Appalachian Unsolved: Dennis Martin, Missing in the Smokies

[imitating bird calls] [Leslie] At 73 years old, [Dwight] It's happy whatever bird it is. [Leslie] Dwight McCarter has spent his entire life in these mountains. [Dwight] It may be a wren. Wrens do a lot of calling like that, you know. [Leslie] While the retired ranger can name every plant and creature, his real talent is tracking. [Dwight] My grandmother taught me to look for the flat She says follow the flat, Dwight. It's where the child or the adult stepped on it and it's real fresh. [Leslie] One of the top man trackers in the nation, McCarter has assisted in more than a hundred searches in the Smokies. But it's the first person in his logbook that's never been found. [Dwight] Every Father's Day, the Martin family, the  extended family, would go to Spence Field and camp. [Leslie] It was June 14th in the summer of '69 when 6-year-old Dennis Martin, his brother, and friends planned a playful prank. [Dwight] They hatched the idea of going and scaring the family who were sitting up on this hill. [Leslie] The boys split. Dennis headed in one direction alone. [Dwight] The three boys scared the family and Dennis never showed up. [Leslie] What followed is believed to be the largest search in park history. [Reporter] The search area has expanded as the days stretch into a full week since the youngster was reported missing. [Dwight] They amassed a whole lot of people, hundreds and hundreds of people, the U.S. Army with big Chinook helicopters. [Leslie] Fresh out of the military himself, the young McCarter joined boots on the ground. Each day as the search expanded, he believes the chances of finding Dennis diminished. [Dwight] The second or the third day of the little boy missing there were 1,400 people at Spence Field. That just does not work. It messed up all the tracks. If you're a tracker, that's the worst thing for you to do. [Leslie] Nature created its own complications [Dwight] And then it come this terrible rain pouring and pouring and pouring. [Leslie] Still a family hiking near Cades  Cove Loop Road may have heard him. [Dwight] They heard a little boy scream. The father knew... he saw this dirty man from where the sound of the little boy. He referred to him as disheveled. And the guy ran. And the guy got in the van and drove off at a high rate of speed. So I don't know if that was Dennis, you know. [Leslie] Other clues pointed to Dennis. [Dwight] They found a child's footprint. The FBI disregarded it. [Leslie] And psychics around the country sent in their suggestions on where to look. [Dwight] Nothing, he's never been spotted since. [Leslie] Just a few days into his disappearance, Dennis had a birthday. Today, he would be 55. And if there's any trace in these woods, McCarter says Mother Nature has hidden it away. [Dwight] For every year that the remains lay in the woods, the Great Smoky Mountains Park layers up one inch of debris. And Dennis is lost in '69. How many inches is that? This is 2017. But where would you look, you know? [Leslie] In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Leslie Ackerson WBIR 10News [Robin] McCarter says they learned important lessons from the mistakes made in the Martin search. And those changes have helped find many children since. Dennis Martin's disappearance is still an open case. If you have any information, you can call the park with the tips on the number on your screen.

Channel: WBIR Channel 10

Views: 68,103

Keywords: News, Local, appalachian unsolved, true crime, crime, investigations, great smoky mountains national park, east tennessee, tennessee, missing, dennis martin, unsolved, appalachian unsolved mysteries, true crime stories, missing 411, great smoky mountains national park disappearances, dennis martin disappearance, great smoky mountains tennessee, appalachian unsolved podcast, unsolved mysteries, appalachian unsolved wbir

Id: HMup3MOJMdU

Length: 3min 26sec (206 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2017