Y’all know by now I love a good cold case and talking about folklore, and this is a disappearance that hits on all of both of these points.
This case is interesting because, at face value, it’s begging to be pegged as a supernatural mystery, but I wonder if, perhaps, some people are too deep in the backwood weeds to see the forest for the trees.
And if we’re going to lean into the folklore of it all, I have a bit of a theory I think can help make sense of what’s going on with these strange disappearances…but we’ll get to that when we cover staircases to nowhere.
But, for now, let’s dive the fuck into these weeds.
great smoky mountains national park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park ( CNN Wire, 2020)
We’re back in the Smoky Mountains for one more story.
(Well, one more missing story. We’ll be back again to discuss the frightening amount of tunnels and possible feral cannibal people of the underground cave system.)
Our story begins in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Friday, October 8, 1976, as Teresa “Trenny” Lynn Gibson prepared to go on a field trip with her classmates to an unknown location.
Yep, you heard me right: an unknown location.
(The ’70s was a wild time.)
Trenny’s horticulture class was about to take a surprise trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The plan was to hike approximately 1.8 miles up to an overlook for lunch, then head back down the same trail to begin the bus ride home.
Classmates spotted Trenny coming down the trail alone, but though she was falling into step with various groups and chatting, she seemed to be walking with purpose, unwilling to slow down.
Eventually, she fell into step with a group of four other students. The group asked Trenny to sit with them and hang out for a bit, but she declined.
The group watched as she continued for a bit before she froze and glanced to the right.
She crouched down slightly as though she was peering at something through the trees and stepped off the trail.
Initially, the group thought nothing of it; they’d assumed she needed the bathroom or had seen something interesting just off the trail, but when they got up a few minutes later, they realized Trenny never reemerged from the woods.
One of the girls walked over to where Trenny had stepped off the path and looked around, but Trenny was nowhere to be seen. The girl was puzzled though; it didn’t seem like there was any place for Trenny to go. The area was full of dense shrubbery and led to a steep hill that one would need to almost climb in order to get to the top.
The group shrugged it off and assumed they’d missed her stepping back onto the trail.
But, when the class returned to the bus and attendance was taken, Trenny never turned up.
After her teacher reported her missing, park rangers descended on the park to look for Trenny, but that evening, rain, fog, and quickly dropping temperatures made for challenging search conditions.
The following day, search dogs were dispersed around the park, and while there were a few hits of Trenny’s scent in different locations, some of these locations were miles away and there was no physical evidence to tie her to any location.
It was as though Trenny Gibson vanished into thin air in front of nearly forty people.
Some believe that Trenny was abducted by a mystery man standing just off the trail. Others argue she was killed by one or more of her classmates in a conspiracy worthy of a Lifetime drama.
And some believe what Trenny actually saw off the side of the trail was a portal or a mysterious stairway to nowhere, that she didn’t realize led to a place she could never return from.
Now, I could leave the story here and let you imagine what could have happened to Trenny, but there’s a little more to the story, at least, in my opinion.
But, first, I think we need to learn a bit more about who Trenny was as a person.
who was trenny gibson?
Trenny was a sixteen-year-old student at Bearden High School in Knoxville, TN. She was incredibly interested in horticulture and dreamt of becoming a landscape architect.
She worked a summer job at a local cafeteria to save money for a car and college and supposedly had at least $1,000 in the bank and $200 in cash on hand when she disappeared.
Trenny came from a rather strict and close-knit religious family. Her parents, Robert and Hope Gibson, described her as a homebody who rarely did anything without her family and often cited that she and her older brother, Bob Jr., were “as close as a brother and sister could be” (which I think is an odd statement that’s giving Folger’s commercial energy, but I digress).
They felt that she was someone dedicated to her studies and not interested in boys or dating.
Unfortunately, Trenny didn’t have a group of close friends or one person she regularly confided in, which means most of what we know about who Trenny was comes from her family. This is not to say the Gibsons weren’t a close-knit family or didn’t know their daughter, but it’s possible the Gibsons weren’t entirely honest about Trenny’s homelife.
But, though Trenny mostly kept to herself, her classmates remember her being generally agreeable and friendly. They also claim she occasionally gave hints about what life was like outside of school.
Multiple classmates felt that Trenny didn’t have a social life because her parents treated her like a maid. They said she cooked and cleaned for the family and was often left in charge of her two younger siblings, Tina and Miracle.
There was also an incident a year before Trenny went missing that indicates her mind might have been on boys a little more than her parents led police and media to believe.
On October 11, 1975, Trenny’s mother, Hope, filed a police report alleging that Trenny’s classmate, a young black man named Kelvin Bowman, showed up at their house at night and started drunkenly screaming for Bob Jr.
Hope stated that when she heard the yelling, she ran to get her husband’s gun, as her son and husband were not in the house at the time. She alleges that while she was grabbing the gun, Bowman used the trellis on the side of the house to climb to the second floor and smash through the window into Trenny’s room, where he attempted to violently assault her, grabbing her by the hair, verbally abusing her, and slamming her into broken glass.
Somehow, Trenny was able to get away from Bowman and ran out of her room screaming for help. When Bowman attempted to follow Trenny, Hope shot him in the foot. She claims she did not shoot him elsewhere because he quickly put his hands up, and she decided she didn’t want to kill someone else’s kid.
Hope called the police and held Bowman at gunpoint until the police showed up.
Both Hope Gibson and her husband Robert showed up to Bowman’s sentencing hearing to speak on behalf of their daughter and ensure he could never hurt Trenny again. Bowman was sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention center but ended up serving only six months of his sentence before returning to Bearden High School to finish his senior year.
