Park Predators - The Local

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

A Tennessee man who knew the Great Smoky Mountains National Park like the back of his hand disappears into the forestland that surrounds his 100-acre property. The only clue left behind is an idle ATV, indicating he stumbled upon something sinister and never saw the light of day again.Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://parkpredators.com/the-local/ Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I'm going to tell you about is a bizarre one that, to this day, is still unsolved. It takes place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in America, according to the National Park Service. This park takes up more than 520,000 acres and is divided almost evenly between Tennessee and my home state of North Carolina. There are 850 miles of backcountry trails, many of which twist and turn on themselves or intersect with private properties. And it's on one of these trails in the summer of 2008 that 51-year-old Mike Herron disappeared, leaving behind a mountain of mystery as big as the Great Smokies themselves. To help me tell this story, I enlisted the help of one of Mike's sons, Matt Heron. Matt and his brother Andy had been looking for their father who vanished in the woods along the park's

boundary 13 years ago, and the men are certain he was murdered. This is Park Predators. Around 9.30 in the morning on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008, 26-year-old Andy Heron picked up his phone and heard the cheerful voice of his dad, Mike, on the other end. Mike was calling Andy to let his son know that he was leaving his condo in the nearby town of Maryville, Tennessee, and was coming over to Andy's house to pick up a lawn mower and a trailer. Mike told Andy that he wanted to take the mower about 30 minutes away to the family's 100-acre farm in Happy Valley. Right before calling Andy, Mike said he'd tried to reach his other son, 25-year-old Matt Herron, and told him the same thing, but Matt hadn't answered, so Mike left him a voicemail. He left me a message on my cell phone just saying he was going up here to the valley, you know, for the weekend and, you know, nothing strange about the message or anything like that, you know, because he went up on the weekends to Happy Valley where his farm was,

you know, about every weekend. Andy told his dad that using the mower for the weekend was fine. The piece of equipment was something Mike and his son shared often and swapped back and forth. All three of the men worked as contractors for Mike's construction company in Maryville, and they'd often use the mower to maintain land around houses or buildings that they built. During his phone call with Andy, Mike said that he'd been wanting to get out to the farm and mow down some tall grass on a neighboring 40-acre property. Some missionaries who owned that property had been out of town for a while. Andy wasn't at home when his dad called him, but while they were on the phone, he told him that he was on his way back and if Mike waited, he could help him put the mower on the trailer.

Andy told his dad that if Mike didn't want to wait for him, he could go ahead and transport the mower by himself. Andy and Mike lived about a half hour apart, so Andy figured he'd either see his dad loading the mower and help him, or they'd pass each other on the drive. And that's exactly what happened. Andy told the Daily Times that as he pulled down his road towards his driveway, he saw his father pass him driving in the opposite direction, headed toward the family's farm. He actually saw Dad going down Gateway Road with his trailer and the mower loaded up, and he was headed towards the parkway to head up over the mountain.

Andy said when he noticed Mike, he saw that the mower was on the trailer and everything seemed completely normal. The two didn't talk after that, and Andy had no idea that was the last time he'd ever see his father. A few hours later, around 11 a.m., Mike's neighbor saw him pull into his driveway near the end of Bell Branch Road, and he was hauling a piece of equipment on a trailer. Mike's house was towards the dead end of Bell Branch Road, so he had to pass a lot of other farm estates on

the way to his property. According to the Daily Times, 30 minutes later, two other neighbors saw Mike emerge from his property riding on a four-wheeler. Mike even waved at them as he zoomed toward the woods. The rest of Saturday passed, and Andy and his brother Matt didn't think twice about not hearing from their father. It wasn't like they spoke every day. Like I said, Mike did employ both of his adult sons as contractors, but it was the weekend and the brothers and their dad were living separate lives. Andy and Matt just assumed Mike would call one of them to return the mower whenever he was done with it, or the three of them would just touch base at work on Monday. So the brothers were surprised when on Sunday, August 24th, around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, their grandmother called. I remember my grandmother, his mother, had called me and asked if I had talked to him, that she hadn't talked to him or anything.

