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Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. We wanted to take a moment to share some of the important work that the Fall Line podcast is doing to cover overlooked cold cases within marginalized communities in the southeast.
00:01:59
Their latest season highlights the cases of missing teenager Lerian Nicholson and an unidentified homicide victim, both set against one of the worst tornadoes that Nashville, Tennessee has ever seen.
00:02:11
So keep listening to hear their story beginning with Episode 1, An Unidentified Man.
00:02:17
And then please go to the Fall Line feed and you can hear Episode 2, Son of Nashville, that's out right now.
00:02:23
And then please go to thefallinepodcast.com and follow the show at Fall Line Podcast on Twitter and Instagram.
00:02:31
And subscribe to the Fall Line on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
00:02:36
We here exactly right are so proud to have the show on our roster. So please check it out.
00:02:40
Thanks so much. This is the first episode in a three-part series. It discusses crime scenes, graphic injury, autopsy, and violence.
00:02:50
Listener discretion is advised. This is The Fall Line. From the archives of the United States National Weather Service,
00:03:20
the following is directly excerpted from reports of the 1998 Nashville tornado. Quote,
00:03:28
An historic tornado outbreak of at least 13 tornadoes struck Middle Tennessee on April 16, 1998.
00:03:36
Many of these tornadoes were strong or violent and tracked long distances, killing four people and injuring nearly 100 people, while causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
00:03:49
The most infamous tornado during the outbreak struck downtown Nashville, blowing out numerous windows and skyscrapers and causing the collapse of some older buildings.
00:04:00
This tornado outbreak was unusual in several respects. The event lasted nearly the entire day, with the first round of severe weather beginning very early, around 4 a.m. Central Standard Time, and the second and more significant round of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes occurring during the afternoon and evening.
00:04:21
The tornado went through downtown Nashville at 3.40 p.m. and on toward East Nashville, Donaldson, and Hermitage.
00:04:29
The tornado blew out many windows on office buildings. The Nations Bank office towers were one of the hardest-hit buildings in Nashville.
00:04:38
Thirty private airplanes were damaged at Cornelia Fort Airport. E-35 buildings in downtown Nashville were red-tagged, meaning these buildings were structurally unsound.
00:04:50
At least 300 homes were damaged in East Nashville. Many homes lost a good part of their roofs.
00:04:56
Trees were uprooted. Telephone poles were knocked down. St. Anne's Episcopal Church, which is well over 100 years old, received major damage.
00:05:07
Uprooted trees, damaged roofs to many homes, was the story across Donaldson and Hermitage.
00:05:13
Numerous windows were blown out at the Gaylord building in Donaldson. About half the trees, that is over a thousand trees, were blown down at Andrew Jackson's home, the Hermitage.
00:05:25
Mayor Phil Bredesen closed downtown Nashville on Friday, April 17th. Many workers had an unscheduled holiday.
00:05:34
The downtown area was reopened Monday, April 20th. End quote. Everyone knows a little something about Nashville,
00:05:46
the home of country and bluegrass, northeast of Memphis where rock and roll and rhythm and blues were born.
00:05:52
Though both might claim it it Nashville that gets the title of Music City Maybe more rhinestone than diamond of Tennessee a state the name derived from the Cherokee town of Tenassi Nashville sits in the middle region
00:06:07
of the state on rich soil. It's over 500 square miles and one of the largest cities by landmass
00:06:14
in the southeast. In terms of population, Nashville proper is home to over half a million.
00:06:21
Little Richard lived in Nashville for years, holding, as the Tennessean newspaper describes, quote,
00:06:27
long residencies in the famed R&B clubs on Jefferson Street. There's Dolly Parton, Justin Timberlake, Young Buck, Carrie Underwood.
00:06:36
The list of stars who are from or who live in Nashville, who can sometimes be spotted downtown where tourists snap pictures of the city's Walk of Fame,
00:06:45
they seem endless. Online vacation guides are crowded with memorabilia shops to peruse, restaurants serving Nashville hot chicken, and links to book a seat at the Grand Ole Opry or to download a map of Music Row.
00:07:01
Nashville is also home to Tennessee State University, Fisk University, and Meharry Medical College, all three historically Black colleges and universities.
