Park Predators - The Student

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

At the start of the school year in 1976, 16-year-old Trenny Lynn Gibson disappeared while on a school field trip in Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Clingmans Dome. Did she fall? Was she abducted? The only witness to the awful mystery is the Appalachia itself.Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://parkpredators.com/the-student/ 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 today's story is one that I just can't wrap my mind around. After researching it and combing the internet for literally every scrap of information available, I'm still mystified by the disappearance of 16-year-old Teresa Lynn Gibson. Her case takes place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a park I've talked about once before this season in the episode about Michael Heron. And like I told you then, the Smoky Mountains are really big. Combined with some neighboring national forests, the Smokies in general take up a considerable portion of eastern Tennessee. In October 1976, Teresa went on a field trip with her friends

on a section of the Appalachian Trail there and was never seen again. Theories of what happened to her range from accident to abduction to conspiracy. And the truth may be more terrifying than anyone will ever know. This is Park Predators. On the morning of Friday, October 8, 1976, Hope Gibson pulled up to the curb outside of Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the passenger seat was her 16-year-old daughter, Teresa Lynn Gibson, who everyone called Trenny. Hope had already dropped off Trenny's two younger sisters at their schools, and Trenny was her last stop for the morning.

Hope told her daughter goodbye and that she loved her and to be careful on her class's field trip later that afternoon. Earlier in the week, one of Trenny's science teachers told her and her classmates that they'd be going on a field trip on Friday, but the teacher didn't tell them where they were going. So Hope made sure that Trenny had a paper bag lunch and appropriate clothes, just in case the trip ended up being outdoors. Trenny got out of her mom's car and walked toward the school. Hope drove off, unaware that would be the last time she'd ever see her daughter. A few hours later, around noon, 45 Bearden High School students walked off their school bus in the parking lot at Clingman'some Observation Tower inside of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Wayne Dunlap, the lone teacher in charge of all the students, grouped them off into smaller clusters and gave them maps and information

about the park. According to Laura Rist's reporting, up until the school bus pulled into the Clingmans Dome parking lot, the students had no idea what the field trip destination was, and neither did their parents. Mr. Dunlap had kept the trip's details a secret from the class until they got on the bus and arrived. He later told investigators that he wanted to surprise them and figured they'd be really excited to spend the afternoon studying plants in the park. After all, it was a horticulture class. And he was right. Everyone on the bus was really excited for the day's plan, especially Trenny. She loved the outdoors and had grown up in Knoxville. She'd never been in the National Park before and was really interested in studying the plants and animals. The group started their hike from the

observation tower, which according to the National Park Service, is the highest point in all of Tennessee. If you stand in the tall concrete shelter at 6,600 feet, you can see 360-degree views of the Smoky Mountains and even a little beyond that. There was a paved trail a half a mile long that led visitors from the parking area up to the Observation Tower. that led visitors from the parking area up to the observation tower. There were also a few other trails that started at the parking lot, but instead of going to the tower, split off to the Appalachian Trail or other sections of the park. Mr. Dunlap told the students that they'd only be hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He'd tasked them with studying plants and flora inside of the park at both Clingmans Dome Mountain in Tennessee

and their turnaround point just over the border in North Carolina, called Andrews Bald. The students had strict instructions to be back at the school bus in the Clingmans Dome parking area at 3.30 p.m. sharp. The stretch of trail that Trenny and her class hiked is roughly two miles end-to-end. It's marked well with signage, and by all standards, should have been a piece of cake for a few dozen young, healthy high school students to end. It's marked well with signage and by all standards should have been a piece of cake for a few dozen young healthy high school students to follow. In some spots though the trail did get a little hairy. Like if you got too close to the side in a couple of places you could easily go down steep

drop-offs. A few of those ravines were essentially either straight drop-offs or deep ditches that led into thick tangled brush. Not a place most people want to be. While on the hike, Trenny walked the small group of two or three students, including a boy who was a year older than her named Robert Simpson. Robert was best friends with Trenny's older brother, Robert Gibson Jr., who was 18 and had already graduated from high school. By 3.30 in the afternoon, the students had finished up their hike and were congregating back at the school bus. As Mr. Dunlap was counting heads, he noticed Trenny wasn't in the group. He figured she was just lagging behind, so he waited. But five minutes turned into 10, then 15, and even longer, and there was still no sign of Trenny. Two of her friends,

