Trenny Gibson - New Evidence In This Smoky Mountains Mystery - The Missing Enigma

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hey there, folks.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
When it comes to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
or rather the disappearances within the park, there are two
specific cases that stand out and have been responsible for
a lot of Internet myth and legend. One, of course,
is Dennis Martin, which I've covered extensively. The other is
about a teenage girl named Trenny Gibson. I'm sure many

(00:41):
people have already heard some version of her story, or
at least are familiar with her name, and I have
to say, much like the Dennis Martin case, I think
the story of Trenny Gibson is.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Often told poorly.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
The lack of significant detail is what I believe leads
to the creation of myths like the feral wild people
of the Smokies. These types of creations are what some
people invent to fill in the gaps, so to speak,
while doing it in a way that would capture the
public's imagination and seemingly endless desire for mystery or the paranormal.

(01:14):
For myself, I had some understanding of the Trenny Gibson
case before investigating it, but after doing the old deep dive,
I realized I didn't know the half of it. But
that's what this video is for, so we can educate
ourselves and go over the best available information while consulting
all sources we can, and even other investigators are experts

(01:35):
on the subject. The story in details I'm about to
relay come from a variety of sources, the official Park
Service investigation, newspaper articles, and the book Unsolved Disappearances in
the Great Smoky Mountains by Juanita Baldwin and Ester Grubb,
who did a lot of great investigative work. But later
I will also be showing you an interview I did

(01:57):
with two authorities on the case who reveal plenty of
previously unknown information. Anyway, I'm already starting a rant, so
let's just get right into the disappearance of Trenny Lynn Gibson.

(02:26):
Trenny Lynn Gibson was a sixteen year old girl living
in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her home, located on White Tower Road,
was just large enough to house both of her parents
and a number of siblings. Her father, Bob Gibson, was
the director of personnel development for Malta International Corporation, and
he was also a member of the National Guard. His

(02:48):
work often required him to be away on business for
a couple of weeks every month. Her mother was Hope Gibson,
who said that Trenny was close to her parents as
well as her other siblings. These included an older brother,
Robert Junior, who was nineteen and in the military, a
younger sister, Tina, who was fourteen, and Miracle, who was five.

(03:09):
Trenny was also close to the family dog, Mitzi, whom
she reportedly loved dearly. Trenny attended the local Beard and
High School, where, despite being shy, she still had a
number of friends. As the day of October eighth approached,
Trenny's father was away in New Orleans on a business trip,
leaving her mother as the sole parent. Again, this was

(03:30):
a rather common occurrence in the Gibson house, and nothing
was reportedly out of the ordinary in the time leading
up to this event.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
On the day of.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
October eighth, nineteen seventy six, Trenny's class was gearing up
for a planned mystery field trip to the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park, but more specifically, they were planning to
travel to Klingman's Dome parking lot and then go on
a hike. To get there, you have to travel on
the Newfound Gap Road and then make a turn onto
Klingman's Dome Road. This road the Appalachian Trail closely until

(04:02):
it eventually reaches the parking lot and trailhead. At this point,
they planned to hike the Forney Ridge Trail south to
a location called Andrew's Bald. The trail runs along the
top of the steep Forney's Ridge and is roughly three
miles round trip. Andrew's Bald is essentially a high point
on the ridge and a decent spot to stop and

(04:23):
take a break. Other trails in the area lead north
towards Klingman's Dome, a popular observation tower, which subsequently connects
to the Appalachian Trail. These areas, however, were not intended.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
To be part of the hike.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
I call this excursion a mystery field trip because none
of the students or their parents knew the destination before
the actual day of the trip. The journey to Andrew's
Bald was part of a horticulture class that Trenny was
taking at Beard And High School, and it was to
be led by teacher Wayne Dunlap. Mister Dunlap would wind
up being the only person chaperoning the forty se students

(05:00):
who would end up going on this excursion. He did
try to find additional chaperones, including Treenny's own mother, who
apparently agreed to go at one point, only to call
it off later. Despite mister Dunlap's best efforts, he was
certainly going to have his hands full with a forty
to one ratio of students to adults. Trenny's mother would

(05:20):
later state that Trenny herself had not planned on going
on the field trip that morning, believing that it would
be called off due to intense rain that was hitting
the area. Because of this, Trenny didn't even take a
jacket with her to school that day. Trenny left home
wearing a blue shirt, blue and white sweatshirt, blue jeans,
and a star sapphire and diamond ring. Hope Gibson drove

(05:43):
Trenny to school that day, during which time they passed
another student. Trenny asked them if the field trip was
still on, and she was told that it was indeed.
Missus Gibson dropped her daughter off at beard And High School,
then drove away, never thinking twice about the field trip
that day. Fortunately for Trenny, she was able to borrow
a brown plaid jacket from her friend Robert Simpson sometime

(06:07):
that day. And yes, there are a lot of Robert's
already in this story. Just for clarity, we have Robert Gibson,
Senior Trenny's father, then Robert Gibson, Junior, Trenny's older brother,
but we also have Robert Simpson, Trenny's friend, and just
a pile on to that, Robert Simpson's father who was
also named Robert Simpson, but we won't end up talking

(06:30):
about him in this video too much anyway.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Moving on.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Shortly after arriving at school, the forty students tromped onto
the school bus monitored by mister Dunlap. When all were aboard,
he announced that their location would be the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park. The students all cheered in response to
the news. Mister Dunlap laid out the plans for the day.
They would drive to Klingman's Dome parking lot, then hike

(06:55):
the trail out to Andrew's Bald before returning to the
bus using the same trail. Mister Dunlap put strict rules
in place that no one was to stray from the
trail or take any side trails during the hike. The
students were to observe the trees and plant life that
they encountered along the way. The plan was to have
everyone back at the bus by three thirty pm. During

(07:18):
the roughly two hour bus ride, Trenny sat next to
her friend Robert Simpson. They talked and joked along with
other students. There was never any hint that anything was amiss.
The bus would arrive at Klingman's Dome parking lot around
twelve thirty pm. According to mister Dunlap. The group left
Klingman's Dome parking Lot shortly after twelve thirty pm, heading

(07:40):
towards the trail that led to Andrew's Bald. Mister Dunlap
had reminded everyone to take their coats with them as
the day was cold and overcast, and to remember to
meet back at the bus at three thirty pm. The
air at the time was filled with the loud talking
and cackling of a group of forty teenagers let loose
in the four of the Smokies. A few students raised

(08:03):
each other to Andrew's Bald, running out far in front
of the bulk of the group. As the party moved
along and was forced to thin out along the narrow trail.
They ended up breaking up into smaller groups. Given that
the students were spread out, all arrived at Andrew's Bald
at different times. Trenny walked with her friend Robert and
both arrived safely at Andrew's Bald around one thirty PM.

(08:26):
After spending some time at their destination, a majority of
the students decided to begin hiking back to the bus.
Trenny decided to leave with this group, while Robert stayed behind.
It is reported that this party left Andrew's Bald at
around one fifty pm. Many students were attempting to hurry
back to the bus as the weather had worsened and

(08:47):
they were not dressed accordingly. Nobody seemed especially intent on
looking at any trees or foliage. Trenny was reportedly last
seen by a number of students at approximately two fifty PM.
When everyone arrived back at the buses, The time was
roughly three thirty, just as planned. As is typical, a
head count was done just to make sure everyone was there.

(09:10):
This was the point where people began to realize that
Trenny was missing. Mister Dunlap questioned his students, and a
girl named Bobby Coghill came forward. She said that she
was walking with Angela Beckner and Lisa Mickls when Trenny
came up behind them, walking faster than they were. Bobby
began walking with Trenny. At that point, she said, they

(09:31):
both caught up with Scott Troy and Anita Rounds and
began walking with them for about five minutes or so.
Bobby asked if anyone was breathing hard, and Trenny said yeah, everybody.
Then someone suggested that they take a moment to rest.
At that point, everyone stopped and sat down, except for Trenny.

(09:52):
She said she didn't want to stop, and so she
separated from the group and kept moving. Anita Rounds estimated
that they were roughly happy a mile or three quarters
of a mile from Klingman's Dome parking area when Trenny
left them. Anita said that she was watching her and
it looked as if Trenny had gone right off the trail.
David Eastham came up behind her, so she turned around

(10:14):
to look at him, but when she turned back around,
Trenny was not there. They all assumed that she would
be back at the bus. No student had seen Treny
after she walked into the woods around three PM, Mister Dunlap,
perhaps thinking that Treny must be back on the trail somewhere,
sent a student named Danny Johnson down to Andrew's Bald

(10:35):
while he walked out towards Double Springs, a location to
the northwest. Mister Dunlap probably made this decision on the
assumption that Trenny missed the turn back to the parking lot.
During this time, the students were told to stay put
in the parking area and maybe spend some time searching it,
but never to leave the area. Danny Johnson did not

(10:57):
find any trace of Trenny. Mister Dunlapp, however, saw tennis
shoe tracks about Trenny's size on the Appalachian Trail and
heading towards Double Spring Shelter. He lost the trail approximately
half a mile past the intersection of the Appalachian Trail
and the trails to Forney Creek and Andrew's Bald. The
search for Trenny begins quickly after she vanishes, and there

(11:20):
are detailed records of how things unfolded hour by hour. However,
many folks would probably find that boring, so I'm going
to provide the basic bullet points.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Of how the search progressed.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
A park technician, Sammy Layle, was called by mister Dunlap
via CBE radio. He was informed of the disappearance and
dispatched to the area. He arrived at the Dome parking
lot around four thirty PM. The lot was searched, and
then he went up the trail towards Double Springs. Mister
Dunlap continued his search along the Appalachian Trail before heading

(11:54):
back towards the parking area and officially reporting Trenny Gibson
as missing. He then continued back on the Appalachian Trail.
As darkness fell, the school group began making their way
home around five thirty PM. The feeling amongst the students
was that Treney had run off with someone. However, mister
Dunlap did not agree with that assessment, but he had

