July 1, 2024 • 12 mins
On June 8th, 1998, Marcus Rutledge disappeared from his residence in Nashville, TN. Detectives believe foul play is a factor in Marcus’ disappearance, but little to no development has been made since his disappearance.
At the time of his disappearance, Marcus was 23 years old and described as 6’ tall, 190 lbs. He has black hair and brown eyes. Marcus would be 49 years old today. If you have any information about the disappearance of Marcus Rutledge, you are encouraged to contact the Metro Nashville Police Department Cold Case Unit at 615-862-7329.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome to Mysteries of Mimosa's. My name is Max and here with me today is the
(00:16):
ever fantastic co-host, Arya.
Hi everyone.
Hi Arya. Are you excited to be back for another week of mystery?
You know I am.
Another week of Mimosa's?
Of course.
Another shot at the trivia title?
I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that.
That'll have to wait until Thursday, but everyone listening is rooting for you to win. It's
(00:37):
a long time coming and you deserve it.
Thank you. And thank you for joining us for Mystery Monday. If you're joining us for the
first time, Mystery Monday is a short episode we produce to bring awareness to lesser known
cases with very little information available. The goal is to spread the word about these
cases and encourage conversation. And of course, the end game is to hopefully help the victims
(00:59):
find answers they've most certainly been looking for.
Also, I just want to let everyone know if you have any information about any of the
cases we cover, you can reach out directly to us with information by visiting us on our
website at mysteriesofmimosa.net. You can also find us on Instagram at Mysteries of
Mimosa's podcast. We're on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and we even have a Discord server
(01:22):
which we have not given up on yet.
Well, you haven't given up on it yet. I think I've given up on that.
Just wait, wait until the day when your phone just blows up with Discord notifications because
people will catch on. It's a little intimidating at first, but it's actually nothing to be
afraid of. It's just a chat server.
Yeah, I don't know. But I will tell you, I have enjoyed watching our YouTube subscriber
(01:47):
number keep climbing slowly, but it's climbing.
Yeah, and I'm figuring out TikTok. Those are climbing too.
So today's case is about 23-year-old Marcus Rutledge out of Nashville, Tennessee, who
vanished from Nashville on June 8th of 1998.
Growing up, Marcus was your typical kid. He played instruments in band. He played football
(02:09):
and soccer. He really enjoyed reading. Marcus was a good kid, always willing to help other
people. He had a great sense of humor and he took his schoolwork very seriously.
Marcus was raised by his parents, David and Geraldine, who also met while attending school
in Nashville. After graduating, the two moved to Geraldine's hometown in Ypsilanti, Michigan,
(02:30):
where they raised Marcus and his older sister, Felicia. Once Marcus graduated high school,
he moved to Nashville to continue his education at Tennessee State University.
Well, that's cool. His parents met while going to school there and now he's going back to
attend school at that same university.
Yeah, I'm sure his parents might have had something to do with it. Like, hey, this is
(02:52):
where we met. This is where I went to school and he probably had aspirations to attend
the same school.
At the time of his disappearance, Marcus was a senior at the university and he was the
father of a four-year-old son named Darius. At that time, Marcus was living in Nashville
and Darius was living with his mom in Knoxville. Although Marcus was no longer in a relationship
(03:13):
with Darius' mother, Marcus would travel from Nashville to Knoxville to visit Darius
as much as he could. Sounds like a good dad.
Yeah.
While living in Nashville, Marcus also had a two-year-old daughter with his girlfriend.
We don't have the daughter's name, but he had two kids, a four-year-old Darius and his
two-year-old daughter. On June 7th, Marcus spent the night with his girlfriend and on
(03:36):
the morning of June 8th, Marcus took their daughter to daycare. His girlfriend reports
she spoke with Marcus around 1.30 p.m. that day. This was the last time Marcus was ever
seen or heard from again.
Later that evening, David received a phone call from Marcus' worried girlfriend after
she was unable to get a hold of him. As you can imagine, this worried Marcus' parents
(03:57):
because it wasn't typical for Marcus to lose contact with his family. After trying to reach
Marcus, David called Marcus' girlfriend back and asked if she had heard from him, but she
hadn't.
It's got to be pretty scary, right?
Absolutely, yeah.
As she became more and more worried, Marcus' girlfriend decided to go to his duplex apartment
to see if she could find him.