00:07:11
The latter two were founded in the decade after the Civil War. And there's also Vanderbilt, named after an American millionaire who provided its initial endowment.
00:07:21
His name is all over town, including the various Vanderbilt medical facilities that serve the city.
00:07:27
It's a music town, a college town, an everlasting tourist attraction, and a city that's faced numerous natural disasters.
00:07:36
Nashville has seen floods, a collapsed reservoir, tornadoes, fire and heat waves, blizzards, and earthquakes.
00:07:43
When it comes to states of emergency, Nashville, Tennessee has been hosed to more than its fair share of trouble.
00:07:51
1998 was a particularly bad year. On April 15th and April 16th of that year, deadly tornadoes swept through the southeast.
00:08:02
Much of the damage was concentrated in Tennessee and Mississippi. On April 16th at about 5 p.m., downtown Nashville was hit.
00:08:10
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, quote, a tornado roared down Music Row, sending tourists running for cover.
00:08:18
That tornado, quote, touched down in Centennial Park before cutting a path clean through downtown Nashville.
00:08:25
The damage was extensive. Uprooted trees, crushed power lines, residential homes, government buildings.
00:08:32
The AJC reported that the tornado even, quote, ripped the seal off the state flag.
00:08:37
It hit retail stores, honky-tonks, and the football stadium, where residents saw parts of the structure, quote, being tossed around like popsicle sticks.
00:08:47
A reporter for The Tennessean described the aftermath as chaotic. Lights down, residents driving recklessly through intersections strewn with debris.
00:08:56
At least 100 people were injured, and one was killed, a student from Vanderbilt University.
00:09:02
Per the Jackson Sun, he was, quote, crushed underneath a tree in Centennial Park.
00:09:07
According to the article, there had been no tornado siren to warn residents to take cover.
00:09:13
All told, Nashville faced roughly $7 million worth of damage. Different media outlets gave varying totals for the cost and the number of injured,
00:09:23
but they all agreed the city was seriously impacted. A state of emergency was declared.
00:09:30
The Boston Globe reported that then-Vice President Al Gore went down to Tennessee to view the aftermath.
00:09:36
East Nashville, the hardest hit, saw massive recovery and cleanup efforts in the days following the storm.
00:09:43
A 2013 Tennessean retrospective recalls that the former Nashville mayor, Phil Bresden,
00:09:49
quote, personally directed traffic as cleanup trucks rolled through. The destruction would take weeks to assess, contain, and repair.
00:09:58
And it wasn't limited to Nashville. Much of Tennessee had been hit. In the following weeks, Tennessee news was dominated by that storm.
00:10:07
The repairs, the stretched thin public services, the first responders. And maybe that's why, one of the reasons why, the body found in North Nashville just a few days before the tornadoes hit got so little press.
00:10:23
That discovery came on Monday, April 13th, 1998, a cool, clear morning in Nashville.
00:10:30
It was around 8 a.m. that someone called the police to report the smoke. The Collar lived on Mary Street, a dead-end road in North Nashville.
00:10:40
The street runs up against Interstate 265, where Patchy Woods meet the road barrier.
00:10:45
And back then, there were a few vacant lots at the end of the road, too, so no direct neighbors where the street ran into the embankment.
00:10:54
According to the Tennessean, that particular spot was known as a convenient place to abandon strip cars.
00:11:01
Mary Street was reportedly popular with sex workers too, and it wasn't unusual for residents to see cars on their street at all hours.
00:11:10
Per the Tennessean, residents had heard a car early on the morning of the 13th at around 5 a.m.
00:11:17
Nothing remarkable there. As noted, the street saw traffic. But as the sun rose, it became evident that something had been left behind.
00:11:26
Something burning. According to a Crime Stoppers bulletin published later that summer, a Mary Street resident saw a rolled up beige carpet at the end of her road.
00:11:36
It was still smoldering. And wrapped inside that charred material was a body. The victim was so profoundly burned that, per the Tennessean, first responders could not guess at race, gender, or age, or cause of death
00:11:51
The fire hadn spread but kerosene sprayed on the carpet had created a very intense heat And yet no one had heard a thing As reporter John Yates pointed out the traffic from Highway 265 would probably have drowned out
00:12:07
more suspicious sounds. Police arrived and the scene was photographed and processed,
00:12:14
but it would take a medical examination to determine more about the victim. The police report is brief. The body was found in a prone face-up position at the dead end of
00:12:25
of Mary Street in North Nashville. At the time of this report, the body could not be identified,
00:12:30
having been burnt beyond recognition. The body was transported to FSC for further examination.