including Robert Simpson, told the teacher that the last time they'd seen Trenny, she was with them at Andrews Ball. She'd expressed she wanted to head back to the school bus, but they wanted to stay a little longer and hang out. So she began walking alone back down the trail to catch up with another cluster of students who were hiking. Two other students told Mr. Dunlap that they'd seen Trenny around 2.50 p.m. while they were taking a break to rest on the trail. That spot was about three-quarters of a mile away from the parking lot. These students decided to rest for longer, and Trenny hiked on ahead of them. When they last saw her, she was walking away from them in the direction of Clingman's Dome. When she was about 200 yards ahead of them, sort of around a bend, they noticed that she'd crouched

down to look at something off in the woods, then stepped off the trail and disappeared. When they finally got moving again and passed the spot where Trenny had walked off the trail, they didn't see her. They said they called her name a few times, but she didn't answer. They brushed it off and just figured they'd miss seeing her get back on the trail somewhere up ahead of them. Taking all of these students' stories into account, Mr. Dunlap became concerned that Trenny was lost in the woods. He told a male student to run the two miles or so back to Andrews Bald and look for Trenny there. Mr. Dunlap decided to take a quick half-mile trek to look for Trenny on the trail. When another 15 or 20 minutes went by with no sign of her, he alerted a park ranger that Trenny was missing.

Right away, the ranger radioed the Knox County Sheriff's Office, and from there, deputies alerted Trenny's parents. Within the hour, Robert and Hope Gibson and their oldest son, 18-year-old Robert Jr., were at the park. When they arrived, they met up with the school group and the park rangers who were already starting to look for Trenny. The family's drive from town to Clingmans Dome was 23 miles. The only road to get there was Clingmans Dome Road, and it dead ends into the parking lot at the base of the observation tower. Trenny's family was obviously distraught, as you can imagine.

At that point, all of the other students were accounted for except their daughter. The school bus that had brought the group to the park was sent back to Bearden High School with all of the teens in tow. of the teens in tow. The thought in everyone's mind, including authorities, was that maybe Trenny had just gotten turned around on the hike and was lost in the forest or had fallen and was injured. They figured maybe she just slipped on one of the steep drop-offs on the trail where her classmates last saw her. Rangers were worried she might be in one area in particular known as Deep Creek Drainage Field. That spot was very close to where she'd last been seen and was full of briars, fir trees, and other thick evergreens. That kind of foliage cover would make spotting her nearly impossible. Around seven o'clock that night, park rangers gathered a small

crew of deputies for a search of the area. They reminded everyone of one unique and sort of disturbing thing, which was that sound in the park wouldn't travel far. Because of all the leaf cover and heavy overgrowth in some areas, any kind of call for help or scream wouldn't go very far. The leaves on the trees literally would muffle sound waves, so if Trenny was shouting for help, no one would likely hear her. So the best thing to be on the lookout for were her clothes or broken branches, maybe matted brush that would indicate she'd fallen or wandered off. According to an article for Strange Outdoors, park officials and law enforcement launched this small search effort for Trenny on Friday evening,

just a few hours after she disappeared. They searched until 3 o'clock in the morning, but found no trace of her. The next morning, Saturday, authorities leashed up several bloodhounds and German shepherds and gave them some of Trenny's unwashed clothing to get her scent. Right away, the dogs picked up on her scent on the Appalachian Trail, where the two students had last seen her. The dogs followed her scent from that spot towards the Clingmans Dome observation tower. They got another strong hit around the base of the tower, but then the dogs went in a direction far from where Trenny's school bus would have been waiting. And what they found at the end of that scent trail was puzzling.

was puzzling. When search dogs tracked Trenny Gibson's scent from the base of Clingman's Dome Observation Tower, they led investigators further away from the parking lot. The dogs went completely off the designated dirt trail and took officers through some thick woods and out to the side of a nearby road. Once on the road, the dogs lost Trenny Scent completely. The section of roadway where they'd stopped was on the Tennessee-North Carolina border and had a parking lot nearby. It's a spot that's still there today and has room for about 15 to 20 cars. If the dogs' tracking skills were to be believed, Trenny's scent disappearing near the road wasn't a good sign to investigators. It indicated that at some point she'd made it to the roadway but then gotten into or been put into a vehicle. There were only two reasons for that. One, she either walked through the woods alone to meet someone who was waiting to pick her up,

which would have been hard since she didn't know the field trip's destination until that morning. Or two, and more likely, someone had abducted Trenny, transported her to a car, and driven her out of the park. According to Strange Outdoors' article on this case, several items of interest were found both on the trail where Trenny stepped off and on the road where the dogs stopped. Scattered around both locations were the same brand of cigarettes and a few beer cans. Some of the cigarette butts were in a pile, almost like someone had smoked several of them at the same time, then stamped them out. And the beer in the cans smelled fresh. and the beer in the cans smelled fresh.