Trenny’s classmates did report that Bowman had begun to bully Trenny upon his return, though we don’t know exactly what they meant by that. Bowman was treated as a suspect in the case for several reasons, but primarily because Trenny’s parents claimed he had vowed to “kill her” for what she did to him in the courtroom on the day he was sentenced.
But, here’s the thing…we only have Hope’s testimony this was how the situation went down.
No one has ever seen the police report, because Bowman was under eighteen at the time and considered a juvenile, so those records are sealed. Similarly, the Gibsons were the only people who heard Bowman’s “threats” in court that day. No one has ever been able to verify their story.
Now, Bowman tells a different version of events, but before we dive in, I must give you the caveat that in the 80s he was convicted of third-degree sexual assault. However, given it seemed to be common knowledge around the school that Trenny and Bowman were seeing each other, the inconsistencies in Hope’s story and there being at least one other reported instance where Trenny’s father went after another young black man Trenny was caught alone with, I’m inclined to mostly believe Bowman in this instance.
(If you’re interested in reading about the case, you can do so here. It is an interesting read insofar as Bowman attempted to appeal his conviction because the ADA assigned to the case testified that it was his opinion Bowman’s friend, who was his alibi that evening, had lied because he initially remembered the time period he was with Bowman but not the date. The original case is unfortunately not publicly accessible.)
Bowman asserts that while he did know Bob Jr., they weren’t friends and he had no reason to visit him. He claimed that he and Trenny were secretly seeing each other, and like many other nights previously, they had arranged to meet. She had left her window open so he could sneak in.
In his version of events, he was climbing in through Trenny’s open window, and her mother burst into the room with a gun. The two of them tried to explain what was going on, but Hope was so angry she shot Bowman in the foot. Hope told Bowman to get out and stay away from her daughter. He claimed Trenny attempted to step in on his behalf and began to argue with her mother.
Ultimately, Trenny convinced him to run from the Gibson house, as she was afraid of what her father would do when he got home. Bowman left the house and tried to seek help in the street.
There is some evidence that corresponds with his version of events. A nearby neighbor reported that they heard a shot, which indicates that Bowman was likely not on the lawn screaming for Rob Jr. The neighbor also said they saw Bowman limping down the street, saying he’d been shot, even though Hope Gibson has always stated she held Bowman at gunpoint until the police arrived.
Bowman also attested that the same evening he was arrested and taken to the hospital, Trenny’s father drove there to confront him and shared a few choice words—telling him to stay far away from his daughter.
And while that might not mean much or be true, consider how peculiar it was that Robert Gibson showed up to Bowman’s sentencing hearing and demanded he be sent to a juvenile detention facility in Texas, so he would be far, far away from Trenny.
That could have been the request of a concerned father, but it strikes me as odd that Bowman would be so, so angry at Trenny if he actually hurt her accidentally in a drunken, rage-filled stupor. It would make a little more sense though, if Trenny knew her parents had lied to protect their “reputation” and instead of speaking up for Bowman when the police arrived, allowed her parents to claim that she was assaulted by him and ruin his life.
The thing is, it’s not clear if Trenny was ever separately interviewed by police. We aren’t even fully sure if anyone examined the crime scene or Trenny’s alleged injuries. In all likelihood, since this was Tennessee in the 70s, police probably didn’t feel the need to question the story of a concerned white woman who claimed her daughter was attacked by a black man.
Despite still being considered a suspect in Trenny’s case, Bowman has continued to be open to anyone willing to listen to his side of the story today. Bowman has maintained that he and Trenny were seeing each other and that he does not necessarily believe she is dead.
Like many of her former classmates, Bowman believes Trenny may have run away on October 8, 1976. In interviews over the years, he has continued to express that despite what the Gibsons claim, Trenny was unhappy at home and never allowed to enjoy her life.
While we can’t necessarily assume that everything Bowman or her former classmates say is the complete truth, it is peculiar that so many people believed she felt oppressed by her family’s watchfulness, despite the Gibsons claiming Trenny preferred to stay at home with them.
And though Trenny’s classmates might not have known her well, it does seem like they might have picked up on something. After all, Trenny’s brother told his friend Robert Simpson to keep an eye on her the day of the field trip. Obviously, it could have been because she was potentially being bullied for what happened with Kelvin Bowman, but what I didn’t mention earlier was that Trenny’s mother, Hope, was supposed to be a chaperone for the field trip that day.
Hope Gibson had offered to chaperone the horticulture class trip until she realized the trip was supposed to last for the entire school day. She called the school early in the morning and told them she couldn't find a sitter for her youngest child on such short notice, leaving the school to find a replacement.
Now, many people get caught up in the weeds on this bit because what did she plan to do with the kid for those few hours anyway? Not to mention, Hope’s eldest child, Bob Jr., was supposedly home at the time before his deployment with nothing else to do.
I don’t really think there’s anything sinister about her last-minute call-out. It’s very likely that Hope had forgotten to arrange care and didn’t feel comfortable leaving her toddler alone all day with his brother with no car or way to contact her if anything went wrong. From what we know of the family, Rob Jr. had also never watched any of the younger siblings before, so it’s likely Hope wasn’t willing to let today be the test run.
That being said, I think what we can glean from Hope offering to be a chaperone and Rob Jr. calling his friend to watch Trenny after she was unable to go is that the family didn’t completely trust Trenny after what happened with Bowman.
I know some of you might say “But wait—they let Trenny go to work!” and that is true, but consider that Trenny was primarily working with adults in a supervised environment. She also didn’t have a car, so she had to be dropped off and picked up by her parents, which meant unless she lied about her shifts or was allowed to get a ride, she didn’t actually have that much freedom.
So, I think it’s safe to say we can’t necessarily trust that the Gibsons weren’t a bit more focused on portraying their daughter in a certain way instead of acknowledging she was a teenage girl desperate to form connections and have a life, and that may have seriously impacted the investigation.