She hadn't been able to get a hold of him. Mike's mother, Alma, was upset. She asked the boys if they'd heard from their dad and they both told her no. She explained to them that she hadn't heard from Mike all weekend, which was unusual. She told Matt and Andy that mid-morning on Sunday, she and Mike's dad had walked down about five minutes from their house on Happy Valley Road. They went to Mike's house on Bell Branch Road and knocked on the door, but no one answered. The couple didn't go inside, but they noticed Mike's truck was sitting in the driveway

with a mower and a trailer attached to it. Andy and Matt weren't really alarmed by the fact that their dad hadn't answered the door or unhitched the trailer. They knew he would often work on projects outside on the farm or be taking care of the 40 head of cattle and dozens of chickens that he had. The boys also knew that Happy Valley wasn't friendly for cell phone use. There is no cell phone service in Happy Valley. I don't know if you're familiar with that or not. There's no cell phone service. So basically there's a landline that he would use.

But if he's out on the track or out hunting or, you know, doing stuff with the cattle or working the fences or something like that, then, yeah, he wouldn't be able to get a hold of. So, you know, really didn't raise any red flags to me on Sunday when my grandmother called and asked if I'd talk to him. Matt and Andy told their grandmother not to worry and that Mike was probably just busy on the farm, and once he was back near a phone, he would call her. The brothers knew that Mike knew the farm property really well.

It's where he'd been raised and grown up. At one point, Mike had even worked as a ranger for the park service trimming nearby trails. He knew that area like the back of his hand. I mean, you could send him out there and drop him somewhere, probably anywhere around that area and, you know, pitch black in the dark and he could tell you exactly what's what and what landmarks were here and there. So he knew the area very well. According to Matt and several news reports, on Monday, August 25th, Alma called Matt and Andy again. This time she was in a real panic. She told them that she had still not heard from Mike and she felt something was very wrong.

Matt says it was around 8 30 or 9 o'clock in the morning when they realized after speaking with their grandmother a second time that they needed to check on their dad. So Matt drove to Mike's condo in Maryville to scope it out. The condo was where Mike usually stayed on weeknights or when he wasn't at the farm. When Matt arrived, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Mike's bed was made and all of the

lights were off. It looked like he left in a normal manner, just like he always did. Nothing was out of place. He had a Mercedes, a little convertible car, and a Harley. They were both in the garage, so we knew it was in his truck, obviously, still. The only vehicle missing was Mike's pickup truck, which Matt knew from talking with his grandmother was at the farm. After checking on the condo, Matt met up with Andy and the two headed to the farm. Mike's mother had gone back to the farmhouse for a second time to check for signs of him. When she got there, she called Andy and Matt to tell them that a four-wheeler was sitting in the front yard and Mike's truck was still parked by the house with the lawnmower and trailer attached to the back of it. It said his truck was still parked there with the trailer on, the lawnmower in the back.

The windows were rolled down. I mean, it looked like he just kind of left it there temporarily. It was just kind of not in the state you would leave something if you were going to park it for a long time or anything like that. Andy and Matt quickly made their way over to the farm and found Mike's truck there, just as their grandmother had described it. It was parked with the windows down and all of the doors were unlocked. Inside, they found their dad's keys, ID, some cash, and his cell phone laying on the seat.

Something else really strange that stuck out to Andy and Matt was the way their dad's truck was parked. It wasn't how they knew he normally parked it. The boys knew that their dad had a regular habit of It wasn't how they knew he normally parked it. The boys knew that their dad had a regular habit of letting a school bus from the area park on the property on weekday mornings. In order for that bus to have parked in its usual spot on Monday morning, Mike would have had to position his truck in a specific way to let the bus through. But the way the brothers found their dad's truck told them that he hadn't moved it for the bus. They also noticed a four-wheeler in the yard, which was the one their grandmother had told

