MURDERED: Tent Girl

Feb 18, 2018

On May 17, 1968, a woman was found in the woods, murdered and wrapped in tent fabric. For over 30 years she remained unidentified in a Kentucky grave with a donated headstone that bore the name "Tent Girl". But 90s internet and a superhero named Todd come together to give this girl a name and give her family the answers they waited so many decades for. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-tent-girl/    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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hi everyone welcome back to Crime junkie I am your host Ashley flowers joined by Britt hi everyone and just a couple of housekeeping things if you haven't signed up for a newsletter then you miss the fact that we're doing our first meet up about a month from now on March 10th in Indianapolis Indiana so if you're interested in coming out hanging out with us and talking to your crime make sure you go to our Facebook page and RSVP for the event can't wait to see you guys this episode of crime junkie is brought to you by Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana

so now that you know a little bit about Crimestoppers if you had to guess where do you think they get their funding since they work so closely with police I would have to assume that they're either state funded or there they get some money back from a police program no they actually are 100% a non-profit and they get no money from the police and no money from the state wow they can still function with that yeah so they get actually all there even though Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana Works closely with police and is literally responsible for thousands of arrests they receive no Government funding all of their funding comes from listeners like you there are a 501 c 3 so all donations are tax-deductible and as we're rolling into 2018 and you're deciding where you're going to donate your time and money consider getting involved with your local Crime Stoppers and if you want more information on volunteering or donating to Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana go to Crime tips dot-org okay Brett this week I have a really

good story that kind of gives us answers at the end which is so not a crime junkie thing but you're going to love it so it starts with a Jane Doe and The Story begins on May 17th of 1968 a man named Wilbur riddle is out in Georgetown Kentucky off of Route 25 he was there to work as a water well driller but he had some time to kill so he went around collecting these glass insulators off of the ground that the telephone workers were discarding he had like a friend that could use them in some kind of collection Art weird thing he was doing but as he's working he's off the main road kind of in like a wooded area and he's walking around and he comes across this large object wrapped in a green canvas tarp and rope and as soon as he gets close there was this horrible odor of Decay he nudges it with his foot because obviously he's terrified I mean I think like anyone who comes across a

body shape tarp they know what they're getting into but he nudges this object and it rolls down this slope and as soon as it hits the end it exposes the body of a white female who's decomposing and totally nude Wilbur immediately drove to the Sheriff's Office to report what he found when they got to the scene they found that they didn't have a lot to work with she was curled up into the fetal position very decomposed to the point where her eyes had already rotted away and her I know and her skin was dark and deteriorating she was totally nude nothing to identify her no purse no jewelry absolutely nothing the police only had two things to go off of the first were her fingerprints but she was so decomposed that they had to actually rehydrate her skin with chemicals to produce a proper print but even then a print is only helpful if you have something a comparative with yeah exactly and they didn't have anything to compare it to

the only other thing they had to go off of were her dental records and her teeth had a slight Gap in the middle and showed some signs of Decay so at least they were a little distinctive and again there's no like Dental database but they had this to go off of when maybe they could find like a missing person that would compare to it when they finally get an autopsy done they find that she's about five one a little over a hundred pounds likely between ages 16 and 18 years old and she's been dead about two weeks to two months by the time they found her

her decomposition actually had kept them from finding the cause of death there weren't any obvious wounds like a gunshot or a knife right and I I would assume that they would be able to tell if she had died from like blunt-force trauma by examining her skull but with whatever means they were working with back in 1968 they couldn't make any kind of determination the sheriff realizes pretty soon that they're in no way equipped to handle this case this is a really small town in Kentucky and they normally deal with like petty theft sometimes domestic violence distort dispute and in a small town they have literally not even had any death investigation so they don't feel like they're equipped to handle one of this size so they call him the state police which was like Bravo good call yeah do you care about me

State Police try to track down some evidence based on what she was wrapped in but they come up with nothing the rope that they found can be found at any local hardware store and the tarp that she was wrapped it was actually this cloth material that's often used in like tents back in the day like at carnivals or fairs or whatever and this is how she actually got the name tent girl and this unidentified girl will go on for years and years and years to be known as tent girl they start trying to match this girl to missing persons reports and I know it's common knowledge like in my head I know that in 1968 they didn't have computers much less like any kind of database to work through but for whatever reason it like rocked me when I was reading and realize they're actually going through this index card Rolodex one by one and each one has like a missing person's name their height their