According to Laura Rist's reporting, more cigarettes of the same brand were found along the section of the Appalachian Trail that Trenny had been hiking. It was believed that these cigarettes did not belong to Trenny, because according to her classmates, she had not brought any cigarettes with her that day. Her family told the police that they knew Trenny sometimes smoked at school, but she didn't carry packs of cigarettes with her. Around that same time is when the Park Rangers and Knox County Sheriff's Office called in the FBI to help.

Agents began interviewing Trenny's classmates. One by one, they sat each of them down in Bearden High School. They questioned them about everything they'd heard or seen during the field trip. They questioned them about everything they'd heard or seen during the field trip. All of the teenagers told the FBI the same stories they'd told the park rangers, which was that the last time they saw Trenny, she was walking with them on the trail, but then disappeared after stepping away for a split second. None of her friends reported that she had any enemies at school or talked about wanting to run away.

Trenny was the second oldest of four children. In August 1976, she just celebrated her 16th birthday. Her older brother, Robert Jr., was 18, and Trenny had two younger siblings, Tina, age 14, and Miracle, who was only six. Trenny's classmates described her as a normal teenage girl who liked studying plants and nature. She enjoyed listening to music and smoking at the smoking pit at Bearden High, which I know isn't a thing really anymore, but back in 1976, being in the smoking pit was a big deal. By all accounts, Trenny was a quiet girl who many people referred to as somewhat of a loner. She had a handful of friends, but she tended to keep to herself most of the time. According to reporting by Laura Rist,

Trenny had set her heart on attending the University of Tennessee and studying landscape architecture. That's part of the reason she was so excited when she learned the field trip was going to be in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Within days of her disappearance, one student in particular who was on the hike really got law enforcement's attention as a possible good suspect. Robert Simpson, the

older boy who'd been with Trenny most of the afternoon, was who police were looking at. According to Laura Rist's reporting, Robert Simpson and Trenny's older brother, Robert Gibson Jr., were really, really good friends. The day before the field trip, Robert Jr. had asked Robert Simpson to keep an eye out on Trenny. Even though her brother didn't know the destination of the trip, he wanted to make sure that someone was keeping tabs on his sister and watching out for her. Robert Simpson was from the same town as Trenny and her brother and attended the same high school. Growing up, he was a really outdoorsy kid. He was an experienced hiker and hunter, but was also a little overweight and

awkward, and according to other students, wore overalls a lot that made him stick out. According to the students on the field trip, Robert Simpson may have had a crush on Trenny. Trenny was allowed to date after she turned 16, according to her family's rules, but she didn't have a boyfriend at the time she disappeared. She also had not told anyone that she had any interest in Robert Simpson. As far as anyone knew, they were just good friends, because Robert Jr. and Robert Simpson had known each other. Robert Simpson came from an affluent family, despite his sort of rugged mountain man vibe. His father was a prominent attorney in the area and actually became the district attorney for that county in the years after Trenny's disappearance.

According to interviews with students who were on the hike, Robert's whereabouts during the last 45 minutes of the field trip weren't exactly known. weren't exactly known. There was a brief period of time after he and Trenny parted ways at Andrews Bald that no one in the group of 45 students remembered seeing him on the trail. When investigators asked Robert about this, he told them on his return hike from Andrews Bald, he'd gone off for a few minutes on his own to track a bear. That essentially was his alibi. He said he tracked the bear until it was time for him to head back to the school bus. According to interviews with other students, Robert did make it back to the school bus on time. One girl said when she saw him arrive, he was huffing and puffing like he was out of breath, but that wasn't necessarily all that surprising because Robert was overweight and had

been known to have asthma. Trenny's family got a chance to question Robert about the missing chunk of his time, and they asked him why he let Trenny walk away on her own that day in the park if he was supposed to be watching out for her. According to Laura Rist, who says she interviewed Trenny's grandmother, when Robert was faced with that question, he physically jumped out of his chair, firmly said what he'd always claimed, which was that he was tracking a bear, then ran out of the house and never spoke to them again. By all accounts, the bear tracking story has been Robert Simpson's alibi since 1976, and on advice from his father, who was an attorney, that's what he stuck to.