00:12:36
The case remains open as of April 13, 1998, at 1500 hours. There were two articles,
00:12:44
at least that we found, published on the discovery of this victim. They are also brief.
00:12:50
The Tennessean's initial report didn't contain the information about the carpet,
00:12:55
Likely that detail hadn't been released to the press at the time of publication.
00:12:59
Perhaps there would have been a follow-up as soon as the coroner's report was in,
00:13:03
had there not been a dramatic change to the Nashville news cycle. The Tennessee tornadoes came and the case disappeared from the local papers.
00:13:11
There was much to report on in the state and in Mississippi and beyond, and so that report from April 14th remained the only spring coverage of the body found at Mary Street.
00:13:23
In that report, there were virtually no identifying details, nothing to help a family recognize their missing loved one in the description.
00:13:32
Only upon the publication of the Crime Stoppers Bulletin in July was more known about the victim.
00:13:38
According to the Bulletin, the Mary Street victim was a black male between 18 and 25 years old.
00:13:45
His body had been profoundly burned in postmortem. Examiners were able to give an approximate height of about 5'11",
00:13:54
and a weight range of 150 to 160 pounds. Though not in the paper, a source who has seen the autopsy told us that the cause of death
00:14:03
was listed as blunt force trauma to the head. And according to our source, a toxicology report was run on the victim.
00:14:10
The results showed that no controlled substances were in his system. The examiner was able to distinguish some details of the young man's clothing.
00:14:19
A pullover shirt, blue jeans, a maroon CPO zipper-style jacket with YKK displayed on it, and sandals.
00:14:27
The clothing details were specific enough that someone, hopefully, could have recognized them.
00:14:34
But no identification came. Eventually, the unidentified victim's remains would either need to be interred, cremated, or stored for testing.
00:14:44
In Nashville, unidentified persons are generally buried. Every city has so-called potter's fields or cemeteries or areas where public burials are conducted.
00:14:56
These public burials are funded by the city because of a decedent's lack of funds, unknown identity, or unclaimed status.
00:15:05
Historically, criminals might also be buried in potter's fields, sometimes, like other citizens, in unmarked plots that might or might not be recorded in a log.
00:15:16
These public burial grounds usually exist within or adjacent to traditional cemeteries where there are plots that are also sold privately.
00:15:24
In the 20th and 21st centuries, Nashville's indigent or pauper burials have occurred in various cemeteries and on county-owned land throughout the city.
00:15:34
In some cases, there are not individual grave markers, whether the decedent's identity was known or unknown.
00:15:42
Now, the process is overseen by Metro Social Services, specifically indigent burial and cremation services.
00:15:51
The eligibility for assistance is outlined on their website. The office works to provide plots, caskets, and grave markers for residents of Davidson County or those who died while in Nashville.
00:16:03
The Tennessean newspaper has spotlighted the program on a few occasions and its program manager, a woman named Carol Wilson.
00:16:12
Metro Bordeaux Cemetery is one of the sites of Nashville's indigent burials. A 2014 Tennessean article describes the area as industrial, and the graveyard is home to 1,000 people who were interred via Metro Social Services.
00:16:28
Maps show that the entrance to the cemetery is off the main road, on the way to the main building of a local water treatment plant.
00:16:37
The Tennessean notes that Metro Social Services made use of Bordeaux Cemetery from 1986 until 2003.
00:16:46
Bordeaux has attracted a number of find-a-grave contributors who have photographed nearly a thousand of the markers in the cemetery,
00:16:54
both the indigent burial section and in the main burial area. One such photo on the website shows the entrance to the potter's field, where the nameplates are flush with the ground.
00:17:06
That section is marked by a granite memorial bearing the following words. Bordeaux Cemetery. Rest with us here at this stone, where poverty and suffering are not known.
00:17:18
Dedicated to the deceased citizens of Nashville, Davidson County, who rest with us here.
