Pod Insights Park Predators The Field About this episode In 1969, when a young boy vanished in a matter of minutes in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, his case set off a series of events that forever changed the way search and rescue operations in the United States and around the world are conducted. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Dennis Martin is as baffling today as it was all those decades ago.
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 Hi, park enthusiasts. I’m your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I’m going to tell you today is one of the most baffling and haunting mysteries of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. It’s a case that’s been on my list since I started this show five years ago, but for some reason, I just never felt quite ready to tell it. However, now that I’m a mother of a little boy, who we often take with us to plenty of national and state parks, I realize this new perspective is what finally made me feel prepared to handle this case with care. And I think to the best of my ability, I have. The missing person case of six-year-old Dennis Martin in June of 1969 is a complicated one.
0:45 Speaker 00 For starters, it happened 56 years ago, and at the time involved multiple law enforcement agencies, kind of all doing their own thing. It’s documented as being the largest and most intensive search ever conducted in the park’s history. And as the decades have passed, it remains a behemoth of a case that continuously draws headlines. There have been several books and TV programs produced about it. And when I say there’s also a wide variety of theories as to what happened, I mean wide. Even venturing into paranormal territory. What I hope you take away from this episode, though, is this: Dennis Martin is still out there, somewhere. Maybe in the park, maybe not.
1:28 Speaker 00 And until he is finally found, we should all care deeply about the impact his case had on his loved ones, many of whom are no longer alive, as well as countless other outdoor enthusiasts, who I know often find themselves asking the same question I do when I’m out in nature: What if my child disappears? This is Park Predators.
2:31 Speaker 00 Around 4:30 PM on Saturday, June 14, 1969, a 32-year-old man named William Martin and his father Clyde were hanging out with a group of other adults on a grassy knoll in Spence Field in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They looked over and saw several young boys playing around a nearby trailhead. Two of the kids in the group were William's sons, 9-year-old Douglas and 6-year-old Dennis, and the other youngsters belonged to people in the group of folks William and Clyde were hanging out with. And from where the men were sitting, which was about 40 yards away, they could tell the boys weren't exactly on the nearby trailhead, but rather sort of at the top and parallel to it. The most important thing, though, was that they were within eyesight of their dad and grandfather.
3:16 Speaker 00 The outing was one of those "just the guys" kind of trips. It was the day before Father's Day and the morning prior, so Friday, William, his dad, Douglas, and Dennis had arrived in the park for a fun-filled weekend camping and hiking along the Appalachian Trail. They'd traveled from their hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, to spend a few days in the park enjoying the great outdoors. According to Carson Brewer's reporting for the Knoxville News Sentinel, the family had visited the park many times before and were especially familiar with the clearing at Spence Field. However, this outing was little Dennis's first time spending the night away from home on a camping trip. A few minutes after the adults noticed that the group of boys had split up, it was obvious that they'd all drifted out of sight, with some of them going in one direction and others
4:01 Speaker 00 going another. It wasn't super alarming at first because, like I said, the kids were playing, and anyone who has kids or has watched over them for any period of time knows that's just what kids do while adults sit around and chat. They find ways to keep themselves entertained. They also like to pull pranks, and that's exactly what happened in this situation. A few minutes after the group of boys split up, Douglas, William's oldest son, popped up next to the grown-ups and surprised them. And I imagine everyone in the group had a good laugh, but then, the mood suddenly changed. William looked around and noticed that Dennis, his younger son, wasn't there. It had been less than five minutes, though, since William had last laid eyes on him,
4:45 Speaker 00 so he figured his younger son couldn't be too far away. He asked Douglas and the other boys where they'd last seen Dennis, but Douglas told his dad that the last time he'd seen his brother was a few minutes earlier, when the group of boys had agreed to split up and take separate routes to sneak up on all the adults.
