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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. This episode of Forensic Tales is sponsored by Podcorn. When I first started looking for sponsors to feature on the show, it was really important to me that the brands I worked with were not only a good fit for me, but for my listeners. That's why I choose Podcorn to find sponsorships for Forensic Tales.
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To learn more about what Podcorn can do for you and your podcast, click the link in my show notes to sign up to Podcorn and start browsing today. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. In a Georgetown cemetery, a young, unidentified female was buried. No family, no services, and no speeches.
Nobody knew anything about her, except she was dead. Her grave read, Tent Girl, found May 17th, 1968. The horrific tragedy told and retold by the town's community. A determined young man was captivated by this heartbreaking story. How could she be buried with no name? Our name is the most beautiful sound in our lives.
Nobody deserves to die without one. Could one of the world's first web sleuths give this poor young girl a name? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 66, the story of Tent Girl. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist.
Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
If you're interested in supporting the show, getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and much more, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Before we get to the episode, I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to this week's newest patron of the show, Cindy J. Thank you so much, Cindy.
Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review or telling friends and family who love true crime about us. Now, let's jump right into this week's story. This week's story isn't just your ordinary cold case murder solved decades later. It's one of the first cold cases to be solved by none other than web sleuths.
and with a little help of forensic science. It took 30 long years for the full story to be told, and it began in May 1968. On Saturday, May 18, 1968, Wilbur Riddle showed up to work for the day. Wilbur worked as a water well driller assigned to a site near Georgetown, Kentucky.
When he arrived, he saw a note from his boss telling him not to start drilling until he got there. His boss was running late. To kill time waiting for his boss, he spotted a couple of telephone workers replacing old glass insulators on the phone lines. This was perfect. Wilbur had a friend who sold those exact old insulators. Wilbur thought, why not go over there and grab a couple for his friend to sell?
Wilbur headed in Eagle Creek's direction, just off of I-75, where the telephone workers were stationed. After grabbing as many insulators as his two arms could carry, he headed back towards the worksite. But on the way back, something caught his attention. Just down the creek's embankment, he saw a five to six foot long, rolled up green tent. That's an odd place to dump a tarp, he thought.
Wilbur decided to put down the glass insulators and check out the green tent. When he pulled on the tent, a horrendous odor filled his nostrils. The unmistakable scent of death. Wilbur dropped the tarp and kicked it. But he felt something. Something no one should ever discover. He saw the outline of a human body inside of the tarp.
After realizing he may have discovered a dead body, Wilbur ran back up to his truck. He jumped in his truck, flooring the accelerator. He drove two miles to the nearest gas station to call the local sheriff. Two sheriff deputies went back with him to Eagle Creek, where Wilbur discovered the green tarp. Just like Wilbur, the scent of death and decomposition poisoned the officers.
Once they got closer, the deputies cut a piece of rope tied around the tarp. Inside was the badly decomposed, naked body of a young female. After a body was discovered, the police secured the area, an area that was now a crime scene. The female body was transported to the coroner's office. It was clear that the victim had been dead for quite some time. Her eyes had already rotted away.
and her skin showed significant signs of separation from her bones. Whoever this girl was, it was going to be difficult to identify her. The preliminary autopsy suggested the girl could be anywhere from 16 to about 19 years old. What little skin was left told the authorities she was Caucasian. She stood about 5'1", and she had short, reddish-brown hair. She also had a small gap in between her front teeth.
but without any identifiable marks, she was a Jane Doe. The first thing the coroner did to try to make an identification was to examine the fingerprints, except she didn't have any. Her body was so badly decomposed, she hardly left any trace of fingerprints. One of Jane Doe's fingers was removed and soaked in a chemical for about a week to try and get a solid fingerprint. And after a week, it worked.
They finally had a fingerprint, but they still didn't know her name. The condition of the body made it extremely difficult for medical examiners to identify her and determine her cause of death. To help determine a cause of death, the Scott County District Attorney decided to call in a forensic pathologist from Ohio. The Ohio pathologist's best guess was that she'd likely been struck over the head with a sharp, blunt object.