00:17:25
It was in Bordeaux that the unidentified victim found on Mary Street in April of 1998 was buried.
00:17:33
Unlike many victims who we've covered, his remains were not cremated. Upon his internment, a marker was placed.
00:17:40
John Doe, 19. Per the Tennesseans, Brian Haas, quote, He was the 19th unidentified man buried in the Bordeaux Cemetery.
00:17:49
He lies in plot 555 a grave overlooking the White Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant We are not sure of the precise day of John Doe 19 burial The tornado came just three days after his body was found and there would have been an autopsy and required records to file
00:18:08
And all of that would have been slowed down by the city's storm damage. But based on information from social services, we know the interment happened sometime in May.
00:18:18
Assuming that John Doe 19 was local to the city. Exactly how many young Black men were missing that April in Nashville?
00:18:27
How much could, did the storm impact the public's awareness that a body had been found?
00:18:33
Did anyone miss the news due to a lack of power that would have signaled that the man
00:18:38
could be their missing son or brother or friend? Per the 2000 census, David County had an African-American population of roughly 27%.
00:18:47
percent. Young Black men in John Doe 19's age range of 18 to 25, they numbered in the thousands.
00:18:56
We can't say precisely how many young adult Black males were reported missing in 1998.
00:19:02
There aren't public records of cleared cases, and as our audience knows, most missing persons
00:19:08
reports are eventually closed. But we can access the cases that are still open, the cold ones now
00:19:16
present as entries in public databases. When the parameters are limited to a five-year span,
00:19:22
NamUs lists exactly four missing Black men from the greater Nashville area. If you further narrow the search to 1998, NamUs returns exactly one case.
00:19:34
The missing person in question is a young man named Marcus Rutledge, who was last seen by his
00:19:39
family in June of 98. So he couldn't have been John Joe 19, but his family and authorities feared
00:19:46
that he too was a homicide victim. Marcus was 23 years old at the time of his disappearance
00:19:52
and a senior at Tennessee State University, where he majored in biology. According to the Charlie
00:19:59
Project, he'd actually planned on a career as a veterinarian, which is why his family was so
00:20:04
concerned when they found his dog locked in an apartment bathroom without food or water. It just
00:20:10
wasn't something that Marcus would do, and there were no signs that he'd gone on a trip. Though his
00:20:16
car was eventually found across town, Marcus remained missing. While unsolved disappearances
00:20:22
were comparatively rare in Nashville, there was plenty to keep law enforcement busy.
00:20:28
The 1990s were hard on the city, and the effects of crime hit some communities harder than others.
00:20:34
All told, there were 99 homicides in Nashville in 1998. John Doe 19 was unusual in that his identity remained unknown,
00:20:44
but he shared three common factors with a number of the year's other homicide victims.
00:20:50
He was young, he was black, he was male. According to a long-term study conducted by the Tennessee Department of Health,
00:20:57
which covered the years 1995 to 2002, quote, among 15 to 34 year old African-American males, homicide was the leading cause of death,
00:21:08
responsible for 34% of deaths in this age group. The study also found that across the board,
00:21:14
black men and boys had the lowest life expectancies of populations living in the
00:21:19
metropolitan areas of Tennessee. A 2018 study found that across the United States, quote,
00:21:25
non-Hispanic black men were nearly 10.4 times more likely than non-Hispanic white men to die
00:21:32
by homicide in the U.S. That reality isn't reflected in the media that we consume.
00:21:40
Though white women are at the forefront of true crime entertainment, they are statistically much
00:21:45
less likely to be murdered, both in Tennessee and across the nation. Per the Tennessee Department
00:21:51
of Health Study on the state's population. Quote, based on 2001 to 2003 data, African-American males
00:21:58
aged 15 to 24 die from homicide at a rate that is more than 31 times that of white females.