them about on the phone. The brothers inspected it, but quickly realized it was old. Their dad had actually recently purchased a new one, and that one was the one that was missing. For Matt, the new ATV missing really concerned him. It meant that his dad was out there in the woods somewhere and at one point had a mode of transportation, but for some reason hadn't come back with it, which probably meant he was injured. Around noontime on Monday, the brothers alerted some close family members that Mike was missing and then they called their mother. Their mom and Mike had been divorced for six or seven years at that point, but she still lived in Maryville. She drove to Happy Valley to help her sons try and locate her ex-husband. Jerry Heron, Mike's brother,

learned about the search for Mike while he was at work. Jerry's wife had called him to explain what was going on, and Jerry immediately thought to himself the same thing Matt had, which was that maybe Mike had fallen or wrecked the four-wheeler in the woods and was injured. Jerry remembered that his brother had high blood pressure, but other than that, Jerry knew Mike was healthy. Back at the farm, Andy and Matt worked together to repair a flat tire on the old ATV sitting in the front yard, and then they began searching the 100 acres for their father. Me and Andy searched. We just took our trucks at first and just rode the main trails on the farm and didn't see anything. We were combing all the 140 acres that we owned, and there's actually a

property that dad was mowing for some missionaries that were in the Philippines. He'd sold some property a long time ago, and he was going to go up there and mow it for hay. And so he'd already said he was going to do that. So we went, we drove out there and looked and didn't see anything. And I mean, it was probably, I would think, two or three hours, maybe more than that. We looked everywhere we thought to look. The brothers rode up and down dozens of trails

and even went to nearby campgrounds inside of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. After several hours of searching in the forest and not finding a single trace of their dad, Matt and Andy started to think the worst. By four o'clock, the brothers decided to call the police. Because the Heron Farm is so close to the National Park, but not technically inside of it, Matt was first connected with dispatch close to the National Park, but not technically inside of it,

Matt was first connected with dispatchers from the National Park Service, but eventually was transferred to Blount County Sheriff's Office. Around 6 o'clock Monday night, deputies began arriving at the family farm, but they hit a roadblock right away. I think the Sheriff's Department members showed up just a little bit before dark, and it was probably about 30 minutes to an hour into the search and then that's when it started raining and it really it rained for I think two or three days straight. An officer with a tracking dog tried to pick up Mike's scent around the farmhouse and his empty pickup truck but the dog couldn't

get a hit. The rain and bad weather made it difficult to accomplish anything. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, the next morning, the Blount County Sheriff's Office launched a formal search for Mike. They asked the public and media for help and to be on the lookout for the missing four-wheeler and any sign of Mike. According to the witnesses on Bell Branch Road who saw Mike on Saturday, the clothing he was last seen wearing was a faded red t-shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and Teva sandals. Some good information that would also help people identify him was the fact that Mike had a distinct surgical scar on the back of one of his knees, a snake bite scar on one of his feet, and a tattoo on his lower back. Some of Mike's other identifying features were that previously of his feet, and a tattoo on his lower back.

Some of Mike's other identifying features were that previously in his life, he'd had his appendix removed, so he would have a scar on his abdomen. He also had caps put on his teeth, which we all know, teeth are some of the best identifying markers of a person if they're found dead and there isn't much left of them to ID. But despite all of that helpful information about Mike, no one came forward right away to say that they'd seen him. It was literally like he disappeared into thin air. Two big problems that the Blount County Sheriff's Office ran into right away were one, the authorities were late to the party because Mike's family had inadvertently delayed officially reporting him missing. And two, all of the wind and rain that had started up worked against deputies.