(12:15):
no other theory on what could have happened. Rangers Taylor, Dick,
and Phillips arrived in the area around six thirty pm.
Phillips checked the Mount Colin shelter and then walked to
Colin's Gap. Taylor and Dick interviewed mister Dunlap and then
picked up Phillips at the Collins Gap before returning to
the Dome parking area.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Later on, they met.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Up with Layle, who was just returning from his search
of the Double Springs area. No people on the trail
or at the shelters had seen Trenny at any point
during the day. As seven pm approached, additional search and
rescue resources.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Were called in.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
By eight twenty four pm, Trenny's mother had been informed
of her daughter's disappearance. After searchers contacted Beard and high school.
Hope called her husband, who decided to fly home immediately.
Both of Treeny's parents were expected to arrive at the
park headquarters as soon as mister Gibson arrived at the airport,
Rangers spoke to the high school principal, who said that

(13:12):
Treney was a good student with no problems. He said
that he would interview teachers and children to try and
get more info on Treeney's past activities and when she
was last seen on the trail. By nine pm, more
searchers arrived at the Dome parking lot, bringing food, batteries,
and other supplies. Quadrant maps were used to help divvy

(13:32):
up territory and direct search efforts. A crew on the
Tennessee side of the park were standing by to help
if needed. The weather that evening was rainy, cold, and wet.
At ten fifteen PM, searchers split into pairs and began
searching numerous areas, including Forney Creek, Andrew's Bald, and Collin's Gap.
Men were prepared to stay all night in order to search. However,

(13:55):
by midnight, all search teams reported in and all had
negative results. Both of Trenny's parents arrived around midnight, bringing
some dirty clothes belonging to Treny that would assist search
dogs in picking up a cent. At two thirty am,
many searchers left the area to go home, but leaving
three in the parking lot to stay overnight. At seven

(14:17):
am on October ninth, all NPS personnel arrived back at
the Dome parking lot, relieving the three who had stayed overnight.
Four dog teams would arrive an hour later. The main
focus of the search on this day was the path
towards Andrew's Bald and also the trail out to Forny Creek.
During this time, the road up to Klingman's Dome was closed.

(14:38):
A student had informed searchers that he last saw Trenny
leave the trail and head east into very dense undergrowth,
but he did not specify a point on the trail
where this occurred. With more search crews on the way,
the teams that were already present fanned out to their
respective objectives. At ten thirty am, one of the dog
teams picked up a scent near Andrews's Bald and then

(15:00):
headed towards Forny Creek Trail, but no visible signs were detected.
Ranger and tracker Dwight McCarter would arrive at eleven h
five am on this day. Folks may remember him as
an important participant in the search for Dennis Martin in
this very same park. A group of twenty marines also
arrived to assist in the search, though they were not

(15:21):
dressed for the cold weather. They were only cleared to
search for a short period of time. Helicopters were put
in the air, but bad weather prevented them from making
it to Klingman's Dome. At two pm on this day,
a pair of searchers with a bloodhound got a scent
while walking the Appalachian Trail at the Klingman's Dome Tower.
They followed the scent off trail to Klingman's Dome Road

(15:44):
and then lost the scent at.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
The road itself.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
This area is called Colin's Gap and there is a
parking lot here for people looking to stop. The search
continued throughout the day, eventually ending at eight pm that evening.
It was around this time that information came back from
a teacher who had interviewed some of the students, Anita Bounds,
Scott Troy, and Bobby Coghill. They said they had seen

(16:07):
Treny about half a mile from the Dome parking area.
They stopped to rest and Treny went on ahead. They
said she seemed to be in a hurry to get back.
Anita said that she last saw Trenny on the trail,
then looked away, and when she looked back, Trenny was
nowhere in sight. Bobby Coghill said that he was watching
the trail and saw someone who looked like Trenny stop,

(16:29):
bend over and then make a right turn off of
the trail and into the woods. Searchers went and checked
that area, but there was no trail leading away anywhere.
The location was rough terrain with brush and trees. When
dogs were brought in to try and pick up a
scent there. They were unsuccessful. The end of the first
day had negative results, but the dogs picking up Trenny's

(16:51):
scent were big clues. One thing I want to mention
now and kind of put an asterisk by, is that,
according to Baldwin and Grubb, searchers found three cigarette butts
and a beer can with some beer still in it
close to the spot where Treney was last seen, so
essentially the spot where she walked off trail and into
the woods. We'll get back to the cigarettes later though.

(17:14):
On October tenth, the search restarted around eight thirty am.
Helicopters were able to begin the search by air now
that the weather had cleared up a bit. At one pm,
search dogs again picked up a scent along the Appalachian
Trail heading to Colin's Gap. The dog handlers said that
the dogs were following almost the exact same pattern as

(17:34):
they were yesterday, showing movement along the trail and then
moving off and connecting to the Klingman's Dome Road. All
search teams were out of commission by four thirty PM. Again,
Baldwin and Grubb state that on this day searchers found
eight cigarette butts at the spot where Trenees sent trail
petered out on the road. Again, this spot has a

(17:56):
little parking area for people pulling off of the roads.
Were of the same brand found a day earlier at
the spot where Trenny stepped off the trail.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
And again I have to put a little.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Asterisk here because I cannot find this fact among the
daily search logs, and you would think that they would
put that in there because it seems like important evidence.
But again we'll talk about cigarettes later. On October eleventh,
searchers arrived at eight am to continue the ground search.
At ten fifteen am, search dogs were again sent out

(18:28):
along the Appalachian Trail and once again multiple dogs confirmed
the positive hit along the trail from the Klingman's Dome
tower heading towards Colin's Gap. And to be clear, the
search dogs are detecting a trail from this area and
heading east to northeast up the trail to Colin's Gap,
which gets so close to the road that it wouldn't

(18:48):
be difficult at all to go off trail and get
on the road itself. After four point thirty PM, many
search crews were released from duty. At seven pm, one
more dog team came in to check the Appalachian Trail.
This dog team once again confirmed the results of the
others positive hits along the trail, heading towards Collin's Gap

(19:09):
and the road. Starting October twelfth, the search began to
peter out a bit, with fewer search personnel showing up.
The daily logs end entirely on October eighteenth, with no
new evidence having been found along the trail or in
the forests. The search would officially end on October twenty second,
and overall it was an intense effort, with hundreds of people,

(19:31):
including rangers and volunteers, being involved on any given day.
In total, some seven hundred and fifty six different searchers
were involved over the entire course of the operation. They
made frequent and effective use of search dogs and even
helicopters when the weather allowed. The search radius went three
miles in all directions, and trails in the area were

(19:53):
searched for up to fifteen miles. Nothing was found that
gave indication that Treney was still in the park. Afterwards,
the Governor of Tennessee would announce a five thousand dollars
reward for anyone who had information leading to the arrest
or conviction of an individual responsible for Trenny's disappearance. The
reward drew in no new information. The next year, on

(20:16):
April eighteenth, nineteen seventy seven, a renewed search was performed
in the area where Treney disappeared. A line sweep system
was used for intensive coverage in hopes of finding some
clues that would solve the mystery. Unfortunately, after great effort,
nothing came of the thorough search. The FBI did become
involved in this case as many rangers believe that Treney

(20:40):
was no longer in the park and it became increasingly
more likely that twenty may have been a victim of
foul play. The FBI ran their investigation behind the scenes,
as they always do. They went to Beard In High
School and interviewed all the students in Treenne's class in
Principal Frank Hall's office. Whatever the FBI learned during their
investmentstigation is still unknown, because although the Park Service saw

(21:03):
fit to release their records on this case, the FBI
has not. To this day, they still issue denials based
on the fact that Trenny's case is still open and
there remains a possibility that we could see law enforcement proceedings.
It's a fairly common reason for a denial, so much
like the Dennis Martin case in this same area, the

(21:24):
FBI is still holding out. Of course, the FBI did
release their files on Dennis Martin after constant protest one day.
I suspect Trenny's file will follow suit. Trenny's father, Robert Gibson,

(21:47):
believed that foul play was involved in his daughter's disappearance.
He believed that someone had abducted her. He said that
she was a top student, well liked, and did not date.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Hope.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Gibson told newspapers, Trenny just never dated. She really didn't
have any boyfriends. In fact, if she did like a boy,
he'd never know it. Though she was known to be
with several boys while at school, neither parent believed that
Trenny would run away with a boy or for any
other reason. The Gibson family said that one year prior
to Treny's disappearance, they had received threats from an unnamed person,

(22:22):
and they feared this individual may have taken twenty They
tried their best to get media support and publicizing Trenny's disappearance,
telling them that Trenny was level headed but not experienced
in the mountains. Some of the reasons that Trenny's parents
believed that she had not run off with someone were
that she left two hundred dollars in cash in her
room and that she had not taken any money from

(22:44):
her savings. Trenny had been working at a place called
Morrison's Cafeteria and had earned two thousand dollars, which was
left untouched. Trenny had a dog at home, Mitzi, whom
her parents said she loved. She also had injured her
foot about three weeks prior and still took medicine for it,
which was at home, and she was looking forward to

(23:05):
spending time with her brother, Robert Junior on that very weekend.
Robert Gibson Senior spent a lot of time advocating for
further searches near Klingman's Dome, despite believing foul play was involved.
For a while, it worked, and mister Gibson's constant pushing
caused more resources to be put on the ground. In
nineteen seventy seven. Trenny's mother was not as convinced that

(23:28):
a secondary search would be of any assistance. When the
second search did occur, few volunteers showed up, and mister
Gibson was disappointed. Rangers told him that many of the
searchers who had participated in the first search did not
believe Trenny was in the park anymore and therefore unwilling
to spend more time climbing around the mountains in bad weather.