But, let’s get into the details and see what we can figure out.
october 8, 1976.
Bearden High School in Knoxville, TN (1969, Knoxville Sentinel Archives)
Now that we’ve learned a bit about Trenny, let’s get into the day she disappeared.
Hope Gibson reported to law enforcement that Trenny was acting a bit odd the morning of the trip. It was supposed to rain and possibly even snow that day, and she made a big deal about why she thought they should cancel the trip.
When it turned out that Hope wasn't able to attend, Rob Jr. phoned his friend, Robert Simpson, who happened to be in Trenny’s horticulture class, and asked him to watch over his sister on the trip. He told Trenny to find Simpson and stick with him.
Now, remember that her teacher, Wayne Dunlap, had not told students where they were going on their trip, but presumably, if Trenny was concerned about the weather, students must have had some idea the field trip would be outdoors, which made it even stranger that she decided on a styled ensemble and wore a blue blouse, a pastel blue striped sweater, jeans, blue Adidas shoes, and her diamond and sapphire ring.
It was even more peculiar then that Trenny left both her purse and jacket in the car when her mom dropped her off at school that morning. Hope recalled that as Trenny was getting out of the car, she called out to a classmate and asked them if the field trip was still on. When the classmate assured her it was, she left her purse and jacket in the car and said goodbye.
Trenny met up with the thirty-eight other horticulture students and took a seat on the bus next to Robert Simpson. The class then began their mysterious drive to an unknown location with Wayne Dunlap as their only chaperone.
We do know that Dunlap contacted multiple people to find a substitute for Hope Gibson on the trip, including former college classmates, but no one was available at such short notice. Given they had already booked the bus and the kids had already been excused from classes, he decided he could manage the trip alone without assistance.
The class drove for roughly seventy-two miles to reach the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and parked in a lot close to Clingmans Dome (now referred to as Kuwohi).
Wayne Dunlap told the students they would be hiking up to Andrews Bald. He asked them to stay together, remain on the trail, not disturb the wildlife, and plan to be on the bus by 3:30 PM.
Trail to Andrews Bald (2021, Musings of a Rover - click the link if you’d like and overview of the trail )
Now, you might be wondering why, given the lack of supervision, Dunlap didn’t ask the bus driver to accompany them or why he didn’t organize the students into groups with group leaders to help keep track of everyone. The former is straightforward: the bus driver, per company policy, was unable to leave the bus unaccompanied, but the latter is difficult to answer.
Perhaps, Dunlap believed that these high school students were smart enough to not do something dumb like wander off the trail or, maybe, given the fact this was his first year teaching, he lacked the experience to know that high school students sometimes use field trips as a time to bend the rules.
Regardless, students did report that Dunlap stayed towards the back of the group and did seem to be keeping an eye on things.
Now, we know that Trenny got off the bus and walked up the trail to Andrews Bald with Robert Simpson, but they were much further behind the others, as Simpson appeared to be struggling a bit with the trail. At some point, Simpson handed his jacket to Trenny, since she was not dressed for the weather.
We know the pair ate lunch together with the class at Andrews Bald. It does not appear that Dunlap took attendance when the class reached their destination, but multiple witnesses could confirm Trenny and Robert did eventually make it to Andrews Bald.
The next part is where things get a bit fuzzy since we only have the testimonies of various classmates to go on.
After lunch, the group began to disburse, but Trenny and Simpson stayed behind to finish their lunches. Trenny offered half of her sandwich to Simpson and, according to Simpson, after a little while, he spotted a bear that he was determined to track and Trenny decided to walk ahead and rejoin the class.
Trenny was next seen walking briskly down the trail towards the parking lot by multiple peers. Classmates told law enforcement that while Trenny was walking quickly, as though she was trying to get away from something (or someone) if she fell into step with a group, she would slow down and chat for a little before moving on.
About a mile from the parking lot, Trenny fell into step with Lisa Michael, Anita Bonds, Bobby Coghill, and Stacy Martin. She walked with the group for about a quarter of a mile before Bobby asked the group if they could stop for a moment. Bobby had asthma and needed a moment to catch his breath.
The group invited Trenny to sit with them and hang out for a bit, but Trenny declined and pressed on.
Anita Bonds reported to law enforcement that the group watched Trenny continue to walk before stopping suddenly in the middle of the path. Trenny bent over and looked towards the right of the trail. The group watched her step just off the trail, not completely out of sight though, and Anita claimed that she looked away for a couple seconds and suddenly Trenny was no longer visable.
Initially, the group had assumed Trenny needed to use the bathroom and had stepped off the trail for some privacy, but when the group got up to continue their hike a few minutes later and Trenny had still not emerged, Anita went over to check on her.
But, when Anita examined the area where Trenny had stepped off the trail, there was no sign of her.
Anita was confused though, the area Trenny had stepped off had no trail. There was a large flat rock, a small stream, a significant amount of thick shrubbery and dense trees, and a rough rocky area that led uphill. She called out Trenny’s name a few times, but there was no response.
When she reported back to the group, they decided they must have missed her stepping back on the trail.
The class made it back to the bus by 3:30 PM with Robert Simpson bringing up the tail.
As Wayne Dunlap ran through attendance, he quickly realized Trenny had not made it back to the bus. Anita’s group told the teacher that they’d seen Trenny step off the trail about half a mile or so up, and Dunlap turned his attention to Robert Simpson.
Remember, Simpson had spent the majority of the day with Trenny, before she suddenly left him behind to speed walk to the bus, and he was also the last person down the trail. Simpson told his story about staying behind to track the bear, and claimed he never saw Trenny after she left him up at Andrews Bald.