Any clues or tracks that may have been left in the woods on Saturday, when Mike was last seen, could have washed away. At daybreak on Tuesday, August 26th, Blount County Sheriff's deputies and search and rescue crews from the National Park Service resumed their search for Mike. They began meticulously walking through the woods on or around his property. Matt and Andy joined authorities. They were still desperate to find any trace of their dad. One of Mike's next door neighbors on Bell Branch Road, a man in his 80s named Grady Whitehead, volunteered to lead some of the parties. Grady had been one of the people

to briefly see Mike the Saturday he disappeared. Grady remembered Mike riding his ATV past his house and waving. Grady's own son, also named Mike, had grown up with Mike Herron. The two families were really close, and Grady had actually been a park ranger in Great Smoky Mountains National Park from 1955 until 1988. So he knew the land well and had a reputation as an expert tracker. Grady's wife told the Knoxville News Sentinel that Grady was so passionate about finding Mike that every day searches were underway. He was, quote, the first one on the search and the last one off, end quote. he was, quote, the first one on the search and the last one off, end quote. Grady used all of his tracking skills to help point authorities to possible signs of Mike, but nothing panned out.

Grady told the newspaper that the vegetation in Happy Valley would have indicators like bent weeds or bushes if someone had walked through an area or fallen and then tried to find help. The massive search for Mike covered close to 500 acres and included helicopters, dogs, drones, and people on horseback. The sheriff's office also brought in divers to drag two pawns on Mike's property, but nothing came from that search either. By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, authorities finally got the break they needed. Deputies had made a huge

discovery, one that would change everything about this investigation and would send rumors flying in Happy Valley. Around noon on Tuesday, August 26th, Blount County Sheriff's deputies found Mike Herron's ATV. Mike, though, was still unaccounted for. According to the Daily Times, one of Mike's friends had found the ATV while randomly checking an area off of Happy Valley Loop, a road that leads to Bell Branch Road. The ATV was abandoned about a mile away from Mike's farmhouse. It was parked in thick woods near an abandoned cabin. mile away from Mike's farmhouse. It was parked in thick woods near an abandoned cabin. When the ATV was actually located, Andy and Matt were searching in a different section of woods nearby, and they heard the radio chatter come through on the walkie-talkies. When they said they found it, you know, my heart sank because I just didn't know. I knew we'd find him. I knew wherever the

folder was, I just had envisioned, you know, he'd flipped it or done something and killed himself or hurt himself because I just knew that's what was going to happen. But when Matt and Andy got to the spot, their sure feeling that their dad had wrecked his four-wheeler and would be nearby quickly went away. The brothers saw the ATV and they knew right away that it was the one that had belonged to their dad, but where it was found was not a location Mike should have been. The brothers had no idea why the four-wheeler was where it was. Matt told me that was the moment he felt in his heart. Whatever had happened to his dad was not an accident. Once they took me where the four-wheeler was found, I just, I knew right away, I thought, yeah, there was foul play involved because it didn't make any sense where and how the four-wheeler was left, you know,

that he would have put it there. Something happened that wasn't right. It wasn't on his property. It was in between his property and the property that I had mentioned that he was going for, you know, for hay for the missionaries, which was probably about a mile and a half, So it wasn't technically in the National Park? But close area? The way Matt described the position of the four-wheeler to me was that it was sort of stashed up a steep hill in a strange way, almost like someone had jumped off of it in a hurry or it had been ditched there last minute. When Matt and the deputies with the Blount County

Sheriff's Office looked closer at the dashboard, they saw that the four-wheeler was left in high gear with the ignition switch in the on position, but the kill switch was off. Nothing else about the four-wheeler indicated it had been damaged or wrecked in any way. It was just sitting there. Deputies tried to lift fingerprints from the handlebars, but the rain and bad weather the previous days washed it pretty good. Matt and Andy told the sergeant that their dad would never have left an ATV with an ignition switch on. It would drain the power, and the last thing their dad would have wanted while deep in the woods would be to run out of juice and be stranded.