She also had a plastic bag tied over her head, suggesting that suffocation could also be a likely cause of death. Even if the pathologist couldn't determine an exact cause of death, he could determine that she died a slow, painful death, and her death ruled a homicide. The media heard a young female body was discovered wrapped in a green tarp. They dubbed her Tent Girl.
Until the authorities could adequately identify her and call her by her real name, she was now Tent Girl. The green tarp she lay and probably killed in would be this poor girl's name. After the autopsy, Georgetown police called in a forensic sketch artist. The plan was to create a sketch of what this girl might look like, get it out there in front of as many eyes as possible, and hope someone sees the drawing and recognizes her.
This girl is someone's friend, someone's daughter, maybe even someone's wife or girlfriend. Someone out there has to be looking for her. Someone. The sketch of Tent Girl was printed in every newspaper possible. Authorities wanted as many people as possible to see this girl. When the sketch was first printed, the response was better than ever could be expected.
The police received hundreds of tips. People from states outside of Kentucky were contacting the police, saying that they know who Tent Girl is. The police got many tips because the sketch of Tent Girl was pretty generic. It looked like it could be anyone's daughter or sister who was missing. The only identifiable mark in the illustration was a gap in between Tent Girl's front teeth.
Other than that, it was your typical looking girl. But as quickly as the tips poured in, they were ruled out even quicker. One tip would be ruled out because it didn't match tent girl's height. The other wouldn't fit her relative age. One by one, the police eliminated each possible tip. The only tip to have some promise was a missing 15-year-old girl from Pasadena.
Debbie Crane was last seen in a blue Chevy with her 17-year-old boyfriend on March 3, 1968. Debbie's physical description was almost an exact match to Tent Girl. She was described as being 5 feet tall with dark brown hair. Witnesses last saw her wearing a brown skirt and a gold top.
So when Debbie's file came across the detective's desk, they thought maybe she was Tent Girl. Her description was almost identical. Even Debbie's dental records were similar to Tent Girl's teeth. Police in Kentucky contacted Debbie Crane's parents and asked if they would be willing to come down to Georgetown to see if Tent Girl was their daughter.
So on June 13th, Debbie's mom, Velma Crane, and her aunt spent over two hours looking at photo after photo of Tent Girl. But after putting each image down on the table, Velma Crane was sure those weren't pictures of her daughter. Even though the girls looked almost identical, Debbie Crane wasn't Tent Girl. Over the next several weeks, Tent Girl remained unidentified.
The police recovered the green tarp used to conceal her body, the rope used to tie it shut, and some white toweling wrapped around her body. The police sent the items to the FBI's Washington Forensic Lab for testing. But after weeks of testing, the FBI found nothing conclusive. The tarp, rope, and white towels were made from common manufacturers, and there was nothing identifiable about them.
A second promising tip came in a couple weeks later. Georgetown police learned about a girl from Pennsylvania who was found dead in a very similar circumstance. 16-year-old Candace Clothier disappeared from home on March 9, 1968. Her body was found about a month later on April 13. Just like Tent Girl, her naked body was found wrapped in a dark colored tarp.
The similarities between Tent Girl's case and Candace's case were almost identical. Both girls were young, both were naked, and both were wrapped up in a tarp. There must be a killer on the loose targeting young women, murdering them, and disposing their bodies in tents.
Candace's autopsy was also very similar to Tent Girl's. Her body was severely decomposed, making it difficult to determine precisely how someone killed her. Like Tent Girl, she showed signs that she'd been likely struck with a blunt object. Candace's case made the police wonder if maybe Tent Girl was also from Pennsylvania. The police compared Tent Girl's sketch to all the photos in the state's missing person database.
but no one matched the description. Tent Girl wasn't from Pennsylvania. Georgetown police decided to go back to the drawing board. They contacted the forensic sketch artist to produce a second sketch. This time, the artist made Tent Girl's face a little fuller, lowered her cheekbones, and took away her smile.
