Trenny Gibson: Teenager Disappears in the Great Smoky Mountains
An unsolved case with many twists and turns
Student Vanishes During Field Trip
On October 8th, 1976, 16-year-old Trenny Gibson went on a field trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She was one of approximately 40 students, led by their horticulture teacher—the only adult chaperone on the trip.
Trenny was last seen around 40 minutes before she and her classmates were supposed to meet back at the bus.
The search for her would be extensive and many odd details would be discovered during the course of the investigation into her disappearance, including a scent trail which led to a nearby road, suggesting that Trenny had likely left the park in a vehicle. But, if so, did she do so willingly or had she been forced?
As more information was uncovered, it appeared that hers was probably not a simple lost in the wilderness type of case, but definitive answers—along with the missing girl herself—have remained elusive for decades.
What happened to Trenny Gibson?
Teresa “Trenny” Lynn Gibson
One of four children, Teresa Lynn Gibson was born on August 17th, 1960, to parents Hope and Robert. “Trenny,” as she was known, was said to be a shy and intelligent girl who excelled in school and was close to her family, especially her older brother Robert Jr.
She also had a dog named Mitzi, whom she adored. Trenny was a junior at Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Gibsons were religious and regularly attended church at Calvary Baptist Tabernacle.
Horticulture Field Trip
On October 8th, 1976, Trenny and her classmates had a scheduled field trip for their ornamental horticulture class, which was taught by Wayne Dunlap. Dunlap struggled to find other adults to accompany them on this outing. Trenny’s mother Hope was originally supposed to go, but decided not to at the last minute, as she was unable to find a babysitter for her youngest child.
Trenny herself reportedly doubted that the field trip would even take place, since the weather was supposed to be rainy that day. Because of this, she didn’t bring a coat with her, thinking that she wouldn’t need it. Hope dropped her off at school, where Trenny learned that the field trip was, in fact, still on and boarded the bus with her horticulture classmates.
It was foggy and lightly raining. She sat next to her friend Robert Simpson, who allowed her to borrow his brown plaid jacket. Robert said that the two chatted during the bus ride and that Trenny appeared to be in good spirits.
The destination had been kept a secret by Wayne Dunlap until the students boarded the bus. The reason for this, he later explained, was that he wanted to ensure that no one would attempt to follow any of the teenagers there. Dunlap announced that they were heading to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a revelation that was met with excitement by his students.
They’d be hiking to Andrews Bald, a mountain in the park, and then returning. The trail that would take them there and back would amount to an approximately three-mile round trip. The students were to observe the trees and other plant life along the trail as they walked. They arrived at 12:30 p.m.
As Dunlap was the only adult chaperone on the trip, it wasn’t possible for him to keep a close eye on all of the teenagers. He instructed them to stay on the trail at all times and that they were to meet back in the parking lot by 3:30 p.m.
Last Sighting of Trenny
Trenny walked with Robert Simpson to Andrews Bald, where they stopped briefly to look around and have lunch. By 1:50 p.m. Trenny was ready to begin the return hike, but Robert wanted to stay behind for a little while for unknown reasons—although one unverified source would later suggest that he’d been tracking a bear, but we’ll get to that.
Leaving Robert there, Trenny caught up with classmate Bobbie Coghill.
“I was walking with Angela Beckner and Lisa Mikels,” Bobbie explained, “when Trenny came up behind us. Trenny was walking faster, so I started walking with her.”
A short time later, the two began hiking with Anita Rounds and Scott Troy. After a while, the majority of the small group was ready to take a break, but Trenny wanted to press on and left without them.
Anita:
“We were about a half or three quarters of a mile from the Clingmans Dome parking area (where the bus was located) when Trenny left us. We were watching her, and it looked as if she turned right off the trail. David Eastham came up from behind, and I looked at him. When I looked back down the trail Trenny was not there. We thought she would be back at the bus.”
This took place around 2:50 p.m. and is considered the last official sighting of Trenny Gibson. When the rest of her class made it back by the arranged time, it was discovered that Trenny was not among them.
