The Tent Girl

Note: As the author of mystery novels, it should not surprise anyone that I am always interested in real life mysteries, too. Here is one I came across recently that I hope you will also find interesting.

May 17, 1968, was a grey day in northern Kentucky, with a threat of thunderstorms. But that didn’t stop well digger Wilbur Riddle from scavenging for glass telephone insulators along US Highway 25, a few miles north of Georgetown, Kentucky. But the day turned even more dismal when Riddle happened upon the decomposing body of a young woman wrapped in a heavy green canvas tarp, similar to what would be used for a tent. Riddle quickly contacted police, and an investigation was launched into the identity of the murder victim, and for her slayer.

Scott County Sheriff Bobby Vance had only seen two other homicides in his eleven years with the Sheriff’s Department, both of which were quickly solved. But the case of the young woman, who became known as the Tent Girl, would stymie law enforcement for 30 years. An autopsy determined her cause of death was asphyxiation, but also noted trauma from a severe beating. In spite of nationwide publicity into the crime, and following leads from coast to coast, the still unidentified woman’s body was buried in the Georgetown cemetery in 1971. A local company donated a headstone with the words Tent Girl and her physical description, as well as an engraving of a police sketch of how she might have looked in life.

Eventually law enforcement had to move on to other cases and it seemed like the story of the Tent Girl was forgotten by many. But not by Wilbur Riddle, the man who had found her body and who remained haunted by his experience. Years later, Todd Matthews, Riddle’s son-in-law, became interested in the case and began searching the Internet, which was still in its infancy, looking for information that might solve the case. In 1997 he created a website for the Tent Girl, hoping it would trigger a memory for someone who remembered a missing friend or relative from that time period.

In 1998, Matthews came across an online description of a young woman who had gone missing from Lexington, just fifteen miles from Georgetown, in 1967. Her name was Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor, 24 at the time she went missing, and she was last known to be living in Lexington with her husband George Earl Taylor, a carnival worker, and their infant daughter.  Taylor had not filed a missing person report for his wife and had told her family that she had abandoned him and their daughter and ran off with another man. Matthews contacted a family member listed in the online description, who turned out to be a sister of the victim. The Tent Girl’s body was exhumed and DNA testing confirmed her identity.

Her husband, George Taylor, was considered the prime suspect in her murder, but he would never face justice for his crime because he died of cancer in October,1987. Barbara’s family had her reburied in the same grave after her identity was confirmed but added a second stone base placed under the original grave marker, bearing her birth name, nickname, date of birth, presumed date of death, and the inscription “Loving Mother, Grandmother & Sister.” Hopefully the Tent Girl now rests in peace.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Everyone has a story. You just never know what they’re going through.