00:22:06
When it came to covering the city's victims, Nashville's local paper actually had much more
00:22:12
coverage than in many cases we've researched. In the 1990s, the Tennessean ran regular features
00:22:18
on unsolved homicides, and based on what we saw, the paper seems to have highlighted diverse
00:22:24
victims and families affected by rising violence. 1995 and 1997 were Nashville's worst years,
00:22:33
though homicides were comparatively high in 1996 and 1998. Leaders were concerned,
00:22:40
and the police were stretched thin, and there was the worry as a tourist town of developing
00:22:45
a reputation. As one city official told the Tennessean in 1997, quote, nobody wants to see
00:22:52
Music City become Murder City. In 1997, the Tennessean reported that some big cities were
00:23:00
seeing a decrease in crime, but Nashville wasn't so lucky. The city was facing what the paper
00:23:05
described as, quote, a killing almost every third day. Reporter John Yates, who covered crime for
00:23:11
the Tennessean throughout the 1990s interviewed detectives who said by 1997 they were sometimes,
00:23:17
quote, juggling five murder cases at once. According to Yates, the city put various plans
00:23:24
into action, from citizen committees to participation in a national program called
00:23:29
Officer Next Door. Per Yates' 1997 article on the subject, the program encouraged law enforcement
00:23:36
officers to buy homes in high crime areas at, quote, half market value. In some neighborhoods,
00:23:42
law enforcement provided retailers with emergency beepers to summon police. In October 1998, Tennessee, an article mentioned something called flex teams, which were small
00:23:54
groups of officers that could be dispatched quickly by precinct captains to combat neighborhood crime.
00:24:00
1998, Metro Nashville Police expanded what they called their murder squad. Along with increased homicides, case clearance rates had also fallen,
00:24:10
a cause of concern for the Metro Nashville Police Department. Nashville had begun the decade with a higher than average solve rate.
00:24:17
The Tennessean reported it at 87 percent, but by 1997, that percentage had fallen to, quote, just under 70.
00:24:25
And as reporter John Yates pointed out, caseloads had doubled in that time. He interviewed a Metro Nashville captain who pointed out a problem that was faced in every
00:24:35
growing city, what the captain called, quote, mystery murders. Though he doesn't elaborate, the concept is a common truth discussed in true crime circles.
00:24:45
The more people, the more roads, and the more access, the lower the likelihood that a victim
00:24:51
can be traced to a suspect in a neat, straight line. So, Nashville saw major growth, in part due to the arrival of the Houston Oilers football team, who relocated to Nashville in 1995.
00:25:05
But the decade was also hard. As we said, in 1998, the year John Doe 19 was found, there were 99 murders.
00:25:13
Of those homicides, 21 would still be unsolved by January of 1999. The Tennessean provided a long feature article on those unsolved homicides with each victim
00:25:25
discussed by name. This piece, also by reporter John Yates, includes John Doe 19 and the year's other unidentified
00:25:33
victim, a woman shot and left in the Cumberland River. They were listed along Nashville citizens, the majority of whom were shot.
00:25:41
In many cases, burglary or robbery are listed as the motive, though many are labeled as
00:25:47
quote, motive unknown. An elderly couple, Clayton and Nora Smith, were shot in their home by a man
00:25:54
in an army-type uniform. A young woman named Carolyn Fisher was strangled and left along
00:26:00
Interstate 40. The skeletal remains of a missing mother, a 44-year-old Donna Farr,
00:26:06
were discovered in a wooded area. Terrence Teasley, 21, was shot, no suspects. Kevin Carter,
00:26:14
21, shot, motive unknown. Jermaine Banks, 26, shot, robbery. And the list goes on. The victims show no
00:26:23
pattern of particular intent, different races, ages, areas of town, but for each case marked
00:26:30
motive unknown, there's an example of that mystery murder phenomenon. No clear trail to follow,
00:26:37
though, perhaps no answers forthcoming. Of the 21 then-unsolved homicides, five took place in
00:26:44
April, but only two occurred within a week of the tornado. There was John Doe 19 on April 13th,
00:26:51
and then there was Jeffrey A. Davis, who was shot on April 17th. Davis was found on Garfield Street,
00:26:59
just about half a mile away from Mary Street, where John Doe 19's body was recovered.
00:27:04
Both victims were found close to I-265. Davis was found bleeding on the sidewalk and later died at Vanderbilt Hospital.
00:27:13
To the best of our knowledge, Davis' murder remains unsolved. With the victim known as John Doe 19, though, detectives were looking at what were essentially two different cases, identifying the victim and catching the suspect.