Search Efforts
Upon realizing that she wasn’t there, Wayne Dunlap immediately went in search of her, telling the rest of his class to remain in the parking lot. He contacted a park technician by CB radio and this man quickly came out and helped look for her as well. The pair split up, searching various trails and the areas surrounding them, but turned up no signs of the missing teenager.
Now deeply concerned, Dunlap notified the park rangers and they joined the search efforts. Hope received a call around 8:30 p.m. and learned that her daughter had vanished.
She contacted her husband, who was away on a business trip and he caught a flight home as soon as possible. Together, the couple drove to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to look for her, bringing along some articles of her clothing for the search dogs to sniff.
Over the course of the search, hundreds of people—including volunteers, Marines, family members, park rangers, and the FBI—would comb the area. Helicopters were utilized as well. However, despite this, they failed to locate Trenny.
Interestingly, several different dog teams would independently hit on the same scent trail—one that went off trail for a while (likely where her classmates had seen her veer off), then onto the Appalachian Trail, where it then appeared that Trenny had cut through the wooded area along that trail and walked into the road—where her trail ultimately ended. There were several cigarette butts on the ground and a parking area close by.
Because of this, many of the searchers—including Trenny’s parents—reached the conclusion that the 16-year-old was actually no longer in the park. The reason the FBI had become involved was due to the belief that the missing girl might have been abducted.
Early Suspect
Hope and Robert Gibson had their suspicions as to who might have taken their daughter (if someone did): a teenager named Kelvin Bowman.
Bowman, Hope explained, had broken into Trenny’s bedroom the previous year, leading Hope to shoot him in the foot. According to her, he had still refused to leave, but she chose not to shoot him again because he was someone’s son and she didn’t feel right about doing that.
Kelvin was arrested and spent time in a correctional facility. Hope said that he’d made threats against Trenny’s life while in the courtroom. (Although this can’t be confirmed by court records as they are sealed due to the fact that he was a juvenile at the time.) He had since been released and was back in school.
They became convinced that Kelvin had followed Trenny’s bus to the Great Smoky Mountains and, when an opportunity presented itself, abducted her. A couple of students even lent credence to this theory by stating that they’d spotted him driving behind the bus.
However, law enforcement investigated Kelvin’s alibi and confirmed that he’d actually been in school when Trenny went missing. There was nothing to tie him to her disappearance.
In an interview with Nick Kyle, of the YouTube channel The Missing Enigma, Laura Riste (a longtime researcher of Trenny’s case) and Michael Bouchard (an author and investigator) talked about what they’ve learned in their years of looking into Trenny’s disappearance. Both have spoken to friends, family, and classmates of the missing girl.
Kelvin Bowman told Michael Bouchard a very different version of events regarding the alleged break-in. He denied breaking into the home at all. He said that he and Trenny had been seeing each other secretly for months and that she would leave her window open for him on a specific day each week. Hope caught them on the night in question and shot Kelvin.
Kelvin was witnessed by neighbors limping down the road after the shooting, contradicting Hope’s version of events in which she stated that he had refused to leave even after she shot him.
Additionally, Trenny had reportedly been dating a basketball player named Derek Scott before her father caught her sitting with him in his car.
Conversely, Robert and Hope Gibson were both adamant that Trenny never dated and had no interest whatsoever in boys.
Laura Riste said that she believes the Gibson family had many secrets, including that Trenny’s parents disapproved of their daughter’s interest in Black men (both Kelvin and Derek were Black). Riste and Bouchard learned from those who knew her that things were tense in the Gibson home, even before Trenny had vanished.
She was allegedly treated like a “maid,” being given all of the household responsibilities while her siblings had none. Her unhappiness at home led some to wonder if she saw an opportunity to run away and took it, although her family firmly dismissed this idea.
Her brother Robert Jr.:
“Trenny and I have been this close (he held two fingers together) since we were real little. There’s no way she’d go anywhere when she knew I was coming home. No way.”
The homecoming he was referring to was the fact that he was supposed be on leave from the Navy shortly after his sister had vanished.