Wayne Dunlap grabbed a student named Danny Johnson (a school athlete), and asked him to jog up the main trail to Andrews Bald to see if Trenny was still on the trail somewhere. In the event Trenny was turned around trying to get back to the parking lot, Dunlap would head in the opposite direction from where the trail bisected onto the Clingmans Dome Bypass Trail that led to the Appalachian Trail.
To better help illustrate the scene, I’ve created this beautiful color coded map for you. As you can see, Danny’s search route was the same path the group had traveled earlier that day. Wayne Dunlap walked in the opposite direction towards the Double Spring Gap Shelter which is about three miles from the parking lot.
For additional context, the pink highlighted portion of the route is the original trail route the class would have taken to and from the parking lot. If Trenny had not turned onto Clingmans Dome Trail, and continued straight towards the bypass trail, she would have eventually ended up on the Appalachian Trail.
I know after looking at the map you probably have many questions like how could she get turned around with all of these other students going the correct way? Or were there no signs on the trail that would have indicated she was heading the wrong way?
We’ll get to that, but first, let’s finish our story.
the search.
According to National Park Service records, Johnson found no trace of Trenny Gibson on the trail the class had taken to Andrews Bald. Dunlap found shoe prints that matched the bottom of Trenny’s Addidas sneakers and looked to be the same size, heading in the direction of the Double Spring Gap Shelter, but he lost the tracks about half a mile past the trail intersection.
Around 4:00 PM, Dunlap and Johnson returned to the bus, and Dunlap made the executive decision to send all of the kids home, while he stayed and called for help.
Dunlap called for help and by 4:30 PM Park Ranger Sam Lail was on site to assist with an initial search. Ranger Lail headed out to follow Dunlap’s initial search route towards the Double Spring Shelter, and Wayne Dunlap headed in the opposite direction down the Appalachian Trail to check the area around Clingmans Dome.
After both men were unable to locate any sign of Trenny, Wayne Dunlap officially filed a missing person report; however, the Gibsons wouldn’t find out Trenny was missing until the bus returned to the school nearly two hours later.
Robert and Hope Gibson wouldn’t be able to join the search for their daughter until nearly 8:00 PM that evening—almost five hours from when Trenny was last seen.
Despite cold temperatures, high winds, and freezing rain, park rangers and the Jackson County Rescue Squad did their best to search the area, but still could not find any trace of Trenny.
Over the following days, search teams went over the areas with dogs.
Trenny’s scent was picked up near Andrews Bald, as well as around Clingmans Dome Tower and on the Appalachian Trail east of the tower, towards an area called Collins Gap that sits just off the highway. But, while dogs were able to pick up Trenny’s scent in these various areas some miles apart; they were never able to find evidence that Trenny had been in any of those locations (save for witnesses who placed her on the trail leading to Andrews Bald prior to 3:00 PM).
I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that after ten days of searching and scouring major and minor trails, drainages, and ridges, no trace of Trenny was ever found.
what happened to trenny gibson?
Over the years, there have been a few theories circulating (some more special than others):
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Trenny used the class trip as an opportunity to run away from her oppressive Christian family.
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A stranger lured or coerced Trenny off the trail with the threat of violence, and killed her within feet of her classmates. They then managed to hide the body until it was safe to move.
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Something happened on Andrews Bald between Robert Simpson and Trenny that caused her to try and get away from him quickly. Simpson made his way down from Andrews Bald through the treeline beside the trail, lured Trenny off the path, killed her, and hid her body well enough that he was able to go home and return later that evening to properly dispose of the body.
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Kelvin Bowman, who allegedly swore vengeance against Trenny, figured out the location of the class trip and followed the bus out to the park. He waited off the trail and managed to lure Trenny into the woods where he killed her and then disposed of her body.
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Trenny was killed by her classmates in a prank gone wrong, and the students worked together to somehow cover up an accidental murder like the teens in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
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Trenny’s brother, Rob Jr., was waiting off the trail to pick up Trenny and take her out of state to get an abortion, but something bad happened on the way out of the park, Trenny was killed, and the family helped cover for Rob Jr.
Now, before we dive in, there was one small piece of evidence found near where Trenny went missing, and this “evidence” is the source of more than a few of these theories.
While it is not mentioned in the original report, supposedly someone potentially related to Trenny found three cigarette butts and a “freshly” opened can of beer near where Trenny was last seen. Some people believe this is concrete proof someone was standing and waiting just off the trail to lure Trenny away from the group, and that had rangers preserved this evidence, we would know the identity of who took Trenny.
However, this “evidence” was supposedly discovered on October 9th—a day after Trenny had gone missing. After a night of rain, there would be no way to tell how “fresh” any of these items were, and the rain would have likely degraded or contaminated any potential DNA evidence that could have been recovered in the future.
Also, remember that this was a field trip for a bunch of high school kids in the '70s, when a portion of the class was old enough to drink (and potentially buy cigarettes depending on where Tennessee laws on tobacco fell at the time). It’s entirely possible a few older kids decided to sneak some contraband on a field trip that was already going to have fairly limited supervision.
It’s equally possible the beer and cigarette butts had been there for days prior to Trenny’s disappearance.
So, with that being said, let’s get into these theories.
theory 1: a great escape.
Our first theory posits that Trenny used this trip as an opportunity to run away and start over, but there are a few problems with this theory.
First, Trenny allegedly didn’t know the final destination of this field trip, which would make it very hard to plan an escape. She also neglected to take a coat or her purse, and no money was missing from her wallet or her bank account. One would assume that, if Trenny truly wanted to disappear, she would have at least wanted to take some money to be able to support herself until she could find a stable job somewhere far from Tennessee.
That’s not to say it’s impossible that Trenny ran away.
In fact, that’s what most of her classmates believed happened to her.
She absolutely could have acted odd on the trail so people would take notice she stepped off, hid until the class passed, and made her way down towards Clingmans dome and Collins Gap before anyone went to look for her.