5:03 Speaker 00 Within minutes of realizing Dennis was unaccounted for, William and his father Clyde began looking for him and started calling out his name. William walked as far as one mile west of the field, hoping that he'd either find his son along the way somewhere or that Dennis had managed to wander back to the group waiting at Spence Field. But William searched and searched and didn't find any trace of Dennis. After a little bit more time passed, he set off to hike another portion of the Appalachian Trail that led about 2 and 1/2 miles west of Spence Field in the direction of a designated shelter on the AT. And the whole time he's doing this, he is booking it. He would later describe it to one newspaper as "double time." And to give you just a quick sense of how this landscape is laid out,
5:47 Speaker 00 Spence Field is literally right on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The state line basically snakes along a section of the AT there, and so there's a part of Spence Field that falls into North Carolina's jurisdiction and another part that is technically located in Tennessee. Now, where Dennis was last seen was on the Tennessee side, which is in a more northerly direction from where William and Clyde were hanging out with the other adults. The closest designated shelter to the field was the one that William hiked to on his second trip to look for Dennis. And like I said before, that's about 2 and 1/2 miles west from the field. And according to National Park Service records, that shelter was actually where William, his father, and the boys had stayed the previous night, June 13.
6:31 Speaker 00 So perhaps William was thinking, maybe if Dennis had gotten lost, he'd at least known how to get back to that shelter that he and his family had stayed in. Which I think might be one explanation as to why William went there looking for him. The next closest shelter to Spence Field was about five miles away, headed east, and seemingly wasn't on terrain that the family had already covered during their trip.
6:53 Speaker 00 For the next four hours or so, the adults continued to look for Dennis. William and Clyde decided to divide and conquer to cover more ground and alert authorities. Clyde hiked several miles to Cades Cove Campground and by 8:30 PM had gotten ahold of rangers to report what was going on. The rangers wasted no time and immediately got on their radios to notify a dispatcher at the park’s headquarters that a child was missing. While that was happening, a few miles away, William hiked a different trail than his father that led toward a paved road called Laurel Creek Road. On the way, he met a husband and wife who were driving in the area and got them to give him a ride to a spot on the roadway where another trail intersected with the road, likely hoping against hope that perhaps Dennis had wandered toward the street in the
7:38 Speaker 00 event he’d hurt a car or something and wanted to get help. But sadly, there was no sign of Dennis there either. Eventually, a ranger who’d become aware of what was going on drove to pick up William on Laurel Creek Road, and together, they took a jeep trail back in the direction of Spence Field. When they arrived, Dennis had still not been found, and authorities got right to work interviewing several hikers and anglers who’d stopped at the field in the time after Dennis vanished but before rangers arrived. These folks had all come from different directions on the AT, and they all said the same thing: “No one had run into a little boy along their way,” which I imagine felt really discouraging to everyone who was now very concerned about Dennis’s well-being.
8:22 Speaker 00 As more time went by, it started to get dark, and to make matters even more difficult, the weather took a turn for the worse. According to National Park Service records and a timeline published by the Knoxville News Sentinel, thunderstorms moved into the area that night not long after Dennis was reported missing, and that really restricted authorities’ ability to spread out and search for him. It also meant that if Dennis was still alive somewhere, he would most likely have a hard time hearing anyone call out for him. It rained some 2.5 inches in and around Spence Field, which caused nearby streams to swell and get really churned up. But despite all those challenges, Dennis’s dad, grandfather, and rangers didn’t give up.
9:04 Speaker 00 They kept looking for him and searched to the best of their ability for any sign of where he’d gone or where he was. Early the next morning, Sunday, June 15th, the Park Service launched a more robust search, which included dozens of rangers, park maintenance employees, area rescue squad members, Boy Scouts, and volunteers with the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club. Crews looked for Dennis in drainage areas adjacent to Spence Field, along trails, in creeks, at fire towers, in trail shelters, and even pit toilets, but nothing surfaced. The description crews were given for Dennis was that he was white, about four feet tall, weighed about 55 pounds, and had brown hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a red t-shirt, green shorts,
9:48 Speaker 00 and low-cut Oxford-style shoes. William also revealed something else to investigators that he felt set Dennis apart from other little boys his age, because he was truly unique.
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11:11 Speaker 02 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
11:15 Speaker 03 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
11:19 Speaker 02 I'm Eliza Orlands, career public defender.
11:22 Speaker 03 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
11:25 Speaker 02 And on our brand new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
11:31 Speaker 03 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
11:46 Speaker 00 Dennis's father told authorities that his son was a child with a learning disability. Basically, it's stated by some sources that Dennis was about six months behind the mental age of his peers. Because of this, he was in a special education program at school and was known to be rather quiet. Williams said that his son wouldn't call out for help or draw attention to himself, but he might respond to a person he didn't know who came across his path. Dennis's mother, Violet, noted to reporter Sharon Abercrombie early on that she was worried Dennis may have wandered much further away from the initial search grid than authorities were willing to believe. She described Dennis as a very fast walker, and so she thought he was likely a lot further away from Spencefield than people in charge thought.
