George Owens

Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we're going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and get into a little right now in true crime before we get into the episode. So first up, I have not spoken about this case on here, but we have a breaking news update in the Hailey Busby missing person's case. So, Haley, who seventeen years old, went missing around ten o'clock PM on January fifth, after she left her family home, and it was very much put out there that she did leave willingly, but her family said that it is likely that she didn't make this decision to leave on her own and she must have had help in leaving. It was announced last week that they did believe that they were going to be working on a recovery mission thinking that Haley was no longer alive. They identified a suspect who his thirty nine year old Tyler Thomas, and they believe that Tyler and Haley started communicating on some type of gaming platform and he is the one that picked her up at her house. Police did say that they had made contact with him within days of her going missing, and initially he told investigators that he dropped her off along a road in western Ohio, but that was determined to not be the truth. Police conducted a couple of searches at his home in Columbus and a short term rental property that he had, and it was determined that Haley had in fact been at both locations. This past Monday, they did another search of the rental property and they said that they were able to recover some evidence which may indicate that a crime occurred in the rental property. Now, very quickly, as this investigation turned from a missing endangered person to a suspected homicide case, Tyler Thomas led police to where he said he had placed the remains of Hailey Busby. At this point in time, though he has not been charged with her murder as of right now, he's facing charges of tampering with evidence and pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor, which is basically him having child sexual abuse material on his phone that included images of Haley. But I assume they're still trying to gather the evidence to officially be able to bring murder charges against him. It does seem that initially Haley was alive and well and then at some point in time something turned and he ended up allegedly at this point in time, taking her life. So they did recover the remains. They have sent everything off for of course identification, and it is really sad and tragic that something like this happened. And I'll say it a million and a half times, there is not enough parental controls out there to control our children from the predators of the internet. They go to the Internet and different gaming platforms because they want to take advantage of children. A thirty nine year old man has zero business talking to a seventeen year old girl has zero business going to her house and picking her up. And a lot of people are saying, well, Haley left willingly. Well, Haley is also seventeen years old, and honestly, children just don't think that anything bad is ever going to happen to them until it does. When you're seventeen, if you want to do something and your parents say no for X, Y and Z reason, you just think they're being unreasonable. But nine times out of ten it's for a reason like this. He is currently being held on a one and a half million dollar bond, and he is expected back into court on Tuesday. I would assume that more charges are to follow, but right now that's kind of where things stand. I wish that this had a different outcome. Hayley was a beautiful girl and unfortunately she became victim to an online predator. And I am just saying, if you are a parent listening to this podcast right now, there are predators lurking the internet in search of easy victims, and unfortunately, teenagers are easy victims because they don't think that it's going to happen to them. And a lot of these websites allegedly have parental controls in place that is not the case. There unfortunately, are ways around these parental controls for predators. It is so easy to go online and act like you are a team teenager or a child. Everybody is capable of doing that. And as much as we want to say that these different platforms are safe, that's unfortunately not how it is. But it's also not realistic to say that your children can't be on the devices and on these platforms, because one way or another, they're going to figure a way to get on the platform. So the best line of defense is having open communication with your children, monitoring as best as you can, and just being extra extra aware and always having those difficult conversations. Teenagers are more likely than not going to be approached by a predator online at some point in their time on their devices, on these gaming platforms, on social media, and we all as a collective group just have to do better at educating and staying ahead of the predators because it's only going to get worse because that is the predator's first go to spot. It used to be that you would see the creepy van drive by and you thought that that was the predator. Now the predators are online in your home every single night behind their computer screens, and that is a really, really scary thought. All right. Next order of business is the ever evolving disappearance of today's show anchor Savannah Guthrie. Her mom, Nancy Guthrie, is missing, and it is ever evolving. There is a lot of rumor, a lot of speculation. I am only going to talk about the things that have been