Abduction And Suicide

In 1989, Tonetta Carlisle was a 15-year-old girl. She resided in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her mother, Nonie, and her older brother Darrell. At 5’1 and 95lbs, she looked much younger than her age.

.She was a decent and nice girl whose favorite musician was Bobby Brown and was once known for securing all A and B grades at school.

She resided twenty minutes away from her high school and on 16th March, she was walking residence from school wearing a pink and white lined blouse, a denim skirt, and white sneakers. She usually walked with an acquaintance girl named Nika who happened to be off sick that black.

At around 3 pm that day, a lady saw Tonetta on Ruth Street a block away from her residence, when a yellow van pulled up beside her. Several (Don't know the exact number) men jumped out and dragged her into the van, close the doors, and drove off.

The woman chased the van, unsuccessfully but managed to remember the van's number plate and called in what she did. The woman created suspect sketches with the authority, but they were never made public.

Meanwhile, Nonie waited up for her daughter to get home and finally called the authority to file a missing person report at about 10 pm. Authorities were dismissive about it, assuming since she was an older girl she was just a runaway or had stayed out late until they understood the two rings matched up and it was Tonetta who was abducted by the can driver.

They ran the number plate and discovered the van belonged to Jeffery Jones, a man who got out of jail after serving 8 years for rape one year before.

But when they closed in on him, they discovered him dead in his van on March 18th. He’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and it was called a suicide. They didn’t have the opportunity to talk to him about Tonetta, so he took whatever he knew about the grave.

They searched for Tonetta at Jeffreys's flat building but could find no evidence of her. Many sightings were called in over the years of Tonetta, especially in Minnesota but no more solid evidence was found.

The case was reinvestigated in 2019, Darrell and Nonie have passed over DNA so they can check remains and her dental records were passed. The priority now is purely on discovering her remains. Nonie does think Tonetta was murdered by Jeffrey and he killed himself out of shame but has always prepared for Tonetta coming home one day, and has saved the same phone number since 1989.

Many think Tonetta was kept alive long after her kidnapping, and could even be alive today since several men kidnaped her and the only one died. I wonder what sort of arrangement these men had in mentality to do this. And as Jeffrey just a fall man and why did he wind up dead so soon after her kidnapping? Who were the other men in the van? What do you believe?