12:30 Speaker 00 A psychologist from the University of Tennessee told reporter Carl Vines that in missing children's cases, it's extremely common for kids who are Dennis's age to run from voices that are yelling their name. Basically, the fight-or-flight response kicks in, and they tend to avoid people who are hollering out their name because they're afraid of possibly getting in trouble. And honestly, that interpretation just hits me like a ton of bricks, because even though it makes total sense when you put yourself in a young child's shoes, it's obviously counterintuitive to our adult-developed brains. Anyway, around noon on the 15th, Violet got to the scene, and not far behind her were reporters from radio stations and newspapers who'd picked up on the story.
13:13 Speaker 00 Dennis's dad told the press he couldn't wrap his mind around how his son had literally vanished in five minutes. It was baffling to him. He remarked to UPI News that when his sons and the other two boys they'd been playing with split up to try and surprise the adults, the grownups all knew what the kids were up to, but pretended that they didn't. William said that in the moment, he'd picked up on the fact that the three older boys had intentionally sent Dennis on a route by himself because they'd seemingly realized the red shirt he was wearing was likely to catch the adults' attention and thwart the prank they were trying to pull. William emphasized to the news outlet that it had only been a few minutes that Dennis was out of sight, so the nagging question that no one could answer was how?
13:58 Speaker 00 How had he disappeared without a trace in such a short window of time? Over the next few days, the search effort to find Dennis grew larger and larger. Some areas around Spence Field were combed more than once, just in case anyone had missed anything. Carson Brewer reported for the Knoxville News Sentinel that at one point, a set of what appeared to be child-sized footprints had been found about a mile away from Spence Field, in the Eagle Creek area of North Carolina. But NPS Rangers didn't think it was a very credible lead, mostly because a troop of Boy Scouts had been helping scour that area earlier in the search, and it was totally possible the prints belonged to one of them. The impressions were said to be distinct, though, with one of them appearing to have
14:42 Speaker 00 been made by a barefoot and the other by an actual shoe. The impressions trailed for about 300 yards and ended at Eagle Creek. Park Rangers took casts of the footprints, but when the Martins looked at them, they indicated they felt the tracks were too large and likely didn't belong to their son. Eventually, this clue was written off as being unrelated. As the week stretched on, authorities utilized helicopters and got help from a bunch of Special Forces personnel who happened to be doing some training in a nearby gorge in North Carolina. Other volunteers arrived with tracking dogs, too, but their efforts weren't very helpful because it was believed that the heavy rain from the night Dennis vanished had essentially covered up his scent, making it nearly impossible for the dogs to do their job.
15:27 Speaker 00 And unfortunately, the weather didn't improve all that much in those first few days of searching. NPS reports state that ground fog and mist in the mountains became a serious issue for the helicopter pilots and delayed their ability to get airborne in search. It had also started to rain again, which made the roads and trails that search teams were trying to cover harder to traverse. On Wednesday, June 18th, Rangers procured an aircraft that had a loudspeaker attached to it, and the plan was to send William up in it. While the pilot flew, William would call Dennis's name through the speaker and instruct him on what to do and where to go to get help. But, in a heartbreaking stroke of bad luck, when that airplane landed in Cades Cove to
16:09 Speaker 00 pick up William, a rock damaged its rear landing gear, and the damage was so bad it completely took the aircraft out of commission. So that plan basically fell apart before it even had a chance. In the meantime, Dennis's mom Violet had to return to her family's home in Knoxville to care for nine-year-old Douglas and her and William's other two children, who were ages five and six. She and the kids spent most of their time praying for Dennis's safe return, going to and from William's mother's house and trying to process what was happening. She told reporter Sharon Abercrombie that she had a strong feeling search crews would eventually find her son. So she'd made it a habit to stay very close to the phones at her and her mother-in-law's
16:53 Speaker 00 house, waiting for updates, but she purposely didn't read local newspapers, watch TV, or listen to the reports on the radio because she said it was too painful. Also around the same time, investigators began to get calls from psychics, or people claiming to have dreams about where Dennis was. These predictions, as they're referred to in the NPS reports, were a bit all over the place. Some folks said they were confident Dennis was somewhere within a few miles of where he'd last been seen, while others claimed he'd fallen off a cliff and was caught in trees. An entire appendix in an NPS report file is dedicated to tips like this that came in from self-proclaimed clairvoyants.