(04:18):
So they didn't live together then?
No, I don't think so.
They each had their own place?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
Yeah, because he stayed the night with her, took their daughter to daycare, and she then
after becoming worried goes to his duplex apartment to try to find him.
Got it.
After contacting Marcus' dad to find out if David heard anything and he hadn't.
(04:40):
So with the help of Marcus' former roommate and friend, they opened a window to Marcus'
apartment, but they didn't find Marcus inside. They did, however, find Marcus' dog locked
in the bathroom with the door closed.
Now, I don't know if this is like a typical place to keep his dog or if it's unusual for
his dog to be locked in the bathroom. I mean, when we leave for an extended period of time,
(05:03):
we have our dogs in a kennel. They're trained to be in the crate. And so I don't know if
this was normal for him or if this was odd.
Because Marcus' family and friends knew this was unusual behavior for him, they called
the police and they reported him missing.
The Metro Nashville Police Department started searching for Marcus and learned that his
four-door Dodge Neon with Michigan plates was also missing. That's red, by the way.
(05:28):
As you can imagine, the police quickly turned their attention to the car. They solicited
help from local media outlets, asking the public to help find Marcus and the car.
Well, the car should stand out at least a little bit, right? Because it has Michigan
plates in there in Tennessee. So it might be a little easier to spot it.
Yeah, I mean, I think that back then, the red Dodge Neons were a dime a dozen. You could
(05:51):
probably find them all over. But in Tennessee, with the Michigan plates, that would surely
stand out a little bit more.
So on July 1st of 1998, only about a month after Marcus disappeared, police recovered
his car at the Riverwood Apartments on Cabot Drive in Nashville.
Do you know how far away from his own duplex that was?
(06:12):
I don't know exactly how far away it was, but it was across town. It was on the other
side of town.
According to detectives, when the car was processed, they were able to recover some
latent fingerprints. But as of now, they haven't been able to match the fingerprints to anybody.
It's interesting they haven't been able to match those fingerprints to anybody. Because
you're fingerprinted anytime you're arrested, anytime you're charged with a crime, if it's
(06:37):
ordered by the judge. Anytime you get a driver's license nowadays, you have to get fingerprinted.
Anytime you apply for a job that requires a background check. So it's very weird that
nobody's ever matched these fingerprints.
I do know that the main fingerprint database, APHIS, is not the only fingerprint database
out there. So it could be that whoever matches this fingerprint is in another database in
(07:02):
another state somewhere and just never put into APHIS.
I didn't know that. I thought that APHIS was the database that everyone used for this reason.
So that we're all on the same page.
Yeah, it's the main database, but it's not the only one.
Oh, wow. Well, it should be. That way you don't run into these issues, right?
(07:23):
There's one other interesting thing about this case. Remember Marcus's friend that helped
his girlfriend get into the apartment?
Yeah.
His name was Ethan Gibbs. Less than a year after Marcus disappeared, Ethan was murdered.
Ethan was gunned down on February 23rd of 1999 at his duplex apartment in Nashville.
(07:45):
What?
Yeah. One of Ethan's friends was charged with Ethan's murder, but the charges were later
dropped and that suspect was released.
So that's interesting. I wonder if there's a connection there. It's kind of odd, obviously,
that less than a year later, his friend and former roommate is gunned down at his duplex
apartment in the same city.
(08:06):
Right. Yeah, it's very suspicious. And although Marcus's family believes that there is a connection
between Ethan's murder and Marcus's disappearance, police don't have any evidence or information
to lead them to believe that these two cases are connected.
I wonder why the family thinks they're connected or what reason there would be. They had an
(08:27):
enemy or something in common or it's interesting.
I don't know. It's very strange for Marcus to just up and disappear. He was regularly
traveling to Knoxville to visit his son. He just had a two-year-old daughter that he took
to daycare. He seemed to be very well-educated and took school very seriously. So for him
to just up and vanish, he didn't do this on his own.
(08:52):
And so maybe that's why the family thinks, oh, well, there has to be some kind of connection
because his close friend, Ethan, who is trying to get into his apartment or got into his
apartment to try to find him, is killed not even a year later. It's got to be difficult
for the family for all these years to not have any answers on whatever happened to Marcus.
(09:15):
And in 2015, Marcus's mom, Geraldine, passed away before she was ever able to find any
answers into her son's disappearance.
