Marlena Childress, age four, disappeared from her front yard in Union City, Tennessee on April 16, 1987. Her mother, Pamela Bailey, reported hearing car brakes about 3:00 p.m.; when she went to check on Marlena the child was gone. Witnesses including Marlena’s seven-year-old stepbrother and a local store owner said they saw her speaking with a man in an older two-door red car shortly before she vanished. The vehicle may have had McCracken County, Kentucky plates.

At the time she went missing Marlena had light brown hair, blue or hazel eyes, and stainless steel caps on her front top and bottom teeth. She was wearing a purple and white top, light purple pants, and pink jelly-style shoes. Hundreds of volunteers searched, and there were a few unconfirmed sightings in the months afterward, but nothing produced a break.

Two months after the disappearance Bailey confessed to accidentally killing Marlena and said she and a local man disposed of the body in the Obion River; searches found nothing and she later recanted, saying she was distraught, under pressure and on medication. Bailey later gave other conflicting accounts and was not indicted because there was no body or physical evidence. The case is officially classified as a non-family abduction.

Did anyone in Union City in 1987 remember the red two-door car or the man seen talking to Marlena?