Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is about how a young man's disappearance revealed a secret life. And his secret life made it so much harder for investigators to solve his disappearance. This is the story of Marcus Rutledge. So it's the afternoon on Monday, June 8th, 1998, and a woman named Tawania is getting kind of nervous.

She and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Marcus Rutledge, were supposed to meet up, but he's a no-show.

Not even answering his cell phone.

She's like calling him and calling him, but she's just not hearing anything back.

And when's the last time she spoke to him?

So it actually hasn't been very long.

I mean, he had spent the night at her place and then took their two-year-old daughter to daycare at around like 10 o'clock that morning.

And they've even honestly talked on the phone since at like 1.1.30 that afternoon.

So truly, very little time has passed.

It might not even ring alarm bells for some

people. But the thing is, this is totally uncharacteristic of Marcus not to answer his phone. And if he did

miss a call, he would get back to whoever tried him, like ASAP. So right away, she knows in her gut that

something just doesn't feel right. So she reaches out to Marcus's

parents, David and Geraldine, known as Jerry. And she's just trying to see if, like, they have

heard anything from him. They're not local. They're in southeast Michigan while Tawani and

Marcus both live in Nashville, Tennessee. Marcus had actually moved to Nashville to attend

Tennessee State University, TSU. But even with the distance, like his family talks to him pretty regularly.

So Tawani is hoping that they might know where he is.

But it turns out they haven't heard from him either.

Now, according to what his dad David told our reporter Nina, when he got that first call

from Tawanya,

he understood her concern. Like, Marcus going MIA, even to him, is unheard of. But, you know,

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