(23:49):
As previously stated, the secondary search in nineteen seventy seven
was a failure, turning up no new trace or any
evidence at all. Mister Gibson consulted experts in just about
every possible avenue or a theory related to Trenny's disappearance.
In the end, that's all he had theories. There were
no certainties, and he would be forced to go on

(24:12):
with his life not knowing what really happened that day.
In October, Trenny's brother, Robert Gibson Junior, took a leave
from his service in the Navy to come home and
participate in the search for Treny. It said that he
searched those mountains until his feet bled. He could not
fathom that Trenny would have run away of her own
free will. Telling a newspaper, Trenny and I have been

(24:34):
this close since we were real little. There's no way
she'd go anywhere when she knew I was coming home.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
No way.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
In the years after Treny's disappearance, Hope Gibson would be
contacted by Juanita Baldwin about her book Hope, a highly
religious woman, wrote a letter to be included in its pages.
I will let an excerpt of her words speak instead
of mine. Never for a moment after the third day
of the search for Trenny, have I thought she was

(25:03):
lost in the mountains. Too many unanswered questions, But praise God,
the day is coming when I'll have the answer to
every question. Not only will I learn why Trenny's comb
that she never ever parted with was found in the
car of a friend, or why that friend was never
allowed to be questioned, or why instead of walking back

(25:24):
to the parking lot with her after eating half of
her lunch, went tracking a bear. Oh, so many unanswered questions, However,
I find the more I stay on my knees in prayer,
the more God answers.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Now.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Hope's letter was a whole lot longer than that, but
most of it does not really include anything factual about
the case and is really much more focused on her
faith and belief in God. Still Hope is alive today,
though I believe her last name is now Vaughn. As
you might glean from that short bit I just read,
Hope still seems to think there was some element of

(26:01):
foul play involved in her daughter's disappearance. The problem is
nobody has really been able to connect the dots in
a way that makes sense. As always happens in a
high profile disappearance, there is a flood of reported sightings

(26:25):
and also visions by psychics. Treny's disappearance was no different.
Some of these reports appear more legitimate than others, so
we will focus on just a few. For example, shortly
after the incident, a girl matching Trenny's description came to
Bryson City to get married. She gave her name as
Alice Marie. Another reported sighting was of a girl believed

(26:47):
by witness to be Trenny, getting on a plane at
Newark with a much older man, heavy set, wearing green pants.
The man and the girl got off the plane in
Nassau at eleven thirty pm. It's unknown if this was
ever investigated. Another sighting was from a girl who came
into the Waynesville Hospital with minor cuts and bruises. She

(27:08):
was accompanied by four men and gave different names to
the nurse who was treating her. One of these names
was Rita Kay Gibson. The nurse in question said that
the girl fit the description released for Trenny Gibson. After investigation,
it was determined that this was not Trenty, but a
local girl. Still, I thought it would be prudent to
leave it in here because this is often how these

(27:30):
tips end up as misidentifications. A psykic contacted the park
Service while the search was occurring and stated Trenny was
still alive or else frozen in a sitting position. They
said that searchers are close, but need to search a
little to the left of the area they were currently in,
or near the mouth of a creek. The psychic saw

(27:51):
Trenny sitting in a hollow or what might be a
bear den in a rocky area with little undergrowth. The
information was acted on to the best of searchers abilities,
but nothing came of it. Robert Simpson was always looked

(28:17):
upon with some suspicion. He was Trenny's friend and spent
a lot of time with her that day. Robert's father,
Robert Simpson Senior, was an assistant US attorney. He was
a pretty powerful man. Some thought that he would have
the ability to stifle an investigation into his son if
Robert Jor was ever suspected of criminal behavior, especially in

(28:39):
the case of Treny. Of course, Robert Jor separated from
Trenny at Andrew's Bald, and by all accounts, he never
saw Trenny again. No witnesses saw him chasing Trenny or
anything like that either. In terms of detail, all we
really have is Robert's testimony. He was asked by authorities
to write down everything he could remember about the incident

(29:00):
the day after Trenny disappeared. In his statement, he describes
the bus ride and walking to Andrew's Bald. Robert and
Trenny hiked about a mile together and then stopped for
a rest as Trenny was breathing hard. After five minutes,
they started down the trail again. When the two reached
Andrew's Bald, Trenny was in good spirits. They looked around

(29:20):
a bit, then stood under a tree when it began raining.
By the time the bulk of the students were ready
to head back. Trenny asked Robert if he was coming
with them. Robert said that he was going to stay
a little while longer. She said goodbye, and that was
the last time Robert saw her. When Robert did start
heading back on his own, he apparently started or attempted

(29:41):
to track a bear he supposedly believed was in the area.
What caused him to believe this, whether he saw a
bear or scat or bear sign is unknown. I'll also
add that I have yet to find a quote from
Robert himself indicating he actually did this, but Trenny's mother
indicated he made such a statement, so we'll go with that.

(30:03):
When Robert got back to the bus and saw that
Trenny was missing, he started asking people questions about what
they saw.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
They told him that.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
They stopped to rest and Trenny kept going. They also
said that the trail curved to the left, but Trenny
went to the right into the forest and nobody had
seen her since. Newspapers at the time often mentioned an

(30:34):
incident that was at the forefront of investigator's minds when
it came to a potential abduction angle. The story goes
that Trenny had received threats from an unknown man who
had attempted to break into her room over a year prior,
but this individual is not unknown. That man's name was
Kelvin Bowman. Most public sources kind of tell a story

(30:56):
that this was a guy who apparently tried to date
twenty two years prior, but she seems to have denied
his advances.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
The incident at the heart.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Of all this, however, involves Kelvin Bowman going to the
Gibson house late one night and breaking into or attempting
to break into Trenny's room Hope Gibson. Trenny's mother would
end up shooting Kelvin Bowman in the foot or leg
and police were called afterwards. Kelvin was subsequently arrested, tried,
and sentenced to jail. The Gibson family mentioned in some

(31:27):
newspapers that Kelvin made threats to Treney while in the
courtroom after sentencing. All of this seems to indicate that
this might have been a man who would have a
motive to harm Treny. According to Baldwin and Grubb, after
Treny disappeared, a few students from her school came forward
to Trenny's parents saying that they had seen Kelvin Bowman

(31:48):
following the bus as it traveled to the Smoky Mountains.
They also said that Trenny's hair comb was found in
her friend Robert Simpson's car. Robert Gibson approached the Knox
County Sheriff with this information and hopes that he could
use it to investigate both Kelvin Bowman and Robert Simpson
to see if they were at all involved in Trenny's disappearance.

(32:09):
Concerns would only increase after Tina Gibson, Trenny's fourteen year
old sister, had a conversation with Robert Simpson. Tina said
that Robert visited the Gibson house twice while her parents
were staying in Gatlinburg as the search for Trenny was
continuing in the Smoky Mountains. During one of these visits,

(32:29):
Robert Simpson told Tina, quote, if Kelvin Bowman has Treny,
he will kill her. If he does not have her,
I think she might have run off with some horny hitchhiker.
The Knox County Sheriff's Department was charged with investigating Kelvin
Bowman's involvement. They interviewed mister Dunlap, Trenny's teacher and field

(32:49):
trip leader, who was certain that no cars had been
following the bus. He felt positive because he hadn't told
anyone what their destination was until all of the students
were on the bus and departing for the Smokies. Beard
and high school principal Frank Hall told the sheriff that
Kelvin Bowman was in school on October eighth, nineteen seventy six,

(33:10):
the same day Trenny vanished. Due to the alibi, Kelvin
Bowman was cleared of suspicion. The comb that was rumored
to have been found in Robert Simpson's vehicle was seemingly
never investigated. Much like the Dennis Martin case that I've

(33:36):
covered a handful of times, I think it is necessary
to discuss the missing four one one retelling of this
case because I believe it has caused a lot of
misconceptions and confusion. I know some people dislike it when
I do this, but it helps set the record straight.
If someone corrects something I present in one of my
videos and they have evidence to show that I'm wrong,

(33:57):
I have no problem with that. In fact, I appreciate it.
I'm not interested in presenting incorrect information, and I'm less
interested in clinging to an outdated version of a story
instead of evolving my own thinking. So let's take a
quick look at this. In Missing four one one the
Eastern US, David Politis theorizes that someone or something pulled

(34:18):
Trenny off the trail. This is mainly based solely on
the fact that Trenny's attention seem to have been on
something in the woods, though it seems quite clear from
the testimony of Trenny's classmates that she willingly walked off
into the woods and was not forced by anything or anyone.
Though it's not explicitly stated in the book, there seems

(34:39):
to be some implication that Bigfoot might be involved or something,
and Robert Simpson supposedly tracking a bear is used to
justify this line of thinking. Again, it feels similar to
the Dennis Martin case in that sense. But for me,
that's all just whatever. I don't really care. That's all
opinion and theory, and people are in the rights to

(35:00):
have those The part I take issue with is that
Politis mentions that search dogs picked up twenty sent at
Andrew's Bald, quoting one specific report from Swain County Rescue
Squad canine unit had interesting information. Dog number one picks
up scent at Andrew's bald and heads toward the Fornee
Creek trail. Two dogs had hit on this same area,

(35:23):
but Politis fails to mention that another group tracked her
sent to a road in the report which Politis references,
this is in bold and underlined. How could you leave
that out? But more important than that, this specific scent
trail heading to the road was confirmed numerous times in
the daily search logs. As we read, it's impossible to miss.

(35:45):
Politis never mentions it once. You can draw your own conclusions,
but to me, it feels like it isn't mentioned because
it indicates that Trenny left the park entirely, and the
theory in this book is that Trenny was grabbed off
the trail by someone or something, which, to be honest
with you, sounds like foul play to me. And whenever

(36:06):
I see that, I'm reminded of the missing four one
one exclusionary criteria, which include both foul play and voluntary disappearance.
There's no way you could rule those out of this case.
They are easily the two most viable theories. Anyway, I
won't linger on this topic, but I have to bring
it up because oftentimes the information most people are familiar

(36:28):
with comes from Missing four one one, and the record
really needs to be set straight.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
So let's move on.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
There's something that occurs sometimes with select cold cases. They
capture the interest of someone with an inclination to spend
their time, energy and resources on investigating an incident that
others have given up on. It's true for a couple
of people in this case, one of them you've probably
already met on this channel love him or hate him.