That's sad. I hate for that to happen. A family waits... Well, at that time in 2015, it had
been almost 20 years with no answers of where her son is and she never got those answers.
(09:36):
Right. And the rest of his family is still looking for those answers. And it's just got
to be super difficult and painful to have to not know when you have somebody just taken
from you. It's different than an unexpected death. I mean, that's tragic nonetheless.
But say you have a family member that's unexpectedly taken from you because they're in a fatal
(10:00):
car crash or a crime of violence or something. Most people get to have those answers immediately
and bury or have services for their loved one. In this case, nobody knows what happened,
whether he's alive, whether something nefarious happened to him. They just don't know. And
it's unfortunate that Geraldine passed away before she could find those answers.
(10:23):
Yeah, it is. At the time of his disappearance, Marcus was 23 years old and described as six
feet tall and 190 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. Marcus would be 49 years old
today. If you have any information about the disappearance of Marcus Rutledge, you are
encouraged to contact the Metro Nashville Police Department Cold Case Unit at 615-862-7329.
(10:49):
Well thank you for that. I appreciate the help. And hopefully if you are listening,
you could also remember, reach out directly to us at mysteriesofmimosas.net. Send us a
line. There's a chat box. You can give us a tip and we will pass that information along
for you if you don't want to be identified. What else you have?
(11:10):
I don't have anything else. I don't have anything else either. And this
is a super short, super mysterious case out of Nashville. I hope that we find answers
about what happened to Marcus. And if we do, we will update you here. And in the meantime,
please do us a favor. Help us out by clicking five stars. Give us a review. Send us a line.
(11:33):
Send us a message. And share the word about our podcast. That helps us out.
Yes. I love seeing all the five star reviews. That's so very much appreciated. Or the five
star ratings. But if you want to leave a review, please do that as well.
And if you want to leave a review for specifically Max and you don't want to, you know, maybe
(11:56):
you feel like Aria is only worth two stars for her involvement in today's episode, that's
okay. But if I'm three, if I'm worth three stars and Aria is worth two stars, then I
mean, math tells me that's a five star rating. True. Or, you know, the times when Max is
one star and I'm four stars. I didn't want to go there.
(12:16):
You don't have to even mention that part. You don't have to mention that he was just
one star. You can just mention my four stars. Yeah. Or if you don't think Aria parted off
this kid, I can go back and forth with this all day, but I'm not going to. Okay. So thank
you for listening and what else you got? Anything else? Just cheers. Cheers.
Hello and welcome to Mysteries of Mimosa's. My name is Max and here with me today is the
(00:16):
ever fantastic co-host, Arya.
Hi everyone.
Hi Arya. Are you excited to be back for another week of mystery?
You know I am.
Another week of Mimosa's?
Of course.
Another shot at the trivia title?
I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that.
That'll have to wait until Thursday, but everyone listening is rooting for you to win. It's
(00:37):
a long time coming and you deserve it.
Thank you. And thank you for joining us for Mystery Monday. If you're joining us for the
first time, Mystery Monday is a short episode we produce to bring awareness to lesser known
cases with very little information available. The goal is to spread the word about these
cases and encourage conversation. And of course, the end game is to hopefully help the victims
(00:59):
find answers they've most certainly been looking for.
Also, I just want to let everyone know if you have any information about any of the
cases we cover, you can reach out directly to us with information by visiting us on our
website at mysteriesofmimosa.net. You can also find us on Instagram at Mysteries of
Mimosa's podcast. We're on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and we even have a Discord server
(01:22):
which we have not given up on yet.
Well, you haven't given up on it yet. I think I've given up on that.
Just wait, wait until the day when your phone just blows up with Discord notifications because
people will catch on. It's a little intimidating at first, but it's actually nothing to be
afraid of. It's just a chat server.
Yeah, I don't know. But I will tell you, I have enjoyed watching our YouTube subscriber
(01:47):
number keep climbing slowly, but it's climbing.
Yeah, and I'm figuring out TikTok. Those are climbing too.
So today's case is about 23-year-old Marcus Rutledge out of Nashville, Tennessee, who
vanished from Nashville on June 8th of 1998.
Growing up, Marcus was your typical kid. He played instruments in band. He played football
(02:09):
and soccer. He really enjoyed reading. Marcus was a good kid, always willing to help other
people. He had a great sense of humor and he took his schoolwork very seriously.
