Barbara Hackmann

**Barbara Ann "Bobbie" Hackmann** (September 12, 1943 - December 6, 1967) also known as the **Tent Girl**, was notable as an unidentified homicide victim for nearly 30 years after her body was found on May 17, 1968, near Georgetown, Kentucky. She was referred to as "Tent Girl" because of the material wrapped around her.

## Events

### Backstory

In 1967, Hackmann Taylor lived in Lexington, KY, with her husband George Earl Taylor, a carnival worker, and their infant daughter. When she went missing, Taylor claimed his wife had left him for another man and maintained the ruse until he passed from cancer in October 1987.

### Discovery and Burial

Wilbur Riddle worked in the Kentucky countryside digging wells. On May 17, 1968, while looking for telephone pole insulators along US Route 25 near Sadieville, KY, Riddle came upon a parcel wrapped in a tent. When he prodded the object with his foot, it rolled down a hill, revealing the shape of a human body within.

Riddle called the authorities from a nearby gas station. The sheriff arrived, unwrapped the parcel, and found a woman's remains. A police investigation failed to identify the deceased woman, or to name any suspects in her apparent murder, despite efforts to publicize her description and check reports of missing women.

With no new leads in the case, her remains were buried in 1971 in the Georgetown Cemetery. A local company donated the headstone, which was inscribed with the following:

TENT GIRL
FOUND MAY 17 1968
ON U.S. HIGHWAY 25, N.
DIED ABOUT APRIL 26 – MAY 3, 1968
AGE ABOUT 16 – 19 YEARS
HEIGHT 5 FEET 1 INCH
WEIGHT 110 TO 115 LBS.
REDDISH BROWN HAIR
UNIDENTIFIED

The opposite side had an engraving of a police sketch made to depict how she might have looked in life.

### Identification

Todd Matthews initially heard the tale of Tent Girl at a Halloween party in 1987. When the attendants began swapping ghost stories, Lori Riddle, Wilbur Riddle's daughter, shared her father's tale of discovering the remains of a girl wrapped in a canvas tent nearly 20 years prior. Seventeen-year-old Matthews latched onto the story. He and Lori eventually married, allowing Matthews to prod his father-in-law for details concerning Tent Girl's discovery.

After dedicating himself to discovering Tent Girl's true identity, Matthews spent the first several years chasing paper trails and tracking down key people in the investigation for questioning. New avenues opened when the internet became widely available to the public in the 1990s. Message boards filled with amateur cold-case detectives became a major resource for Matthews.

In an effort to find the young woman's family, Matthews launched a website, TentGirl.com, in November 1997. He hoped her family would reach out to him, but when no new leads appeared, Matthews returned to the message boards.

In January 1998, Matthews found a classified listing from an Arkansas woman named Rosemary Westbrook. The listing pleaded for information concerning her missing sister, who disappeared from Kentucky in 1967. Westbrook described her sister as 5'2" with brown hair and brown eyes.

Tent Girl's estimated 5'1" height and reddish-brown hair were similar enough for Matthews to reach out to Westbrook. Photographs of Westbrook's sister and Tent Girl also matched, leading Matthews and Westbrook to request Tent Girl's exhumation for testing.

Tent Girl's body was exhumed on March 2, 1998. Through a comparison of DNA extracted from her remains and a cheek swab of Rosemary Westbrook, Tent Girl was positively identified as Westbrook's sister, Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor.

In 1967, Hackmann Taylor lived in Lexington, KY, with her husband George Earl Taylor, a carnival worker, and their infant daughter. Her immediate family, however, believed she was living in Florida at the time, giving them no reason to suspect she was Tent Girl. When she went missing, Taylor claimed his wife had left him for another man and maintained the ruse until he passed from cancer in October 1987.

Though no details of Hackmann Taylor's end could be confirmed, many suspect her husband played a part in her demise. He had an aggressive temper, as well as access to tent canvas from his carnival work. Hackmann Taylor's family placed a new headstone below her existing one, identifying her as Barbara Ann Hackmann.

### Aftermath

The family chose to have Hackmann's remains re-interred in Georgetown Cemetery, with an additional stone base placed under the original grave marker, bearing her birth name, nickname, date of birth, presumed date of death, and the inscription "Loving Mother, Grandmother & Sister". The Hackmann family excluded Barbara's married name from her gravestone.

After Taylor's identification, Matthews co-founded The Doe Network. It is a group that maintains an online database for volunteers dedicated to matching missing persons with unidentified decedents.

## News

*For news articles on Barbara Hackmann, see here.*

## External links

* Barbara Ann “Tent Girl” Hackmann • Find a Grave
* Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor • Wikipedia

## In popular media

### Podcast

* Forensic Tales - *Tent Girl* (2021)
* Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories - *Tent Girl* (2018)

### Television

* 48 Hours - *Never Forget* (30 April 1998)
* Who Killed Jane Doe? - *The Tent Girl* (23 January 2018)