The story on its face, though, seems questionable to me. Why would you track a bear on a high school field trip with no firearm? What was he going to do if he found it? Why would anyone want to track and confront a bear unarmed, knowing that you had to be back with your classmates at 3.30 p.m. sharp? But besides that, probably the most suspicious red flag about Robert Simpson was that a day after Trenny disappeared, Robert Gibson Jr. was with him in his car and saw a comb that belonged to Trenny sitting on the dashboard. The Gibson family knew that that comb belonged to

Trenny because Trenny's sister, Tina, had an identical one. Hope had bought the combs for both of her daughters. Hope was adamant that Trenny's comb was something she would never be without and would always keep in one of her pockets. Robert Jr. asked Robert Simpson why he had his sister's comb, and Simpson's reply was that Trenny had given it to him before the field trip and just, quote, wanted him to hang on to it for her, end quote. Pretty quickly, rumors started swirling that Robert Simpson was involved, but nothing ever materialized to the point that law enforcement could arrest him or take him in for further questioning. My question, though, is, if he had done something to Trenny, what happened to her body? How, after all those search efforts, was it never found? It's literally one of my biggest questions in this case. But even despite all that suspicion,

the searches for Trenny in the park had to continue. The weekend after she disappeared, temperatures in the park dropped to 31 degrees, freezing. This proved to be challenging when park officials organized a larger-scale search around dawn. A lot of fog had settled in the mountains on Saturday, and it had started to drizzle. On Sunday, October 10th, 300 searchers, including volunteers, came out in 20-degree weather to search the mountains, looking for any sign of Trenny. According to the Daily News Journal, four helicopters flew over the forest and mountain ridges

around Clingmans Dome and Andrews Bald. The pilots were trying to use the wind from the helicopter blades to move around the thick, dense trees. Without the wind, it was impossible to see to the forest floor. But once again, their efforts went nowhere. By nightfall on Sunday, the park's chief ranger announced that the search had covered a two to three mile radius from the spot where Trenny was last seen. In total, searchers had covered as far as 10 miles out from her last known location.

The next day, Monday, October 11th, search and rescue teams were still determined to cover even more ground. About 150 men who worked for the National Park, the Civil Air Patrol, and local police departments armed themselves with Trenny's clothing and used more bloodhounds and scent dogs to cover hundreds of square miles. But their efforts were fruitless. The weather challenges only got worse throughout the week, making the search effort extremely hard. Law enforcement knew that if Trenny was still out there, alone in the park somewhere,

she was likely on the brink of freezing to death. One bright side to the search effort, though, was the fact that police had a very specific description of what Trenny was last seen wearing. She was described as 5 foot three inches tall, with long brown hair, and had on Adidas tennis shoes, blue jeans, a blue blouse, and a blue and white sweater. Her friends said they also saw her wearing a brown and plaid CPO style jacket that Robert Simpson had let her borrow. Now, this CPO jacket is kind of distinctive. I had to look up what those letters stood for, and basically what I learned is that this kind

of jacket is sort of a shirt and jacket. It was really popular in the 1960s and 70s, and was made of thicker material and had two large square-edged flat pockets on the front. Think of it like a really thick flannel shirt. A lot of big department stores back then, like JCPenney's and Sears, sold them. In law enforcement's mind at the time, Trenny having that men's jacket with her, wherever she was, was important because the temperatures in the park had dropped so much in the days that she was missing. The jacket would be essential to keeping her warm if she was still alive. On October 12, five days into the search, the lead park ranger on the case went public with

the theory that Trenny was still alive but no longer in the park. Essentially, it was a runaway theory. He told the Associated Press that the cigarette and beer can evidence the dogs had found on the side of the roadway suggested that it was possible Trini had been able to keep warm long enough to somehow make it out of the park and meet a friend who'd possibly picked her up. He suggested if it wasn't that scenario, then she'd come across someone who'd picked her up and taken her to get help or maybe to a hospital or something. come across someone who'd picked her up and taken her to get help or maybe to a hospital or something. The immediate problem with that theory, though, was that no one had come forward to report picking Trenny up, and no hospitals reported a 16-year-old girl coming in for treatment.