The police were highly hopeful this revised sketch would resemble the Tent Girls' true identity. And like the first sketch, the police initially received a handful of tips. Every tip investigated and every tip leading to nothing. After months of investigation, Tent Girls' case caught the attention of the American edition of Master Detectives.
The magazine wrote a full story on the case. They interviewed one of the head detectives who begged anyone to come forward if they thought they knew who this poor girl was. Like everything up to this point, no new information turned up. Nobody knew Tent Girl. By 1971, Georgetown police had no choice but to bury Tent Girl's body without identification.
Her decomposition was so bad that it made embalming almost impossible. Without a name, Tent Girl was buried in a county-owned section of Georgetown Cemetery. Her resting place was marked No. 90. But even though Tent Girl was buried, the community of Georgetown still wanted to see her be identified. Several weeks after she was given the headstone No. 90,
Residents donated a gravestone to be placed over her body. It read, Tent Girl. Found May 17, 1968, on U.S. Highway 25 North. Died about April 26 to May 3, 1968. Age, about 16 to 19 years. Height, 5 feet 1 inch. Weight, 110 to 115 pounds.
reddish-brown hair, unidentified. Next to the description was the police sketch of what she might look like. Tent Girl went to her grave without a name. Something that has always brought me joy is listening to stories about how other people have overcome obstacles in their life. Because these stories provide me with such inspiration, that's why I subscribe to the Hero Makers Podcast.
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Long after Tent Girl was buried six feet underground, she remained nameless. Her murder unsolved. As each year passed, fewer police officers worked the case. It seemed as though the case was cold and would never be solved. One decade turned into two, and Tent Girl's case was no closer to being solved. Until Todd Matthews came along.
Remember, Wilbur Riddle discovered Tent Girl's body while collecting telephone insulators for his friend. Two decades after discovering Tent Girl's body, he retired from well drilling and moved to Livingston, Tennessee. Wilbur moved on with his life, while Tent Girl remained a mystery. Wilbur was now retired, married, and had a 17-year-old daughter.
But even though he moved on with his life, he couldn't forget about Tent Girl. He couldn't forget anything about the day he found her lifeless, naked body wrapped in a green tent. At a Halloween party in 1987, everyone at the party started swapping ghost stories. One person who chimed in was Wilbur Riddle. Wilbur sat down with his 17-year-old daughter Lori and her boyfriend Todd Matthews.
His daughter Lori had already heard the story about Tent Girl probably a hundred times from her dad, but not Todd. This was the first time he's ever heard the name Tent Girl. After hearing about her story, he was immediately intrigued. Todd Matthews couldn't believe her murder was still unsolved. And after two decades, she still didn't have a name? How could this be? How could there be nobody out there looking for her?
It seemed almost unimaginable to Todd that after close to 20 years, nobody knew who this girl was. He couldn't fathom. To be murdered? With no suspect? Case unsolved? But for no one to remember your name? It's like you never even existed. Todd Matthews went home and couldn't stop thinking about Tent Girl. Who was she? Where was she from?
Thousands of questions swirled in his head as he tried to go to sleep that night. When he woke up in the morning, he knew he needed to find out. He needed to find out who Tent Girl is and who murdered her. Todd began his quest to identify Tent Girl. He got his hands on every newspaper clipping he could find. He also found police reports. He read everything to see if there was something the police missed all of those years ago.
One of the reports he inspected was the FBI's lab report on the forensic testing done on the tarp, rope, and white towels recovered from the scene. Of course, we know the killer used the tarp to wrap the girl's body, and he used the rope to seal the tarp on the top and on the bottom. But they also tested white towels found wrapped around parts of her body inside of the tarp. Even though the FBI forensic testing came back inconclusive,
When Todd looked at this report, he saw something different. He thought the white towel meant something. To Todd, this type of towel reminded him something a mother would use to swaddle her baby. And if he's right, then Tent Girl might be a lot older than the police thought. She might be a mother.
Todd wrote letters to Georgetown's police explaining his theory that Tent Girl might actually be much older than previously declared. He even thought she could be a mother. Todd felt like he hit gold. If Tent Girl was older, maybe the police could update the sketch to reflect someone 5 to 10 years older. But when the letters arrived in Georgetown, they were thrown away.
