vehicle is no longer in
His possession so many years later investigators have no luck finding it Juan takes and passes a polygraph test he maintains his innocence at Tabitha’s disappearance and says nothing that detectives find incriminating whatever reason this woman had really embellished and given information that was not at all accurate we were able to
Eliminate Juan in Louisville Kentucky had no connection to T whatsoever today 15 years after she disappeared detective Steven johnley is still actively investigating Tabitha’s case they are following leads going back to the very beginning looking at everything trying to pick up on anything that they may have um
Missed this case is probably on my mind more than most of my other ones there’s just so much to it and there’s so many different Avenues and different leads that it often often comes to mind it’s been very challenging but I really wish that I could be the one that
Could help them get the answers that they’re looking for the tutors are still doing everything they can to keep Tabitha’s case in the public eye I think about my sister every day still have hope that they’ll find her yes sir absolutely didn’t take you very long to
Answer that question no we’ve never lost help We’ll get her back one day we have thought about moving and one reason why we haven’t moved yet where we live at is only place that she knows where home is Tabitha’s family says they feel as strongly today as they did when she disappeared that she didn’t leave home on her
Own I believe that day that time to come up missing somebody took her I don’t know if it’s somebody that she knew or somebody that she didn’t know but they took her I know my child didn’t run away it’s heartbreaking on all of us cuz we didn’t uh didn’t get to see her
Graduate didn’t see her uh get her driver’s license no a whole bunch of stuff and she’s got nieces and nephews that she hasn’t saw yet so she needs to get home she see them i s of Wonder you know she’s 27 would she have kids and would she be married and what
Would her kids look like and definitely a lot of things run through your head um after all these years we have her room just about the same way it was when she left and I I hope that one day that she she’ll come back home and see her room just like it
Was when she left it’s hard losing your child especially when you don’t know where they are I just want some kind of closure that’s all me AG progression software suggests what Tabitha tutors would look like today at age 28 if you have any information on Tabitha Tutors or her disappearance
Please contact Nashville Crim Stoppers at 615 742 7463
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