wait like a kind of a description and if they were really lucky it included a picture but most the time it was literally just these index cards it's like flash cards yeah and they had thousands of them and just for the state of Kentucky so keep in mind I mean if this girl's from out of state they would have to call each individual State give them a picture of the autopsy describe this girl to then and then have each state go through they're Rolodex it's just mind blowing when you think about today it's I mean it's so hard to identify someone today but in 1968 it was different postural literally Manpower and time to flip through and read all these cards that's insane exactly so they dumped a ton of time into trying to match this girl to a missing person report but they come up with nothing they eventually have her buried in an unmarked grave while they continue their investigation and they asked a local policeman who's kind of like an artist in his free time

like a hobby to look at the autopsy photos and try and make a sketch of what she could have looked like when she was alive so they can distribute this nationally because at this point they're like we really don't believe she's from Kentucky so this guy is like an artist in his free time now he's got this girls like life in his hands after death so like no pressure I've got a picture of his sketch on our website and while it's good the problem is she just looks very common but they send it out anyways and these posters are put up and made like Nationwide they get a ton of calls and tips but nothing really solid until some detectives call from Maryland and they say I think we know who your tent girl is not too long before tent girl was found a mother had reported her daughter missing she was 15 years old and was last seen getting into a car with her 17 year old boyfriend but she hadn't been seen in months her description

in is closely matched to the one of tent girl and probably the closest they had seen so far so they ask the family to drive 10 hours from Maryland to Kentucky to meet with them they show them the autopsy photos and the girl's mom is obviously devastated and she's like yeah I think it looks like her but you have to remember like her skin is darkened her she doesn't have her eyes anymore look like a human anymore right so between the decomposition of the victim and what photography was in the 1960s she feels like she can't be sure but through all the tips please have gotten there so sure that this is it that they basically declare that tent Girl Is This Woman's daughter and they send her home to plan her funeral her mom gets back to Maryland she starts making funeral arrangements and ten days later everyone is totally blindsided when an anonymous call comes in to police that

a person is saying the girl you have Ted girl is not the girl you think she is that girl is still alive police take what information they can from this collar and they actually do a full investigation that leads them to a small town outside of Philadelphia they actually find this girl and her boyfriend the two of them had run away together and plan to get married but we're totally alive and well like can you imagine being that mom who's planning your daughter's funeral and then all of a sudden you find out she's alive and well can I take a moment to say that teenagers are the worst yeah they're the absolute worst like it's why I don't have kids I think I think me and a toddler would be cool the day I have a kid that says they hate me and runs away like I can't handle it God bless our parents because I don't know how they did it I know and can you even imagine like what I think about even more is can you imagine if that person had not called in like how long would everyone have gone on thinking 10th girl was this girl

God yeah what she I mean would she be like living today think your daughter was dead would she have ever come forward like it's just crazy to think about that's insane that's ridiculous so while the this family had a happy ending the state police and Kentucky were back to square one with 10 girl the next break that they get in the case comes a while later Kentucky police get a call from Pennsylvania this time because they saw this poster and on the poster they put out with the sketch also included a story of how she was found and the Pennsylvania police tell the Kentucky police this crazy story just a few weeks before tent girl was found 650 miles away in Pennsylvania another body was found wrapped in a canvas tarp and tied up with rope

also badly decomposed to the point where they can't determine the cause of death she was found totally nude with no identifiers but in this case they were actually able to identify the girl later because they match her to a missing person report and she was identified as Candace cloth your Rolodex for the win Rolodex for the win she actually looks really similar to the sketch of tent girl and they're about the same way in the same height so it looks like they could be the same victim profile Candace was last seen leaving her house she was going to catch a bus to go meet a friend but she actually never even made it on the bus and her body was found five weeks later wrapped in the tarp tied and rope totally nude in the woods near water just like tent girl so now the police are freaking out because they think they have a serial killer before serial killer was even a word at this point I mean - this is pre mine hunter y'all so they double down on their

efforts and they even get really popular magazine at the time called Master detective to run a story and it was like the crime junkie podcast before crime does it say subscribe me I'd like to see if they wish they were still doing things they're not it's fine and while the story gets national attention and renewed interest no new leads are generated from this story and it gets them nowhere the case goes totally cold eventually a local funeral home actually donates a headstone with the words tent girl and her sketch on it and that's how the story remains for years and years and years and she becomes a local Legend in Kentucky and Wilbur the guy that found her body would often talk about the case and he happened to talk about the case with his daughters High School boyfriend Todd and Todd becomes obsessed with this case like you know there's always those cases you hear about and you cannot get off your brain and it will even if you like

