If you’re a true crime fan, you’ve likely heard stories of ordinary people using their own research or social media skills to help crack real-life cases. Volunteer genealogists have used family trees to give names to previously unidentified victims. Facebook posts of crime videos have help to identify suspects. If you’ve watched the Netflix series Don’t F**k With Cats, you saw how Deanna Thompson and John Green spent 16 hours searching for certain types of doorknobs and walking down Google Earth streets to help hunt down a killer. The internet has given those of us passionate about justice the ability to use our own unique skills to pitch in.

But it’s also given birth to trolls. Trolls that threaten the very fiber of the criminal justice system and the notion that all people are “innocent until proven guilty.” The internet has shed a light on just how ugly some people can be when they hide behind their computer screen lobbing threats at people they have never met. This mentality is this generation’s form of getting out their pitchforks and chasing down the so-called monster.

Wednesday evening an Amber Alert popped up on my phone. Soon several of the true crime Facebook groups that I’m a part of were buzzing with questions about the adorable little girl that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations was asking people to be on the lookout for. Evelyn Boswell was last seen on December 26, 2019, but she wasn’t reported missing until February 18, 2020 - nearly two months later.

Everyone wanted to know why there was a delay in reporting her missing. Some people offered their thoughts and prayers that she would be found safe. And then the comments took a turn. The mother was labeled “another Casey Anthony.” People suspected that the mother must be on drugs or did something sinister with her baby. Speculation and name calling turned in to a social media call to arms when group members tracked down the mother’s personal Facebook page.

Being curious, I followed the link. Hundreds of comments appeared on the mother’s Facebook profile accusing her of murdering her baby. People posted screenshots of text conversations with people that know this woman personally. Another posted a picture of the license plate on her car, insinuating that local people should hunt her down. Threats of harm were interspersed with theories on who else could be involved.

Now, I agree that the situation sounds very suspicious, and I’ve done my own personal digging to see what I could find in social media profiles, etc. But I know that I’m not law enforcement, and my gut feeling does not mean I know the true about what happened in this situation. I think about the possibility that this mother really had nothing to do with it, and is not only panicking about what may have happened to her daughter, but is now dealing with hate, anger, and threats from people she has never met.

If someone is arrested in the future, and that person ends up being someone the people of the internet suspected, that still doesn’t change the fact that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Everyone should get a fair trial. We are no longer mobs with pitchforks taking justice into our own hands. We have evolved as a society more than that.

As someone who considers themselves a citizen detective, these trolls give us a bad name. We have to be better than that. We cannot meet supposed evil with more evil and hate. Let us focus on finding answers for Evelyn Boswell and the others like her, and less on tearing one another down.

If you have seen Evelyn, please call the Sullivan County Sheriff's Office at 423-279-7330 or the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND.

Facts Of The Case

It was April 16th, 1987. The Secret Of My Success starring Michael J. Fox was the number one film in the box office that week, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship was the number one song, and Jelly Shoes were all the rage. Four-year-old Marlena Childress of Union City Tennessee was wearing a pink pair when she went missing that Thursday afternoon.

Marlena Childress - 1987Source: NAMUS.gov — Marlena Childress - 1987
Source: NAMUS.gov

Pamela Lynn Bailey, Marlena’s mother, contacted Union City police around 4:15pm to report her daughter missing, claiming that the last time she saw her daughter she was playing in the front yard of their modest red-brick home on North Division Street. At around 3pm, Pamela heard what sounded like breaks squealing, and was worried a car had hit her daughter. She said she had seen what looked like an older two-door red car from her kitchen window, and Marlena speaking to the driver inside before she heard the sound. When she ran outside to see what had happened, her daughter was gone. Marlena’s step brother and a local store owner from down the street both claimed to have seen the same red car with either Kentucky or Illinois plates.

A city and state-wide search were conducted immediately with nearly a thousand people volunteering to search. Posters were distributed describing Marlena’s blue/hazel eyes, brown, straight hair, and pierced ears. She was roughly 48 inches tall and 38 pounds, wearing light purple pants and a white top with those pink jelly shoes. She was also described as having stainless steel or silver caps on her front top and bottom teeth. Pam’s father LaWade Strickland quickly offered up a $10,000 reward for Marlena’s return and suggested in a letter to the editor of the Grayson County News-Gazette that Marlena may have been sold to a couple wanting a child after she was abducted.

The next week, police searched for two women in Memphis (roughly 120 miles from Union City) where they believed they had a lead on Marlena’s whereabouts. A woman claimed to have seen Marlena at a hair salon with one woman in her 30s and one in her 50s. The girl was calling for her mother, and when the concerned woman asked the young child her name, she thought the girl said “Marlena.” The girl was wearing different clothes than Marlena had been wearing when she was last seen, and the woman did not notice that the child had any caps on her teeth. The lead was investigated, but nothing came from it.