confirmed by law enforcement because there is so much out there. Every single day, new things are popping up. I do want to be clear, I'm recording this on Wednesday afternoon, around five o'clock in the afternoon. I'm only gonna talk about what we know as fact per law enforcement. So Nancy is eighty four years old. Like I said, she is the mom of Savannah Guthrie, and she was last seen at her home in Catalina Foothills, which is about six miles northeast of Tucson. She was dropped off Saturday evening around nine thirty by family members and she did not show up to church on Sunday. And some of the people that go to her church were alarmed by this and then notified family and they are the ones that eventually contacted law enforcement. And then of course authority started searching pretty quickly right after this, and the search went on from Saturday until the next morning. Now, Nancy does not move around very well. She is of sound mind, but she doesn't walk very far at all. She uses a walker and needs some assistance from a physical standpoint. And there was some blood that was found outside of the house that of course is caused for concern. And they have mentioned that they are treating the house as a crime scene. They do believe that Nancy was taken from her home against her will, and they think that she was taken from her bed. There was also a ransom note that TMZ was reporting on. They said that they were sent the ransom note and it's basically somebody asking for a lot of money in bitcoin for the return of Nancy, and so on and so forth. Law enforcement says that they are working to authenticate this and they are investigating it as it comes now. Today. On Wednesday, there was widely reported speculation that a member of the family was is involved in Nancy's disappearance, and law enforcement has come forward and said there are no active suspects that they are naming at this time. Obviously there is a lot going on here. It was also reported that Nancy's pacemaker stopped communication with her Apple devices, so again that is just another way the technology is going to help aid in this investigation. I believe. I do think that law enforcement, it seems like they are on top of things. They are doing their work, and I will keep you guys updated. Be aware of the different speculation and things that are being reported online. Until law enforcement comes out and says it it is merely speculation and rumor and a lot of the times when law enforcement isn't telling us something, it's to protect the integrity of the investigation, and it's important that they do this the right way and that they find what is going on and hopefully Financy alive and well. So that is it for right now in true crime. I'm sure there will be plenty more to catch up on next week. So I will see you guys then, and we are going to get into today episode. All right, guys, we are getting into a new episode. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing about the still unsolved nineteen eighty five disappearance of then seventy nine year old man named George Owens. Now, his story was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and I happened upon it on Facebook and then I started to dig into it a little more and then decided to cover it here on the podcast. George Owens was born in nineteen oh five. He was an African American male. He met the love of his life, Aileen, in high school and she was a couple years younger than him. They married and were together ever since they settled into life. And that takes us to nineteen eighty five. In Nolansville, Tennessee. Nolansville is about twenty two miles southeast of Nashville, and the town was reincorporated in nineteen ninety six. I attempted to find a census for nineteen eighty five, but due to its unincorporated status at the time, there was not one available, but it was described as a really, really small town. George was a retired custodian who previously had worked for Nashville Products Company and had retired in the sixties. But he was the type that enjoyed working and staying busy and being around people, and he had served as the associate minister at the New Hope Baptist Church in Nashville for over twenty years. At the time of his disappearance, everyone that knew George loved him and described him as never missing a Sunday in church. George n a Lean lived in a one story RedBrick home on Sunset Road in Nolansville, Tennessee. George n Aleen had rarely been a part in their over sixty years of marriage, but in July of nineteen eighty five, Aileen had taken a five day trip to Ohio to visit her family. Unfortunately, Aileen did not realize that when she said goodbye to her husband before he left for her trip, that it would be the last time she would ever see him again. In an article that I found on newspapers dot Com, Aileen recalls the last conversation she had with her husband. It was Sunday, July twenty first, around three pm, and they were talking about a Leen and getting back into town early the next morning, and George was scheduled to pick her up, and he was kind of teasing her a little bit, and he said that he would be there and would see her as long as he didn't oversleep, because it was going to be early the next morning that she was getting in. So that same evening of July twenty first, neighbors recalled seeing George get into his nineteen seventy two darkgreen Dodge Dart and drive towards Nashville, which was about twenty three miles away, and they just assumed that George was picking a Leen up a Liane a little bit