(37:06):
Police officer Michael Bouchard has taken an interest in Trenny's case,
much like he did for another Smoky Mountains mystery, the
Dennis Martin case. Michael Bauchard is also an author, and
he has published a number of books about his investigations
into cold cases. But there's someone else as well, a
woman named Laura Risti who caught an interest in Trenny's

(37:28):
case and has been investigating it for years. Many consider
her to be quite an authority on the details of
this incident, having spoken to many of those involved. She
currently runs a website dedicated to Trenny and her opinion
and knowledge on the case are well respected. These two
people know a lot more about the case than you
would get from reading any report, newspaper, or book. At

(37:51):
this moment, much of this unknown information is currently just
in their heads. For this reason, I felt it was
absolutely necessary to have them on the channel and talk
to both of them about what they have learned about
the case and what theories they have developed when it
comes to what happened to Trenny. Having talked to them,
I can tell you that they definitely have information that

(38:12):
you will not find anywhere else.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Now.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
I did a two hour interview with them, so it
all won't make it into this video, but I will
be showing you what I found to be the most
important and interesting information. If you want to watch the
full video, I will post it for free on my Patreon.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
The link to that will be in the description.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
I just the first thing I wanted to do is
confirm I mean, we both know the story of what happened.
She's going on a school field trip, they go to
Andrews Bald, she's coming back and then people see her apparently.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Walk off trail.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
And the thing that I'm a little curious to get
your impressions on because I have my own. Is that
it appears, based on the scent trails and whatnot, that
she walks off trail and then it kind of sounds
like at some point she gets back on the trail
up near the Appalachian Trail, because it seems like dogs
picked up her scent up there, and she takes the
Appalation Trail or Appalachian Trail. Excuse me, people get angry

(39:21):
when I mispronounce it heading east until it gets really
close to the Klingman's Dome road and then it seems
like she cut across to the road and then that's
where the scent trail stops. Is that your guys understanding
of what the scent trails show or what our best
knowledge is of her path of travel after she disappeared.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
If that's correct, it's very indicative of like when people
are being tracked by a dog and they hit a
main road. Now she hit gone out to the other
side of the road. The dog would have picked up
a scent, so she had to get into a car. Well. Again,
another obstacle we're dealing with was the weather conditions with

(40:06):
rain and everything else. I don't in my mind see
how the dogs were really brought in the next day.
If you have rain on you know, any type of
contact DNA, it usually destroys it. Similar to the Dennis
Martin case, they brought dogs in, but Dennis's DNA with

(40:29):
all that rain had been destroyed way before the dogs
even came in. So my question is what were the
dogs actually tracking?

Speaker 2 (40:36):
So and Laura, do you have any point of view
kind of on Treny's path of travel based on, you know,
the NPS report and anything you've learned about the case.

Speaker 4 (40:47):
Well, Michael and I were talking, but I've always sort
of wondered. There was a group of students that she
was walking with and they stopped to rest and try
said that she wanted to keep going, so she left
their group and she kept walking. And the consensus among

(41:09):
that group was it looked like at one point Trenny stopped,
looked to the right, and went off the trail, And
I often wondered if that was true, or if that
was what they saw, but then Trenny perhaps stepped back
on the trail and continued her journey boards the bus,

(41:33):
or if the students are mistaken, or if that's what
they were told to tell the authorities. Interestingly enough, Trenny's
sent was also picked up by Clinton's Dome, and that
was a part of like an area that wasn't covered
by the field trip itself. The dome at one time

(41:57):
had a storeroom in the base of it. I should
say the storeroom is still there. It's it's just reconfigured
a bit. But there was an area in the base
of the dome and it was used for a storage room,
and it had a dirt floor. And one of my
concerns or questions was that it was a potential, potentially

(42:20):
a good place to put someone or hold someone as
it as it had it had dirt floor in it.
But in speaking with Dwight McCarter, he claims that that
tower base was searched and he said it was locked
at the time. They had to bring in something to
bust the lock off of it, and he said there

(42:42):
was there was nothing there at the at the time.
But yet her set sent was picked up in that area.
But in all of that, I tend to agree that
she she left the park by car. I believe it
Frenny was to be found in the park, they would
have found her barring that she plunged so deeply into

(43:06):
the undergrowth and the thicket and everything that they absolutely
could not find any remains to verify that she that
she died in the Smokies. So I think it's either
that's what happened to her or she left the park
by car, because if I believe if she had been
anywhere else, they likely would have found her.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
With this case kind of like many others that are
kind of there's kind of little details that people pick
up on and then it builds. People build theories, and
there's one I see commented on a lot, but when
I was researching for my video, I couldn't really find
much to verify any of it. And it has to
do with trending wearing a star sapphire ring or a

(43:51):
sapphire diamond ring. I'm not sure which, but some people
make a big deal out of that as if like
who gave it to her?

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Where did she get it?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Did she have a friend who may be involved that
we don't know about. So I'm curious what you guys
know about this ring and it's provenance.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
Yeah, Like what I was told by her family was
the treenty was given the ring by the family, and
it was worth about six hundred dollars, and back in
nineteen seventy six, that was, you know, a lot of money.
It was, so it was it was semi valuable, and
she was wearing it the day that she disappeared, and

(44:28):
it came to find out. They came to find out
that this ring ended up in the possession of a
girl that was in the sophomore class, so she was
a grade below twenty, and she and Trenty knew each other.
This girl was quite a talented singer. They knew each

(44:49):
other from from church and also from Bearden Junior High
and Bearden Senior High where they were attending when when
Trenny disappeared, and that that was very suspicious as to
why she'd have this ring. And a girl that came forward,
a grown up lady now came forward to me about

(45:11):
six years ago and told me that she was the
one that confronted this girl via telephone after her mother
found out that this girl had Trenny's ring. And this
girl that confronted the possessor of the ring asked her,
you know, how did you get it? You know, how

(45:34):
did you come to have it? Why do you still
have it. Why don't you give it to the Gibson family,
that sort of sort of thing. This girl was very
evasive in her in her answers, she said that she
was given the ring by Treny to hold for and
when pressured, she finally said that, yes, it probably is

(45:57):
the right thing to do to return the ring to
the parents of Trenny. But she never ever did. And
this person passed away. What year are we in now,
she passed away twenty one years ago now. Trenny herself
gave the ring to this girl, according.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
To her, on the day she disappeared, Yes, to hold
interesting and.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
Like my father would have said, you know this girl
that had the ring, well it didn't do her any
damn good because she passed away. She was quite young,
in her early forties. So I don't know if that's
karma coming around or you know, something something else. I'm
not sure, but I don't know why if you had

(46:44):
this thing, why you didn't want to, you know, give
it back. But you know, maybe she had her her
own read now with the ring the ring story, another
story to that is Robert Sims. And I don't know
if Michael has told you much about Robert Simpson, but

(47:05):
he sat with Trenny on the bus that day, and
he was the young man that Trenny hiked to Andrew's
Bald with. And he came forward and told Miss Gibson,
Trenny's mother that when Trenny was in the washroom that
that afternoon washing her hands, she took her ring off

(47:27):
and she gave it to a different girl in the
sophomore class. Now, this girl is completely different from the
one I just talked about, totally different girl. Trenny handed
the ring to her and said that she wanted her
to hold it for her. And when questioned, this girl

(47:47):
didn't know about this ring, didn't have it whatever. And
it seemed odd to me why Robert Simpson would know this,
why he would be privy to this infation that Trenny
took her ring off and gave it to a girl
in the sophomore class. I've interviewed a lot of Beard

(48:08):
and alumni that were in the same class with Trenny.
Some knew her, some didn't know her very well, but
nobody could see why she'd take off a valuable piece
of jewelry like that and give it to somebody to
hold for her, Because it wasn't like a ten dollars ring.
It was a six hundred dollar piece of jewelry.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
So right, okay, and so so, Mike, you're putting your
cop had on since you're a police officer. When you
hear this about the ring. A lot of people think
this has significance in the case, maybe towards foul play.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
What do you think it actually could because you know,
my question is the first girl that was supposed to
have it was Tina Mayde and she was I believe
the one that was had gotten it first, and then
it went to Robin Moses. Now here's the problem. I've

(49:05):
tried to contact uh, Tina Mays and Robin's sister Kathy Tuck,
and none of them want to talk. So my cop
hat right away says, you know you've done something because
but you know, I find it really odd with this case.

(49:26):
Is a lot of these people and you know I
and I you know, you know I'm hypocritical, hypocritical about people.
Is these are all like born again Christians and all
of this stuff. You know, baby, let me tell you what.
Hell's got one door and your ass is going into it.
You know what I'm saying, Because you're all liars. You're

(49:47):
all liars. You know how you got the ring, you
know how she got the ring. So and then you
know your sister won't clear you. The other one won't
say anything. So you know, it could have something or
it could just be a total from what I've I've

(50:08):
talked to one of the teachers that replaced Wayne Dunlop,
and basically he said he wouldn't doubt it if she
stole it because that's just the type of person he
said she was. And his name, her name came up
right away, right when I said, Hey, what do you
think his name? Her name came right up right away. No,
that would have been Robin Moses.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Robin Moses.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
He says she was much. She was a teenager going
on forty one. Bad friends, bad habits, bad everything. So
you know, and you got to understand, I mean, if
you look at the dynamics of how many of these
people that were involved in this passed away because of
substance abuse, I mean, holy crap. Yeah, I mean you know,

(50:54):
I say it's Trenny's curse, the wrath of Trenny, because
everybody that had something to do with this passed away
has passed away even Kelvin Bowman.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
The other piece of evidence that people talk a lot about.
It's one of those ones that you know, you look
in the report and you won't find it, but you'll
find a lot of people talking about it. And that's
that a beer can with some beer in it and
some cigarette cigarette butts were found on the trail, and
then some more cigarette butts were found at the location

(51:30):
on Klingman's Dome Road where the scent trail that was
tracking training ends, And a lot of people talk about this,
and for good reason, but it's really hard to find
a source for it, like who found it? And I've
always said if I would think it would be in
the search report if someone found it, So what what
do you guys know about that? And why why isn't

(51:50):
in the search report if people found this evidence.

