Freaky Friday Files: "Tent" Girl

ashey9111
May 16
5 min read

DISCLAIMER: This blog post discusses a m*rder case. Please read at your own discretion.

I recently stumbled across a YouTube video about the infamous case "Tent Girl," and it really intrigued me because of the whole story behind it, so please enjoy this blog post about it. It's one of those cases that people never thought would ever be solved, but it did get solved in the end. Obviously, it would have been great if this never happened, but it's good that there was some closure in the end. I hope that makes sense.

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"Tent" Girl

According to Wikipedia, Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor, "Tent Girl" (September 1943 - December 1967) was a h*mocide victim. She was known as "Tent Girl" as her identity wasn't discovered for 30 years until after her body was found. The name "Tent Girl" was given as her body was wrapped in material that represented what tents are made of (like tarpaulin). Her body was found on the 17th May, 1968, in Georgetown, Kentucky. It wouldn't be until April 1998 that her identity was revealed.

So what led to all this?

On the 17th of May, 1968, a man named Wilbur Riddle was scavenging for "glass insulators alongside U.S. Route 25 near Georgetown, Kentucky". Wilber discovered a decomposing body that was wrapped in a green tarpaulin - something that he assumed was used to wrap a tent. The woman had been k*lled by some sort of head injury.

Police investigations failed to identify the woman, and they also failed to name any suspects in her m*rder case. It was obvious that she was a victim of foul play; they just didn't know who she was or why that was the case. There was a lot of effort to publicise her description and much investigation into reports of missing women from the time. As her identity failed to be revealed, she obtained the name "Tent Girl" and was buried in a cemetery with a tombstone that simply said "Tent Girl" and as follows: TENT GIRL

FOUND MAY 17 1968

ON U.S. HIGHWAY 25, N.

DIED ABOUT APRIL 26 – MAY 3, 1968

AGE ABOUT 16 – 19 YEARS

HEIGHT 5 FEET 1 INCH

WEIGHT 110 TO 115 LBS.

REDDISH BROWN HAIR

UNIDENTIFIED

Here's where the story gets a little bit more interesting. A factory worker called Todd Matthews was married to Wilber Riddle's daughter found out about the case and became quite obsessed with finding out who Tent Girl really was. He spent loads of money that inevitably went nowhere. However, with the rise of the Internet in the late 90s, Todd started doing his DIY detective work on there, searching for missing persons cases. It was originally thought that Tent Girl was a teenager because of her small stature, but Todd thought that she might have been an adult & possibly a mother, which turned out to be true. In January 1997, he found something - a listing for someone who matched Tent Girl's description. He then emailed the woman who posted the listing, Rosemary Westbrook of Benton, Arkansas. Rosemary was looking for her sister, who had disappeared in late 1967 from her home in Lexington, Kentucky (10 miles/16 km from Georgetown). As they conversed back and forth, they started to see similarities between Tent Girl and Rosemary's sister. Both women were 5"1, weighed 49kg, had red-brown hair, manicured nails, and gaps between their front teeth. DNA results showed that samples of Rosemary's saliva matched the body of Tent Girl. Her real name - Barbara "Bobbie" Ann Taylor.

Todd Matthews was so obsessed with this case because both his siblings passed away as infants, so he knew what the pain felt like. He also created his own website to help look for Tent Girl - I believe someone else owns the domain for this now.

So who actually committed the crime?

Well, it's alleged that it was Barbara's late husband, George "Earl" Taylor who committed the m*rder. Earl was a carnival worker who had told Barbara's "Bobbie" family that she had left him for another man, and no missing persons report was filed. CBS News (1998) says, "Many people suspect that Earl may have killed his wife during an argument. They recall Earl Taylor as an impulsive, even violent man. Bobbie's body was found not far from I-75, the highway leading toward Ohio, where Earl's family lived. The canvas that Bobbie was found wrapped in resembles the kind used in carnivals."

When Barbara went missing, she had an 8-month-old daughter. When Barbara's identity was discovered, her daughter was tracked down - and was living in Ohio. In 1998, she was 30. I cannot find any more information on her, but she likely just assumed that her mother left her when she was young. According to Wikipedia, Earl passed away from cancer in 1987. Justice was never served. If it weren't for a break in this case, Barbara's daughter would have never learned the truth about her mother. There's an interesting Reddit thread about the tombstone "here".

I think this case shows that sometimes we do need internet sleuths to help. Todd Matthews passed away in 2024 due to health complications. He did a lot of incredible work helping set up the "Doe Network" - a website designed to help with missing persons cases.

I wasn't sure how relevant this was to this case, but some people used the story of Tent Girl, similar to how they use the Boogey Man to motivate/scare children. Brewer (2007) says:

"It's not the snap of a twig or the whistle of a witch's broomstick in the wind or even a grade-B movie monster come to carry off your first-born child. No, this monster was real, and it was right in the backyards of school children who lived ominously, perilously close to Georgetown Cemetery. If they failed to behave, to do their homework or to brush their teeth at night, chances were they might be called upon by … the Tent Girl!

For three decades, parents who liked to take the fast route to teaching Dick and Jane the "how-to's" of life used the Tent Girl instead of the Boogeyman as their object of motivation. This was how I was actually introduced to the Tent Girl: I was looking for a Halloween story, and the old-timers told me the younger Georgetown College frat boys sometimes took their dates into the cemetery Halloween nights on dares from upperclassmen and forced the girls to touch her tombstone."

A bit odd in my opinion, but at least Bobbie's identity was discovered and her daughter found out the truth.

Thanks for reading,

Stay safe, everyone, and may Bobbie rest in peace.

Ash x

References