early. Now. A Leen was due back early the next morning. On Monday, July twenty second, nineteen eighty five, At around six am, her bus had arrived and she was expecting George to come pick her up in Nashville. She waited at the station for over an hour before coming to the assumption that what George was joking about the night before must have come true and he had overslept, so she called her brother in law, Alfred, who was George's brother. Alfred attempted to call George but got no answer, but he made his way to the train station to pick up a Leen. They then went back to the Owens home, and when Aileen went into the garage, she saw that George's car was gone. It was then that she realized something was wrong. The kitchen table was set for two. George's hat, which a Leen had given him the month prior and he always wore since he got it, was left behind. There was also a black suit that George would often wear around the house that was also missing. The family dog was hungry and agitated, almost like George hadn't been there for quite a while. George was nowhere to be found in the home. Aileen and Alfred contacted authorities and reported George missing. An investigation turned up nothing. Six days later, George's nineteen seventy two Dodge Dark car was found abandoned on top of a hill over a hundred miles away from his home. Now, the road that George's car was found off of is a very difficult road to access. It is gravel and rocky and hard to get to. And it's reported that there were no signs of a struggle or foul play. But the keys to George's car were still in the edition. The car battery was dead, the driver side window was down, and rain had soaked the interior of the car. The back door was open, and George's cane, which he used to walk, was propped against the car. Inside of the car, they found George's suit, jacket, matches, and piles of kinneling wood. Now, this wood is described as small, dry, easily combustible, smaller wood pieces that are used as a bridge between tender and larger logs to start fires. Now, according to the Unsolved Mysteries episode and the recreation, the wood was found in piles surrounding his car, And apparently this was something that George would do at home. He would go and gather wood and put it in piles for fires. But still, this doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. George was nowhere to be found. Shortly after the car was found, a local news station ran a story about George being missing, and that started to bring in some clues from other parts of Tennessee. However, trying to piece things together left investigators with way more questions than answers. One man came forward and said that on July twenty second, around nine am, he saw George eighty miles away, traveling along Ruth thirteen. And he said that George came up to his service station in Santa Fe, Tennessee, and he had stopped to get his flat tire repaired. Now, the owner recalls that George seemed a little disoriented and confused at first about what he wanted, but then he said he wanted a new tire, And the owner said that George paid him sixty dollars in cash, and George was getting ready to leave, and then he told the owner that he was a little bit turned around and a little bit lost, and asked for directions back to his hometown. But it is believed that the service station owner miss her George and gave him directions for Loblesville instead of Nolansville. Now, it very well could have been a misunderstanding, and he misheard what he said. When he asked for directions to Nolansville, he heard Lobilville. But the owner said that when George left, he wasn't really confused anymore. He seemed okay, and he didn't really think much of it. But none of this made sense. How did George get to Santa Fe, Tennessee, and why was he there when he was supposed to be going to Nashville to pick up his wife. And this was a whole three hours after the fact that he was supposed to be at the bus station to pick up a leen. Nolansville is thirty miles southeast of Nashville. That morning he was headed for Nashville. Like I said, Santa Fe was fifty miles southeast of Nashville, and Lobilville is sixty miles west of Santa Fe, So that is a total of one hundred miles away from George's home. Now, there was another woman who came forward named Mary Joe, and she said that on Tuesday, July twenty third, she saw George at the market that she worked at in downtown Lobilville. She said she was the only one working there that day and George had come in and asked for ice cream and asked if she would get it for him, which she did. He then paid and went back out to his car. Then a few minutes later he came in and asked for cigars, which later would come out that that was odd because George had previously quit smoking, but she got him a box of cigars along with a box of matches. Then George began talking to the worker, Mary Joe, about his wife and how they used to dance, and he made a comment about having trouble finding her, and Mary Joe did very much feel like George was disoriented and watching the scene recreation and unsolved mysteries, I very much felt the same way. George just didn't seem like he really knew where he was or what he was doing. He was searching for his wife, but he was way far from home. Now it is possible that something medically could have happened to George to cause him to become disoriented and unsure of where he was, and he wasn't really able to problem solve what to do now. Mary Joe said that he ended up getting upset when he was talking about his wife and