Speaker 4 (51:53):
There were some cigarette butts found at the side of
the road where it was right in the spot where
the dogs lost the scent for Trenny and they believed
that that's where she got into a car. What I
was told was the cigarette butts that were by the
road looked like somebody dumped an ashtray out of a car.

(52:16):
They were kind of in an almost like a pile
sort of thing, so that's what it appeared to them.
Randy Collins claims that he was the one that found
the cigarette butts that were off the trail in approximately
the spot where the students said that it looked like
Trenny left the trail and went to the right, and

(52:40):
he said it looked like two people had hunkered down there.
One person was bigger and heavier because their footprints were
more pronounced in the in the soil, and the other
person was smaller and lighter. According to Randy, he figured
that Trennie was one of the people and the other

(53:03):
person was likely a male and a smoker, because there
were cigarette butts found there and about a half a
can of beer, and the beer was still fresh enough
to smell, so it hadn't been sitting there, you know,
for days or anything like that. And he claimed that
these cigarettes had a certain kind of a filter on them,

(53:24):
and they were called parliaments. They kind of had a
triangle shape filter. And for whatever reason, the Collins family,
now this is Randy, his father r M and his
uncle Steve, they were all of the mind that Trennie's

(53:45):
brother Bob was involved and maybe he was the one
that was there and made those footprints in the ground,
smoked those cigarettes, and consumed that can of beer. The
only evidence of that is Bob happened to like those cigarettes,
and Bob happened to drink that beer. But hundreds and

(54:06):
thousands of other people you know that did the same.
They have no proof that it was Bob. They just
have a funny hunch that, you know, maybe that's that's
what happened. M cigarettes found in that spot where the
beer can was. There were these same cigarette butts found

(54:26):
on the on the trail, and they were the same
cigarette butts that were found at the side of the
road where it looked like someone dumped an ashtray out
of a car. Randy said that he got a baggie,
he got a stick, and he kind of just withd
you know, these cigarette butts into a baggie. He gave

(54:47):
it to one of the park rangers that was out
there in the search and said, hey, you know, I
found I found this or whatever, and the ranger basically said, well,
this isn't anything and threw them out. And I mean,
this is nineteen seventy six. We didn't have DNA. The
most they could have done was maybe fingerprints or something

(55:09):
like that. But anyway, they got thrown out. They weren't
held for evidence.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
What do you think about this, Mike, do you think
that was like a big failure on the part of
the NPS.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Well, you know, I think in a lot of a
lot of the cases back in the seventies, it was
a big, a big fail for them. You know, you
have to realize back then, they weren't sworn law enforcement.
They had never gone through academy, never went through investigative training.
They were just people that got hired for a job.

(55:42):
Here as your suit, let's go. But you know, my
question with the Collins is, really, you know they were
so adamant that Bob Gibson was involved. What why? Why
do you think that? What makes you believe that too?

Speaker 4 (56:00):
You know that you have to have some sort of
motivation to do this, right.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
So yeah, then when I when I did talk to
Calvin Bowman, you know, he said that you know what
I found. I'm in the process right now of accessing
the actual shooting report when he was shot that night,
uh the year before, by Hope Gibson, training Gibson's mother,

(56:31):
and I already found things in Hirsh some of her
basic statements that when I talked to Calvin Bowman, the
didn't know, it didn't match. And I believed him because listen,
he's a suspect. He's voluntarily coming to me and saying, hey,
this is my story, because for forty eight years people

(56:53):
have been throwing me under the bus for something I
didn't have anything to do with.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Well, okay, well let's take a pause real quick.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
We can.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Let's fine, let's talk about Kelvin Bowman real quick. But
for people that you know, I know, Laura knows, and
I know, but tell so Kelvin he he most people
according to reports, you know, I mean Trenny's family, they said, oh,
she didn't date and this guy was like a stalker,
and he was. They shot him as he was leaving

(57:21):
her bedroom, basically.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Shot him in the leg. He was a bad guy.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
We'll get to that, and that at uh he was
convicted in trial and during that time he made threats
against Trenny's life. So basically in the newspapers at the time,
they made him sound like a really bad guy. This
is a potential suspect, murderer, something kidnapper who could have
taken Trenny. So why do you say you believe Kelvin

(57:48):
when the family has clearly stated that this was some
sort of stalker type guy who should be looked at
as a suspect. So get into detail on why you
believe Helvin but not the family.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Well, because a lot of the things that the family said.
I looked at the house, you know, I kind of
I creeped down the house on one of those like
what is it willow and stuff like that, to see
what the house looked like, what the possibility of what was.
But she said she shot him. He was out in

(58:22):
the front yard drunk, yelling for her brother Robert. I
talked to him. He says, yeah, I knew Robert. We
didn't like hang around. And he said Trenny had been
leaving that window open for me on a certain day
for months.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
And they had a relationship.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Is that where you're kind of hinting at they had.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
It was a relationship, But you have to remember Calvin
Bowman was an African American, you know, you're talking about
nineteen seventy six, Tennessee, you know, so there was a
lot more to that than And then she said in
one of our reports that well, after I shot him,
he came into the house, and I didn't shoot him

(59:04):
again because he was somebody's son. You're so you know what. Listen, No,
that's not how it works. If he shoots somebody and
they come into your house and to shoot him again,
that that's how that's how it works, especially especially if
you're in fear. If you were in fear, why do
for you or your daughter? Why did you shoot him
in the first place? You know? And then what happened

(59:27):
was tonight he went to the hospital. Her father went
up there and had a few choice words for him.
You know. The father also during his trial, said that
he tried to actually get him sent to a juvenile
detention facility in Texas. And it's like, okay, and you know,

(59:52):
it's not uncommon for people that have been arrested or
I mean, he went to a juvenile detention center for
nine months. What do you think he's gonna he's going
to say to her, Okay, yeah, have a nice day. No,
he's going for nine months. He wants to kill everybody?
Did they often people say that all the time, everybod's
gonna kill everybody, but it very seldom happens on the

(01:00:14):
day of her disappearance, the FBI confirmed that he was
in the school. The principal confirmed that he was into school.
It was an hour and a half trip. How did
he make it from the school all the way up
there by about three.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Forty So what I'm gathering is that Kelvin Bowman, Kelvin Bowman,
was he was wrongly accused in a way. Basically, he
was like the boyfriend of Trenty and her parents just
didn't like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
What happened is a year after this, or in seventy eight,
he got himself in trouble again. He got involved in
a sexual assault. He was sentenced again, and then forty
eight years later, I come knocking on his door. Hey
here I am. It happened. But you know, if he
was so guilty, why would he like here? You have

(01:01:07):
all these classmates. I tried to reach out to Facebook, uh,
text us and everything. They won't respond back. But yet
the guy that's the primary suspect in the case, Yeah,
I'll talk about it. I got no problem talking about it.
So you know, that kind of leads me to think, well,
who's really the liar in the case, him or some

(01:01:31):
of the people she was with?

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
You know h and also also the parents trying to
cover up the fact that their daughter was seeing a
young African American man.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
Yeah, I think there's a lot of a lot of
secrets that have to do with the family, and there's
some things that they didn't want, you know, us to
to find out, to maybe disclose, And this definitely one
of them on the list was Trenty. You know, she
was attracted to African American males.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
And I mean if she's purposely leading her window unlocked
and opened, you know, and and he's said, I think
I read you the TEXI sent me. He said, Yeah,
we had planned this already. I was driven to the house,
I got out, we would meet, you know, come back,
because he knew the brother wasn't there, He knew the

(01:02:32):
the father wasn't there. Yeah, so it was some pre
arranged plan. But yet the mother seems like it was
a random act of just stalking.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
It wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
He was doing this for weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
I think a lot of people would be surprised to
hear this because I think they automatically would assume that
the family of a missing young girl would want to
give the authorities and even the public as much accurate
information as possible, and by even pointing at Kelvin Bowman
and appearing it appears that they were incorrectly doing that.

(01:03:06):
Then it makes it look like they weren't really giving
Trenny the best chance at being found, because Kelvin Bowman
sounds like a total dead end.

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
Well, the other the other thing is Trenny also was
seeing another young black man. This was after after Calvin Bowman.
I'm not sure at the time if Calvin Bowman was
still incarcerated or if he had been released and was
already back at Beard, But Trenny was casually seeing another

(01:03:38):
young African American male and his name was Derek Scott
and he was a basketball player. And apparently she was
caught in a car with him by her father.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Is Y so was he was this Derek Scott fellow
ever considered a suspect her knowledge.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
Or Michael and I are have a bugger of a
time to pardon the part trying to locate.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Him, trying to find him.

