In the autumn of 2012, a young, 21-year-old man named Erik Tyquan McFadden vanished from Charlottesville, Virginia. He was last seen around November 23rd of that year, but the circumstances surrounding his disappearance were anything but straightforward. For years, his absence was not officially documented by law enforcement. It wasn't until June 26, 2019, nearly seven years after he was last heard from, that his mother filed a missing person report with the Charlottesville Police
Department. She had been under the impression that his father had reported him missing years earlier and only learned this was not the case when detectives contacted her regarding another investigation. Both his mother and his stepmother had not seen or heard from him since 2012 and expressed grave fears that he might be deceased.
The request to file a report on Erik's disappearance came about because his name was intrinsically linked to another deeply troubling local case: the disappearance of 19-year-old Dashad 'Sage' Smith. Smith, a transgender woman, was last seen in Charlottesville on November 20, 2012, just a few days before McFadden himself disappeared. Authorities believe McFadden was the last person to have seen or had contact with Smith, as the two had plans to meet that evening. In the initial days of the investigation into Smith's disappearance, a detective made brief contact with McFadden, but he failed to appear for a scheduled interview and abruptly left town. After that, he was not seen or heard from by his family or by law enforcement. Due to the circumstances, Smith's case was eventually reclassified from a missing person case to a homicide, and McFadden was publicly named a person of interest.
For over a decade, the intertwined disappearances of Sage Smith and Erik McFadden remained a painful mystery for their families and the Charlottesville community. Investigators believed McFadden might have traveled to various cities along the East Coast or potentially to the West Coast. The case took a significant turn in late 2025, when authorities announced that Erik McFadden had been located alive and well in Los Angeles, California. He was discovered after he initiated the legal process to change his name. Detectives traveled to Los Angeles and were able to interview him at length regarding the information he might have about the night Sage Smith vanished. While specific details of that interview have not been made public, his discovery marked a major development in an investigation that had grown cold. With McFadden being found, his missing person case is closed, but the investigation into the disappearance and presumed homicide of Sage Smith remains active.Last Seen: Nov 23, 2012