But, I suppose the question would be, if she did plan to run away that day, purposely leaving behind her jacket and money so that everyone would suspect foul play, who would have helped her?
Did she hitch a ride near Collins Gap?
Or did someone much closer help plan her great escape?
theory 2: the trailside predator.
ur second theory argues that Trenny was lured off the trail by a violent stranger who killed and disposed of her body. Some believe the stranger may have offered her a cigarette or asked for her help, while others think the stranger might have had a gun or some means of scaring her into doing whatever they said.
This is perhaps one of the most unlikely theories.
Consider that no other students reported seeing or being approached by a stranger that day and that Trenny was in the middle of a large group of people.
If Trenny had been abducted, why were there no signs of a struggle or evidence of foul play? Why would our killer potentially attempt to transport a dead or unconscious body miles away, while park rangers were combing the area?
You see, the problem with this theory is that even though Trenny was walking alone at the moment, she was still part of a group and would be missed pretty quickly.
Even though there was a gap between when she was discovered missing and when the search began, the trails were crawling with rangers from the moment she was officially reported missing. If a stranger had taken her, they would have somehow needed to transport her body through the woods without getting close to any trails.
theory 3: robert simpson
Theory three focuses on Robert Simpson.
We know that Trenny seemingly wanted to get away from Simpson, and while I will admit Robert’s arc is a bit suspicious with the whole “tracking a bear” bit, I don’t think he did more than make a very inappropriate pass at Trenny that led to a fight.
Why would Robert Simpson potentially behave inappropriately towards his friend’s younger sister?
Well, men have done plenty of terrible things to women who have simply been nice to them, but I wonder if, given Trenny’s reputation, certain assumptions or comments were made.
Let’s go back to what happened between Kelvin Bowman and Trenny:
If we take Bowman’s version of events at face value, we know students were potentially bullying Trenny after the fact and brought up during the investigation that Trenny was caught making out with a different young black man at another point.
Now, it’s possible that in the South, a little more than ten years after segregation ended, some of the bullying might have been centered on the fact that Trenny was a young white girl who was known to exclusively date or hook up with black men. It’s also possible that, given Kelvin Bowman alleged he was repeatedly invited to sneak through her window for romantic encounters, the “good Christian girl” had earned a reputation for being “easy”.
Could Robert Simpson have made a pass at Trenny that was rejected? And could his response to being shut down have been to say something gross or racist?
We’ll never know for sure, but I would hazard a guess that something like this went down since allegedly Robert Simpson once said to a Gibson family member, “If Kevin Bowman has Trenny, he will kill her. If he does not have her, I think she must have run off with some horny hitchhiker.”
What a thing to say to a grieving family member.
Now, the real reason Robert Simpson is one of the primary suspects is because his father, a newly appointed Assistant District Attorney (ADA) at the time, stepped in very quickly to stop police from questioning his son.
It’s tempting to believe his dad was part of a massive cover-up, but consider for a moment Simpson’s dad was an Assistant District Attorney—he knew the game, he knew how police operated, and he knew how it would look for the ADA’s son to be the primary suspect in a missing person’s case.
It’s not completely out there to imagine his dad said something akin to don’t tell them you were inappropriate with her because they’ll focus the investigation on you.
It’s true though; if Robert Simpson had said he’d made a pass at Trenny and she tried to get away from him, it would call into question why he was the last one to show up to the bus. They wouldn’t consider that he was potentially embarrassed and didn’t want to run into her on the trail or that he was out of shape and already struggled on the first part of the hike; they would assume he was using that extra time to hide the body.
Now, I’m not saying Robert Simpson is innocent, but I am saying in 2025, we can all understand why someone would not want to be the primary focus of a police investigation.
Realistically, it’s hard to imagine the guy that was huffing and puffing it up to the top of the trail was going to outpace her walking beside the trail, somehow convince her to step off the trail and away from people while she was potentially upset with him, and physically move her body to a place even rangers couldn’t find.
Then, after all of this, take a long ass bus ride back to the school, get in his car to drive back out to the mountains where it was thirty degrees and raining to collect her body and somehow transport it to his car amid a search.
Now, that being said, there are a few strange things that make Simpson stand out from other suspects.
First, Trenny’s favorite comb was found in Simpson’s car. Trenny was never known to go anywhere without it, and always kept it in her pocket.
Did Robert Simpson keep her comb as a souvenir after killing her? Or is it possible that it was uncomfortable to hike in tight jeans and Trenny asked Simpson to hold onto it for safekeeping during the hike?
The second bit is a bit more peculiar.
In the weeks after Trenny’s disappearance, the Gibson family claimed they were confused by some of the statements attributed to them in the press, and eventually discovered that Robert Simpson had been showing up to their home and “fielding calls” from reporters to “help” the family.
The Gibsons asked Robert Simpson to stop and he did, but no one was quite sure why he thought that was an appropriate thing to do.
Maybe he had a guilty conscience?
Or maybe he was just trying to make sure his name didn’t end up in the paper?
theory 4: kelvin bowman.
Our fourth theory alleges that Kelvin Bowman followed the bus to the park that day, and sat in wait to lure Trenny off the trail and kill her. This theory primarily originates from her family, who continued to push law enforcement to question Bowman despite there being no evidence of his involvement.
Now, the school claims that Bowman was in class that day, but former students have since claimed the school was pretty lax on attendance after homeroom; however, we don’t have any concrete evidence that Bowman left early that day.
There are a few kids that claim to have seen Bowman following the bus that day, but Wayne Dunlap has repeatedly said that the bus was not being followed that day, and more to the point, Kelvin Bowman didn’t own a car.
So, let’s say regardless of the facts, he did come to the park that day. There are two possible ways it could go depending on what actually happened a year prior:
If Kelvin Bowman really did violently attack Trenny last October, it’s highly unlikely she would have walked off the trail to be alone with him. Could he have used an accomplice to lure her off the trail?