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
We're trying, but we could talk to him.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Here's a statement made by Calvin Bowman. He said, I
did not go to the house to see Bob. I
was dropped off at the house. TRENNYE was letting me
in the window when she saw me. I was halfway
through the window when I got shot by her mother,

(01:04:30):
So it was already pre planned, and I got it
right here on my cell phone His Texas August twenty
seventh of this year.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
And again so Hope's version of events was that he
was on the lot screaming for Robert Bob to come out,
even though he didn't know him.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
According to Kelly, I.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
Often suspected that Trenny and Calvin were seeing one another
because her mother's story just didn't make any sense. Who
in their right mind would break into somebody's house in
the process of breaking in be shot. So then they
they just continue breaking in, I guess so the homeowner

(01:05:12):
could finish the job they started and blow their their
head off like it is. Their story just made no sense.
Interviewed a neighbor that lived down the street from the
Gibsons when Trenny was when she disappeared, and that person
actually still lives in exactly no sense. Interviewed a neighbor

(01:05:35):
that lived down the street from the Gibsons when Trenny
was when she disappeared, and that person actually still lives
in exactly the same house in Knoxville, on the same street.
And she said that the night that Calvin was shot,
he was limping down the street. He walked past their house,

(01:05:56):
and she had heard the rockets, she'd heard the gun
shot and wondered, you know what had happened. Then she's
seen this young young man walking down the street limping,
saying I've been shot, I've been shot, and so on.
Whereas turns it around that Calvin was shot, gains access

(01:06:20):
to the house, comes in the house, surrenders himself to hope.
She calls the authorities, and I guess holds him there
till the police come and arrest him, and so on
and so forth. Whereas this neighbor said, no, he was
walking down the street limping, moaning that he had been shot. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
And I have another another thing that he textmashed me.
I had been sneaking in and out of her Crinny's
room for a while. It just so happened we got caught.
She told me to get out, and he because of
her father, who if he had caught me, he would

(01:07:00):
have killed me if he had been home. Tranny try
to stick up for me, but her mother told her
that I was not good enough for her boom. But
he also told me a lot of conversations that it
was one of the most dysfunctional households he's ever been into,
because Trenny was more like their uh their maid, not

(01:07:23):
a maid, you know, watch the kid, feed the you know,
clean the house.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
And see.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
That's another thing you don't really get from reading the
You know that your average sources for this because the
parents make it sound like this was a very happy home.
Trenny was happy, she wasn't dating, she was an angel child.
Everything was good, So Kelvin Bowman doesn't think so was
Was she in a stable home?

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Was she happy to what do we know about now?

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
She she at school, pretended to be happy, but she
was in a really dysfunct because he mentioned it here
quite a few times that her household was uh what
I just read? I read off a text message he
sent me that uh he he and her had been
seeing each other for a while. She left the windows
open forums took sneak in. The mother says, no, he

(01:08:15):
was breaking and which was not the case. Uh so
the mother's version of the story. That's why I'm interested
to get the police report. I don't really care you
know too much about I just want to know what
she said because.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Very it's very interesting because that kind of would you know,
kids unhappy kids can run away, right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Right, and they do every day. I mean, people disappear
every day on their own. I mean, I'll be honest
with you. In my mind, I kind of think she's
still out there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
I don't think she well, well, well, well we'll get
to we'll get to theories.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
We'll get yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
One one last one, last point on this though, is
it is it was stated multiple times that after he
was convicted he said something that he would kill Trenny.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Is that just something Hope made up?

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
The first place that shows up is in Baldwin and
Grubb's book, right, right, But the only people Baldwin and
Grubb talked to was Hope Gibson. Is that right? Because
they couldn't get court records because he was a juvenile.
You can't release court records, So how would they have known.

(01:09:28):
She couldn't have got a copy of the court records
to verify it. She was going based on what Hope
Gibson says.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
What I understand was Calvin Bowman said something to the appointment,
you know, to the effect of I'll be back or
something like that, like I'll return or i'll be back
kind of thing, you know, when he goes and serves
the sentence and whatever and comes back. In speaking with

(01:09:58):
people that knew Trenny at school, they said they all
kind of the consensus is in she wasn't from a
happy a happy home A hope. Gibson tends to say that, uh,
Trenny didn't really hang around with other kids, you know,
outside of school. She kept to herself. She was a homebody.

(01:10:21):
And I think that's true to a point. But I
also think Trenny didn't want to bring other people around
because if she did, she was going to have to
explain some things. You know, Why is she the family
scrub lady? Why is there you know, why can't he
just lay around in his room all day listening to
music and smoking dope? You know? Why do we have

(01:10:44):
to look after her little brother's every whim? You know?
Why why are they constantly going back and forth to
church and hopes whole living being focused is the church?
The church? The church? Why does Trend his sister Tina
get to, you know, hang out with other kids and

(01:11:04):
go over to their house and stay over and do
this and do that. You know, she knew that there
was gonna be a lot of questions and things she
was going to have to to answer for, and she
didn't have the answers, and it was just easier not
to have anybody over or invite anyone around.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
I think I think she was afraid of them meeting
her parents, either the mother or the father, which kind
of leads brings me to, you know, either even a
darker tale than that, what may have been going on
closed doors.

Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
I did talk to that did get into the house,
mainly because they were friends that were kind of persistent,
you know, like I really want to come over, I
want to see your room, I want to do this,
and want to do that kind of thing. And they
did get invited in, and then they were like, holy shit, yeah,

(01:11:58):
I think something very very wrong here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
So this is going to be news to a lot
of people that that that trendy may not have really
been in a very good home at all.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
She wasn't she wasn't in a good home at all.
And you see, this is this is like you and
I have discussed, you know before on the phone about
you know, what people learn on podcasts. And you know,
like I said, the only two podcasts I ever suggested
are either yours or Micah Hanks, because you know, you
guys research and go into this stuff where the other

(01:12:32):
ones are just taking or making up their own line
of crap and pushing it out on the population who
seems listen. And you know, if they if they seem
to buy the garbage that's put on four to one one,
I got a I got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
But there was also a second suspect, right, That's.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Where I'm going.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
You know that there's only two suspects really that are
named that are in this case. The first one we
just talked about, Cale Bowman. The second her friend Robert Simpson,
a seemingly privileged kid, a powerful father who could keep
him out of trouble theoretically if he if he had to,
and and Hope, at least in Baldwin and Grubbs book, Hope,

(01:13:18):
you know, wrote a letter where she kind of directly
points at Robert, saying, well, Chinese comb was found in
Robert's car and she would never separate from that comb.
So what are we dealing with here with Robert Simpson.

Speaker 3 (01:13:30):
You know, my thought about that was a little a
little different. You know, we already know Hope Gibson her
statements aren't very accurate because her daughter never was saw anybody,
never had boyfriends, never had this. Well, obviously, you know
she was you know, she was departing from the truth
because she knew all this was going on. So why

(01:13:53):
would I start to believe what she has to say
now was Robert Simpson's case. You know, if anybody may
have been involved in something, and I want to say,
I'm not saying a homicide in anything, it might have
been him. But you have to remember, So they went
up to they went up to part of the park,
they ate lunch. She decides she's coming back, right, So

(01:14:17):
she was rapidly walking, passed about five or six friends,
sat down for a while, and continued to walk. So
we know that nothing had happened to her prior to
her getting to her friends. So to say that he,
Robert Simpson, did something to her up there, you know,

(01:14:43):
she was walking at a pace and then she sat down.
None of her friends mentioned that there were any physical
injuries on her. Okay, now it could have been simply
she was wearing Robert Simpson's jacket. What if she took
her comb out of the pocket put it in the jacket,
he ended up getting it back before or she takes
off going down the hill, it ends up in his
car with his jacket. Now, So I talked to one

(01:15:06):
of his relatives and I said, well, what do you
what's your take on this thing about a beer?

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Real quick, Mike, So you're referring to Robert Simpson. Robert Simpson.
There's been reports that what he was doing when Trenny
left was that he was tracking a bear.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
That's where you're.

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
Referring to, right, But but you know what, I looked everywhere.
I could never find him saying that me neither. So
did he really say it? I don't think you said it.
I think that was just another somebody's making a line
of crap up.

Speaker 4 (01:15:41):
Laura, what do you got It's in Politis's book.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
Yeah, of course it is. Of course it is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
And we know how which kind of leads to bigfoot
in his book.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, yeah, So it's in Politics's book.
But so did all the other falsehoods about the Danis
Martin case.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
So, La, Laura, what are your thoughts on Robert Simpson
as a suspect. Do you think it has potential or
step away from potential?

Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
Is he is he responsible for a homicide? I I
don't know. I just think he knew a lot more
about what happened that day than he let on. And
he was well protected by his father. His father was
very powerful. He could have screwed up your life with
the stroke of a pen if he wanted to. Right. Oh,

(01:16:31):
so I do find some of Robert's behavior a bit
suspicious apparently. And now this is according to the Gibson family.
So Hope's sister, Flossie, she came to a at their
house in Knoxville while the Gibsons were up at the

(01:16:52):
in the Smoky Mountains in Gatlinburg and they were searching
for for Treny. So Flossi Collins, that was Hope's sister,
she came out and stayed at the house in Knoxville
because Tina and Miracle, Trenny's siblings were still attending school.
And then she there every day, could look after the
house and so on and so forth. And she said

(01:17:14):
that Robert Gibson or Robert Simpson rather kept coming to
the house and basically acting like he was the personal
secretary for the Gibsons and he was screening their phone calls.
And this went on for several days till Flothy finally
managed to convince him to stop, that they did not

(01:17:38):
need him to do this and it really was not appropriate.
And in that time, when Robert Simpson was at the house,
he made a couple of comments to Tina Gibson about
Trenny's disappearance. He said that if Calvin Bowman had Trenny

(01:17:58):
that he would kill her. Or if it came to
be that Calvin Bowman didn't have Trenny, Robert figured that
Trenny ran off with some horny hitch hiker. So that's
when these statements were made. Now the comb thing, I'm
on the fence about the comb. It could be a

(01:18:19):
complete red herring. Like like Michael said, Trenny had this comb.
It was a nice heavy comb. It was made by
the Stanley Company. They sold door to door, kind of
like fuller brush used to back in the day. And
Trenny had this comb and her sister Tina had an

(01:18:40):
identical one, and Trenny loved the thing and it was
always in her Jean's pocket. Apparently This comb was found
after Trenny disappeared, and it was found on the dash
of Robert Simpson's car, And who was the one that
discovered it but Trenny's brother, Bough And it was just

(01:19:01):
sitting out in the open on the dash of the car.
Robert Simpson apparently had been using it to comb his
own hair, because it was all kind of twisted her
in the comb, that sort of thing. Bob Gibson asked, Robert,
you know, what the hell, why do you have Trenny's comb?

