posted April 04, 2004 08:54 PM               

Todd Matthews had not yet been born when Barbara Hackman was
killed in 1968. However, he would say some 30 years later
that "even though she died two years before I was born, she
changed my life forever."

Matthews’ work of more than a decade solved the case of
Hackman’s murder, a case law enforcement agencies had all
but given up on, and began a hobby of investigating
unidentified and missing persons that has become his life,
and now may lead to bigger and better things for the
32-year-old Livingston resident.

"To me it’s like putting things back where they belong,
it’s fulfilling," said the Hutchinson employee and father
of two. "You can go back and you have the ability to repair
something. Obviously you’re facing insurmountable odds and
if you can do something to alter that little bit of history,
you’re doing what needs to be done."

Doing what needs to be done has led Matthews to a world-wide
Internet-based organization, the DOE Network
(www.doenetwork.org) has set up contacts with detective and
coroner contacts all over the nation, and gives a bit of
hope to families with missing loved ones.

"We get hundreds of letters from the families of missing
people, crime victims, law enforcement and just concerned
citizens looking for help," he said. "Sometimes we can give
them at least a little closure."

Matthews’ work has attracted the attention of many. He has
appeared in countless magazine and newspaper articles and
local news programs, as well as a few appearances on
national television. Leeza and 48 Hours have both had him on
to discuss unidentified persons and he has done contributing
research for publications and networks like Court TV and The
Discovery Channel. He also frequently offers his advice to
other media outlets.

"A lot of times we hear from publications and shows like
Montel, 48 Hours, and 20/20, as the media director for the
DoeNetwork, I’m almost functioning as an associate
producer to them," he said. Then, with a laugh, added,
"unpaid of course. They’re looking for this or that and
I’ll just refer things, people and cases to them. It’s
just an exchange of information. You’ll see some things
that are very public and some things you’ll never know we
(the DoeNetwork) were ever involved in. We also send lots of
press releases as we try to focus attention on certain cases
that need to be brought back into the spotlight."

After a decade of work investigating Doe cases through the
medium of the Internet, Matthews is close to seeing a
long-time goal realized: bringing his work into the homes of
living rooms across the nation through the medium of
television.

Matthews is working with Nashville-based Winco to create a
program similar to Unsolved Mysteries that will profile
unidentified and missing persons cases. His progress has
been a long time in the making.

Originally drawn to the idea as he tried to get TV shows
like Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted to aide in
the identification of the Tent Girl several years ago. Even
after the identification of the Tent Girl, the need for an
outlet for these cases was even more apparent.

"I also talked to Dr. Emily Craig, Kentucky State Medical
Examiner, about the idea in 1998 while we were in Los
Angeles. She also had an idea for a show which would feature
unidentified cases," he said. "Try as I may, I couldn’t
get anybody to pick it up. It was something that had already
been done."

Undeterred, Matthews simply enhanced the idea.

"I developed it a little further," he said. "Obviously, the
reality programming is becoming really popular today. I do
want to feature missing persons and unidentified and also
feature the reality of real people working on them. Police
officers and house wives, many of the people I work with (on
the DoeNetwork) are housewives. That is reality. They have
made a big difference. That idea seemed a little more
interesting to a production company."

Matthews also plans several other features to entice
viewers. Including an "extremely viewer interactive
web-site." And many projects like Project EDAN: http://www.forensicartist.com/campbellco/writeup.html

"We came up with the idea of recreating a face on television
or exhuming a grave on television," he said. "To actually
open the grave with a doe in it, that is something that some
people may not want to see, but most people are very curious
about that. And to actually see the process (of identifying
an unidentified person) as we’re doing it, that’s
interesting and that’s reality."

Matthews also hopes putting the unidentified persons, as
well as missing persons in front of people will help solve
the cases.

"I would like to see the show take a huge chunk out of the
more 4,500 unidentified persons we have. Give the families
of the missing a chance to speak. We want it to become a
television clearinghouse for all organizations that deal
with missing and unidentified people, something to get it in
front of as many people as possible. You’re getting a lot
of input from a lot of different types of people. There
might be something a grandmother or somebody might come up
with that somebody else will totally overlook."

Matthews also felt that playing on the instinct of mothers
would help solve cases.

"There is nothing worse than a mad mother," he said. "Nature
shows you that. Nothing will fight like a mother protecting
her child. Humans are the same way. Mothers are ferocious
fighters. They’ll stay up all night putting together
pieces. And I want to feature these people."

Finding material to fill a weekly television show may be
daunting in most subject areas, but Matthews is certain that
he has more than enough content. It is intended to offer an
outlet for not only DoeNetwork cases, but from organizations
from all across the globe. Creating a Global Network of
Organizations for Missing & Unidentified Persons. With the
show and related web-site...as a portal to the world.

"With 4,500 unidentified bodies listed on NCIC, I don’t
think I’d ever run out of material. On just the small
scale on the Internet, I can work 16 hours per day and not
even scratch the surface."

Matthews also said that the DoeNetwork has some 700
potential matches of currently unidentified bodies in their
database in various stages of review.

With a solid show idea intact, Matthews was in luck when he
met up with Winco.

