In the winter of 1981, a 31-year-old man named Edward 'Eddy' Hale Tidwell vanished from his home in Marion, Kentucky, leaving behind a life that included a wife and two young daughters. On the evening of December 14th, he informed his wife that he was heading to the nearby town of Sturgis to meet a man about a potential job. The man was supposedly a foreman for a river industry business located in southern Illinois, though his identity was never confirmed.
Edward, an unemployed riverboat deckhand who had recently applied for unemployment benefits, was also thought to be on his way to purchase alcohol and may have been intoxicated when he disappeared. He departed from his residence, situated two miles east of Marion on U.S. 60, at approximately 8:45 PM. He was driving his yellow 1974 Chevrolet Bel Air, a vehicle with distinctive features including a cracked right front windshield and rust spots. The car bore the Kentucky license plate number AKV 215. Neither Edward nor his vehicle have been seen since that night.
Edward Hale Tidwell was a white male with brown hair and blue eyes, standing between 5'11' and 6'1' and weighing around 160 to 165 pounds. He had several distinguishing marks, including scars on his right knee, right arm, and abdomen, as well as a tattoo on his upper left arm from his time in the Army that read '13 1/2 / 12 jury'. His nose had been broken multiple times. On the night he went missing, he was reportedly wearing blue jeans, a shirt of an unknown color, and black steel-toed leather lace-up boots with white cotton socks that had green and red tops. He was not wearing any jewelry. The Kentucky State Police were notified and opened an investigation into his disappearance, but years of searching have yielded no concrete answers.
The disappearance of Edward Tidwell has remained a painful mystery for his family and community for over four decades. Despite the passage of time, the case officially remains an unsolved endangered missing person case. Edward had no criminal record and there were no apparent troubles in his personal life that would suggest a reason for him to voluntarily leave his family. Sometime after he vanished, he was legally declared dead, allowing his family to receive Social Security benefits. The lack of any evidence or leads has left those who knew him with a profound sense of loss and a litany of unanswered questions about the fate of the young father who drove off into the night and never returned.Last Seen: Dec 14, 1981
