TN TN - Dennis Martin, 6, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 14 June 1969

[cenazoic]

then how do they ever find out if someone turned in a tip or if he has been found?

Well, that’s the rub. If the family hasn’t submitted DNA, then it would be very difficult to confirm any matches. Presumably potential matches could be excluded based on other factors like age or sex. That assumes Dennis didn’t make it to adulthood, of course.

the John Doe DNA wasn't viable. I want to assume this will all be handled,

Can you clarify what you mean by ‘handled’ in this context? If you mean something like ‘they’ll try extracting it again sometime”, I’d think it would be dependent upon why the sample wasn’t viable to begin with (too little? too degraded? Something else?)

With DNA - my limited and perhaps incorrect understanding of NamUs is that they can sort of auto- exclude based on DNA, assuming a missing person and an unidentified person both have DNA submitted to NamUs.

That said, even when people have submitted matches that turn out to be correct, they a) usually don’t get any sort of acknowledgement and b) it’s often a long time later that the match is made public. If it’s not a match, if they’re lucky, the case manager might provide a tidbit of previously unknown info - like, this person has been excluded, even though they don’t appear on the exclusions list in NamUs.

how long would this take?

I don’t want to be discouraging here, but I wouldn’t expect quick results for anything. And by ‘quick’ I mean say, less than a year. ‘how long does it take’ isn’t something we can answer, but it’s likely somewhere in the range of ‘a long time’, sorry to say.

 

[bloobutterfly]

Clarification- The ME with the doe told me the DNA was not available, as in something was wrong with it and would work on it. I assume ME has some way of trying to attain a viable sample. The case is old though, so I am hopeful, but not sure if it's possible to fix the problem they are having. The other person corresponding from Dennis' side said they do not have DNA to compare to the doe, and would "think" about how to proceed. Umm. If I was in the Martin family, and I saw the response to this inquiry, I would be furious. Also, the person answering the phone listed as the agency contact had never heard of this case, because it is so old, I am assuming. They also were surprised to get a call like mine and "didn't even know what to do." So, I mentioned the contact name for the case there and the person knew them. So, I asked to have that case manager call me. The man said he knew him and would give him my message. So, the contact person was known and still reachable. However, he didn't call me, someone else did. Then yet another person messaged the ME. The attitude seemed to me to be, that they would decide or figure out how to proceed. So, my opinion is that if anyone here knows the family personally, that they should let them know about my experience. They need to advocate for themselves and make sure strangers, non-family do not decide what is going to be done about this. Does anyone know them?

 

[bloobutterfly]

The ME, by the way, was very professional and kind.

 

[Caring1]

June 6, 2025

GATLINBURG, Tenn. (WATE) — June 14 will mark 56 years since Dennis Martin disappeared in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The quiet boy from Knoxville was just a few days away from his 7th birthday the last time he was seen.

More than five decades after Dennis Lloyd Martin’s disappearance, 6 News obtained the National Park Service’s case file, which details how the search for the boy was conducted after he vanished from Spence Field.

https://myfox8.com/news/public-safety/missing/6-year-old-boy-still-missing-after-vanishing-in-great-smoky-mountains-in-1969/

 

[Richard]

Bumping this thread up.

 

[snooptroop88]

What creeps me out especially on cases like this is that nobody has any idea, really, what actually happened. We know all the "coulds." But until actual remains are produced, or a live Dennis Martin comes forward, we can never truly know. The "most likely" scenario here is Dennis got caught up in some natural hazard posed by the environment and that together with his young age led to his disappearance-- compounded by the storm. Probably one of the most telling notes I saw was that searchers themselves were in some cases seriously injured in the course of this search.

Trigger warning: Scavengers and predators-- they do in some cases consume bones. This is a concern in that nothing may be left to provide any answer if the child wandered into some hazard. Also, I know bears are mentioned repeatedly on this thread, the area didn't just have black bears, which usually don't pose a strong threat. This area (at least today, and there seems to be something of a history for it) has extremely aggressive wildlife and they've had bear attacks there. (The bears are enormous, too.) Is such behavior unusual for black bears? Yes, but it's a known problem in the area where Dennis went missing. To my knowledge, when the bear decides on a target for whatever reason things get scary fast, so weirdly, I don't think a bear's that out of the question here. They don't always drag prey, they often carry it, and they don't always leave "a lot" of blood, or much blood in some scenarios. And bears come suddenly, there may have been no notice for screaming.

Looking at Knox News, not completely ready to rule out a human, either:

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/2019/06/06/dennis-martin-missing-smoky-mountains-50-years-spence-field-mystery-smokies-search-east-tennessee/1272247001/

“When we got about half a mile or maybe three-quarters of a mile from the car, we heard a scream,” Key told News Sentinel reporter Carson Brewer. “A trouble scream. … An enormous, sickening scream … We couldn’t tell which direction it came from, but it sounded like it came from higher on the mountain to me.”...Minutes later, something moved in the brush....“I looked across the creek and saw a man in the bushes,” Key recalled. “I couldn’t tell much about him because he was going down the creek toward the cars ... He was definitely trying to keep from being seen. … I thought maybe he was a moonshiner.”...Key said he crossed the creek and found what looked like a crudely drawn map on a scrap of paper about where the man would have been. When he came back, he noticed the only other car parked at the roadside, an older-model white Chevrolet, gone.

So that's quite, quite weird, and when they do these massive searches-- not saying "it's impossible" they'll come up empty, that's not the case. But the coming up empty together with the Keys story is unsettling. Probably not, but if I saw a UID that was a potential match, I'd submit it. It's along the lines of the Sodder family. Not likely, but... as of yet unknown. And maybe that way forever, unfortunately.

 

[snooptroop88]

Was looking at this Doe earlier, they found only his cranium April 1975 along east bank of Mississippi/Memphis-Shelby Cty, they have him classified as an adult (but with absolutely no range given beyond that) so this can't be Dennis:

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

Weirdly, I still thought of Dennis Martin when I saw this. Started wondering where a body could somehow move if the body were submerged in a waterway near where Dennis's group had been located. It looks like it actually could (theoretically) travel quite far, potentially. These waterways near Spence Field seem to follow a pretty complicated path through to the Ohio River which joins the Mississippi in Cairo IL and then flows down towards Memphis (an incredibly long journey). While researching, specifically saw "Cades Cove" mentioned over and over again. I didn't remember seeing that particular location in relation to this case, but when I pulled documents for Dennis Martin I hadn't seen before, I saw-- Cades Cove.

While I know Dennis' group is a distance from the actual Cades Cove, they're pretty close to Anthonys Creek, and that flows into Caves Cove. There was that fierce storm. And I've read if a body sinks, it can travel underwater for a very, very long time due to undercurrents, even if it never fully surfaces at bloating stage. Want to be aware of the waterways and their movements in the area where he disappeared in the hopes that someday, remains of Dennis might be identified if he is indeed deceased.

Also, the documents I'm viewing now seem to indicate the adults during the boys' game were at the Anthony Creek trailhead. A parking lot is just very close to there, to my knowledge, and researching it seems to indicate yes, parking lot right there. It would be very interesting to know exactly how close that parking area was to where the boys' game was being played. A parking lot at an easily walkable distance is potentially a huge nod to the parents' theory, jmho. Can anyone confirm there was a parking lot nearby? Everything I've seen so far is leading me to believe there was.