not being able to find her. She was trying to be really reassuring to him, and she decided that she was going to call the local clinic to see if maybe she was there, but nobody matching her description was so she told George, your wife isn't at the clinic, and George left. Now, of course, hindsight is twenty twenty and Mary Joe goes on to say in the Unsolved Mysteries interview that she wished that she would have called for help or done something more. And I really do feel bad for this woman because because when they interviewed her, you could tell that she regretted not doing more, especially knowing what we know now about George still being missing to this day. It was five days following this interaction that George's car would be found, and it was found about twelve miles from the market where George was the last scene. Investigators organized a search and rescue mission, but nothing turned up. A new clue did emerge, and that was that someone else other than George could have been driving his car and that there was also possibly a second vehicle, which was a pickup truck at the scene. When the search of the area first started, there was a woman who came forward, and she said that she saw George's car go up the hill and there was also a pickup truck following it. The truck stayed up there for about fifteen to twenty minutes, and then it came back down the road. Now, this road where George's car was eventually found was the type of road where there's only one way in and one way out. Investigators weren't able to determine who that truck belonged to or why they were there that day. There's just a lot with everything that just doesn't make a lot of sense. The firewood that was found surrounding the truck, it wasn't firewood that looked like it had been picked up from the area where the car was found, meaning that George would have had to compile all of these wood pieces and put them in his car and then drive up this gravel road and then surround the car with them to a lean. That doesn't make any sense because she said he would never put sticks and wood in the back of his car. That car was his baby. He kept it very clean and tidy. It just wasn't like him to do something like this. And she also couldn't see him navigating this gravel rocky road. He was almost eighty years old, so that didn't really make a lot of sense. She also said that he didn't ever go long distances without his cane, and that cane was propped up against the car. So what happened to George we do not know. Sadly, a Lean passed in nineteen eighty nine, never knowing what happened to the love of her life. So let's try to break this one down. I think there's a lot of things that could have happened here. I think it's quite possible that George maybe had some underlying memory deficits that he probably in his own environment, was in great control of, and something medically might have happened that exacerbated these memory deficits, and he became disoriented and confused, and that led to him wandering off and getting lost and unfortunately losing his life in a tragic accident type of way. However, if this is the case, and this is what happened, I'm puzzled by the fact that they were never able to find any remains despite the efforts that were put in. So if George did accidentally wander into the woods, why weren't they able to find his remains. That part very much baffles me, and I do feel like there could be a logical explanation for everything that happened, and it could have been related to some type of medical event. In unsolved mysteries, they suggest that he might have had a stroke or something of that caliber that could have made him disoriented, and unfortunately, with him being elderly, who could have fallen. He could have hit his head, anything could have happened where he could have accidentally made his way into the woods. He could have fallen down and he succumbed to his injuries. But I don't understand why they didn't find any remains for him. But I do think, on the other hand, two things can be true at once. I think it's possible that all of the other stuff that I previously talked about is true and that's what happened, but somebody took advantage of that. Because the person that saw the car driving up the hill following George's car is very interesting to me, and I think that there could be more to the story than just a tragic accident. Somebody could have come across George out and about and decided to take advantage of him. Because they realized that he was in a week in state, he was older, he was a little confused. Maybe they had offered to help him, and he thought that whoever this person was was trying to be helpful and trusted them, and they ended up having not so great intent and they ended up causing harm to him. Now, of course that is all speculation on my part. But the part that leads me more to think that foul play is involved here is because they never found any remains, And I keep harping on that, but I think it's important in this case. So that means one of two things. Either they're not looking in the right spot or they just didn't come across his remains, which to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that they had such an extensive search effort in the area where the car was found. Now, given the fact that George was an African American man, there's also a quite large possibility that he was targeted due to his skin color and it was a racially motivated type of crime. I know, it's been a long time forty one years since George went missing. Even if he