Let’s say Bowman convinced a person or few people to help him out, and they somehow coordinated where to meet without anyone noticing and convinced Trenny to step into the treeline, where Bowman abducted her and the person or persons that helped rejoined the class.
The question is why this day?
Kelvin Bowman had ample opportunity to get revenge on Trenny, but from what we know, he never did anything more than bully or tease her at school.
Why would Bowman suddenly escalate to murder and put himself at risk of going back to juvenile detention or worse, prison?
And even if his intention wasn’t to murder but merely to scare or intimidate her, the question remains, how was he able to kill and dispose of the body with zero witnesses?
If Bowman’s version of events is true and he never attacked Trenny, then it’s possible she would have stepped off the trail to speak privately with him and apologize, but, at the same time, we would assume he wouldn’t have needed to chase her to national park to have a conversation.
At the end of the day, while Kelvin Bowman might have a motive, there is a significant lack of evidence he was involved in any way.
theory 5: rob jr. and the abortion plan.
Our penultimate theory comes from Laura Riste.
Riste is a Canadian woman who has dedicated her life to solving this case. She doesn’t have a background in law enforcement; she’s just someone very interested in missing children. I’m going to let you do your research and form your own opinion on Riste, but all I will say is, that while Riste has been able to collect a lot of information about the case, take everything with a grain of salt.
Riste is a civilian interviewing people decades after the fact, and while a lot of this information is potentially interesting; a lot of it has never been verified or corroborated.
According to Riste in a 2023 episode of the Missing Podcast, she spoke with a relation of the Gibsons who claimed non-immediate family members wanted to get to the truth of what happened to Trenny.
This family member alleged that they had reason to believe that Trenny was pregnant at the time, and Rob Jr. and Hope had possibly attempted to use the field trip as a way to sneak Trenny off to another state in order to obtain an abortion.
(Abortions were illegal in Tennessee at this time.)
Riste now believes that Rob Jr. had his friend Robert Simpson distract Trenny up on Andrews Bald, long enough that she would be further back in the group, so he could easily flag her over and pull her aside. They then hid until the class had passed, and made their way to Collins Gap where his car was waiting.
Riste can’t quite explain how Trenny might have died in the process, she mentions the possibility of a drug deal gone bad or trafficking, but alleges the family covered it up after the fact.
The proof?
Hope Gibson refuses to speak with her.
While it perhaps sounds reasonable for a person to stop engaging with someone after they accuse their son of killing his sister and the family of covering up a murder, I guess Hope Gibson’s refusal to provide proof this didn’t happen is somehow her admitting that it did.
Regardless, there are a few reasons this theory seems far-fetched.
The first is that Mr. Gibson was relentless in pushing for a second search of the area. He was so adamant enough wasn’t done the first time around, that he reached out to his former boss, Jimmy Carter, who was President at the time, to help push for a second search to be conducted.
If the Gibsons did cover up Trenny’s murder, one would assume they would not want to involve the President of the United States on the off chance they were caught.
The second issue with this theory is that if the Gibsons were desperate enough to get Trenny to another state where she could legally have an abortion, Kentucky is only about an hour away from Knoxville, TN.
Meaning, that there was no real need to abduct Trenny from a field trip and put more attention on her absence, when they could have easily told the school Trenny was sick one day or pulled her out of school for an afternoon by saying she had a doctor’s appointment.
theory 6: i know what you did on the horticulture class field trip.
This one also comes from Laura Riste.
I’m not going to spend too much time on this one because it’s perhaps the least plausible and its origins are dubious.
Basically, Riste previously alleged that there was a potential conspiracy among Bearden High students. She argued that students on the trip were collectively bullying Trenny, and potentially a cruel prank led to these students accidentally killing her.
She believed the students worked together (perhaps even with the help of their teacher) to hide Trenny’s body, and later returned to dispose of it where no one would ever find it.
Now, aside from the fact that criminal conspiracies of this level are hard enough for seasoned criminals to pull off, let alone a group of high schoolers, the main issue with this theory is that anyone who participated in the “accident” would have needed to take a four-hour round trip to somehow move the body as search teams were combing the area.
Why did Riste believe this was a possibility?
Allegedly, a man in Tennessee who helps her with her investigation claimed to have had two encounters with people that went to Bearden High School. It’s important to note though that these people were not in Trenny’s class, but attended the school several years or more after her disappearance.
One girl he met allegedly claimed that Trenny was dead thirty minutes after she stepped off the trail and when he asked how the girl knew this, she laughed and walked away. While off at college, the man claimed he ran into a group of girls from Bearden at a party, and as they were drinking together they told him they knew where her body was and would tell him; however, he had to promise not to share what they told him or they could be next.
Riste also claimed that she’s received threatening anonymous messages over the years from people telling her to stop digging. She also alleged that Trenny’s younger sister, Tina, encountered similar pushback when she attempted to dig into her sister’s disappearance.
I’ll grant you that this all sounds sinister, but consider, aside from the fact that posting anything on the internet automatically attracts trolls, if there was some legitimate conspiracy that resulted in the death of Trenny Gibson, why would so many students outside of that horticulture class know what happened to Trenny? And then go on to pass down the full details of their story to new students year after year?
Was there an actual conspiracy to cover up a murder?
Or did her disappearance become something of an urban legend to the students of Bearden—something that perhaps grew more bizarre and fantastic over the years as the story was passed down by upperclassmen?
Remember, Trenny literally vanished in the middle of a group of people on a class field trip. That’s a crazy thing to experience, and of course, people are going to talk about it, especially when multiple people from school were considered suspects.
