The Vanishing of Marlena Childress: A Mother’s Confessions, Lies, and a 38-Year Mystery

 Today we’re looking at the disappearance of Marlena Danyele Childress, a 4-year-old girl who vanished from Union City, Tennessee, on April 16th, 1987.

That afternoon, Marlena was playing in her front yard around 3:00 p.m. Her mother, Pamela Bailey, later said she heard car brakes outside. When she went to check, Marlena was gone.

Witnesses reported seeing the little girl talking to the driver of an older red two-door car with Kentucky license plates. Her stepbrother and a local store owner both described the same car, but no one recognized the man behind the wheel. Marlena was never seen again.

Two months later, the investigation took a shocking turn. Pamela Bailey confessed that she had struck Marlena while disciplining her, accidentally killing her, and disposing of her body in the Obion River with the help of a man she knew. But that man had an alibi, and Bailey quickly recanted, saying the confession wasn’t true—that she was depressed, on medication, and under police pressure.

Over the years, Bailey gave investigators multiple conflicting stories. She once claimed she sold Marlena to pay off a drug debt. Another time, she said a family friend who had abused her as a child had abducted the girl. None of these statements ever led to Marlena.

For a brief moment, there was hope. Several people in Anniston, Alabama, believed they saw Marlena later in 1987, living with another family named Childress. This family had a history of harboring other children, and they later moved to Florida where the father was arrested on sex charges. Neighbors identified photos of Marlena as the child they remembered. But authorities could never confirm the sightings.

Meanwhile, Bailey’s troubles with the law continued. In 2002, she stabbed her twelve-year-old son in a Kentucky cemetery. He survived, and Bailey was convicted of attempted murder. She served time in prison and has since been released.

Because Marlena’s body has never been found and the original abduction reports were never disproven, her case is still officially classified as a non-family abduction. If alive today, Marlena would be 42 years old.

After decades of conflicting stories, dead ends, and unconfirmed leads, her disappearance remains one of Tennessee’s most haunting mysteries.

So here’s the question I’ll leave you with: Do you think Marlena was truly abducted that day, or do the answers still lie within her mother’s shifting stories?