A small production company in Nashville, Winco has worked
primarily on the music scene, producing a show called
Country On The Move, as well as producing pieces for artists
such as Charlie Daniels, Travis Tritt, Rascal Flatt and
SheDaisy. The company also produces Varsity Xtra, a show
based on Tennessee High School sports. CEO J.R. Davis is
determined that Matthews’ is on to something, and believes
together they can produce a show worthy of national air
time.

"The thing that intrigued me is who he is," Davis said. "The
idea that Todd is in the middle of Tennessee and he’s an
eight to five worker and yet has this passion to discover
and put names to folks who have been buried and very long
forgotten, that is intriguing. Another thing that caught my
eye was not just the fact that he discovered one person, but
he works with this network that reaches across the country
and across the seas. In a grassroots type of campaign, they
are discovering who these people are.

"I can’t imagine a lost love one, but I can sort of grasp
the lack of closure a family has when their uncle or
daughter or loved one has been missing. It’s a sad
endeavor because most of these people are found dead, but
it’s closure for the families. They can move on."

When Matthews approached Davis, it was clear to the
Nashville producer that he was talking to a man with an
idea.

"Out of the middle of Tennessee, Todd comes to me," he said.
"I look at his material and I think, ‘you know, here’s a
guy who’s created quite a stir and continues to. He has
folks from all over the country calling him for advice and
asking for help.’

"Television obviously is moving towards this reality-based
sort of stuff. We’ve got Cops, we’ve got America’s
Most Wanted and we’ve got Unsolved Mysteries. What he
described to me was what I thought to be Unsolved Mysteries
meets America’s Most Wanted: one show airing lights up the
phone banks across America. They are grabbing America
through the medium of television and getting leads to come
in. We looked at that idea and thought, you know, what if we
put up three or four cases every week on TV and spotlight
perhaps two cases and then review cases that are close to
being solved and have a community of viewers start calling
in with leads? I think we have the opportunity to create
closure for a lot of families around the country."

Davis said he has been in discussions with a Los
Angeles-based company for quite some time. Once that deal is
reached, the next step is to find a television network
willing to purchase the show. A couple of possibilities for
the show include Court TV and The Discovery Channel, though
Davis warns that reaching a final agreement could be some
ways off.

"It could be that they come back and say we want something
by the 15th of next month or they could drag us out for six
months," he said.

In the meantime, the ever-ongoing public relations work of
Matthews and the DoeNetwork will continue.

Where It All Began

Todd Matthews would not be born for two more years, but his
fate was being partially decided on a May day in 1968. In
the small town of Monterey, KY, Wilbur Riddle slipped behind
the wheel of his pickup truck and headed for Eagle Creek, a
stream running parallel to Interstate 75 in nearby Scott
County, KY. Riddle intended to search for old glass
telephone insulators. He would repaint his findings and sell
them for extra income.

As he walked along the creek, Riddle stumbled and fell over
an object at his feet. After recovering his balance, he
discovered that the object was an old tarpaulin. Curious, he
took out his pocket knife and cut through the canvas.
Horrified, he found himself looking at the badly decomposed
remains of a nude female body.

Help was summoned and an autopsy followed. Coroners
determined that the body belonged to a 16-19-year-old female
and had been dead for several weeks. It was determined that
she had been knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, then
placed in the canvas bag, later suffering death due to
suffocation.

Though authorities in Scott County spent many hours working
the case, no solid leads were ever developed. Local media
dubbed the unknown girl the "Tent Girl" due to the canvas
bag in which she had been discovered. The name stuck, and
the Tent Girl became local urban legend. Ghost stories
developed from the story of her death, and it became
tradition for nearby college students to dare one another to
make a rubbing the grave marker, which simply read "#90," at
midnight.

19 years after the discovery of the Tent Girl, Riddle moved
his family to Livingston. It was here that Riddle’s
daughter, Lori, met 17-year-old Matthews in school. The two
began dating, and were married within a year.

Soon after they met, Matthews learned the story of the Tent
Girl from the 1969 issue of Master Detective owned by future
father in law.

"It was kinda like a classic Halloween story," he recalled.
"They showed me the old Master Detective (magazine) articles
and there was just something about that case, I don’t
know, it seemed like that was what I needed to be doing, I
needed to work on that case. I began a 10-year-journey at
that point." http://www.angelfire.com/tn3/masterdetective/StateJournal.html

Matthews spent hours poring over the details of the case and
made several trips to Kentucky to view the Tent Girl’s
grave and talk to local people, hoping to learn new details
about the case. His efforts proved fruitless, but Matthews
refused to be discouraged.

"It actually got to the point that I was having bad
nightmares about it," he said. "I had several nightmares
about her, even. I don’t want to say it was a haunting,
but it really was a haunting experience for me. I felt so
badly that if I stopped working on it, it seemed like I had
such a feeling of guilt, like I was not doing something I
was supposed to be doing, like you’re not doing your job."

Matthews said his father-in-law (Riddle) told him those
feelings must mean that he needed to be working on the case.

"If I realized the odds of identifying her at the time, I
would’ve probably given up a whole lot sooner," Matthews
said. "I had no idea the odds were so stacked against me."