on like everyone smile just pops in your brain like me like what happened to more Amari like girl where did you go so Todd is like a pre-crime junkie crime junkie totally and after he and Wilbur's daughter get married he makes it his mission to start collecting any information he can find on 10th girl because he knows someone out there has to know who she is or at least what happened to her well in the 1990s all of a sudden we get the internet and sign out 90s internet was like the best internet if I even think about those old a im sounds it's like an endorphin shot to my brain yeah give me a geocities and Angel Fire and aim all the time yes yes yes so he's regularly on forums for missing people and he comes across a message from a lady who says she's looking for her sister who went missing in

the eighth and she was last seen in Kentucky they get connected over the phone and she tells him this crazy story here's what she tells him there's a woman named Barbara Ann Hackman and everyone calls her Bobby when she was in her teens she met a man named George Earle Taylor he was a carnival worker with a two-year-old daughter and he said that his wife had left him in the daughter for another man and Bobby starts out as just like his babysitter but she ends up falling for him and they get married after only a couple of months whoa she's totally smitten with him and thinks his life as a Carnival Barker is like very glamorous and exciting Bobby and I have different views on Carnival barkers but I will not hold it against her like it was the 60s I don't know what life was like

so they get married and she begins to travel around with him and actually start working at the carnival herself but they eventually have a couple of kids and settle down together and they move to Florida which is like the home base for this Carnival so he would travel in the Summers with the carnival and in the winters he would drive trucks and her mother and her sister actually end up moving to Florida to be near them and help Bobby out with the kids

one day Bobby and George pull up to Bobby sisters work and bobby gets out and tells her sister like hey do you want to buy this TV from us and her sister says no I have a TV like I don't why are you selling your TV this is so weird and she says well we actually have to skip town for a while it turns out George had skipped out on his army Duty and the FBI was looking for him and word was they were in town so Bobby said they were going to take the family leave for a while and then they likely be back in the fall she doesn't tell her where they're going but she mentioned something about Texas and then says she'll call once they're settled well then weeks go by and months go by and there's no call from Bobby Bobby's family has no idea where she is and one day Bobby's sister gets a visit from a friend who tells her that they've seen George her husband he was back in Florida living in a town called Davy which is like

rural farm land like in Florida she asked if Bobby was with him and he says no and he goes on to tell her that what George told him was that Bobby had up and left him in the kids for another man sound familiar a little bit yeah exactly what he had told Bobby when they first met

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so her sister immediately gets suspicious she doesn't necessarily put together that that's what his story was before but she knows that her sister would never just up and leave her kids she was such a good caregiver so she gets in her car and starts driving to Davie Florida she doesn't even have an address so the first stop she makes and she gets to Devi is to the police department and she kind of recounts to them this whole story and they're super nice and want to help her and wouldn't you know it they had just pulled over George for some kind of traffic violation so they had his address like right at the tip of their fingers beautiful they give her his address and she drives straight over to his house to confront him at this point he's alone and he gives her the same story about Bobby leaving him and the kids for another man and he refuses to tell her where the kids are Bobby's sister feels super uneasy about this so she files a missing-persons report and then goes home to tell her

her mom wants to go up and talk to George herself and try and see the kids try and get some answers but by the time they're able to get back up to Davie Florida he's gone totally packed up and gone which is like red flags red flags red flags yeah definitely and they never see him again no like and never see the kids again years and years and 30 years go by with nothing until one day Bobby's sister gets contacted by Bobby's kids they were all grown adults by now and had been looking for their mother and their mother's family for their entire lives at this point I know at this point when they found the family Earl had already died of cancer but once they're all together they start to piece together a story a little bit of what might have happened to Bobby

the kids tell Bobby's sister that from what they can remember when they left Florida they actually went up to Kentucky where they were living in a one-bedroom apartment over a restaurant and why she never called her family is totally a mystery to me but all three kids and their parents shared this like one-bedroom apartment and the oldest girl was about seven at the time and one night she said that she woke up and saw her mom and her dad struggling but she thought she would get in trouble for being awake so she just like turned over and went back to sleep and she said when she woke up in the morning her mom was gone and she never saw her again like they were just they were just kids at the time and they were told the same story that you know your mom left us she didn't want to choose left us for another man she only thing to do with you and they grew up believing this but always kept looking for her thinking maybe like she didn't want them when they were young but they at least wanted to find her right definitely I get that