The ignition key was on, but somebody hit the kill switch to turn it off. And where it was found, it was on a side hill, and it was in a high gear. I think he said third or fourth gear. And it was kind of just stashed over in some brush. It wasn't like somebody had made a decision to park it in a good spot. It looked like it had been driven in a hurry and somebody had just stashed it. You know, when he was found like that, my first thought was that he did not put the forward there. The next morning, Wednesday, August 27th, deputies and more than 50 community volunteers fanned out around where the four-wheeler was

found. The main goal was to search for clues to find anything that could tell them where Mike was. Matt says that that particular area was remote and had thick vegetation. It actually bleeds over into the boundary of the national park. So we're talking dense woods and uninhabited forest that stretches for acres and acres. That part of the valley is so remote that the sheriff's office had to set up a mobile cell tower at the investigation's command center

in order for people to get enough cell service to communicate. Deputies used a tracking dog to attempt to pick up Mike's trail, starting at the abandoned four-wheeler and moving outward, but it led nowhere. According to the Daily Times, that same day, a park ranger led a group of volunteers to search around a cave. Mike's family said that the cave was somewhere Mike knew about and sometimes would go, but the group that searched there didn't find anything. On Friday, August 29th, the Blount County Sheriff's Office officially called off the search for Mike. In January 2009, some emergency workers resumed searching the backcountry around Mike's land.

They battled cold weather and snow flurries, but still made little progress. The sheriff's office told local media that they had prompted the renewed search for Mike so many months after his disappearance because the fall season had caused a lot of leaves in the woods to clear away, which made it easier for searchers to cover more ground. According to a report by Robert Wilson for the Knoxville News Sentinel, searchers in 2009 found an article of clothing near the area where Mike's ATV was, but the clothing didn't come back as a match for Mike. The searchers also found some bones, and that really got the attention of Mike's family and all of Happy Valley. The bones that searchers found in 2009 were located in a fire pit,

not far from where Mike's abandoned ATV had been found months earlier. This development in the case gave the Heron family a lot of hope, and at the same time, despair. If the bones were Mike's, that meant he was for sure dead. But when the lab test results came in, they showed the bones were from a cow, not human, and not Mike. And that is where leads in this case just completely dry up. For 13 years, authorities have asked people for help and even offered a $15,000 reward. But still, nothing has materialized that points to what happened to Mike. Matt and Andy have had to hold out hope that someone will stumble across a clue in the woods and come forward.

Just every year when hunting season comes around, I just pray. I think our best chances are the hunter or something like that. season comes around, I just pray. I think our best chances are the hunter or something like that, that runs up on remains, you know, some sort. And then we get some kind of something going off of that. Now, I don't like to spiral too much on theories and what ifs, but several people who have spoken publicly about this case and many others who have posted about the case on forums and blogs over the years have brought up some really interesting theories. One theory is that maybe Mike was just depressed and walked away from his life, or that his construction business wasn't as successful as it appeared as the American housing market crash of 2008 consumed the building industry. Law enforcement investigators had to consider this scenario too

in the beginning. I mean, Mike was a grown man and could make himself go missing if he wanted to. But something about that theory just doesn't sit right with Mike's family. Matt is certain that his father did not willingly disappear. We definitely don't think that happened. He was too close to his mom. Me and my brother just got married. I mean, there's no reason. He just got up and walk.

That's one thing my brother and I can clear, that he didn't just make himself disappear. Matt says that his dad didn't suffer from depression, and the family's building business was never in financial trouble, and Mike didn't have any enemies. We had a really good 2007. We had a lot of specs that we were doing, and we had kind of cleared out a lot of the inventory, but we weren't really in a bind when the market crashed.

And I guess at the end of 2008, we were in pretty good shape as far as the business goes. You cannot think of somebody that would want to do something like this to him. We don't think he was caught up in something that somebody would have planned this ambush or something like that. I don't know of anybody that would have known he was going to be up there, other than me and my brother. Matt and Andy believe in their hearts that someone who shouldn't have been in the woods or on the neighboring 40-acre property Mike was planning to mow did something to him. Matt believes his dad is dead, but isn't sure where his body is

or how a killer could have even gotten it out of the area undetected. I think that he was going to check on that property, and somebody, this property he was checking on, it was on 40 acres. This was another property like my father's that really no one has any visual sight of this house. And there was a big equipment barn at the bottom of the hill, you know, and there was a pond and stuff like that. And we just feel like that he was going out there to check on it. And somebody was there that shouldn't have been there. Somebody could have been breaking in. Something happened there. And then whatever happened, they got rid of the foyer. They stashed the four-wheeler on that road or did something. We just have a hard time picking an enemy that would have done something like this.

