In 1968 a man by the name of Wilbur Riddle was walking alongside the U.S. 25, collecting glass insulators when he noticed a tarp like that of a tent just off the Sadieville exit in Lexington. Deciding to investigate, Riddle would discover a grisly crime scene with the body of a woman who would go unidentified for years, only being known as the “Tent Girl.”
Riddle had intended to salvage the tarp and sell it, but when he discovered the naked and bound body of a woman inside he immediately called authorities to the scene of the crime. According to the Lexington Herald Leader it was quickly concluded that the decomposing body had been lying beside the road for approximately two to three weeks before its discovery, however, the investigation soon hit a dead end.
Nobody could identify Tent Girl
Missing person’s reports were checked to try and give a name to the body but no matches were found. Without being able to identify the victim it left investigators with few leads and after a few years Tent Girl’s remains were buried in a Georgetown cemetery in 1971. Her headstone still reads “Tent Girl” to this day, although it has since been amended to include her real name as well.
Years passed with very little of note with regards to the story of Tent Girl, people came to the cemetery to pay their respects to the stranger but nobody who knew her ever came looking. Surely there must have been somebody out there who knew who she was? A parent, sibling or friend wondering where she was?
A breakthrough in the case
It wasn’t until the late 1980s when a man named Todd Matthews married Wilbur Riddle’s daughter and learned how the case had haunted his father in law. Matthews decided to take it upon himself to investigate, using the internet and combing through missing persons message boards to try and find a match…