17:35 Speaker 00 Most of these folks would contact authorities over the phone, but a few of them traveled to Tennessee in person to assist law enforcement. Dennis's parents didn't want to ignore these tips, and according to the NPS, were quite receptive of them. And because authorities couldn't know what was credible and what wasn't, they had no choice but to check out all of the information that came in, including predictions from psychics. But unfortunately, none of these tips got them any closer to finding Dennis. Something kind of wild I read while researching this case is that William and his family weren't the only visitors to Spence Field on June 14th who had the last name Martin. Turns out, a doctor from Huntsville, Alabama, named Carter Martin
18:18 Speaker 00 had been visiting the same area and even camped with William, Clyde, Douglas, and Dennis that very weekend. Carter also had two sons with him, 11-year-old Carter Jr. and 9-year-old Douglas. Yes, there were two 9-year-old Douglasses with the same last name in the exact same part of the park at the exact same time. It's confusing, I know, but hang in there. But it was actually Carter Martin's two boys who'd been playing with Douglas and Dennis Martin on the afternoon Dennis disappeared. According to the source material, Carter Martin had gotten to know William Martin well enough while camping and during those first few days of searching that he actually dedicated several days of his time to help William look for Dennis. He spoke several times with the NPS
19:04 Speaker 00 and questioned his sons about what they might know. But in the end, the other Martin family could not come up with a reasonable answer as to what happened to Dennis. And it seems like just a total coincidence that they had the same last name as the family at the center of this incident. By Friday night, June 20th, almost a week after Dennis vanished and on what would have been his 7th birthday, the park service and Special Forces troops who were helping in the search had a meeting to regroup and go over what search crews would do if they found him alive or dead. The harsh reality was that the landscape Dennis vanished into was riddled with all sorts of hazards, including wild bears, boars, venomous snakes, and generally unforgiving terrain.
19:49 Speaker 00 Because so much time had passed and the weather conditions had also been so unrelenting, it was a real possibility that he'd succumb to the elements. So crews were briefed about what to do and who to call if they found his body. Now, mind you, this was all going on while normal visitors and tourists were in the park. It's not like all operations in Great Smoky Mountains National Park shut down because of this incident. But to at least try and curb the number of onlookers and outdoor enthusiasts coming near Spence Field, authorities set up roadblocks leading to where the search command center was and where all of the aircraft being utilized in the search were located. By the end of the day on Saturday, one week into the search, around 1,400 people were
20:32 Speaker 00 involved in the efforts to find Dennis. It's fair to say that at that point, folks who'd been there since the beginning were extremely tired, and even the military leaders who were on site had to consider pulling back some of their resources and personnel because no sign of him had turned up in all the days everyone had been looking. By that point, the theory he'd perhaps been injured by a predatory animal or bitten by a snake had all but fizzled out because some kind of trace would have been left behind if that were the case. After the first two weeks, the number of volunteers and overall resources dedicated to the search had dwindled, and by the end of the day on Sunday, June 29th, more than two weeks into the search, the Park Service, the FBI, and Dennis's parents had to regroup
21:17 Speaker 00 and figure out their next moves. The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that it was a moment for loved ones like aunts and uncles to just pause and consider what was the best use of their energy moving forward. During that meeting between NPS investigators, Dennis's parents, and the feds, the FBI told the Martins that because no evidence had been found that pointed towards Dennis being abducted or foul play being involved, they weren't going to be able to open a full-blown kidnapping or criminal investigation. It stated in NPS that basically the powers that be felt that the family just didn't want to accept the fact that Dennis would likely never be found. The day before this, Violet had informed the Park Service that the family was contemplating
22:01 Speaker 00 offering a reward for information, and the FBI's response to that was essentially telling the family they could do that if they wanted to, but the government wouldn't really have any involvement in raising the funds or distributing the posters. The Martins moved ahead anyway and put up a $5,000 reward for information. For its part, the NPS promised the family that at least three Rangers would continue searching for Dennis for the rest of the summer and into the fall. Unfortunately, though, because so many leaves were expected to fall during that season, the NPS wasn't confident that searching for Dennis or his possible remains would get any easier the more time passed. After going over all of this with the Martins, authorities officially shut down the formal
22:45 Speaker 00 search for Dennis, with the exception of those three NPS Rangers who were still going to keep at it. As a parent, I can't even begin to imagine how difficult this time was for William and Violet. They got a small glimmer of hope, though, on July 21st, when a possible witness came forward with a brand-new piece of information.