The theory that Mike may have stumbled upon someone or a group of people doing something illegal in the woods and they had to silence him seems like a possible scenario to me, especially when I read a few posts on social media from people who claimed they grew up with Mike. These posters said that in 2008, homeowners with property that butted up to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, just like Mike's, had indicated there had been

instances of people using the cover of the forest to grow marijuana. Now, I couldn't find any confirmation of this from the Blount County Sheriff's Office directly, but this theory got so much attention in Happy Valley that people just began to think it was the only logical explanation. Matt thinks that theory makes sense. He's sure that if his father came across people doing something illegal just a mile outside of his property, Mike would have confronted them. Matt says his dad was not someone to let criminal behavior or wrongdoings go unreported. Mike was a very protective and responsible person who would have intervened

if he saw something illegal or wrong going on. Other theories that swirled around have suggested that maybe Mike himself was using the woods near his property to do something illegal, but I couldn't find any information from law enforcement or official sources that support that theory. Honestly, there's just not enough out there in this case to say one way or the other, and Mike's family has never indicated that they knew he was up to anything nefarious or illegal. If Mike did, for some reason, walk away from his life to start a new one, why has he never contacted his sons or family members? No financial activity has ever been seen on his bank accounts either, which to me indicates that he's not alive anymore and carrying on with another life somewhere.

Another theory many people have brought up is perhaps Mike just lost control of his four-wheeler. Maybe he was just going too fast, hit a bump or a tree root, and was ejected really far away from the ATV. From what I've read online, the main reason a lot of people speculate this theory is the way that the four-wheeler was positioned when it was found. A lot of people familiar with these kinds of off-road vehicles wrote the ignition switch being left in the on position, but the kill switch off could indicate that Mike fell off the four-wheeler sometime during his ride. Then the vehicle kept going on its own until it ran out of power and ended up stopped in a weird way up the hill near the cabin. And I definitely entertained this idea while researching this case, but I keep coming back to the point that Matt made, which is that Mike's body has never been found, not even as much as a shoe, a piece of clothing, or a bone. I feel like if the scenario

really was that Mike just fell off the four-wheeler somewhere and tumbled down a hill or was in a gully, some trace of him would have been found by now. Like even if animals have scavenged his remains, there would be something other than the ATV to indicate that he was in that area. The woods all around where deputies found the ATV was searched thoroughly and authorities have never found a sign of Mike. That just leads me to believe that he isn't there, and he was never there for long. One year after Mike disappeared, his friends and family gathered together to remember him. They essentially held a celebration of life service.

Matt and Andy began organizing an annual hike called Hike for Mike along the trails outside their dad's property. That event continued for several years, but eventually ended. Mike's sons remember him as very animated, and then he had a loud laugh and big smile. Most of Mike's friends described him to reporters as being a social guy who got along well with everyone and really enjoyed his life. Matt told the Daily Times that his father worked hard to build his company and enjoyed going on vacations and riding four-wheelers and motorcycles.

As Matt and Andy have grown older, they've become fathers themselves. I've got a six and eight-year-old. My brother has a seven and nine-year-old. For the whole family not to really know what happened, it's just kind of a cloud that we're just not really ready to go through the full in-depth of what happened. They just know that Papaw Mike has passed away is what we've told them. We hadn't really said anything other than that. We know whatever's happened to him is not good. I mean, we know that he's not alive. We just, we want to know what happened. And that's what I'm going to ask of you. If you're listening and have any information regarding Mike Herron's disappearance, please contact the Blount County Sheriff's Office Crimeline at 865-273-5200. park predators is an audio chuck original podcast research and writing by delia d'ambra with writing assistance from

executive producer ashley flowers sound design by david flowers you can find all of the source material for this episode on our website parkpredators.com so what do you think chuck do you