00:27:28
We were able to speak with retired Nashville Detective Larry Flair, who worked on the department's murder squad in the 1990s.
00:27:36
For a brief time, he was actually the lead detective on John Doe 19's case. We asked him to walk us through how they would have approached the case of an unidentified homicide victim, especially in the days that came before the tornado.
00:27:51
He told us that pre-planning was essential, that the murder squad had a number of procedures in place to help them quickly gather as much information as possible.
00:28:00
He also walked us through use of a regional teletype system, essentially NCIC, but focused on a particular state.
00:28:10
In this case, Tennessee. Well, in my career, when we first formed our squad in Nashville, we actually put all of our heads together and got a checklist.
00:28:23
And the checklist consists of at least 150 different things, everything from date and approximate time that we felt at the time of being notified all the way through the other 150 or 60, including weather, temperature, outside.
00:28:44
All types of samples are extracted if we're outside. All types of forensic stuff that is gathered by our forensic team and such,
00:28:58
all the way down to once, if it was determined on an unidentified, when a person that we felt was missing,
00:29:08
or we found out that somebody was on the missing person report, and that's where we would follow up.
00:29:14
And when you got a body with no identification you keep that right up front but you know on the front page Let do everything we got And you get someone ID with paperwork on them DLs or something like that it may not even be them
00:29:33
So you treat each one of these victims as if they're practically, possibly not the person you feel that they are.
00:29:41
They could be an unidentified individual. So that's the teamwork that we had. at the Nashville PD during that era.
00:29:49
In the unidentified cases that I worked, I depended tremendously on the organization
00:29:58
that's called ROCIC. That's the Regional Organization Crime Information Center. And we, as detectives that utilize the ROCIC,
00:30:13
we would author a complete actual part of everything that we knew of the unidentified person.
00:30:22
We would pour that into their system, and their system, along with their analyst,
00:30:29
would then complete searches with any other type of situation that might match up.
00:30:37
Now, in this particular case, we didn't get anything back on this victim. There's an entire file on that and that alone with the ROCIC.
00:30:50
Unfortunately, they had a regional office there in Nashville, which made it much easier, and we gained a relationship with those different professionals over there.
00:31:00
So there just weren't missing young adult black males who met the age and physical criteria at the time?
00:31:06
Not at that time because each and every hit that we would get that would be close when we would follow up on it.
00:31:14
That's my memory is that they were definitely not in the criteria of where it could have been in either in Nashville or the AIDS group or, you know, different things of that nature.
00:31:27
So everything that we put in, we weren't able to get anything of value, but it helped us cancel so many others as well.
00:31:36
Larry told us that they would have employed NCIC2 to run national and sometimes even international checks.
00:31:45
They would have had the basic victim description back from the coroner on an average case within a day or two and sometimes in as little as seven hours.
00:31:54
The official report would come much later, but as with the Glynn County Jane Doe, the medical examiner would have prioritized giving law enforcement the basics they needed to begin sorting through missing persons reports.
00:32:06
So with that in mind, the first check through the system would have likely come on April 14th, though we can't be certain.
00:32:15
Detective Larry Flair left the Homicide Squad in July of 1998, so he can't speak to how the case eventually unfolded.
00:32:23
But he was involved in the retrieval of evidence, evidence that Metro Nashville would explore over the next two decades.
00:32:31
And the Murder Squad would have worked John Doe 19's case throughout the spring of 1998.
00:32:36
but would have also experienced the same shutdowns as the rest of the city when the tornado hit on April 16th.
00:32:45
How much did the storm impact the search for the victim and the killer? In a 2013 article on the case,
00:32:53
law enforcement relayed the effort to Tennessean reporter Brian Haas. Haas reported that, quote,
00:32:59
Sergeant Gary Kemper, who now leads Metro's cold case unit, said detectives worked feverishly.
00:33:05
They developed persons of interest, even went out of state to conduct interviews.
00:33:10
But the case went cold in 2001, and they never identified John Doe 19. End quote.
00:33:18
Now, there have been a few studies that concern the combination of natural disaster and crime.
00:33:25
But most focus on crimes that occur after a disaster, and who is most vulnerable,
00:33:31
and which predators might take advantage of long-term chaos, like the multiple serial killers operating in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
00:33:41
What's much harder to quantify, though, is how a natural disaster might affect an ongoing case.
