Two hunters walked through the woods of Walland, Tennessee, in April of 1981 and found bones scattered on the ground. They weren’t sure what they were looking at, but something about the fragments felt wrong. They called the Blount County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies arrived and determined the bones were human.
They were sent to the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Center, where anthropologists examined what little was there. The remains were fragmentary, heavily scavenged, and in poor condition. There wasn’t much to work with, just a partial cranium and a couple of long bones. All they could determine was that it was an adult male.
No dental records to compare. No fingerprints. No DNA technology. The body had been there for at least two years, likely longer.
Investigators checked missing persons reports. Nothing matched. They shook the bushes, talked to whoever would talk, and asked the public for help. But nobody came forward.
The case went cold. The evidence didn’t have anything more to say. So the bones stayed in a box. For decades, investigators came and went.
Each one picked up the file, reviewed the notes, and hit the same wall. Technology improved slowly. DNA testing became possible. In 2007, a sample was finally pulled from the remains and placed into CODIS, the federal DNA database.
There were no hits. Still, the case stayed open. In 2022, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced that human remains found years earlier had been identified using forensic genetic genealogy. It was a breakthrough.
The TBI had received state funding to launch an unidentified human remains initiative, using new DNA technologies to help local agencies solve old cases. The Blount County case was one of the first they focused on. Agent Brandon Elkins reached out to the sheriff’s office. He’d found the remains at the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center, where they’d been stored since the 1980s.
He spoke with Dr. Lee Jantz, the forensic anthropologist who had helped preserve them. The bones were old, damaged, and degraded. But they took a shot.
The remains were sent to a DNA lab that specialized in forensic genetic genealogy. Thousands of genetic relatives were matched. On both sides of the family, cousins and distant connections anchored the family tree with surprising speed. The genealogists were able to pinpoint exactly where the unidentified man belonged.
They identified a daughter. Special Agent Elkins called the Blount County Sheriff’s Office. Captain Trana walked into Detective Daniel Stroop’s office and said, “I’ve got some great news. ”
Stroop didn’t believe it at first.
The case had been cold for over 40 years. But when the DNA came back from the lab, there was no doubt. The remains belonged to William Thomas Green. His family called him Tommy.
Tommy had gone missing in the late 1970s. He had been a father, recently divorced, with a son and a daughter. He worked delivering bread from a bakery in Knoxville. He was known as a tough, independent man who never backed down from a fight.
He had two children, Ricky and Angie, who he loved fiercely. Her name is Angie. She remembers him as a fun father, a man who played in the yard with the kids and coached her brother’s baseball team. She remembers riding around with him while he made his deliveries.
She remembers him calling her from jail. The last time they spoke, she asked him, “Are you going to come and pick me up Saturday? ”
He said, “Baby girl, don’t ever forget I love you. Daddy’s got to go.
”
When the phone went dead, her mother told her that her father was calling from jail. She never heard his voice again. For decades, Angie thought he had simply run away. She spent years buying him Father’s Day gifts and putting them in her closet.
But deep down, the not knowing was worse than any answer could have been. Tommy’s mother never gave up hope. When she passed away, Angie was the one who cleaned out the house. She found a briefcase full of newspaper clippings and contact information from the years after Tommy disappeared.
One article, clipped years after the remains were found, described a body discovered in the mountains. Tommy’s mother had put a question mark next to it. She had been wondering if it was her son all along. The family had tried to file a missing persons report in 1977.
But the police said the same thing they said to every family in those days: “He’s an adult. He can do whatever he wants. We’re not going to chase after a grown man who doesn’t want to be around. ”
So Tommy Green became a cold case without ever becoming a missing person.
Once law enforcement knew who he was, the case reopened. The records showed that Tommy was arrested in Knox County in November of 1977 for minor charges, driving a stolen vehicle that had been loaned to him by a friend. He was released with a court date in December. He never showed up.
The last time anyone saw him alive, he was walking along the interstate. Now, with a name to attach to the bones, the investigation gained momentum. Detectives tracked down people who had known Tommy, friends and associates from his last months. They asked questions.
They looked for the pieces of his final weeks and days. Angie told investigators about the people her grandmother had suspected. There was a friend who lived down the road, a girlfriend, a crowd Tommy had been running with. Her grandmother had always believed something happened inside his inner circle.
She thought Tommy’s friends had something to do with it. The location of the body said something on its own. Tommy was found at the foot of a mountain in an isolated area, far from anything. It was a strange place for someone to end up, especially by accident.
“I think something very malicious probably happened,” Angie said. Detective Stroop is careful not to say too much, but he is clear about one thing. “I really believe this comes down to the final moments of his life and who was around. There are people in East Tennessee that know the answers.
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Angie knows that now. When she got the call from the TBI, she was given the news she had been waiting for her whole adult life. Her father hadn’t abandoned them. He hadn’t run off to another country.
He was gone because someone had put him there. “My father was my best friend,” she said. “And I hate to think about what he went through. How he ended up in the middle of that mountain.
Somebody had to put him there. ”
The investigation is still open. Detectives have spoken to several of Tommy’s old associates. They are following up on every lead, piecing together the final weeks, days, and hours of his life.
The technology that once failed this case eventually solved it. But the truth, the full story of what happened in those last terrible moments, is still out there. For the first time in over forty years, William Thomas Green has a face. He has a name.
He has a family, a daughter who never stopped loving him, and a grandmother whose question mark finally became an answer. “I told law enforcement they had already done a tremendous thing,” Angie said. “Just wanting to have closure, especially for my grandmother. In her later years, she was afraid she was going to die without ever knowing what happened.
Even if what happened isn’t totally solved, we do have some closure. And that’s worth a lot. ”
Tommy Green’s bones were found in 1981. He was identified in 2025.
The Mountain, the forest, the animals, and the years had taken nearly everything from him, but science has given him back what was taken. The rest is up to the living. Someone in East Tennessee knows the ins and outs of the case. Someone knows the final moments of Tommy’s life.
The investigation is still moving forward, one DNA profile at a time, one family member at a time, one truth at a time. The hunt for answers didn’t end with the names. It just got a whole lot closer.