The case initially so haunted Matthews that it led to a car
accident.

"I was driving on Linder Mountain Road and I wrecked because
I saw something, her maybe, laying in the middle of the
road," he said. "I swerved to miss and I wrecked. The whole
story is like an anatomy of obsession."

"We are also considering the development of a made for TV
movie based on the Tent Girl story. Since there are so many
unanswered questions in the story, we will likely have to
use a fact based fiction format," describes Matthews. "I
think many of these stories can be evolved similarly into
feature length segments."

The Tent Girl case was even initially so powerful, it
inspired the creation of the Kentucky State Medical
Examiner's Office: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/3986501.htm

Finally, in 1992, technology led to a break for Matthews.

"I was listening to Al Gore give a speech," he said. "He was
talking about the Information Super Highway. I was just
thinking, there are so many miles up there (to Kentucky). It
is 187 miles up there, and information can travel in the
blink of an eye. I thought, ‘if it’s the way he
describes it, then that is what I need.’ It turned out
that it was beyond the description he gave."

Matthews saved for a computer, then logged onto the Internet
for the first time. He was still spending many hours on the
case, and it was leading to problems at home.

"Me and my wife, we were at a very bad point," he said. "But
now she has determined that I’m not crazy, that some of
these cases can be solved and there is some validity to what
I’m doing."

On a late evening in Jan., 1998, 10 years after Matthews
began his search and 30 years after the Tent Girl’s death,
Matthews was rewarded for his efforts. Searching a website
designed for people to post messages in search of lost loved
ones, Matthews read one of the entries. It was entitled:
"LEXINGTON…..1967…..MISSING."

Matthews knew that he had found his person. Jumping from his
chair, he went to awaken his wife. He contacted the author
of the website entry, a Rosemary Westbrook. Westbrook’s
24-year-old sister, Barbara Ann Taylor, had been missing
since 1967. Contacting Westbrook, Matthews informed her that
he believed he knew the whereabouts of her sister. The Tent
Girl’s body was exhumed and DNA tests proved once and for
all her identity. http://www.TentGirl.com

Solving the Tent Girl wasn’t the end of Matthews’
journey. Instead, it prompted him to work harder to try and
determine the identities of the thousands of other does
whose bodies have turned up across the country. He also
began looking into various other "cold cases", including the
death of Vickie Bertram, a 16-year-old Livingston girl who
died in 1976. http://www.angelfire.com/tn3/masterdetective2/VickieBertram.html

The original autopsy had concluded that Bertram died as the
result of a fall from Rock Crusher Mountain. She had landed
spread-eagle, face-down, causing her heart to burst and
result in her death. Foul play was ruled out and the case
considered closed. Matthews was skeptical of the autopsy’s
findings, however. In April, 2000, he was able to persuade
an exhumation order to be issued, and a second autopsy of
the body was performed at the University of Tennessee’s
Body Farm. The findings from the second autopsy showed that
Bertram had suffered injuries not shown on the original
autopsy.

"A lot of the injuries were in her tail-bone area," Matthews
said. "There was a high-speed injury, but to determine
whether it was from a fall from a cliff or a strike from a
car, that’s hard to tell for sure."

The second autopsy, Matthews said, helped Bertram’s family
find some closure. However, he still isn’t entirely
convinced that the case should be closed.

"It would be hard to go past this point without local law
enforcement or TBI picking it back up," he said. "There are
people who maybe should force the question."

Besides the Tent Girl, the work of Matthews and the
DoeNetwork has helped solve several other cases, each of
which are profiled on the organization’s website. http://www.angelfire.com/pro/doenetwork2/PressKit.html http://doenetwork.bravepages.com/releases.html

Meanwhile, Matthews is anxious to take his efforts to the
screen, and is convinced that a television viewing audience
can help determine the identities of some of the many
unsolved doe cases, including the case of a woman who died
160 years ago, a case Matthews believes could be solved to
some degree with a little exposure. http://www.angelfire.com/tn3/masterdetective/OldMystery.html

"This sends a message to the criminal element," he said. "If
it can be solved after 160 years, it’s getting harder and
harder to get away with it. Time will catch you. There are
people who are looking for you. Somebody’s going to say
something eventually and you are going to mess up. It’s
more than just law enforcement, and there’s no place
hide."

---------------------------------------------------

Todd Matthews http://www.TentGirl.com http://www.ProjectEDAN.us
Media Director for http://www.DoeNetwork.Org & http://www.OutpostForHope.Org
931-823-6992

Nashville Production Company Developing New TV Series.....to
provide hope for the missing....and a voice for those who
have no voice.

The concept is being considered by CBS Television and has
been called in for a 2nd meeting.
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“Winco Productions, a Nashville / L.A. based company is
developing a TV project that would do three things –

1) serve as a clearing house for doe (unidentified deceased)
inquires and leads (missing persons)

2) week in and week out spotlight cases and

3) fulfill the goal of the EDAN project - http://www.ProjectEDAN.us http://www.forensicartist.com/campbellco/writeup.html http://courttv.com/news/hiddentraces/boyinthebox/tent_girl.html