MAR 10, 2020
Grandmother: Last time saw missing toddler was in September
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The grandmother of the missing Blountville toddler said she last saw her granddaughter in September, and she thought the child she called “Eve” had been placed in foster care in recent months.
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“It’s surreal,” Boswell said Monday night at her parents’ home in a trailer park near Kingsport. “It’s something that’s still sinking in to me.”
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Angela Boswell, 42, said she knew something was wrong when she spoke last month with her ex-husband, Tommy Boswell Sr., who told her he planned to report Evelyn missing.
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Angela Boswell said she had a falling out with her daughter, Megan Boswell — who is Evelyn’s mother — in September, the same month she said she last saw her granddaughter. On that occasion, her daughter brought Evelyn to stay with her while she visited a relative in the hospital, Angela Boswell said.
Toward the end of December, she said she heard that Evelyn had been removed from her mother’s custody and placed with a foster family. She said that led her to get back in touch with her daughter and try to help her. Still, she did not explicitly discuss Evelyn with Megan “Maggie” Boswell because she wanted her daughter to bring it up on her own when she was ready, Angela Boswell said.
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The child had not actually been placed in foster care, but Angela Boswell said she believed that was true, and she thought her daughter was embarrassed about it.
“I just believed Maggie just didn’t want to come out and tell me that,” Angela Boswell said.
But on the evening of Feb. 17, Angela said she spoke with her ex-husband and learned that Evelyn was missing.
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No one has been charged in the child’s disappearance, but she said she does not believe her daughter, Megan, is capable of harming Evelyn, and she doesn’t believe any other family member is involved either.
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Angela Boswell said that she and her daughter mended their issues earlier this year and saw each other regularly again starting in January.
Megan Boswell was living with her boyfriend, Hunter Wood, according to Angela Boswell. But after the investigation into Evelyn’s disappearance was launched and an initial interview was conducted with Megan Boswell, her daughter reached out on Feb. 19 and said her boyfriend didn’t want her staying there any longer, she said.
Angela Boswell said she and her boyfriend, McCloud, picked her daughter up from a Shell gas station in Bristol, Virginia, and she was stressed about the investigation. She said they went for a drive to help her daughter calm down and later dropped her off at the Sheriff’s Office.
Angela Boswell said she was avoiding the Sheriff’s Office because she believed she had a probation violation from a past case and could be arrested.
She said she and McCloud spent the night of Feb. 19 in Bristol and traveled to Wilkes County, North Carolina — where she said McCloud is originally from — the following day “to clear my head.”
“I didn’t know how to react. I was shocked, I was stunned, I was hurting over Eve, I was hurting over Maggie, and everything was rolling so fast at the time,” she said.
The couple stayed overnight at a motel near Wilkesboro and later stopped at McCloud’s grandmother’s house, although Angela Boswell said she stayed in the car while her boyfriend went inside.
She said early in the afternoon of Feb. 21, she had been in touch with the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office about returning and speaking with investigators. Soon after, she said her dad texted her to say the BMW she and McCloud were traveling in had become associated with the Amber Alert.
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She said that in early February, Hunter Wood drove the BMW over to the Kingsport trailer park and gave the vehicle to her because she has two young kids — ages 3 and 7 — and she needed reliable transportation, she said.
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Angela Boswell said she was surprised by the car theft charge, and she never spoke about the vehicle with its owner, Melissa Wood.
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Since her arrest in North Carolina, Angela Boswell said she has spoken with a number of investigators and cooperated with authorities.
After she was extradited to Sullivan County, she said she briefly interacted with her daughter in a detective’s office on Feb. 25, the same day Megan Boswell was charged with filing a false report and arrested. Earlier in the day, before the arrest, Angela Boswell said she had a five-minute conversation with her daughter that officials recorded with the knowledge of the two women.
Angela Boswell declined to talk about the specifics of the conversation between mother and daughter.
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While Angela Boswell acknowledges that some people may think she was fleeing town when she went to North Carolina, she said it was part of how she was processing a stressful situation.
“I was worried to death about Eve,” Boswell said. “My heart was broke and aching to a point that my mind wasn’t working right, but people don’t realize that.”
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Asked about Megan’s statements, Angela Boswell said Monday that the claims aren’t true and she has no ties to Mendota.
Still, she said she thought the pressure of the case led her daughter to make those statements.
“It hurt me, but still that’s my child, and I love her,” she said.
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“She loved that baby,” she said.
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“I want people — instead of judging Megan — I’d rather them put her in their prayers and understand that she is a child, too, caught up in this.”