There was zero sign that Trenny had made it out of the park on her own free will, at all, since Friday afternoon. But still, this park ranger was convinced she had and that she wasn't abducted. The only alternative theories were that she'd fallen and died somewhere and the extensive searches just hadn't found her yet and would never find her. Or worst case scenario, against authorities' beliefs, Trenny had been abducted. At that point, leads in the case dried up and rumors about what happened to Trenny swirled for weeks. In all of that time, not a single shred of evidence showed up telling authorities where she was or what had happened to her. Her father, Robert Gibson Sr., told the Associated Press in late October of 1976 that he did not believe authorities' theory that

Trenny left the park voluntarily with someone. He said that she had several reasons not to abandon her life and take off. One of those was the fact that she had left her ID, makeup, and $200 in cash in her room at home, and there was another $1,000 in her bank account that had never been touched. and there was another $1,000 in her bank account that had never been touched. Trenny's older brother, Robert Jr., told reporters with the News Sentinel that he felt the same as his dad. When Trenny disappeared, Robert Jr. had just returned from Florida, where he'd been in boot camp for the U.S. Navy since July. He said that he and Trenny were super close their entire lives, and she would never have run away, especially because

he just returned home. According to Laura Writh's reporting, Robert Jr. got home on a Wednesday, and Trenny disappeared two days later on Friday. Robert Jr. said Trenny wouldn't have gone anywhere with anyone knowing that he had just gotten home and they could spend time together. Trenny's dad told several reporters that he felt strongly in his heart that his daughter didn't leave on her own free will. He and his wife Hope were certain Trenny had been abducted or possibly murdered inside of the park. Their main reason for thinking this was an incident that had happened a year earlier,

one that involved a home invasion, a shooting, and direct threats against Trenny. Robert and Hope Gibson told Knox County Sheriff's Office detectives that in October of 1975, a young man had attacked the family. The suspect's name was Kelvin Bowman,

and he had been a student at Bearden High School and was known to commit petty crimes in the Knoxville-Gatlinburg area. According to Laura Rist's reporting, one night, Kelvin broke into the Gibsons' home and Trenny's mother, Hope, shot him in the foot. He survived and was eventually convicted of home invasion. A judge sentenced him to two years in a juvenile correctional institution. According to reporting by the New Sentinel, when he was in the courtroom, Kelvin vowed to retaliate against the Gibson family when he was released. He outright threatened to kill Trenny when he got out. He only served six months of that sentence.

When Trenny disappeared, Kelvin was enrolled at and attending Bearden High School. Now, as you can imagine, this past history with Kelvin seemed like a pretty legit motive for him to want to hurt the Gibson family. Robert Sr. went to the authorities with this information in the winter of 1976, hoping that the FBI would seriously look into it. Articles from newspapers at the time state that the authorities followed up on the report, but it didn't lead to any revelations about what happened to Trenny. According to Bearden High's principal, Kelvin was attending class and was accounted for at the school when Trenny disappeared in the park.

As fall turned into winter, Trenny's family felt like they were hitting brick wall after brick wall with the abduction theory and the Kelvin theory. They had no choice but to trust the park service and the FBI. Trenny's dad told the News Sentinel, quote, The only thing we can do now is trust in the Lord and the FBI, end quote. On November 1st, 1976, park officials called off the formal search for Trenny. By that point, they had blown through hundreds of hours of manpower and resources with no results to show for it. Without Trenny's body or any sign of her, they couldn't prove one way or the other whether she'd gotten lost or was abducted. Technically, they couldn't even prove if she was even dead.