was still out there at the time of the unsolved Mysteries broadcast. He definitely is not alive anymore, but I do think there's still room to talk about his case and try to sort through it, kind of go through what could have happened that day, because it really just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I truly think that identifying the person that was in that truck that day would be a huge step in the right direction in trying to figure out what happened to George. I hate to even think that this is one case that never really will get resolution. Due to the passing of time and likely the passing of most people that know anything about what happened to George that day, It's likely not going to be solved. In nineteen ninety three, after eight years, George Owens was declared legally dead. George Owens was last seen on July twenty second, nineteen eighty five. At the time of his disappearance, he was seventy nine years old, five feet eleven inches tall, and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. He had white hair, brown eyes, and wore glasses. He needed a cane to walk any extended distances. He was wearing a gold watch and a ruby ring. At the time of his disappearance. If you have any information relating to the disappearance of George Owens, please contact the Perry County, Tennessee Sheriff's Department at nine three one five eight nine eight eight o three. Now understandably, George's disappearance and never getting answers really haunted a Leen. I ran across an article, a newspaper article on newspapers dot com, and I'm going to go through that article with you guys now, because I really think it puts into perspective A they were a very happily married couple, and b George literally did vanish into thin air, and it haunted a Leen for the remainder of her life. She didn't live a whole lot longer after George went missing, but every single day of her life she looked for him and wanted to find him and was hopeful that he would just make his way back home. And that absolutely breaks my heart. So I'm going to link this article below, but I'm going to go through We're gonna read it together. The article is titled together for more than sixty years than dot Dot Dot husband vanished without a trace. It is written by Susan Thomas George n a Leane Owens had been together since they were teenagers, learning about one another as only a man and wife of more than sixty years ken. They knew what made each other happy and sad. They knew without words what the other one thought about the subject or that, and more than anything else, they thought that they would be together until the Lord took one of us away. But that is not what happened. On July twenty first, nineteen eighty five, George Owens, then seventy nine years old, vanished, and Aileen, who spent her recent seventy ninth birthday alone, is still waiting for him to come home. I don't miss a day thinking about him, she said. I can't keep from thinking about where he could be, what could have happened to him, and wondering why I can't see him no more. After being together all the time, I can't get used to losing him, at least not the way I lost him. The disappearance of Owens, a retired Nashville preacher and custodian, is laced with mystery, leaving behind no easy answers for his wife, his friends, or police. Today, a year and a half after he was last seen. It is as if Owen simply stepped off the edge of the earth without a whisper of how or why it's been so long. I just don't know anymore, his wife said softly. We had talked about death, we had planned our funerals, down to the songs to sing. But this way is well so hard to understand. Sometimes I just wish I had his body here so I wouldn't have to wonder anymore. Aileen now spends her days searching her mind for any clue about her husband's whereabouts, reliving those last days in the summer of nineteen eighty five again and again, and her search always begins with the last time she heard her husband's voice, which was about three pm that Sunday afternoon on July twenty first, when she called him from Ohio, where she had been visiting relatives for five days. He was laughing and teasing me over the phone. She said, I asked him if he was going to pick me up at the bus station the next morning, and he laughed and said, well, i'll meet you if I don't oversleep. That same afternoon, as a lean board of the bus in Cleveland, Owens was seen by friends who lived near the Owens' home on Sunset Road in Nolansville. He was driving his dark green nineteen seventy two Dodge Dart north towards Nashville on Nolansville Road, so his friends presumed he was heading into town to pick his wife up a day early. But at six am the next morning, July twenty second, when a Lean stepped off the Greyhound bus at the downtown station after her night long journey, Owens wasn't there. I waited and waited, she said, But after a good hour or more, I called his brother and told him my husband must have overslept after all, and asked him to give me a ride home. About the same time, a Lean got inside her brother in law's car for the ride to Nolansville. Owens was seen about sixty miles away in Maury County. It was pretty early, about nine or ten o'clock when he drove in with a flat tire, said Larry Pott's, owner of Pott's Garage in the small community of Santa Fe. He acted a little confused at first, like he didn't know what he wanted, but then he told me he wanted to buy a new tire. He just kind of walked around with his cane while I put the tire on, Pott said. About thirty