The police told Todd they've already done everything they could to try and identify Tent Girl. They weren't going to waste any additional resources based on this new discovery of the white swaddle blankets. It wasn't worth their time. But that didn't stop him. After the police rejected his theory, he wrote another letter. This time, he wrote to the forensic pathologist. He told the pathologist about his theory that Tent Girl might be a mother.
In his letter, he requested that her body be exhumed so that the forensic pathologist could examine her pelvic area. This would help determine if she'd ever been pregnant or not. But, once again, the pathologist threw the letter away. The forensic pathologist wasn't going to exhume the body solely based on this theory. Todd Matthews continued his search to identify Tent Girl for years.
Several years into his quest, he got married to his teenage girlfriend, Lori, the daughter of Wilbur Riddle, the person who found Tent Girl. But as the years went by, Todd's desire to identify Tent Girl grew into an obsession. And like many obsessions, it began taking a toll on his marriage. Todd spent hours every single day trying to give Tent Girl a name.
Sometimes he would stay up all night reviewing old reports and newspaper articles. At one point, he even traveled the 200 miles to her grave site. He met the cemetery's owner. He spoke with local newspapers to see if there's been any updates in the case. He studied reports of missing persons from the same time frame. Nothing. He became so obsessed, he even started sleepwalking.
and he almost lost his marriage. By the early 1990s, Tent Girl remained unidentified for over 20 years. But while Tent Girl was buried, the world was changing. By the 90s, many households were introduced to computers and the internet. The internet completely changed the way we interact with each other and the world. It also improved how we get our information.
With the internet, we now had the entire world at our fingertips. Instead of writing letters to the police to access case files or reports, reports were now available from a click of a button. Todd knew that the internet could change the course of this investigation. But there was a problem. He didn't have a computer. You as my listener know that I'm always on the hunt for new true crime podcasts to tell you about.
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In 1992, Todd Matthews knew that if he had a computer and access to the internet, he'd be able to identify Tent Girl. He already spent thousands on the case, and his factory job salary wasn't enough to purchase one. But instead of letting this roadblock stop him, he decided to save a little bit of his money. And after months of saving, he bought the cheapest computer he could afford.
Once he hooked up the computer and connected to the internet, he started searching missing person websites. He searched the sites looking for someone who matched Tent Girl's description. He knew if he just kept digging, he'd eventually come across the right missing girl. To keep him motivated, he hung a picture of her gravestone over his computer monitor.
A couple years after purchasing the computer, Todd created a website dedicated to identifying Tent Girl in November 1997. The site was called tentgirl.com. On the website, he posted everything he knew about the case. The police reports, the autopsy, everything. As soon as he launched the website, he received dozens of emails. The emails were filled with tips from people all across the country.
Each email presented a new lead. But sadly, each lead led to a dead end. None of the emails contained Tent Girl's identity. The internet allowed for Todd to connect with other web sleuths. The term web sleuth derived after people formed a community dedicated to solving crimes and finding missing persons. Back in the 90s, web sleuths formed forums and chat rooms.
People from all across the world came together over the internet and attempted to solve cold cases or locate the missing. They became their own private detectives. Most of these people weren't police. They didn't have any formal investigative training. They were just everyday people who were into true crime and wanted to see if they could take a crack at solving a cold case.
Since the 1990s, the community of web sleuths has grown tremendously. If you're someone into true crime, like we all are, you're probably some sort of web sleuth yourself. I think all of us true crime people wonder if we could solve a cult case, or if we could be involved in a case where we found a missing person after all these years.
And with the internet, we all can become our own detectives. And that's what was happening in the 90s with Todd Matthews. But becoming a web sleuth began to take a toll on Todd's personal life, especially on his marriage. Lori and Todd had a four-year-old son together. And as each year passed, Lori couldn't understand why her husband Todd was so obsessed with Tent Girl.
