The Tent Girl Murder Mystery

2020-11-27 21:17:30 Written by Rao Burhan

The tent girl murder mystery

 

On May 17th 1968, Wilbur Riddle, who had been scavenging for glass insulators alongside U.S. Route 25, found the decomposing body of a young woman bandaged in a huge green canvas tarpaulin, such as might be used to wrap up a tent. A police inquiry failed to specify either the dead woman or named any suspects in her obvious murder.                                                   

 She was laid to rest in the Georgetown Cemetery with a donated headstone that bore her resemblance as it seemed in a police sketch of how she might have looked in life, with the caption "TENT GIRL, " FOUND MAY 17 1968 ON U.S. HIGHWAY 25, N. DIED ABOUT APRIL 26 – MAY 3, 1968, AGE ABOUT 16 – 19 YEARS, HEIGHT 5 FEET 1 INCH, WEIGHT 110 TO 115 LBS. REDDISH BROWN HAIR, UNIDENTIFIED.                                

 The gravesite existed as such for over 30 years until in 1998, the Tent Girl was completely identified as 24-year-old Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor as an outcome of the continuous efforts of Todd Matthews. Matthews was the son-in-law of Wilbur Riddle, who had initially discovered her body and had maintained longstanding attention in the case. He had obtained data on the Tent Girl and rummaged through many losing person reports on the Internet.              

 After Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor's identification, Matthews co-founded The Doe Network, which is an online database devoted to matching losing persons with anonymous decedents. Matthews had found out a report from the family of a young woman who had gone missing in Lexington, Kentucky in late 1967. He sent data on the Tent Girl to the Hackmann family.      

 The family assumed that this was likely their lost relative, which led to the exhumation of the body and DNA testing, which substantiated her individuality.                            

 Thus, some 30 years after her demise, the Tent Girl had eventually got a name, and people now realized who she was and the life she had once had. She had been married and had a daughter, and she had employment, working with a carnival. 

 She had 6 siblings, but after her father and her brother were flown away in a flood and her mother could not take supervision of all six of the children, her mother decided to give them up. They grew up and most of them stayed in connection with the others, but, none of them could discover Bobbie. With the dilemma of her identity unravelled the only thing left to figure out was who murdered her.                       

This, however, stays a mystery, as Barbara's murderer has never been brought to justice, but the main suspect in her killing is her husband, George Earl Taylor, who perished of cancer in October 1987.                                                  

 Her daughter had gone on to have kids of her own, and the family chose to have Barbara Ann Hackmann's remains re-interred in Georgetown Cemetery, with an extra stone base positioned under the actual grave marker, bearing her real name, nickname, date of birth, the assumed date of death, and the inscription "Loving Mother, Grandmother & Sister". No mention of her married name is made on the stone.