(01:19:22):
And he was told that Trenny had given it to
Robert just to kind of keep for her, hold on
for her kind of thing. So the other thing with
that is another way to look at it, is Trenny
knew Robert Simpson quite well. She was friends with him. Basically,

(01:19:45):
Robert Simpson was good pals with Bob Gibson and then
that's how he and Trenty got to be friends. Trenny
had been in Robert's car before, so could she have
dropped the comb in there maybe the day before or something. Absolutely,
it's possible. The other thing is she was wearing Robert
Simpson's coat when she was last seen. Could she have

(01:20:09):
taken the comb out of her jeans and then put
it in the pocket of the coat. Sure could she
have dropped the comb on the trail and maybe Robert
Simpson was the one that found it. Maybe. You know.
The other thing is, if you've listened to the Missing podcasts,
you've heard me talk about my friend Jim. Jim attended

(01:20:33):
East Tennessee State University at the same time that some
of the Bearden grads attended, and they were the class
that would have graduated with Trenny Gibson in nineteen seventy eight.
And the theory among them was Trenny had gotten into
an altercation with some of the Beard and students, a

(01:20:55):
small group of them, maybe maybe three kids, maybe four.
She was wearing Robert Gibson's or sorry, Robert Simpson's coat
at the time that this happened, and she got into
an altercation with them. Somebody held her, but because she
was wearing Robert Simpson's coat and it was several sizes

(01:21:16):
too big for her, they took her ring from her.
They potentially took her comb as well. They held her arms,
but because this coat was so large, she was able
to peel out of it. She took off running and
she got lost in the underbrush and thickets and everything

(01:21:37):
that's in that wooded area in the vast region of
the Smoky Mountains, and that's why they never found her.
But Robert Simpson, apparently, according to this group of Beard
and alumni, he got his coat back and possibly the
comb was in the pocket or fell to the ground,

(01:21:58):
and that's how he he gained possession of the colmb
That's how this student potentially gained possession of the ring.
Or maybe a boyfriend or something was one of the
students in that group that accosted Trenny and maybe he
gave the ring to Robin or gave the ring to Tina.

(01:22:19):
We don't know, but that was the consensus that they had.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
That's an interesting thought because I know talking with Mike
that he is he's tried to get the FBI files
on this case, which much like the Dennis Martin case,
have not been released, but they probably should be after
this long time. But Mike, you were saying you think
that might have something to do with the Robert Simpson's father.

Speaker 3 (01:22:42):
Potentially they're trying to protect his father because.

Speaker 4 (01:22:46):
I suggest to Hope Gibson, and this is about five
years ago, and she got really upset with me. I
suggested to her, if she were to have Trenny legally
declared dead, we could get in for we could get
access to all that information. And she was absolutely outraged,

(01:23:07):
and I said, you know, I know it's not what
you want, and I said, it's not what I want either,
But I said, then we could have access to everything,
and maybe we could piece the damn thing together as
to who was responsible. Yeah, you know, they talk about closure.

(01:23:27):
I don't like the word closure to me. It's just,
you know, people are looking for answers. But then the
thing is when they get answers, now they're gonna have
to find out and figure out how they're gonna live
with live with it, how they're gonna live with the
answers to the questions that they had type of thing.
But she was absolutely outraged at that I even suggest

(01:23:50):
such a thing, because in doing so, even if we
could find out exactly what happened to Trenny, if somebody
harmed her or or what, we couldn't bring that person
to justice because we've already had her declared dead. But
I think after forty eight years, you know, it's it's

(01:24:12):
time kind of saying that she let go of that
and and maybe have her declared dead.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
So Mike, what are your thoughts on the FBI files
and them kind of jamming.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
You out like that?

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Well, you know, and again you know my next You know,
when it came to the Dennis Martin case, it took
me nineteen FOI request get to get them to release it.
So what I'm going to do in this case is
I put the original foyer together, sent it. They denied it,

(01:24:50):
and I said, well, what's your basis of exclusionary rule?
It doesn't fit the exclusionary rule. It's a lost person case.
It's not criminal. You never deemed anybody to be a
suspect in a crime, just like Dennis Martin. You have
no new witnesses, no people of interest that at least
now you can't even arrest any because they're all dead.

(01:25:11):
So what is your reason? Well, it was a assistant
US District attorney's son, Robert Simpson Junior, who was a
person of interest. His father was in charge of all
of the court action on federal land in that area.

(01:25:32):
You know, I have some thoughts on it. You know,
we know when try when Trenny Gibson was running down
the hill. We know Robert was in pursuit of her.
As a matter of fact, I talked to one of
his teachers and I said, could let me ask you
a question. If Trendy ran from him, could he catch her?
He says, absolutely not. The kid was too heavy, too heavy,
too out of shape. One never caught her because she

(01:25:55):
was athletic. He was overweight, couldn't catch her. Okay, so
we know he wasn't a singer, pursuer or down the hill.
Right that that beer story another polaitist plug if one
wants to call it that to enhance some mystery that
wasn't even there. So yeah, it's questionable how he became

(01:26:17):
in possession of so, you know, her comb and stuff
like that, but that might be explained explained the way too.
His life also was just as dysfunctional as hers. He
lived in his mother's basement until he was forty five.
His wife passed away from a drug overdose, and I

(01:26:40):
asked one of his relatives, Hey, what do you think
about this beer thing? Because I wouldn't doubt it he
did crazy shit like that. He was you know, he was,
he was different. Do I think so. And I asked
his teacher, I said, let me ask you a question.
Do you think that Robert Simpson killed her? Wouldn't have

(01:27:00):
mattered if anybody said yes, even if somebody has fair
said yeah, he killed her. What are you gonna do
to them? Dig them up? What are you gonna do?

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
Any of them passed away only a few years ago, right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:11):
Right, they're all deceased. And that's what kind of infuriates
me about this case. Why are all these there are
students that know exactly what happened? You know, this bullshit
of you know, we become born of ken Grishian's No,
you're not. You're going to hell because you're lying about
this ship. You're going to hell. So don't even try
that crap on me.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
And that seems like both of you think there's a
lot of people involved in this case.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
That a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (01:27:37):
I think they know there's there's I don't think it's
a case like a criminal case. I think she just
wanted to get the hell out of there. But they know.
But like they're loyalty. Come on, come on, you know what.
G grow the hell up. You're loyalty, you know, just
tell us what happened, and that's it. Nobody's going to

(01:27:57):
jail because all people of interest are dead.

Speaker 4 (01:27:59):
They with Trenny is like she did come from a
dysfunctional house, don't get me wrong, but she wasn't necessarily
like an irresponsible girl either. I believe that if she
wanted to run away, she probably would have planned better,
you know, like taking some money with her or something,

(01:28:21):
kept a ring, because at least she could have ponded
or something something like that. You know, like, I think
that she she had a little, you know, more sense
than just to oh here I am, I want the
gotta hair and get into a passing car and and
take off out of the park. I think that, you know,

(01:28:43):
there was definitely some mom there would have been some
planning involved if she wanted just to take off the
thing with Robert Simpsons and I'm just gonna call him
Bobby because that's what his family called him, so I
don't get a mixed up with Trenny's brother, who also
went by Bob. But Bobby Simpson. The thing with him

(01:29:06):
is when he made that statement to Tina about oh,
you know, if Calvin Bowman has tranny, he'll kill her
or if he doesn't, well, I guess she just ran
off with some burnie hitchhiker. That to me when he
stated that, it almost sounds to me like it's the
kind of the sour grape thing where somebody didn't get

(01:29:29):
what they wanted or whatever. So now they're trying to
turn it around and make it to kind of look
like the other person needs to be discredited somehow. But
I think it's possible that might have happened. And I
mean I wasn't there, but Prenny and Robert Simpson or

(01:29:50):
Bobby they hiked up to Andrew's Bold. Everything was fine,
they ate their lunch, they looked around, and then maybe
something happened like nothing, nothing necessarily physical because Trenny didn't
have a mark on her or anything. But we don't know.

(01:30:10):
Maybe Bobby suggested something like, you know, hey, let's go
over here and do this or whatever. You know, maybe
he said something suggestive to her kind of thing. Maybe
that pissed her off and she said goodbye Bob or
goodbye Bobby, and then she left by herself. The other

(01:30:31):
theory that's come up with the students, and I've been
puld this a handful of times by different Beard and
alumni that were on the field trip. Was Trenny was
playing matchmaker, ye know who between Nobody wants to say
who she was trying to match up, but apparently she

(01:30:53):
was playing matchmaker. She was walking down the hill. She
talked to one person and go walk ahead, talk to
this other person to tell them what the first person said,
then walk back to tell the first person what the
second person said, and so on and so forth. That's
what they told me was happening that day. The other

(01:31:16):
thing that's come up was I was told by Dwight
McCarter that Trenny had had a spat with her teacher.
He didn't say over what. I don't know. I tried
to speak to mister Dunlap. He would never grant me
an interview. But according to Dwight McCarter, Trenny and Dunlap

(01:31:38):
had a bit of a spat over something that day,
and I don't know what it was about. I think
it had something to do with the fact that they
were in the Smoky Mountains. Maybe Trenny didn't know that
that's where they were going, so she didn't bring a coat.
It was pissing rain that day. It was chilly out.

(01:32:00):
Maybe she told mister Dunlap what she thought of his
field trip.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:04):
The fact that that mister Dunlap kept the destination a
mystery up until the day of is something that kind
of stifles a lot of the theorizing here because it's like,
how could she have planned to run away when she
didn't even know where she was going to go in
the first place.

Speaker 4 (01:32:20):
And interviewing the students, about half of them claimed that
they knew where they were going there and there was
that's that's like a folk tale. The other half of
them said no, they didn't know where they were going.
They didn't find out till they were on the bus.
They all got on the bus and then that's when
mister Dunlap came on the bus announced we're going. The

(01:32:43):
kids were all excited, whistling, clapping everything. According to them,
mister Dunlap didn't say anything about the destination because he
didn't want anybody followed up there, like he didn't want.

Speaker 2 (01:32:56):
What was was Hope Gibson supposed to be a chapern
that day.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
Is that true?

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
Yeah, so she was known. She would have known, right,
That's how Bobby, Bobby Gibson could have found out so
it's not it's not really far fetched that he would
have known.

Speaker 2 (01:33:14):
We know, it's pretty wild actually if you think about it.
So Hope Gibson was going to be a chaperone and
then she wants and it's her daughter that goes missing.

