GATLINBURG, Tenn. (WATE) — June 14 will mark 56 years since Dennis Martin disappeared in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The quiet boy from Knoxville was just a few days away from his 7th birthday the last time he was seen.
More than five decades after Dennis Lloyd Martin’s disappearance, Nexstar’s WATE obtained the National Park Service’s case file, which details how the search for the boy was conducted after he vanished from Spence Field.
The weekend of Father’s Day 1969, Dennis Martin was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on a trip with a group, which included his father, grandfather, and 9-year-old brother, the case files revealed. The group was in the area of Spence Field, along the Appalachian Trail, after staying the night at a shelter cabin on the west end of the field.
Girl still missing after disappearing on 1976 high school trip in the Smokies
As the adults in the group sat in a grassy area of the field to the southwest of the Anthony Creek trailhead, Martin, his brother, and two other boys were playing near the trailhead. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System said that the boys were playing hide and seek, but the case file says that the boys decided to sneak up on the adults, so they split up. The three other boys went south and then west, while Martin went northwest and was supposed to loop back from the north and surprise the adults. Instead, the last time anyone saw Martin was when the boys parted ways around 4:30 p.m…