On June 6, 2000, 35-year-old Tanya E. Taras was seen for the last time in her hometown of Palmyra, Pennsylvania. That morning, she attended a preliminary hearing for a drunk driving charge, which she waived before presumably returning to her apartment. A lunch date planned with a friend went unmet, and in the following days, concern for her well-being grew among her friends and employer, whose calls filled her answering machine with 28 unheard messages. The alarm was officially raised on June 9, when a friend, unable to get in contact with her, noticed damage to her apartment door, including a broken pane of glass, and alerted her landlord.
Upon entering the apartment, police were met with a troubling scene. While Tanya's two cats were discovered unattended, her beloved white Lhasa Apso dog, Roo, was gone. More ominously, traces of blood were found on a pair of her glasses, as well as on the upholstery and carpeting within her home, signaling a violent encounter.
The investigation intensified when, three days after she was last seen, her red 1999 Mercury Cougar was located in Philadelphia, near the 30th Street train station. The car was found with the keys in the ignition and the windows rolled down. Inside the vehicle, investigators made more disturbing discoveries: the padding and fabric from the passenger seat had been removed, and drops of Tanya's blood were present on the passenger-side door and floorboard. The scent of human remains was also detected in the car by a cadaver dog, strengthening the fear that she had met with foul play.
The focus of the investigation soon turned to Antone Herman Wilson, who had been Tanya's counselor at a drug and alcohol treatment center where she sought help for alcoholism. The day before her disappearance, Tanya had confided in a former counselor that she had engaged in a sexual encounter with Wilson at her apartment and was distressed by it. This disclosure was reported to the treatment center, and on the morning of June 6, the very day Tanya vanished, Wilson was suspended from his job pending an investigation. Phone records showed Wilson called Tanya's home multiple times that morning. Further evidence connected him to her disappearance when he was seen on surveillance footage driving her car on the day she went missing. In June 2003, Wilson was charged with homicide, theft, evidence tampering, and retaliation against a victim. Investigators believed he killed her to silence her before she could speak to the review board investigating his conduct. In April 2004, to avoid a potential death penalty, Wilson accepted a plea bargain, pleading guilty to third-degree murder. He was sentenced to nineteen to fifty years in prison and died in July of 2021 while incarcerated. Tanya Taras's body has never been recovered, and authorities have stated that her remains cannot be found.Last Seen: Jun 6, 2000