23:11 Speaker 02 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
23:15 Speaker 03 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, "Wait, what does that actually mean?"
23:20 Speaker 02 I'm Eliza Orland, career public defender.
23:22 Speaker 03 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
23:25 Speaker 02 And on our brand-new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
23:31 Speaker 03 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
23:46 Speaker 00 According to an article by Carson Brewer for the Knoxville News/Sentinel, more than a month after Dennis disappeared, a guy named Harold Key, who was visiting the park with his family from Carthage, Tennessee, revealed to authorities that sometime between 6:00 PM and 6:45 PM on June 14th, while hiking near a stream close to the Cades Cove area of the park. He'd heard someone scream. He told Brewer, quote, "A trouble scream, an enormous, sickening scream. We couldn't tell which direction it came from, but it sounded like it came from higher on the mountain to me," end quote. Then, shortly after hearing the shriek, Harold said he looked across a creek and saw a rough-looking man walking quickly through the woods.
24:31 Speaker 00 The screaming incident reportedly happened somewhere in the woods just a few miles away from where Dennis vanished. Initially, park rangers were skeptical about this lead and weren't sure if it was even connected to their case, but they decided to check out Harold's story anyway. He maintained that around 6:00 PM, he'd gone hiking with some family members after parking his car on a nearby roadway, and by 6:45 PM, he was back at the vehicle, ready to leave. During those 45 minutes or so is when he'd heard the scream and saw the mystery man in the bushes. Harold also told the Park Service and Knoxville News Sentinel that upon returning to his car, he'd noticed an older model white Chevy vehicle parked beneath some low-hanging trees, and it wasn't very far away from his own car.
25:16 Speaker 00 What exactly authorities did to look into this vehicle, though, is unknown. I couldn't find anything more about it in the available source material. It seems it was just something that either got written off or was never thoroughly investigated, which is kind of an important detail to note, because in early August, a month after Harold Key's story came out, it seems there was a major tone shift between the Martin family and the law enforcement agencies involved in Dennis's case, particularly the FBI. According to the NPS, William had written letters to a state senator, a congressman, and the Park Service, expressing several concerns he had about the way the search for his son had been conducted and what was going on with the case.
26:00 Speaker 00 In his letter to the NPS, he was really focused on making sure the federal agencies involved had all of the relevant and important information they needed. But FBI agents didn't receive William's desire to help very well. Honestly, the reports read as if they were almost annoyed by him. On top of that, a 27-page search report the NPS filed last minute with the Tennessee Governor's Office and Tennessee National Guard had several errors in it that William felt needed to be corrected. And finally, there was the information that Harold Key had come forward with. Apparently, William had spoken to Harold a few times over the phone prior to Harold giving his official statement to investigators and the press.
26:43 Speaker 00 And he encouraged him to come back to the park and meet with authorities to take them along the path he'd walked the day he heard that sickening scream in the woods. As we know, Harold did eventually travel back to the park and take FBI agents to the spot in the woods where he'd heard the scream and seen the mystery man. But I guess that information about him physically coming to the search area and meeting with investigators was never communicated to William. So, when he did eventually find out about the outcome of Harold's trip while reading a local newspaper, William was a bit frustrated that he'd been left out of the loop. On July 29th, Violet and William did a television interview with WBIR News in Knoxville to discuss the case.
27:24 Speaker 00 The segment mostly went over the sequence of events that had preceded Dennis's disappearance and where search efforts had taken place. But at one point, William stated he believed someone had killed his son, but of course, he had nothing to back that theory up. It was truly just a desperate father's speculation. A few weeks after that, on September 11th, nearly three months to the day that Dennis vanished, the NPS pulled its remaining personnel off the case and officially ended its search for him. After that, a few tips trickled in, including one from a person in Indiana who'd visited the park and said they'd found a little boy's blue shoe in a river, but that turned out to be a bust.