She couldn't understand why her husband had such a deep connection to this unknown girl, a girl that he had never met before. By the late 1990s, Lori was pretty much fed up with Todd's infatuation with Tent Girl. All of his attention was going towards the case, and not enough attention was being paid to his own family.
Todd was still putting in long hours at the factory, and when he came home, he spent pretty much all of his free time on the computer searching missing person websites. But as Lori and Todd's marriage started falling apart, Todd knew he was getting closer and closer to giving Tent Girl a name. By January 1998, 30 years had passed since Wilbur Riddle discovered Tent Girl's body.
But Todd remained determined as ever to find her identity. One night in January 1998, Todd's wife and their young son went to bed. Like many nights before, Todd stayed up on the computer. This was Detective Todd's time. After his family went to bed, he would stay up a couple of extra hours searching the internet, digging through missing person websites.
On this particular night, he read a description of a missing person case and then clicked next. Not tent girl. He clicked next until he came across three words on a message board. Lexington, 1967, missing. He clicked on the message board post to open it. The post was a missing person report written by a woman from Arkansas named Rosemary Westbrook.
The woman was looking for any information about her older sister. Witnesses last saw her sister in Lexington, Kentucky. As Todd kept reading, he realized the girl's description was almost an exact match to Tent Girl's description. Rosemary wrote on the message board that her older sister had been missing since late 1967. She described her sister as being about 5 feet 2 inches tall with brown hair and brown eyes.
She weighed around 110 pounds and had a gap between two of her front teeth. She ended the post by asking anyone with information to reach out to the address provided. After reading the entire post, Todd knew he found Tent Girl, or at least her sister. Todd didn't waste any time and contacted Rosemary.
He told her that he stumbled upon her message board post about her missing sister and said he thinks he knows what happened to her. Rosemary told Todd her sister's name is Barbara Ann Taylor, who went by the nickname Bobby. She said she was only 10 years old when Bobby disappeared, but still remembers life vividly. Bobby was a 24-year-old mother when she disappeared back in 1967.
At the time of her disappearance, she worked in a restaurant and was married to a carnival worker named George Earl Taylor. According to Rosemary, when she disappeared, no one in the family even knew that Bobbie lived in Kentucky. The family thought Bobbie and her husband George were living in Florida at the time. And since they didn't realize she disappeared, no one reported her missing for months.
Rosemary told Todd that once the family realized they hadn't heard from Bobby in months, they reached out to her husband, George. But when they spoke to George, he told the family that he hadn't spoken to his wife in months. He hadn't even seen her for months. According to George, Bobby ran off with another man, and she'd been gone for a year.
After their first conversation, Todd and Rosemary were hopeful that Bobby Ann Taylor might be Tent Girl. Bobby matched Tent Girl's physical description, even down to the gapped front teeth. They were both from Lexington, Kentucky, and even though it's impossible to say exactly when she went missing, it could have been around the time when the body was discovered.
Believing that Rosemary's sister, Bobbi, could be Tent Girl, Todd put Rosemary in contact with a forensic pathologist back in Lexington, Kentucky. Within minutes of hearing Rosemary's description of her sister, the pathologist performed the almost impossible. He agreed to exhume Tent Girl's body.
On March 2, 1998, authorities in Lexington, Kentucky exhumed Tent Girl's body from the grave, where she'd been for 30 years. The body was sent to a forensic lab in Frankfort, Kentucky, to determine if she was, in fact, Bobbie Ann Taylor. As you can imagine, after all of these years, nothing much was left of the body except for bones.
But lucky for us, human bones remain intact for up to 100 years after they collapse to dust. When Tent Girl's body was exhumed, her skeletal remains were exhumed by a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Emily Craig. Based on the bone's condition, the forensic anthropologist determined that Tent Girl was actually older than previously thought.
The doctor theorized she was somewhere between 20 to 30 years old. Not a teenager as the police initially thought. But the discovery of Tent Girl's age didn't mean much. Nobody knew who she was or if she was Bobby Taylor. The next action was to determine a test for her remains. The only part of Tent Girl's remains that could be tested for DNA were her teeth.