Authorities told reporters for the state's full record and landmark that they would conduct more searches for Trenny in 1977 on a sporadic basis. According to all of the research I found on this story, the status of Trenny's case remained static between November 1976 and the start of the following summer. The next update didn't come until May 1977, when authorities in the park officially discontinued efforts to find her. According to media reports, the National Park Service ordered rangers and hikers to be on the lookout during the summer of 1977. They stated that if Trenny had been alive and lost in the park somewhere after she vanished, there was no way she would have survived the harsh winter. It was almost guaranteed that she was dead. No other formal searches were done after that, and everyone just sort of stopped thinking about the case for a couple of years. The next time it showed up in news headlines was in 1982, when Robert Gibson Sr. decided to really go public with the family's belief that Trenny had been lured by someone in the park and either kidnapped or killed. He told the News Sentinel that the entire family felt

certain that someone had done harm to Trenny in those woods or that she was taken out of the park and killed. In the years after that, though, there hasn't been a lot of evidence found to support that theory. I mean, it's what most people in Knoxville believed happened to Trenny, but because her remains have never been found, it's hard to prove. The only things left for people in law enforcement to scrutinize have been theories about suspects. Obviously, Robert Simpson is someone I think could know a lot more than he's ever said. According to reports, he's never been interrogated further or arrested. According to Laura Rist, he still lives in eastern Tennessee. According to Laura Rist, he still lives in eastern Tennessee.

Other people over the years that were put forward as possible suspects included Wayne Dunlap, Trenny's teacher. A lot of people have suggested that he should have been investigated more. Mr. Dunlap was the only adult with the high school group that day. That seems sort of surprising in today's culture to have 45 kids with only one adult chaperone, but back in 1976, I don't think it was all that unheard of. Mr. Dunlap actually hiked the trail with the students on the day Trenny vanished. He often stayed near the back to bring up and keep track of any struggling students. The teens on the trip all remembered seeing him during the hike, and at no point was he MIA. The only potential red flag about Mr. Dunlap I was able to find is that the very same school year Trenny disappeared, he resigned from his job

at Bearden High School. He and his wife moved away from the area, and not just like a short move to a neighboring town, they moved to Oregon, clear across the country, thousands of miles away from Tennessee. moved to Oregon, clear across the country, thousands of miles away from Tennessee. But even as suspicious as that looks, Dunlap's ex-wife told Laura Rist that their move happened not because Mr. Dunlap was guilty of doing anything to Trenny, but because he'd had a mental breakdown after she disappeared. He told his wife that he just had a really hard time coping with the fact that a student had gone missing under his supervision on a field trip. He was plagued with the guilt of realizing in hindsight he may have haphazardly planned the entire trip.

According to his ex-wife, Mr. Dunlap's mental health in 1976 was in a rough spot after serving in the Vietnam War, and it declined even more after Trenny disappeared. According to other media reports, Mr. Dunlap was considered a suspect just like Robert Simpson, but not a real serious one. Law enforcement has never released any formal statements

saying that they had any reason to suspect him more than anyone else. By all accounts, students at the school liked him and no one thought he could be involved in hurting Trenny. The last theory that some journalists and investigators have looked into at length is a scenario that maybe Trenny accidentally died on the hike in the presence of a small number of classmates, and they all made a decision to cover it up. After all, we are talking about high school students. I think it's completely case extensively, is convinced that a group covering up Trenny's death could be true. She's conducted a lot of interviews with Trenny's classmates and people from Knoxville over the years, and they all think people know much more

than they're willing to share. Laura wrote in her investigative blog that every time she or Trenny's sister Tina pressed people in the town who were teenagers in 1976 about Trenny's case, they told them to drop their investigation. Laura herself has received numerous threats for pursuing her research and interviews. The one thing that convinces Laura that several of Trenny's classmates may have been involved in what happened to her is a nugget of information she received from Tina years after Trenny vanished. Tina told Laura that a few days after Trenny disappeared, some of Trenny's jewelry surfaced. The pieces were a star-shaped pendant necklace and a ring that had semi-precious sapphires and diamonds in them. According to Trenny's family, Trenny was wearing those two pieces of jewelry

the day of the field trip. According to Tina, the jewelry ended up in the possession of a girl who was a sophomore at Bearden High School in 1976. It's unclear how the girl got the jewelry ended up in the possession of a girl who was a sophomore at Bearden High School in 1976. It's unclear how the girl got the jewelry, but when the Gibson family asked for an explanation and the items back, the girl never returned them or explained how she got a hold of them in the first place. For whatever reason, law enforcement has never said if investigators followed up on this lead. Whether the mysterious vanishing of Trenny Gibson fits one of these many theories may never be known. Her body has never turned up. The truth of whatever happened to her may forever be buried in the Great Smoky Mountains, and a predator could have gotten away with the perfect crime. Park Predators is an AudioChuck 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 approve? Bark!