Marcus was raised by his parents, David and Geraldine, who also met while attending school
in Nashville. After graduating, the two moved to Geraldine's hometown in Ypsilanti, Michigan,
(02:30):
where they raised Marcus and his older sister, Felicia. Once Marcus graduated high school,
he moved to Nashville to continue his education at Tennessee State University.
Well, that's cool. His parents met while going to school there and now he's going back to
attend school at that same university.
Yeah, I'm sure his parents might have had something to do with it. Like, hey, this is
(02:52):
where we met. This is where I went to school and he probably had aspirations to attend
the same school.
At the time of his disappearance, Marcus was a senior at the university and he was the
father of a four-year-old son named Darius. At that time, Marcus was living in Nashville
and Darius was living with his mom in Knoxville. Although Marcus was no longer in a relationship
(03:13):
with Darius' mother, Marcus would travel from Nashville to Knoxville to visit Darius
as much as he could. Sounds like a good dad.
Yeah.
While living in Nashville, Marcus also had a two-year-old daughter with his girlfriend.
We don't have the daughter's name, but he had two kids, a four-year-old Darius and his
two-year-old daughter. On June 7th, Marcus spent the night with his girlfriend and on
(03:36):
the morning of June 8th, Marcus took their daughter to daycare. His girlfriend reports
she spoke with Marcus around 1.30 p.m. that day. This was the last time Marcus was ever
seen or heard from again.
Later that evening, David received a phone call from Marcus' worried girlfriend after
she was unable to get a hold of him. As you can imagine, this worried Marcus' parents
(03:57):
because it wasn't typical for Marcus to lose contact with his family. After trying to reach
Marcus, David called Marcus' girlfriend back and asked if she had heard from him, but she
hadn't.
It's got to be pretty scary, right?
Absolutely, yeah.
As she became more and more worried, Marcus' girlfriend decided to go to his duplex apartment
to see if she could find him.
(04:18):
So they didn't live together then?
No, I don't think so.
They each had their own place?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
Yeah, because he stayed the night with her, took their daughter to daycare, and she then
after becoming worried goes to his duplex apartment to try to find him.
Got it.
After contacting Marcus' dad to find out if David heard anything and he hadn't.
(04:40):
So with the help of Marcus' former roommate and friend, they opened a window to Marcus'
apartment, but they didn't find Marcus inside. They did, however, find Marcus' dog locked
in the bathroom with the door closed.
Now, I don't know if this is like a typical place to keep his dog or if it's unusual for
his dog to be locked in the bathroom. I mean, when we leave for an extended period of time,
(05:03):
we have our dogs in a kennel. They're trained to be in the crate. And so I don't know if
this was normal for him or if this was odd.
Because Marcus' family and friends knew this was unusual behavior for him, they called
the police and they reported him missing.
The Metro Nashville Police Department started searching for Marcus and learned that his
four-door Dodge Neon with Michigan plates was also missing. That's red, by the way.
(05:28):
As you can imagine, the police quickly turned their attention to the car. They solicited
help from local media outlets, asking the public to help find Marcus and the car.
Well, the car should stand out at least a little bit, right? Because it has Michigan
plates in there in Tennessee. So it might be a little easier to spot it.
Yeah, I mean, I think that back then, the red Dodge Neons were a dime a dozen. You could
(05:51):
probably find them all over. But in Tennessee, with the Michigan plates, that would surely
stand out a little bit more.
So on July 1st of 1998, only about a month after Marcus disappeared, police recovered
his car at the Riverwood Apartments on Cabot Drive in Nashville.
Do you know how far away from his own duplex that was?
(06:12):
I don't know exactly how far away it was, but it was across town. It was on the other
side of town.
According to detectives, when the car was processed, they were able to recover some
latent fingerprints. But as of now, they haven't been able to match the fingerprints to anybody.
It's interesting they haven't been able to match those fingerprints to anybody. Because
you're fingerprinted anytime you're arrested, anytime you're charged with a crime, if it's
(06:37):
ordered by the judge. Anytime you get a driver's license nowadays, you have to get fingerprinted.
Anytime you apply for a job that requires a background check. So it's very weird that
nobody's ever matched these fingerprints.
I do know that the main fingerprint database, APHIS, is not the only fingerprint database
out there. So it could be that whoever matches this fingerprint is in another database in
(07:02):
another state somewhere and just never put into APHIS.