00:33:48
We can't offer a study on that phenomenon, but we do know of a single specific example
00:33:54
from the week of the Nashville tornado. There was a missing persons report filed on April 15, 1998.
00:34:01
two days after John Doe 19 was found, one day before the tornado hit. The report identified
00:34:08
the missing person as Lerian Nicholson of North Nashville. He was described as an 18-year-old
00:34:14
black male. According to the incident report, Lerian was last seen by his mother, Sylvia,
00:34:19
on April 12, 1998. The report mentions that he was living with his uncle on Jefferson Street,
00:34:26
but that's not quite right. He was actually staying with his mother and regularly visited
00:34:31
his uncle's apartment. His mother and uncle reported that they'd last seen him on Sunday
00:34:37
afternoon when he left the house on foot The responding officer noted that Lurion was on quote medication to treat schizophrenia and quote known to smoke marijuana We don know why the latter is included unless it was discussed in response to a routine question about medications and substance issues
00:34:58
Lerion Nicholson was a native of Nashville, where he'd grown up attending its public schools and participating in its civic programs.
00:35:06
His name appeared in the local paper a few times before that April, when he disappeared.
00:35:11
At Pearl Cone High School, he'd been a talented athlete, running track and placing in several
00:35:17
races that were reported in the regional sports section. He was 15 then, and a lot would change over the next three years.
00:35:25
The police department's report lists Lurion as 6'1 and 150 pounds, with black hair and
00:35:32
brown eyes. His mother and uncle said he was last seen in a white shirt, blue jeans, black Nikes, and a black hat.
00:35:40
There's not mention of a jacket or what style of Nike you use, sneakers or slip-on sandals, that Lurion had on.
00:35:48
If you'll recall, John Doe 19 was described as a black male, 18 to 25, approximately 5'11", and somewhere around 150 pounds.
00:35:58
John Doe 19's clothing was badly damaged, but the medical examiner was able to make out blue jeans,
00:36:04
sandal-style shoes, and a maroon jacket. We don't have access to the report, so we can only say the shirt was pullover style, meaning without buttons.
00:36:14
Most likely, that meant a t-shirt. Minor discrepancies aside, the descriptions of Leroy Nicholson and John Doe 19 were similar.
00:36:25
certainly similar enough to suggest a comparison should be made. For a few days, Lerian's case was open alongside John Doe 19's.
00:36:33
Lerian went missing on the 12th and was reported as such on the 15th. John Doe 19 was found on the 13th, less than a day after Sylvia, Lerian's mother, said she'd last seen him.
00:36:46
Lerian's case would have been active for about 24 hours before the Nashville tornado hit.
00:36:53
So there were four days before his case was closed that a comparison might have been made
00:36:58
if anyone was actively working cases at that time when a state of emergency had been declared.
00:37:05
There is an addendum to Lerion's missing persons report on a separate page that provides some vital additional information.
00:37:13
On April 20th, 1998, a person called the Metro Nashville Police Department and reported that Lerian Nicholson had returned home.
00:37:23
His case was summarily, quote, closed by exception. After April 20th, 1998, there was no missing persons report
00:37:32
to compare to John Doe 19, whose identity was still being sought. Of his family, only Lerian's mother and uncle
00:37:40
knew he was missing that week in April of 1998. They were not contacted when the case was closed.
00:37:47
And Lerian's younger sister, Amira, and his stepsister, Candace, they weren't sharing a home with him at that time
00:37:53
and they weren't aware of his daily comings and goings. Lerion's father, who lived out of state,
00:38:00
was similarly unaware of his son's daily movements. And Candace and Amira, they didn't know that a missing persons report
00:38:07
had been filed in the first place. So they didn't know it had been closed either
00:38:12
five days after Lerion's mother reported his absence. And they didn't know the woman
00:38:17
who'd phoned Metro Nashville police. Per the police report, the caller had identified herself as Pauline Venable
00:38:24
and claimed she was a neighbor of Lurian's. She was no relation to his family. We know that when there's an unidentified victim,
00:38:33
law enforcement starts close to home, looking through the city's own missing persons reports.
