George Owens

On July 22, 1985 George Owens had arranged to meet his wife at the bus station, as she was returning from a trip to Ohio. He never arrived. When his wife arrived at home, he was not there, and his car was missing. After a local television station aired a missing persons bulletin about George, several people in another part of Tennessee recognized his picture.

On July 22, 1985, three hours after George was supposed to pick up his wife in Nashville, he was seen 80 miles away, traveling along Route 13. He had stopped at a service station in Santa Fe, TN, to have a flat tire repaired. It seems the serviceman had misunderstood when George asked for directions, and directed him towards Lobelville, instead of Nolensville, which was the opposite direction. On the afternoon of July 23 George was seen in a convenience store in downtown Lobelville, where he bought some ice cream and cigars. He seemed disoriented and told the clerk that he couldn't find his wife.

On July 28, George’s abandoned car was discovered on a remote hilltop in a rural wooded area in Perry County over 100 miles from his home. The keys were still in the ignition, the battery was dead, the driver’s side window was down, the back door was open, and George’s cane was resting against the car. There was also a box of matches on the dashboard, even though George had quit smoking a long time ago. Piles of tree branches and brush surrounded the vehicle, as if someone was planning to start a fire, and a pile of kindling was stacked up in the back seat next to George’s suit jacket. According to George’s family, it was a common habit for him to go around his house, pick up wood, and place it in piles. The only access to the hilltop was a rough and rocky logging road which would have been difficult for George to navigate. A search was launched of the surrounding wooded area, but no trace of George could be found.

When a local television station aired a missing persons bulletin with George’s photograph, two witnesses came forward who recognized him. One of them was Larry Potts, the owner of a garage in the town of Santa Fe, located 50 miles southwest of Nashville. Potts claimed that sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 AM on the morning of July 22, three hours after he was scheduled to pick up Alene, George stopped at his establishment to get a flat tire repaired. Potts thought that George looked a bit confused and said he wandered around with for 30 minutes while he replaced the tire. He also recalled George asking him for directions to Nolensville before he left and turned north on Highway 7. However, George’s family believe there might have been a misunderstanding and Potts instead gave him directions to the town of Lobelville, located in Perry County about 55 miles west of Santa Fe.

On the afternoon of July 23, Mary Jo Phebus, a clerk at a market in Lobelville, claimed that a man matching George’s description walked into the establishment and purchased some ice cream before walking back to his car. A few minutes later, George re-entered the store to purchase some cigars and he was also given a box of matches. George then started talking about how he couldn’t find his wife, which gave Phebus the impression that he may have been disoriented. She called the local clinic to see if George’s wife might be there, but there were no patients matching her description. After George left the market, this was the last time he was confirmed to be alive, but there would one more sighting of his Dodge Dart later that afternoon. The remote hilltop where the vehicle was discovered was about twelve miles from the market and a local resident who lived near the site remembered seeing the Dart drive uphill on the logging road towards the spot. The witness said there was a pick-up truck following George’s car on the same road before they saw it re-emerge and drive downhill about 15-20 minutes later. Neither the truck nor its driver was ever identified. Based on the eyewitness accounts of George’s behavior, it was theorized that he suffered a medical issue, such as a minor stroke, which caused him to become confused and drive over 100 miles away. Alene passed away in 1989 and George was legally declared dead in 1993, but he has still never been found.