While Laura Riste has been a passionate advocate for Trenny over the years, refusing to speak with someone who’s not affiliated with law enforcement is not indicative of guilt or some larger conspiracy. And I think what we need to remember is that the people who were there that day did cooperate with NPS and the police.
As for what Tina Gibson experienced, we don’t know for sure. Tina died in 2016, and outside of what Riste has claimed Tina shared with her, I can’t find any evidence that Tina took these concerns to law enforcement.
what might have actually happened to trenny gibson?
So, we know there are tons of theories, but let me posit one more theory for you.
It’s simple—maybe too simple, but I would be willing to bet it’s closer to the truth than anything else.
There’s only one person who had time to move a body: Wayne Dunlap.
While law enforcement did look at Dunlap, he was never really considered a primary suspect, mostly because students seemed to agree they don’t recall not seeing him at any point, but let’s look at the very basic facts:
When the class determined Trenny was missing, Dunlap sent Danny Johnson up to Andrews Bald, while he went the opposite direction down a path that led to the Appalachian Trail.
Instead of stopping at the fork in the road and returning to the bus or heading towards Clingmans Dome (an actual attraction she might have wanted to see), he allegedly went out toward a shelter she wouldn’t have known existed.
Upon returning, Dunlap immediately radioed park services and sent the kids home, but he never asked rangers to contact the school or Trenny’s parents.
Now, I’m sure we could make the argument that this kid did go missing on his watch, and perhaps he simply wanted a bit more time to see if he could track her down and avoid getting into trouble. But, he also sent away every potential witness.
Remember, we don’t find out from Anita and friends that Trenny stepped off the trail until much later the following day. Meaning that while rangers were potentially searching the correct trail, almost a day had passed before they knew where she was last seen.
Then, when Ranger Lail arrived, Dunlap told him that he found footprints out towards Double Spring that were about the right size and matched the design on the bottom of Trenny’s sneakers.
But, how did Wayne Dunlap know what the soles of Trenny’s sneakers looked like?
Lail headed west down the trail towards Double Spring, but according to NPS’ report, Dunlap didn’t go with him, instead, he headed east to check out the area around Clingmans Dome, which is coincidentally one of the areas where dogs picked up Trenny’s scent on the way to Collins Gap.
After this, Wayne Dunlap doesn’t really come up again in the search narrative, but we do know that one park ranger, Dwight McCarter, reported speaking with Dunlap that day and that Dunlap admitted he and Trenny argued.
It’s never stated what the argument was about and it doesn’t seem like the ranger pressed, but it seems like an odd thing for Dunlap to volunteer without context.
Well, that is, unless Dunlap was worried that someone might have seen him and Trenny speaking alone somewhere on or off the trail.
Which would had to have happened sometime between when she left Robert Simpson on Andrews Bald, either before she caught up with the other students or after Anita saw her step off the trail.
And if there was someone who convinced Trenny to step off the trail, wouldn’t it make sense for it to be someone she trusted…like her teacher?
But, what could Trenny have been arguing with her teacher about?
I guess she could have been mad about the surprise trip to the Smokies in inclement weather or it could have been something a little more personal.
I didn’t mention this earlier, but Wayne Dunlap had a reputation for hanging out with students outside of class. Though Dunlap was nearly a decade older and only started his job at Bearden that year, supposedly he met with students to go hiking or fishing on the weekends.
Could Trenny have been one of the students he met up with?
Or is it possible Wayne Dunlap might have met Trenny even before school started?
Trenny worked at Morrison's Cafeteria, which was a popular diner-esque place at the time, and only about a ten to fifteen minute drive from where Dunlap was attending school at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying that Wayne Dunlap and Trenny were having an affair that resulted in him killing her on a school field trip.
But, Trenny was a lonely kid.
She spent her time taking care of the home and her siblings and didn’t have much of a social life outside of her family. Boys weren’t exactly banging down the door to date her thanks to her parents. And the only thing Trenny really had to look forward to was graduating and hopefully leaving for college.
It would have been easy for any older parental-esque figure to get close to a young girl who didn’t get a lot of attention and affection at home.
Maybe close enough that the young girl was willing to share details about her home life—close enough the parental figure wanted to help.
So, when they argued, maybe it was because Dunlap had promised to help her run away, and he’d called it off because of the weather, or because he realized it was a crazy idea, but Trenny wasn’t willing to give up.
Now, I know you’re going to say, but why would they have planned to have Trenny run away, if her mom was originally going to chaperone?
Most likely Trenny knew her mom was never actually going to come, so it wasn’t important. After all, her mom didn’t really seem to remember the trip was happening, never tried to get any details on what was expected, and didn’t attempt to plan for any kind of childcare that day.
It was odd that Trenny left her jacket and purse behind, if she didn’t know where they were going, especially after making such a big deal about how she hoped the trip was cancelled and she didn’t like that it was a surprise.
Wouldn’t she have wanted to be prepared for anything?
Or was she trying to make sure that no one would suspect she’d run away?
She did have almost $200 in her wallet and a lot of money in her savings account, and because she didn’t take any of it, her family struggled to believe she’d run with no money.
And the truth is, even if they’d found a replacement chaperone, the field trip was so disorganized that it wouldn’t have been hard for Dunlap to “miscount” the number of students on the bus and head back to the school without Trenny.
Someone would be waiting to pick her up from school, but it would take them a bit to realize she didn’t slip away once she got off the bus. They’d need to call around and figure out if she caught a ride with another classmate, and by the time anyone realized Trenny was never on the bus home, Dunlap would be home and Trenny would be safe elsewhere.
So, if we go with this scenario, perhaps Dunlap sent Danny Johnson to check the Andrews Bald trail because the original plan was for Trenny to hide out at the Double Spring Shelter until Dunlap could return to pick her up.
And maybe when he saw her footprints heading towards Double Spring but suddenly disappearing, he realized she was either lost or had gone off book.