Bobby's family is ecstatic when they get reconnected so not only are they like connected to Bobby's children but this is also the best lead that they've had in years of finding out where she might be so they contact the police and Kentucky looking for answers but police tell them that there are no people matching her description that are dead or have been missing in Kentucky so now they don't know what to do because they know that the last place she was that anyone saw her but they're calling the police police are saying we have no one that matches her description dead or alive so what now

at this point they turn again it's the 90s they turn to the internet as well and Bobby's sister is the one that posted on the Forum that Todd found and then when they got to talking he said listen I don't care what the police say I just had this feeling they're probably disregarding her as tent girl because she was 24 at the time she disappeared and they thought tent girl was 16 to 18 right but he says listen call the police bring up tent girl and make them listen to you I just have this feeling they spent a lot of time talking back and forth with the police and they get a forensic anthropologist to compare Bobby's pictures to the autopsy photos and the bone structure is so similar and the teeth are so similar that they decide it's worth having tent girl's body exhumed

and sure enough they do a DNA test and it is a match they have found Barbara Ann Hackman and she is tent girl like thank God for Todd right yeah crime junkies for the win again I know like they probably would have never gone back to the Kentucky police like as if I called and was like hey my sister went missing like is there anyone that even like but looks like her that you found or anything and they say like no nothing I mean again there's no database you can go through so they would have closed the chapter on that and if he wouldn't have been so obsessed with this case like it was just a miracle that they came together he's like a real superhero and he's an extra super hero because he is actually one of the cofounders of the doe network no way yeah so the doe Network for anyone who doesn't know is like an online database of all these missing people and like composites

lying's clay molds of all of these unidentified Jane Doe's and John Doe's and the doe Network actually attempts to make matches so they're making this database that didn't exist when tent girl existed and I sent tent girl from ever happening again right I spent many a late night on this site and it's like the web salutes Bible but you can get lost like it's almost like it's almost like overwhelming and spooky at the same time it is like I keep looking at the site like I don't know there's so many like I had this breakdown during the Sean great episode when like I can't imagine how one person isn't known like you have a family like how does your family not know you're missing when you see the hundreds of people on this site that are unidentified it is a stating it's overwhelming like I can't I can't figure it out but I'm obsessed with it everyone needs to check it out it's absolutely incredible the work they're doing is amazing if you want to donate to another nonprofit their everything they're doing is totally worth it and that's enough

National Organization as well correct okay so we know what happened to her then right we found her we know who tent girl is Barbara and gets found this is it like it's a resolved case well yes and no like okay so I know you wouldn't be crime donkey if you like ended with answers so they figure that this that I mean they know this is Barbara Ann Hackman they figure that her husband murdered her but they actually can't close the case because he's already passed away but like that's not even the question I have I'm 99% sure he did it there's so many other things that popped up in the story that we have no answers to like so the girl in Pennsylvania Canada happened to her okay so here I did some digging and her case was actually closed a few years ago so like I said lie yeah recently they did this big press conference and they basically said that they know who did it but the person or persons who did it died sometime between

75 and mm so they wouldn't like and they won't name the names because I don't know why they I guess they can't prove it definitely magic and whatever so they but they've basically close the case I have no idea if one of those Persons of Interest was George Orwell Taylor but it was super strange that had how similar the cases were I have no idea of George Taylor was like in Pennsylvania at the time obviously traveled a lot yeah he's traveling a lot whether he's at his Carney job or over the road offseason like he's traveling through the state's frequently I know so that absolutely eats at me and kills me not to know if they're related but even more than that and like what and I see Candice's name come up with 10 girl all the time but what I couldn't find on web sleuths or like on any other Forum that's eating at my brain is

who was George Earle Taylor's first wife yeah because he gave Bobby the story that his first wife left him and his kid for another man and then after he killed Bobby it was the same story so it's likely that whoever his first wife was met the same kind of Fate is she missing somewhere is she dead somewhere is she another Jane Doe like I have a thousand questions about his first wife and nobody else seems to be asking these questions or even concerned so maybe I'm missing something no it's a huge question mark and also if Candice and Barbara Anne's cases our bodies were found in such similar situations that they were able to be connected did the work first wife exist was it like did she die under different circumstances was the story legit there's your right there are so many more questions so many questions well I will tell you what I found about Candis is she I mean the

crime scene photos look identical granted they're black and white but I guess they found out that she it wasn't a tent she was wrapped in she was wrapped in a laundry sack of laundry bag so one of the the ways they found out who they think killed her is they actually track down a person who lent this laundry bag to the supposed killer again there's like zero information who did they lend it to who was the lender where the hell was George Taylor But but so it was a little bit different I guess like the material they were wrapped in but still really similar in the way that they could have died the way that they were found and the fact that both bodies a decomposed for so long how many more could there be if George Taylor was the guy I know so another week no answers I will be back next week to give you more questions to keep you up at night

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