28:05 Speaker 00 There was also the discovery of a pair of boy's underwear near a shelter in Spence Field, but after Dennis's mother looked at the underpants, she assured authorities they didn't belong to her son. Follow-up testing on those underpants eventually concluded they were very deteriorated and contained no blood, hairs, or fibers. Still, the Martins tried their best to stay hopeful and keep their missing son's story at the forefront of people's minds. They even took out ads in local newspapers in Knoxville, asking people who might have information to come forward.
28:40 Speaker 00 In early December, authorities returned a bunch of Dennis's belongings to his parents that they'd previously provided to search crews. According to the NPS's records, his family really wanted those things back, to, I imagine, preserve all they could of Dennis now that he was gone. Despite not having the support or resources from the FBI or NPS, by January 1970, William was more determined than ever to conduct his own investigation. He'd participated in searches for Dennis since the very beginning, and he'd stayed put in the park for many long days and nights doing everything he could to bring his son home. Giving up was just not an option for him, even though he had a wife, other children,
29:22 Speaker 00 and a job as an architect waiting for him back in Knoxville. In his quest, he'd asked the NPS to provide him with a list of names for all the hikers who'd applied for campfire permits along trails nearest to Spence Field, between the dates of June 7th and June 15th, 1969. He also wanted the names of visitors who'd signed registers on those trails, or been issued camping permits during the week Dennis and his family were in the park. NPS staff provided William with as much of this information as they could, but there was just one small problem. At the time, visitors who stayed at group campsites in regular designated campgrounds
30:02 Speaker 00 didn't have to have a permit to do so, which meant that kind of data just didn't exist. The only records the NPS could provide William about park visitors who'd gotten any kind of official permit were the names of people who'd applied for campfire permits, which, in the end, wasn't all that helpful. Around this same time, the Martins took it upon themselves to make reward flyers and distribute them to the public. Despite what the FBI's stance was, the family was not ruling out the possibility that Dennis had been abducted. Violet told reporter James Trotter, quote, "If he is on the mountain, then he is for sure dead, but we believe that someone may have picked him up and taken him out of the park.
30:44 Speaker 00 If that is true, then he may be alive right now," end quote.
30:50 Speaker 00 An NPS ranger who'd been heavily involved in the search disagreed with that statement. He was quoted in that same article basically saying that he believed Dennis's remains were still in the park somewhere, but he'd just not been found yet. He explained that the terrain and plant life in that particular section of the park was so thick, it was entirely possible for someone to walk right past a body and never know it was there. On the one-year anniversary of Dennis's disappearance, his dad told The Tennessean that he and his wife were convinced that Dennis was not inside the park and hadn't been for quite some time. He stated, quote, "The fact that there has not been one shred of evidence turned up
31:33 Speaker 00 about Dennis leads my wife and me to believe that he might have gotten out of the park somehow," end quote. Just after the one-year anniversary passed, a woman in Knoxville called authorities and reported that she'd seen a little boy who looked a lot like Dennis riding in a car in town. According to this woman's statement, the kid had been in a white car riding with another child. She said the man driving the vehicle was between 38 to 45 years old and was bald. One reason she was so sure the little boy she saw was Dennis Martin was because he'd stuck his head out the car's window, and after seeing him, she'd found a photo of Dennis that had previously been published and studied it to make sure her suspicions weren't just the result of her mind playing tricks on her.
32:18 Speaker 00 Whether or not authorities looked into this lead or followed up on the mysterious white Chevy that Harold Key claimed he'd seen back on the day Dennis first vanished is not information I was able to find. I want to assume that investigators did consider these leads credible and did their due diligence, but again, I don't know for sure. The next robust bit of reporting I found about Dennis's case was published in March 2009, nearly 40 years after he disappeared.