So, he sent the students packing and gave himself enough time to search alone for a little longer before the park ranger arrived. He then purposely searches the opposite direction to see if maybe she had sought shelter closer to Clingmans Dome. After all, the weather wasn’t great that day, and while she had Robert Simpson’s coat, it would have been a pretty far walk to get to the shelter.
Clingmans Dome is also a tourist destination, so Trenny might have gone to see if there were other people nearby she could hitch a ride from.
But, if Trenny wasn’t murdered in the park, what happened to her?
I think originally Trenny started walking towards Double Spring because that’s where they’d originally planned for her to go, but at some point, possibly because of the weather or because she wasn’t sure if Dunlap would still follow through with the plan after their argument, she decided against waiting at the shelter.
Unwilling to wait for another opportunity, she walked in the opposite direction that lead towards the road that brought them there with the intention of hitching a ride.
I think she made it to Collins Gap and eventually, she was able to flag down a car.
Perhaps there was a Good Samaritan inside who listened to her story and helped her get away from her family.
Or perhaps Trenny got into the wrong car and never made it to her final destination.
Interestingly enough, earlier that year, one of the most prolific serial killers in US history killed a woman in Knoxville, TN.
Samuel Little was known for preying on vulnerable women, and per his testimony, killed several female hitchhikers over the years.
Though it’s potentially a long shot that she was one of his victims, in 1975 there were almost three hundred active serial killers in the United States (and probably a lot of generally creepy dudes). So, if Trenny did attempt to hitchhike in a remote area like this one, she could have easily been seen as a perfect target by someone looking for an opportunity.
There is one more outstanding piece of evidence I left out, mostly because it’s difficult to fully corroborate, but it’s worth discussing, as it could tie into the Wayne Dunlap theory.
According to Laura Riste, Trenny’s family discovered that one of her classmates had come into possession of her sapphire ring and the necklace she was wearing when she went missing. Riste supposedly tracked down the girl, who allegedly admitted through a third party that they did belong to Trenny.
Some versions of this account say it was one student, while others say multiple students were wearing her jewelry.
It’s not really clear how thoroughly this was investigated at the time or if there’s a lot of truth to the story, but some people see this as proof that there was a conspiracy to cover up Trenny’s murder, particularly since the one girl in question never gave the jewelry back to the family though she allegedly said she would.
To further complicate things, there is also a weird narrative from Robert Simpson about Trenny giving her ring and necklace to a classmate while she went to the bathroom before the hike began. This is often dismissed as Simpson making more stuff up akin to the bear, because obviously women don’t take off their necklaces to pee.
But, hear me out—
If this is true, what if Robert Simpson just misinterpreted what he saw?
Maybe Trenny didn’t hand over the jewelry; maybe she sold it.
If Trenny really had decided to run away that day, she would have needed cash.
Though if that were the case, why wouldn’t the student have told police?
Well, a lot of Trenny’s classmates knew her home life wasn’t great, and they told investigators they believed she ran away. Maybe this girl just wanted to give Trenny a chance to get away.
But, then why did the girl never return the jewelry?
I think the most important thing to remember is a lot of the stories we’ve heard about this case have come from the perspective of third parties recounting what they’ve heard from people who were deeply impacted by what happened. We’re not necessarily getting a full, unbiased version of events, and it can become a little like playing telephone.
It’s easy to paint something as sinister or part of a conspiracy when your perspective is limited by someone else’s bias, particularly when that bias is colored by grief.
Regardless of the rumors and stories, I’m sure that many of Trenny’s classmates felt guilty for bullying a girl who went missing. I’m also fairly positive, a lot of people on that trip feel bad they didn’t even notice she vanished right in front of them.
And I’m almost certain that there were more than a few people who may have wondered if Trenny didn’t run away and someone did something to her, if they were all in danger that day.
We don’t know exactly what happened after Trenny went missing, but we do know that her disappearance profoundly impacted everyone around her, and that’s why sometimes the best thing to do is to go back to the beginning and look at the facts as they were.
Maybe the jewelry is a clue or maybe the real question to ask is, if the ring is Trenny’s why would this classmate refuse to speak with her family directly and give it back?
Is it because there’s a conspiracy?
Or is it because people have their own suspicions about why Trenny might have wanted to run away?
Wayne Dunlap had a mental breakdown after Trenny disappeared.
He quit his job and moved his family to Oregon within the same year Trenny went missing.
His wife, who he would later divorce, allegedly told Laura Riste in an interview that she didn’t believe Wayne had a breakdown because he killed Trenny; she believed that he was dealing with trauma from the Vietnam War, coupled with the shame of losing a student during a field trip.
She felt he blamed himself for Trenny’s disappearance.
And maybe he did blame himself, but not for the reasons his wife imagined.
Dunlap eventually returned to Knoxville after nearly thirty years in the Pacific Northwest.
He’s never spoken about the case publicly and he never will.
Dunlap passed in September 2022, taking any knowledge of what might have happened to Trenny that day to the grave.
For what it’s worth, Dunlap spent the rest of his life working with organizations that helped local communities, especially children who needed safe spaces.
And maybe that’s the biggest clue of all.
Well, at last we’ve made it to the end.
I hope you enjoyed our foray into true crime and the lore that impacts cases.
And that's all she wrote...for now.
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Resources:
Appalachian Unsolved: Trenny Gibson, Lost in the Smokies by John North and Leslie Ackerson
Kelvin Bowman v. State of Tennessee
Old Cases Always Considered Open Until Answers Found by Lance Coleman
The Charley Project: Trenny Gibson
The Mysterious Disappearance of Trenny Lynn Gibson from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
What Happened to Trenny Gibson? by William Keckler
Whatever Became of Trenny Gibson? by Leslie Stahlhut