A little over a month after Marlena went missing, Pam Bailey was admitted to the hospital for depression and stress. During that time, Pam’s family hired a private investigator to help find out what happened to Marlena. In a startling twist, on June 8th, the private investigator received a confession from Pam Bailey shortly after she left the hospital that she had in fact killed Marlena. She said that she had hit the child in a fit of rage, accidentally knocking her into a table, and causing her to die. She said she then enlisted a man she had known for years from Martin Tennessee to help her dispose of the body in the Obion River.

Pam BaileySource: The Jackson Sun (Jackson, Tennessee) · 10 Apr 1988 — Pam Bailey
Source: The Jackson Sun (Jackson, Tennessee) · 10 Apr 1988

Authorities spent nearly a week dragging the north fork of the Obion River searching for Marlena’s body. A bone and a stained cloth were found about 4 miles downstream from where Pam claimed to have dumped the body. These items were sent to Nashville for testing, but no body was ever found. Pam was charged with second-degree murder and held on a $100,000 bond.

The man from Martin that Pam claimed helped her dispose of the body, P.L. Summers (who we will come back to later) denied in a press conference any involvement in Marlena’s disappearance. He sited that he went home after work on the day of the disappearance, and that his wife could attest to that fact. He did admit that he and his wife Ruth knew Pam Bailey, but hadn’t seen her in years. Summers was not charged for his alleged involvement.

On June 23rd, Pam recanted her confession claiming that she was “psychologically coerced” by the private investigator hired by her family. She mentioned that the confession came just days after her release from the hospital and that the meds she had been given changed her mood. Pam claimed that a man from Martin Tennessee (sound familiar?!) who sexually abused her as a child, asked her for sex in April, and when she refused, he kidnapped Marlena. While her lawyer Wayne Emmons declined to name the man Pam believed kidnapped her daughter, P.L. Summers took it upon himself to release another statement that he was not involved. Pam said she followed the kidnapper when he took Marlena to the same bridge she had earlier claimed she and Summers had dumped the body off of and and Summers said he could not have been in that area at that time.

Pam was later examined by a psychiatrist in Nashville and was declared sane and competent to stand trial. In exchange for waiving her right to a preliminary trial, Pam’s charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter. Authorities likely realized that without a body or physical evidence, the case would be hard to prosecute with the only evidence being Pam’s recanted confession. During this time, Pam’s father LaWade added more money to the reward, bringing the total reward up to $50,000. Pam, later free on bond, moved to Mayfield Kentucky to live with her parents.

On October 7th, 1987 a grand jury declined to indict Pam Bailey and no one has been charged since.

Almost exactly 15 years after Marlena Childress’ disappearance, on April 22nd, 2002, Pam Bailey stabbed her 12 year old son Casey Bailey. Police said she blindfolded her son, took him to a rural cemetery in Mayfield Kentucky, and stabbed him three times in the neck and shoulder. The boy was able to escape and residents across from the cemetery called to report the stabbing. Pam was arrested the next morning at a gas station and charged with attempted murder. Casey was released from the hospital into the custody of his father on April 23rd.

Pam Bailey entered an Alfred plea for 2nd degree assault. An an Alfred plea is a guilty plea where the defendant does not have to admit to guilt, but agrees that there is likely enough evidence for a conviction. Pam served a little less than the 10 year sentence she received at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Pewee Valley. Casey’s father, John Bailey, filed for divorce from Pam Bailey and received custody of Casey and his older brother. However, in later years, he advocated for the overturning of her conviction, citing that he did not think the case was properly investigated. In 2012, Union City police agreed to a forthcoming cold case investigation into Marlena Childress’ disappearance in light of Pam’s later charges.

Another person that later faced charges was P.L. Summers. In September of 1987, the same year that Marlena disappeared, Summers was charged with aggravated sexual battery for fondling a 9-year-old child in his backyard. Authorities claimed that this case had no connection with Marlena’s disappearance.

Couch Detective’s Thoughts

Marlena Childress - Age Progression (29)Source: NAMUS.gov — Marlena Childress - Age Progression (29)
Source: NAMUS.gov

In light of Pam Bailey’s later conviction, it’s hard to imagine that she was not in some way involved in Marlena’s disappearance. P.L. Summer’s later conviction for child molestation and Pam’s claim that he had abused her as a child bring some validity to the theory that he may have been involved. Citing his wife as an alibi brings in to question whether his wife would have been truthful about where he was that afternoon.

Whether Pam willingly gave Marlena to Summers or Summers took Marlena after pressuring Pam, with Pam’s ever-changing stories, it’s hard to tell what she really did and didn’t know. It is also possible that she was wholly a victim of losing her child, and this caused her so much stress that she later snapped and stabbed Casey. There have been many possible sightings of Marlena since her disappearance in 1987, but none have ever been confirmed.

Without knowing Marlena’s whereabouts, it’s hard to say whether or not her mother and/or P.L. Summers were involved, but it seems plausible that both parties knew more than they were letting on.

If you have any information on the disappearance of Marlena Childress, please contact the Obion County Sheriff's Department at 731-885-5832.