32:48 Speaker 00 Journalist Bob Hodge chronicled the case in that piece and discussed two other mysterious disappearances that occurred in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the years after Dennis vanished. There's the case of Treni Lynn Gibson from 1976, and her case is a wild story that I actually covered in an episode of Park Predators a few years ago titled "The Student." If you haven't listened to that one, I highly recommend checking it out. It's a story that's as equally baffling as Dennis's. Bob Hodge also wrote about the disappearance of a woman named Thelma Melton, who vanished while on a hike with her friends in 1981. But the similarities between Treni Lynn Gibson's case and Dennis's are especially interesting
33:31 Speaker 00 to me, mostly because they were both minors when they disappeared. Treni was a teenager and Dennis was a tender aged child. An article in the Elizabethan Star explained that within just a few years of Treni vanishing, her father told the press that he was convinced she'd been abducted. And as I've already mentioned a few times, kidnapping was also something Dennis's parents felt strongly could have happened to their son. And really, when it comes down to it, Dennis being taken by someone all those years ago in 1969 has remained one of three likely scenarios that folks believe could explain what happened to him. The other two theories are that he could have been killed by a wild animal or simply
34:14 Speaker 00 died in the terrain after getting disoriented. A former park ranger who participated in the initial search told the Knoxville News Sentinel that he believed Dennis had died after getting lost in the landscape. But he explained that the Martin family never fully bought that theory. He said the more he got to know William and Violet in the years after Dennis disappeared, the more he realized that they'd become convinced someone had taken their son. Credible leads were few and far between, but there were a handful of promising tips, you could say, that sort of reignited hope. For example, in 1985, there was a guy who claimed he'd found a child's skeletal remains in an area of the park about nine miles east-ish of where Harold Key had heard
34:59 Speaker 00 that scream. This witness said he'd stumbled upon the bones while illegally harvesting ginseng. However, he'd waited several years to tell anyone about the discovery because he was afraid of getting arrested for breaking the law by harvesting ginseng. When he did finally report the remains, though, a park ranger and a team of volunteers searched the hollow the tipster said he'd seen them in, but nothing was found. Which to me comes as no surprise because this guy had waited so long to tell anyone about this information. All sorts of things could have happened to the bones between the time he first saw them and when rangers and searchers finally could check them out. If they were even there at all. Another lead came in in the early 2000s when a man who was trying to find his birth parents
35:44 Speaker 00 approached park officials asking whether he could possibly be Dennis Martin. But after authorities checked out this guy's story and compared information about his life to Dennis's, it became clear the man was not Dennis Martin. After that, the case went cold. And I mean, cold, cold. Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Matt Lakin wrote in 2019 about the many lessons the National Park Service and various search and rescue organizations had learned by analyzing the missteps that were made during the search for Dennis. Because the efforts to find him had been organized so quickly and simultaneously utilized so many people and resources, it all ended up kind of working against initial investigators.
36:28 Speaker 00 For example, having so many folks out traipsing on the trails that Dennis might have been on wasn't necessarily a good thing. It was difficult to delineate between what could have been an unrelated footprint or potentially a clue that Dennis left behind. There were also issues when it came to making sure everyone from the different agencies involved knew exactly what they were supposed to do and how much ground they needed to cover each day. By the time all was said and done, the National Park Service ultimately concluded that all the disorganization and rangers not wanting to turn well-meaning volunteers away was detrimental to the search effort for Dennis and may have been one reason as to why he was never found.
37:10 Speaker 00 In 2019, Clay Jordan, the acting deputy superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park at the time, told Matt Lakin that he believed the fruitless outcome of the searches for Dennis back in 1969 would likely be a different story if he disappeared in more modern times. Resources like drones have made searching for a small child in such a large geographic area much easier, and that kind of technology just wasn't around back in 1969. Jordan said that one remaining legacy of Dennis's story is that it created a more robust and better-educated generation of search and rescue personnel that still operates around the world. Like so many people who'd been at the helm of Great Smoky Mountains National Park over
37:54 Speaker 00 the years, Jordan effectively said that humanity would likely never know what happened to Dennis Martin. Period. It was just something that defied explanation. He remarked, quote, "Human nature being what it is, we want to have an answer to something. We want to have an explanation, but it's become one of the enduring mysteries of the Smokies," end quote. According to reporter Matt Lakin, Harold Key, the only real witness in this case who saw something that might be significant, died in 2019 at the age of 94. If the unknown person he says he saw after hearing a sickening scream in the woods is
38:36 Speaker 00 somehow connected to what happened to Dennis, Harold is no longer around to provide any further information. His written statements are all we have to go on, and those have been read and reread with seemingly nothing new coming to light. Unfortunately, he's not the only person who went to their grave without answers. Dennis's father, William, passed away in 2014, never knowing what happened to his son. In his obituary at the time, Violet was said to still be living. I couldn't find a death record for her in my research, so I think she might still be alive, at least as of the recording of this episode. In 2022, about eight years after William's death,
39:17 Speaker 00 the FBI publicly released its entire case file on Dennis's case, all 133 pages of it. And these documents included things like field reports and memos that were exchanged between different federal officials over the course of many years, as well as communications that William had with the FBI. And really, the only reason any of these documents were finally released was because of an author named Michael Bouchard. Bouchard wrote a book about Dennis's case titled, "The Disappearance of Dennis Lloyd Martin: Lost in the Great Smoky Mountains." While conducting research for his novel, he tried several times to get the FBI's records via Freedom of Information Act requests, but each of his attempts were denied.