minutes later, when the car was ready to go, Owens took out his wallet and counted in cash the correct amount of sixty dollars for the tire and left. He turned north on Highway seven, heading toward Williamson County. Pott said, he was real nice. He didn't seem disoriented when he left, so I didn't really think any more about it. About eleven am, a Lean unlocked the garage door of the house in Nolansville, where she and her husband had lived since Owens retired as a custodian in the nineteen sixties. When I saw that his car wasn't there, I got a funny feeling, she said. I had thought that he would still be in bed sleeping. The odd sensation grew stronger as she walked through their two bedroom home. The Sunday dinner where was still in place on the dining room table. Owen's new black hat, which he had worn every day since a Leen had brought it for his birthday the month before, was hanging in its place. Only one set of clothes an old black suit that Owens kept to wear around the house was missing, and their dog, Ring, whom Owens had stayed home to care for while his wife was in Ohio, was wagging his tail waiting to be fed. When he never came home that night, I knew something was wrong, Aileen said. The following days now blurred together in a Lean's mind. The police were called, the nearby woods were searched, news reporters were called. Missing persons flyers were printed, A one thousand dollars reward for information about Owens was posted, and then a Lean waited. We finally got one of the television stations to show his picture, she said. The man from Santa Fe called first to tell us about the tire, and then the next Saturday we got a call from Perry County. Owens car had been found. It was parked at the top of High Ridge over the Tennessee River, near the small town of Loboleville. I don't see how a car ever got up there, said Perry County Sheriff's deputy Joe Bell. The road, if you ever call it, that, is real rocky and rough. But the car was sitting there at the end of the road. At the very top of the hell. The unusual location matched the condition of the car that Owens had kept like new for thirteen years. Stacks of drywood piled ready to light as campfires circled the car. The keys were stealing the indission. The driver's window was down, allowing recent rains to soak the seat. A pack of matches lay on the dash, though Owens had long ago quit smoking, and in the back seat, on top of several more sticks of wood was Owen's black suit jacket and his walking cane. Nothing was right, said Aileen, who was taken up to the hill in a jeep. No, sir, he couldn't have driven that car up there, and he would have never put wood on the seat, and where could he have gone without his cane. For two weeks, local search teams scoured the isolated hillside in nearby river banks but found nothing, and in the weeks and months that have passed, no other clues about Owen's whereabouts have ever been found. I stayed at the house for almost a year because I kept thinking he might come walking up one day, Aileen said. For a while, I thought if somebody had him, they might turn him loose and then later I thought that if somebody had killed him, they might bring his body back and hide it in the woods beside the house. I was up at the window day and night until I got so nervous that I couldn't sleep, and my people were afraid for me staying there alone. I finally decided I'd better leave. Aileen moved into Wedgwood Towers on Twelfth Avenue South in Nashville last June. That is where she now spends her days wondering why her husband disappeared, and sometimes letting her thoughts drift back to memories of other days when she and her husband were still together. We did have good time, she said. Oh, we'd fuss and fight, but the arguments never lasted long. We never did have children of her own, I guess because the Lord just didn't have one to give us. But that was all right. We stayed busy, visiting sick people from the churches wherever he was preaching, or working in the garden together until we got so tired we had to go to bed right after supper. I called him honey, he called me al And you should have heard the way he used to tease me all the time, even the last day she saw him when they were getting ready to go to the bus station where she would leave for Ohio. He was teasing me so bad, Aileen recalled. He said, where's my cane? And when she said she didn't know, he said, you've done a hit it. She added smiling, I said, no, I haven't. What would I need with an old man's cane? And you know, we went back and forth like that until he finally started laughing, and then I helped him find his cane. And that is just such a sweet story. I can tell that they had a amazing love. They were together sixty years high school sweethearts, had been married for such a long time, and it absolutely breaks my heart that she never got answers as to what happened to her husband. But one thing we can be starting on is that they are reunited now and hopefully she has all the answers she needs. So that is the story of George Owens. It very much bothers me that there isn't resolution in this one, but I did want to take some time to share it because George obviously was a great man and his story deserves to be shared. And maybe there is somebody out there that knows something, so it's always important to keep the pressure on and keep these stories in the forefront. I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend ahead and I will see you next week for a brand new unsolved case. Have a good one bye,