Speaker 3 (01:33:22):
Yeah, yes, what are.

Speaker 4 (01:33:24):
The chances of that happening? But Hope Gibson claims they
didn't know where Trenny was going. There was no permission,
slip there was. She just went up to the smokies
and disappeared and that was that was the end of it.
Hope said that all she knew well, Trendy wanted to
get her, wanted her mother to come along. This is

(01:33:46):
according to Hope, but Hope's not told the truth about
a lot of things. But Hope said that Trenny wanted
her to come along, so Hope, you know, thought that, yeah,
she'll go along. She said had told the teacher that
she would come along on the trip as a chaperone.
That was great. All she said that she knew was

(01:34:07):
the trip. They were gonna be gone all day, so
all of a sudden, then Hope said she couldn't go
because she didn't have anybody to watch. Miracle Trenny's younger brother.
When he came home after kindergarten or you know, after school,
there was no one to watch him. She tried to

(01:34:28):
get a sitter, she couldn't find anybody, so she had
to back out, and Trenny had thought, well, you know,
maybe she should just stay home as well, and kind
of had some you know, apprehension about going. According to Hope,
mister Dunlop nonetheless decided, you know, he was gonna go

(01:34:49):
on the trip, and he was gonna keep these forty
kids under under control alone, and driver was staying with
the bus. You know. That's that's what we knew. But
like I said, you know, Hopes lied about a lot
of things. So maybe she did know they were going
to Maybe Trenny did too, We don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Well, so, Mike, it sounds it sounds like you lean
a lot more towards the idea that she ran away.

Speaker 3 (01:35:17):
Than than than the idea that you know, and that
would be kind of be a sad thing if she did.
And I'll tell you why. I would be all well
and fine, and she's alive and lived a life and
this and that, well, what about people she put in
positions that lived the whole lifetime being pointed out as
the bad guy, Robert Simpson Jr. Kelvin Bowman who helse uh,

(01:35:44):
Dwayne Dunlop, who who had serious PTSD.

Speaker 4 (01:35:48):
You know, that was a.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
Bigger part of it, you know. So you know, you know,
there were more victims because of her not saying something,
you know, So so really, who's the victim here?

Speaker 2 (01:36:03):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:36:03):
And then as far as we know, as far as
we know, Kelvin Bowman, Robert Simpson could be the victims
because look at anytime you open up a uh, you know,
a new Anything article podcast, who's the first two people
that are always mentioned? Kelvin Bowman, who didn't do it,

(01:36:25):
who couldn't have done it? But you still have people
pushing that trash. Simpson's a question mark.

Speaker 4 (01:36:32):
I had a history with Trenny, right, so yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:36):
So Simpson's still a question mark. But based on physical
you know, physical evidence. I mean, she was still alive
when she ran past the six kids, so you know,
and nobody saw uh Simpson coming after her. So you know,

(01:36:58):
but these people have become you know, pinnacle to the case.
And the sad thing is, I don't think cal bowmenhat
didn't do it well.

Speaker 1 (01:37:08):
Let me let me summarize what I kind of but.

Speaker 3 (01:37:11):
Well, after talking to him, he sounded like he cared
more about her than some of her failing them members, right,
and that's sad.

Speaker 1 (01:37:25):
It sounds like all this adds up to.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
And what you're telling me is that they're there or
maybe you guys both think this as well, that she
had some sort of plan with some guy that she
ran off with, and some of her classmates knew, but
they didn't want to tell because they knew she had
a bat.

Speaker 3 (01:37:43):
It wouldn't have been it would have been a perfect alibi.
She left her identification and her wallet in her mother's car.
She didn't take anything of money or anything in her
house because if she did, then they would have said, hey,
it's a it's a runaway, or she got stopped with
a walk down the road somewhere. Oh yeah, okay, this

(01:38:03):
is you per it's a it's a perfect storm.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Laura, Laura, how do you feel about it?

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
Do you feel like she ran away or do you
feel like she was subject to foul play of some kind.

Speaker 4 (01:38:20):
I always was of the mind that Trenny is no
longer with us, and she was subject to some sort
of some sort of foul play. Whether or not it's
classmate related remains to be seen, although you know, like
I've said, the classmates knew some things that if they

(01:38:40):
were one hundred percent innocent, they probably wouldn't know. Ordinarily,
would Trenny have had motive to run away if you
sat down and looked at it, yeah, probably. But to me,
I think she would have ran away from a place
that she was a little more familiar with, such as
knock Bill, maybe got the gentleman that she was seeing

(01:39:06):
to come and get her or whatever. All she would
have had to do is lie to her parents and
say she had to work when she actually didn't, and
get in the car with him and take off. The
other thing is, if Trenny ran away with her boyfriend,
she's missing, but the boyfriend doesn't seem to be whoever
he is doesn't doesn't seem to be missing. So that's

(01:39:29):
why I tend more to towards foul play, that something
something bad happened to her, and I believe she's she's
long dead, gotcha. You know, it would be wonderful if
she were still alive. But as Michael pointed out, you
know how many lives got affected by by her disappearance.

(01:39:54):
You know, you have Calvin Bowman, who was always looked
at as the as the jealous boyfriend that you know,
found a way to get to the park and rubbed
her out. You have Robert Simpson, you know, maybe did
something to her or whatever. He had his father that

(01:40:15):
could you know, cover his tracks that sort of thing.
Maybe that was like a sexually motivated crime. You have
you have mister Wayne Dunlap that just wanted to take
his horticulture students on this field trip by hooker by crook,

(01:40:35):
and he ended up having a nervous breakdown. He had
to leave teaching. He moved clear across the US to Oregon,
where he stayed till two thousand and seven before he
moved back to Tennessee because that's where a lot of
his uh his family lived and you know, it tragically
affected his life. It cost him his job, potentially his

(01:40:58):
marriage because he and his wife broke up shortly after
after Trenny disappeared. So you know, yuh, you look at
her brother Bob. Bob suffered with substance abuse and died
at the young age of forty two. After Treny disappeared,
her sister struggled with addictional her life as well and

(01:41:23):
died in her fifties of cancer. You know, we could
we could go on and on and on of all
the people that were that were affected by this. If
Trenny ran away, obviously her mother Hope, and her younger
brother Miracle as well. Uh yeah, just it goes on
and on. It's a vast amount of people. So if

(01:41:45):
you know she did that, pulled rank and and buggered off,
you know, she destroyed a lot of people in in
the wake of doing so. But it was absolutely a
lot easier in the nineteen sex needs to disappear if
you wanted to, you know, she could easily got another

(01:42:06):
Social Security number. They had the forums right at the
post office you could go fill out. It was very
easy to live in the gaps in those days, kind
of where one pay per trail ended and another one started.
So she could have had a you know, a new
identity or whatever. I think that if that sort of

(01:42:28):
thing happened, at some point, she would have tried to
come back, maybe contact her family or if not her mother,
potentially her cousins or her uncle Steve that was very
close to her. He died in nineteen ninety. I think
she would have probably resurfaced.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
As anyone done, because I had the same thought that
if she kind of ran away, maybe she could get
in touch with some of her siblings or family members
that she did like. But have people really engaged to
them much in interviews to try and talk with them,
or would they even be honest if you did, I wonder.

Speaker 3 (01:43:05):
I don't think they'd be honest. I mean, look at
look at the going girl, Joan Rish. She just disappeared,
and we know for a fact that she wasn't a
victim of anything. She just one day up left her
two kids and her husband and just never came back,
probably used a different name. I mean, people disappear every day.

(01:43:25):
People disappear every day. People disappear every day people.

Speaker 1 (01:43:44):
So there you have it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:45):
There's a lot more to this case than most people
ever knew, But at the same time, it doesn't really
get us any further in figuring out what happened. There
were two potential suspects, Robert Simpson and Kelvin Bowman, but
it seems like neither of them were directly involved. The
only thing that seems evident is that Trenny Gibson left

(01:44:05):
the Smoky Mountains the day she disappeared. I believe that
to be true. If she was there, they would have
found her. But besides that, we have pretty good scent
to evidence to show that she got picked up at
the road. The question is how could that happen. Was
Trenny abducted by an unknown individual who was just out
searching for the right opportunity and somehow found it? It

(01:44:28):
seems unlikely. The scent trail leading to a road and
parking lot before ending seems very intentional, like someone was
there waiting for her. If Trenny was lost and found
her way to a road, you would think that she
would start walking along it until she made it back
to the parking lot. Did her classmates know more than
they told authorities? Possibly maybe a large number of kids

(01:44:51):
did know where they were going for that field trip.
Hope Gibson was supposed to be a chaperone. After all,
If Trenny knew where they were going, she could better
plan out her escape if that was her goal. But
who would be assisting her? That is another tough question
to answer. At the same time, Trenny didn't seem very
prepared for running away. She even forgot to bring a

(01:45:13):
code on the field trip. Both foul play and voluntary
disappearance have holes of this fashion. In the end, it
seems clear that there was a lot more going on
in this teenager's life than even her parents knew, given
that there's all sorts of possibilities that we could be
unaware of. Ultimately, there really seems to be only two

(01:45:33):
options in this case, and it all depends on who
that person was that picked up Trenny at the road.
Either it was some criminal with bad intentions, or it
was someone trying to assist her with a voluntary disappearance.
We may never know which of those two options is
the correct one. Much like the other famous Smoky Mountains disappearance,
which is Dennis Martin, the case of Trenny Gibson is

(01:45:56):
much more complex and is often presented. I have to
thank both Mike Bouchard and Laura Risti for their time
and their diligent research. Without it, we would lack a
lot of critical information that furthers our understanding of this case.
If you would like to contact either of them about
Trenny's disappearance, I will put their email addresses in the
description of this video. Hopefully this video has shed new

(01:46:19):
light on the rather tragic case of Trenny Gibson and
please let me know what you think in the comments
and until next time, thanks for watching

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Trenny Gibson - New Evidence In This Smoky Mountains Mystery

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