On the morning of May 16, 1984, 15-year-old Tammy Sue Rothganger was last seen outside Eldon High School in Eldon, Missouri. Living just across the street from the school, she had left for the day's classes but never went inside. That morning, she was seen getting into a blue Plymouth with her mother's live-in boyfriend, Martin 'Marty' Dean Priest, and his 13-year-old nephew.
Tammy was wearing a sweatshirt, Nike shoes, a chain necklace with an arrowhead pendant, and a leather wristband. She had sandy blonde or brown hair, brown eyes, and a tattoo of the letter 'R' on her left arm. When she failed to return home that afternoon, her family reported her missing. Initially, Priest suggested that Tammy had planned to skip school and that he had dropped her off at Rock Island Park to meet with friends. However, police interviews with Tammy’s friends revealed no such plans had been made.
Suspicion quickly fell upon Martin Priest, a man with a disturbing criminal past. Just years before Tammy’s disappearance, Priest had been convicted of the second-degree murder of a 12-year-old girl, Tonya Lewis, in 1980, only to have the verdict overturned on appeal after serving three years. Following Tammy's disappearance, Priest's behavior grew more alarming. Her mother, Sandra, stated that Priest later told her he had Tammy and that she would only see her daughter again through him. On the advice of the police, Sandra began documenting her conversations with Priest, hoping he would reveal information that could lead to her daughter. Priest's violent history continued after he moved to Kansas, where he was implicated in a double homicide on Christmas of 1984 and the disappearance and murder of another teenage girl, 16-year-old Katrina Cheely. Although he was acquitted of Cheely's murder, he was convicted of one of the Christmas murders and sentenced to life in prison.
For decades, Tammy Rothganger's case remained cold, a painful mystery for her loved ones and community. A breakthrough finally came when Priest's nephew, David Nicholas, who was in the car with Tammy and Priest the day she disappeared, came forward with a harrowing account. He testified that his uncle had knocked Tammy unconscious with a wrench, assaulted her, and then strangled her to death in the backseat of the car. Nicholas detailed how they took Tammy's body to his mother's house, where other family members discovered what had happened. Instead of contacting the police, the family made the decision to hide the crime. Priest returned later that night with a barrel and tools, and with his nephew's forced assistance, placed Tammy's body in the barrel and buried it. Despite Nicholas's attempts to lead investigators to the burial site, her remains have never been found. Based on this powerful testimony, Martin Dean Priest was charged with Tammy's murder in January 2016 and was convicted in 2018, receiving another life sentence. The case of Tammy Rothganger is a tragic story of a young life cut short and a family's decades-long search for justice, culminating in a conviction but without the final closure of bringing her home.Last Seen: May 16, 1984