Furthermore, Trenny hadn’t taken any money with her. She’d been working part-time at Morrison’s Cafeteria and had saved up $2,000, which remained untouched in her bank account. She didn’t bring her identification with her either.
Other Oddities
The other individual who has often come up as a potential person of interest is Trenny’s friend Robert Simpson.
Hope alluded to him when she spoke to Juanitta Baldwin and Ester Grubb, the authors of Unsolved Disappearances in the Great Smoky Mountains.
“Never for a moment after that third day of the search for Trenny have I thought she was lost in the mountains. Too many unanswered questions, but praise God, the day is coming when I’ll have that answer to every question. Not only will I learn why Trenny’s comb that she never, ever parted with was found in the car of a Friend? Or why that friend was never allowed to be questioned or why instead of walking back to the parking lot with her, after eating half of her lunch–went tracking a bear. Oh, so many unanswered questions. However, I find the more I stay on my knees in prayer, the more God answers.”
Trenny’s comb was supposedly found on the dashboard in Robert Simpson’s car—a discovery made by her brother. It’s unclear how he obtained it.
Tina, Trenny’s sister, also mentioned that Simpson had come to their house several times while the search for Trenny was ongoing and her parents were away. Flossie, another sister, said that he was screening their telephone calls. Although the reason for this has never been explained.
“If Kelvin Bowman has Trenny,” Simpson allegedly told Tina, “he will kill her. If he does not have her, I think she might have run off with some horny hitchhiker.”
The provenance of the bear tracking claim is something of a mystery itself. This information appears to have originated in David Paulides’ Missing 411 series. He doesn’t cite the source for this story, though, so it’s unclear whether or not it’s accurate. Either way, it seems fairly unimportant as it doesn’t tell us anything about what happened to Trenny.
Some have speculated that Simpson’s father—a U.S. attorney—could have protected him from being questioned if he’d had any involvement in Trenny’s disappearance.
It is worth noting, however, that Simpson was not the last person seen with Trenny. In fact, she’d already parted ways with him and had been hiking with other students just before she vanished. So, if he had anything to do with her disappearance, it’s unclear when he would have had the opportunity.
One theory to explain how he came to have her comb is that she might have returned his jacket to him before she started hiking back and had perhaps left her comb in the pocket. (Although it’s really not clear what happened to the jacket or if she still had it on when she vanished.) The two also went to the mall together in his car sometimes, so it’s possible that she might have left it in there on one of these occasions.
An even more troubling mystery involves the ring she was wearing that day. It was a $600 (approximately $3,400 today) star sapphire and diamond ring that she’d received as a gift from her family.
Some time after Trenny’s disappearance, it was discovered that a classmate named Robin was wearing her ring. She claimed that the missing girl had given it to her “to hold” during the hike. She never gave it back to the Gibson family.
Robert Simpson gave a slightly different version of events. According to him, Trenny took it off in the washroom and gave it to a girl named Tina Mays to hold onto. Tina, for her part, said this was untrue and that she’d never had Trenny’s ring at any point.
So how did Robin come into possession of it? That remains unknown, as no one seemed to be able to corroborate Robin’s version of the story.
Years later, some former Bearden High students allegedly claimed that Trenny had gotten into an altercation with a small group of her classmates that day and that they’d stolen her ring while restraining her.
She slipped out of Robert Simpson’s jacket, while they were trying to hold onto her, and then ran off into the woods, never to be seen again. Who was involved in this alleged encounter is unknown and the veracity of the story has never been confirmed.
Other Developments
There were reported sightings of Trenny in the days and weeks following her disappearance, but none were ever substantiated.
Wayne Dunlap, Trenny’s horticulture teacher, was deeply affected by what happened and resigned from his teaching position not long after.
Trenny’s father, two of her siblings, and many of her classmates have since passed away.
While the NPS has released their files on her case, the FBI has yet to do so.
To this day, the circumstances surrounding Trenny Gibson’s disappearance remain a mystery.
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Thanks for uploading! I listened to it while driving. Keep up the awesome work!
Very interesting story I also listened and read along.
Went over to missing enigma Channel for more info thank you for posting their link.