00:38:39
Nashville had certainly done that and would do that in the future. In fact, we came across a number of articles
00:38:45
discussing attempts and other cases to match human remains to missing persons reports.
00:38:51
One in particular that stood out was the skeleton of a man found in 2001. Once those bones were
00:38:57
discovered, they were quickly compared to the medical records of a missing local man,
00:39:02
Rodney Woodard. Rodney was reported missing by his girlfriend in 1997. When the skeletal remains
00:39:08
were discovered in 2001, police conducted two DNA tests but were unable to make a match.
00:39:15
Although Rodney Woodard met the parameters of our NamUs search, a black male who disappeared in the years directly surrounding 1998,
00:39:22
he didn't appear in the results. He does have one mention on the Charlie Project,
00:39:27
but we can't find any documents on his case past 2001. It's unclear whether his disappearance is still unsolved.
00:39:35
And as far as other open cases go, there was another man who might have been compared to the skeletal remains found in 2001,
00:39:43
Marcus Rutledge, the Tennessee State senior we mentioned earlier in the episode.
00:39:48
Whether he was compared, we can't say, but we know the remains would not be compared
00:39:53
to Lorian Nicholson. After all, his case would have been closed for several years.
00:39:59
And as for John Doe 19, Metro Nashville police would still be seeking the homicide victim identity the next year and the next and the next It would be 15 years until the cold case of John Doe 19 collided with the detective work
00:40:15
of two sisters who had been asking and eventually looking for their missing brother, Lorian.
00:40:22
They hadn't spoken to him since April of 1998. Amira, who was just 12 that year,
00:40:28
felt his loss keenly and also felt sure that her big brother wouldn't have abandoned her.
00:40:35
Here's what she told us in an interview this spring. Because I'm telling you, it's unlike him to not call anybody. He would have reached out to one of
00:40:45
us. One or the other would have heard from him by now. All this time, he would have called
00:40:53
somebody. He didn't even show up. I knew something was definitely wrong because the year that he went
00:40:59
missing, uh, 98, my sister, uh, my dad's daughter was graduating from high school and they had the
00:41:09
graduation on the football field at Pearl Cone. He loved that school, you know, and I'm, I'm sure
00:41:16
that he knew that, that she was graduating because they would have been graduating in the same year.
00:41:20
And I looked for him in that crowd. I'm like, I know I'm going to see him standing somewhere. I can't wait to get to this graduation. And I looked and looked and he never showed. I never saw him. Even up until my graduation, when I graduated in 2004 from high school, I just knew he was going to be there. I was going to see him. He's going to pop up after all these years. Never saw him.
00:41:45
next time on the fall line we'll bring you part two in the series on lorion nicholson
00:41:51
we begin again in 1998 with the story of lorion and his sisters and the strange call that closed
00:41:58
his case and how it all intersected with the unidentified victim known as john doe 19 how
00:42:05
his sisters amira and candace became citizen detectives who wouldn't take no for an answer
00:42:11
we'd like to thank all the listeners who have taken time to support our sponsors
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leave us reviews or support our show directly on patreon we couldn't do it without you special
00:42:25
thanks to angie dodd thanks also to olivia lind of flat rock and something's not right
00:42:30
who connected us with lariah nicholson's family she and her co-host tashana covered his case on
00:42:36
something's not right. Thanks to Eric Kelly of Southern Fry True Crime for reading the National
00:42:42
Weather Service report that you heard at the top of the episode, and to Vincent of Gone Cold for
00:42:47
reading the inscription from the Bordeaux Cemetery. Please check out both shows. They are dear friends
00:42:53
and they are putting out great work. The Fall Line is created by Laura Norton and Brooke Hargrove
00:42:58
and is produced and mastered by Maura Curry. Written, researched, and hosted by Laura Norton
00:43:03
with interviews by Brooke Hargrove. Research assistants are Kim Fritz, Jessica Ann,
00:43:09
Lex Weathers, and Brian Waters. Content advisors are Brandy C. Williams, Vic Kennedy, and Liv Fallon.
00:43:15
Theme music is by RJR. You can find our merch in the exactly right Podswag store.
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If you want to hear more of The Fall Line in the meantime, check out our full-length early access releases
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