Even after our bones collapse to dust, the most durable part of our bodies remain our teeth. A hundred years after your body's been buried, your teeth will survive. The only way forensic scientists could determine if Tent Girl was in fact Bobby Taylor, DNA from her teeth needed to be compared to her sister, Rosemary Westbrook.
In April 1998, forensic scientists swabbed Rosemary's cheek for a DNA sample. To get a DNA sample from Tent Girl, they extracted one of her teeth. Then, they took out the tooth's pulp. The pulp is your dental DNA fingerprint. Surrounded by dental and enamel, the pulp is the best source of DNA in teeth. DNA can be extracted from the pulp decades after someone has died.
And once they had Rosemary and Bobby's DNA, forensic scientists compared the cells to one another for a familial match. After 30 years, this was the closest anyone had been at identifying Tent Girl. When the DNA test came back, it was a match. A match made in DNA heaven. Rosemary's DNA was genetically matched to Tent Girl's DNA. Tent Girl was no longer nameless.
Tent Girl was Bobbi Ann Taylor. Bobbi Taylor had been identified 30 years after Wilbur Riddle discovered her body rolled up in a green tent. And her identification wasn't the result of any law enforcement officer. It was the dedicated work of a web sleuth who spent thousands and thousands of hours on the case. Todd Matthews worked harder and worked longer than any other detective did.
When Tent Girl was long buried six feet underground, he kept her case alive. Once Bobby was identified as Tent Girl, the next question became, what happened to her? How did she end up dead, rolled up inside of a tarp? Todd Matthews was right. She was someone's daughter. She was a mother. And she was a wife.
Bobby wasn't initially reported missing because her family had no idea she even disappeared. And before you think that sounds strange, Bobby's husband, George, worked for the carnival. Carnivals travel all the time, and so do the workers. So it wasn't odd for Bobby and George to be in one place one day and a totally different place the next.
And according to George Earle, by 1967, Bobby left him. She went off with another man. And that's why he didn't report her missing. Well, something about George's story doesn't sit well with many of us web sleuths. We may never know exactly who murdered Bobby. But after all of these years, the answer to that question seems to lie with her husband, George.
Many speculate that George was likely Bobby's killer. Those who knew him described him as impulsive, even violent at times. Bobby's body was found near I-75, a freeway that George traveled to Ohio to visit his family. The green tent she was wrapped in appeared to be the same type of tent used at the carnival. And, of course, George worked for the carnival.
If George Earl murdered Bobby Ann Taylor, we might never know. That's because he's dead. George died from cancer back in October 1987, and whatever secrets he had, he took with him to the grave. It took three decades to identify Tent Girl, and there may still be a chance her killer could also be identified.
Todd Matthews, the web sleuth responsible for identifying her, believes he knows who the killer is. Like so many others, Todd thinks that George Earl killed Bobby. In an interview with Master Detective magazine, he said he believes the story about Bobby running off with another man was just a ruse, that he made it up to cover his tracks. He believes George is Tent Girl's killer.
Since identifying Tent Girl, Todd Matthews hasn't given up his passion for being a web sleuth. He recognizes even though Tent Girl died two years before he was born, her story changed his life. Her story developed his passion for investigating missing person cases. Following Tent Girl's case, Todd joined the Doe Network, an online bulletin board for missing people. His work has helped to create a national database.
As of today, the network has thousands and thousands of cases. He also helped to develop EDAN, short for Everyone Needs a Name, an organization of volunteer forensic sketch artists who donate sketches of people who are missing. Because of Todd Matthews' contribution to the field of missing persons, the U.S. government sought out his leadership for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2011.
His work with the organization allows for law enforcement and the public to upload photos and information about missing persons. His tireless work on Tent Girl's case has really paid off. And just for the record, his wife Lori didn't divorce him. She may have been fed up once or twice, but she loved him. But there was still one more order of business. Todd and volunteers returned to Georgetown Cemetery.
they placed a second grave marker over her grave. It read, Bobby Taylor. No one deserves to die without a name, and no one will. At least, not on Todd's watch.
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