40:02 Speaker 00 Then, finally, after a lot of persistence, the FBI cooperated and gave Bouchard what he was after, which made my job of putting together this episode so much easier. It's also kind of wild when you read through the FBI's case file, because it's very clear, even though the feds had frequently downplayed the Martin family's suspicions that Dennis was kidnapped, agents did in fact look into that theory as a possibility. And when I say they looked into it, I'm not just giving them blanket credit for doing the bare minimum. No, they actually did identify at least a few different people of interest. According to a memo written on July 31, 1969, between an FBI special agent in charge based in Kentucky
40:47 Speaker 00 and the director of the FBI, which by the way was like a month after the feds and NPS told Dennis's family that the search for him was essentially over and the feds didn't think kidnapping was involved, turns out, the FBI had in fact identified some men from Hopkinsville, Kentucky as possibly being involved.
41:06 Speaker 00 These guys' names are redacted from the FBI's case file, but the info about what FBI agents discussed with them isn't. One of the men who was interviewed spoke to investigators on August 1, 1969, and he told the feds that he hadn't been in Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the day Dennis went missing. He said he'd been at work, which was later confirmed by his employer and his wife. When pressed, this guy maintained that he and his family had never been to the Smoky Mountains or visited the eastern Tennessee Gatlinburg area, which, just for reference, is about an hour northeast of Spence Field. Agents interviewed another guy from Kentucky who told investigators he, his wife,
41:48 Speaker 00 and seven-year-old son had visited Gatlinburg on June 13, 1969 and spent two days in the area, but they had no firsthand knowledge about what had happened to Dennis Martin. This man said the only reason he knew who Dennis was was because he said his wife had followed the story on the news, and they'd each talked to a few friends about it because they had a son who was about Dennis's age, and so they'd felt connected to the case in that way. Now, I know you're probably wondering, "Wait, how did the feds even find these two men to begin with? What did they even have on them that merited further exploring?" And the answer is, it's kind of hard to tell. Based on the FBI reports I read, it appears that the feds identified at least one of them
42:32 Speaker 00 after receiving an anonymous letter from a person in Nashville who directed agents to, quote, "Check out," redacted name, "of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He was in the area where Dennis Martin was lost and has a boy about seven years old," end quote. After doing these interviews and following up on these leads and getting nowhere, the FBI slowly became less and less involved in the case. Agents checked out a few claims from prison inmates in the '70s and early '80s, but all those ended up being dead ends. It seems to have been a slow burn, but in terms of having an active, regular role in finding out what happened to Dennis, federal records indicate that the FBI spent far more time trying to convince William Martin
43:17 Speaker 00 that his belief something untoward had happened to his son was unfounded. A memo between a Knoxville FBI agent and the Director of the FBI from August 2nd, 1969 states the Bureau's position in part like this. Quote, "The father, William Martin, has been unwilling to accept the reality that his child did not survive and prefers to grasp at some hope that the child was kidnapped and taken from the park. There has been absolutely nothing to indicate that this occurred." End quote. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has an age progressed image of what Dennis Martin would look like today on its website.
43:59 Speaker 00 Right now, if he is still alive, he would be in his early 60s. It's remarkable to think about how much time has passed since he vanished. Though many folks believe he likely died back in 1969 as a child, there's never been a definitive answer either way. I for one, though, would like to hope that wherever he is, he knows how hard his family, particularly his father, looked for him. I hope he knows that the people who cared about him the most never gave up trying to find the truth, even though the truth still remains a mystery.
44:40 Speaker 00 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.
44:57 Speaker 00 So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?
45:05 Speaker 04 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks.
45:22 Speaker 04 The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
45:25 Speaker 05 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
45:32 Speaker 04 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
45:43 Speaker 06 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
45:53 Speaker 04 I'm Eva Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
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