Just a week before Christmas in 1993, a couple of fishermen who were undoubtedly on the hunt for striped bass in the cold December waters of the Tennessee River got more than they bargained for when they discovered human remains near a boat dock in Decatur County.
They didn’t know it at the time, but those fishermen just closed one chapter and opened another in a ten year old mystery. They had found Nancy Lynn Blankenship.
Ten years earlier and fifty miles away in Lavinia, Tennessee, John and Rachel Sanders didn’t think too much of it when Nancy didn’t come to the door to catch a ride to Wednesday night church service. The Sanders’ just thought that the twenty-year old newlywed who suffered from epilepsy and couldn’t drive, had gotten a ride with someone else.
But when Nancy never showed up to church that night, people started to worry. The Blankenship home was found with freshly made brownies, Nancy’s pocketbook, coat and her recently filled epilepsy medicine all in the kitchen area. Further inspection revealed Nancy’s curling iron in the bathroom—still plugged in and hot to the touch.
Oh and it should be noted: Nancy found out that she was two months pregnant the day before she went missing.
Theories have come and gone about what happened to Nancy over the course of 38 years, including her being one of the Red Head Murders—which is an unconfirmed theory of serial killer that hunted down women with ginger hair…many of them in Tennessee.
I’m Brandon Barnett, and this is Searching For Ghosts: Season Three—The Case of Nancy Lynn Blankenship
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