I didn't know that. I thought that APHIS was the database that everyone used for this reason.
So that we're all on the same page.
Yeah, it's the main database, but it's not the only one.
Oh, wow. Well, it should be. That way you don't run into these issues, right?
(07:23):
There's one other interesting thing about this case. Remember Marcus's friend that helped
his girlfriend get into the apartment?
Yeah.
His name was Ethan Gibbs. Less than a year after Marcus disappeared, Ethan was murdered.
Ethan was gunned down on February 23rd of 1999 at his duplex apartment in Nashville.
(07:45):
What?
Yeah. One of Ethan's friends was charged with Ethan's murder, but the charges were later
dropped and that suspect was released.
So that's interesting. I wonder if there's a connection there. It's kind of odd, obviously,
that less than a year later, his friend and former roommate is gunned down at his duplex
apartment in the same city.
(08:06):
Right. Yeah, it's very suspicious. And although Marcus's family believes that there is a connection
between Ethan's murder and Marcus's disappearance, police don't have any evidence or information
to lead them to believe that these two cases are connected.
I wonder why the family thinks they're connected or what reason there would be. They had an
(08:27):
enemy or something in common or it's interesting.
I don't know. It's very strange for Marcus to just up and disappear. He was regularly
traveling to Knoxville to visit his son. He just had a two-year-old daughter that he took
to daycare. He seemed to be very well-educated and took school very seriously. So for him
to just up and vanish, he didn't do this on his own.
(08:52):
And so maybe that's why the family thinks, oh, well, there has to be some kind of connection
because his close friend, Ethan, who is trying to get into his apartment or got into his
apartment to try to find him, is killed not even a year later. It's got to be difficult
for the family for all these years to not have any answers on whatever happened to Marcus.
(09:15):
And in 2015, Marcus's mom, Geraldine, passed away before she was ever able to find any
answers into her son's disappearance.
That's sad. I hate for that to happen. A family waits... Well, at that time in 2015, it had
been almost 20 years with no answers of where her son is and she never got those answers.
(09:36):
Right. And the rest of his family is still looking for those answers. And it's just got
to be super difficult and painful to have to not know when you have somebody just taken
from you. It's different than an unexpected death. I mean, that's tragic nonetheless.
But say you have a family member that's unexpectedly taken from you because they're in a fatal
(10:00):
car crash or a crime of violence or something. Most people get to have those answers immediately
and bury or have services for their loved one. In this case, nobody knows what happened,
whether he's alive, whether something nefarious happened to him. They just don't know. And
it's unfortunate that Geraldine passed away before she could find those answers.
(10:23):
Yeah, it is. At the time of his disappearance, Marcus was 23 years old and described as six
feet tall and 190 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. Marcus would be 49 years old
today. If you have any information about the disappearance of Marcus Rutledge, you are
encouraged to contact the Metro Nashville Police Department Cold Case Unit at 615-862-7329.
(10:49):
Well thank you for that. I appreciate the help. And hopefully if you are listening,
you could also remember, reach out directly to us at mysteriesofmimosas.net. Send us a
line. There's a chat box. You can give us a tip and we will pass that information along
for you if you don't want to be identified. What else you have?
(11:10):
I don't have anything else. I don't have anything else either. And this
is a super short, super mysterious case out of Nashville. I hope that we find answers
about what happened to Marcus. And if we do, we will update you here. And in the meantime,
please do us a favor. Help us out by clicking five stars. Give us a review. Send us a line.
(11:33):
Send us a message. And share the word about our podcast. That helps us out.
Yes. I love seeing all the five star reviews. That's so very much appreciated. Or the five
star ratings. But if you want to leave a review, please do that as well.
And if you want to leave a review for specifically Max and you don't want to, you know, maybe
(11:56):
you feel like Aria is only worth two stars for her involvement in today's episode, that's
okay. But if I'm three, if I'm worth three stars and Aria is worth two stars, then I
mean, math tells me that's a five star rating. True. Or, you know, the times when Max is
one star and I'm four stars. I didn't want to go there.
(12:16):
You don't have to even mention that part. You don't have to mention that he was just
one star. You can just mention my four stars. Yeah. Or if you don't think Aria parted off
this kid, I can go back and forth with this all day, but I'm not going to. Okay. So thank
you for listening and what else you got? Anything else? Just cheers. Cheers.
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