S03E15: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TERA SMITH

Stephanie: Coming up on this episode of Crime Family; The disappearance of Tera Smith. This case is still unsolved today. It's about a 16 year old high school student who goes missing one summer evening and doesn't return home.

...she overheard a couple days ago that Tera was having an inappropriate relationship with her Tae Kwon Do instructor.

Katie: ...yeah, I feel like if they did search his car and his house and they didn't find anything, what else are they supposed to do? He had an alibi or maybe he didn't, but they really hit a dead end. What are they supposed to do? I feel, six months with no other leads is a long time.

... It's always eerie when that happens and there's no trace of them anywhere. There's no body and there's nobody that knows anything. It's like what happened? It's ,it's creepy.

AJ: ..Yeah, how can something like that just happen.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Crime Family. I'm your co-host AJ. I'm here with my two sisters, Stephanie and Katie, just like always. This week, Stephanie is going to be telling us about a case that she's been researching and wanted to cover on the show. Okay, Steph. So go ahead, take it away and let us know which case you're going to be telling us about.

Stephanie: So today I'm going to be talking about the disappearance of Tera Smith in 1998. There wasn't a lot of information on this case because this case is still unsolved today. It's about a 16 year old high school student who goes missing one summer evening and doesn't return home. I'm assuming none of you have heard of it before?

Katie: No, I haven't.

AJ: No, me neither. I have not.

Stephanie: So Tera Smith was born in 1982 in Redding, California. According to her family, she was a very well liked human being. She had just a zest for life and she loved horses. She loved being with her family. She was very outgoing and athletic. In her freshman year of high school, she was wrestling champ of her high school. So when Tera Smith was 16 years old, she had everything going for her. She was going to go far in life. She was very poetic and she was a prolific writer and she had hundreds of journals in her room that she would write in every day. Like most teenagers, Tera was on the rebellious side. She wanted to have a little bit more independence and just didn't want to be a goody two shoes all the time. She would sneak out of the house and would go to parties when she said she was going to go to her friend's house and she was just trying to live a more independent life. Her parents were trying to keep her on the right path, trying to keep her grades up and trying to just make her work a lot so she wouldn't try and be so rebellious. So Tera and her family owned their own business. It was a fun center, which was called Oasis Fun Center. It had bumper cars, mini golf and bumper boats. It was one of those fun places to work. Tera would work there when she was a little kid as well, up until she was 16 years old. On this particular day in August, 1998, it was a summer day and Tera was grounded because she had snuck out of the house the night before and went to her friend's house when she wasn't supposed to. Her mom had to run some errands and she decided to take Tera with her just because she didn't trust her being home by herself. Because she was grounded, she wanted to keep a close eye on her. Her and her mom went shopping and did some errands, but after they were running their errands, Tera went home and her youngest sister was home at the time and her mom dropped her off and her mom went to work at the Oasis Fun Center. After her mom dropped her off, Tera decided that she was going to go jogging before she went to work later that night at the family business. On that evening of August 22nd, 1998, Tera was supposed to go to work, her shift started about an hour after her mother's did, but Tera never showed up for her shift. So her mom calls the house and her younger sister answers the phone and says that Tera went out for a jog before she had to go to work. Tera said that she was only going to be 20 minutes and that she'd be back home to get ready for work, but she never came home. At this point Tera's mom leaves work and drives all around the neighborhood, trying to see if she could find Tera out jogging. Maybe she fell and she needed help. She was just looking for her just to see if she lost track of time. When her mom couldn't find her, that's when she started calling all of her friends and calling her ex-boyfriend to see if maybe she went to their house. None of them knew anything about Tera's whereabouts and Tera's mom said she didn't call the police right away because she thought maybe she was at a friend's house or maybe she would just show up, she just lost track of time or whatever. But like I said, after she talked to her friends and they didn't know where she was, that's when Tera's mom started to panic and at this point she still hasn't called the police. I'm not really sure why, but maybe she thought, she's 16, she'll show up. Like I said, she had a rebellious side so maybe she just didn't want to go to work that day and was trying to skip out on work. So after she waited a little bit, one of Tera's friends had called back and said that she had overheard a couple days ago that Tera was having an inappropriate relationship with her Tae Kwon Do instructor. His name was Troy Zink. Tera's mom didn't believe it. She was, oh, they're probably just friends. He's a really good instructor...

AJ: So who was it that told her that? A friend?

Stephanie: One of her friends.

AJ: Oh.

Stephanie: That she called and they called her back to say, "Well maybe she's with her Tae Kwon Do instructor, because they were having this inappropriate relationship", according to the friend.

AJ: How old was the instructor?

Stephanie: He was 29.

AJ: Oh.

Stephanie: So according to Tera's family, they had no idea. They just knew he was her Tae Kwon Do instructor. Obviously she's not going to tell even if she was having a relationship with him. This put up red flags for Tera's family. That's when her family decided to call the police. Tera's mom and dad went over to Troy's house to go talk to him around nine o'clock that night, but he wasn't home. So obviously they just left.

AJ: They were going to approach him about that I'm assuming? Or was it, "Do you know where she "is? Have you seen her or heard from her?" Were they going to confront him about the relationship?

Stephanie: I think they were going to confront him about the relationship or see if he knew where Tera was. Like I said her family had no knowledge of the relationship that Tera was having. Troy was 29 at the time of Tera's disappearance. You could see why it was a bit sketchy for the family.

AJ: A little bit! That's pretty sketchy.

Stephanie: Tera's sister said that Tera idolized Troy. She looked up to him. She said that one day she mentioned that she thought it was weird how she would talk about him. But she never thought anything of it. She just thought Tera had this crush on her instructor. The family were out looking for Tera, trying to figure out where she could be. Around 11:00 PM that night, Troy did call Tera's family and he said that he did pick up Tera that night, but dropped her off about a mile and a half away from her house. He went up to this hill called Hand Glider Hill. That's where he went praying for five hours. This is the story he tells. It doesn't seem plausible to me. I feel this seemed a bit sketchy.

AJ: I mean it's plausible, but just highly suspicious.

Stephanie: When they went to the police, there was not a lot to go on. She was 16, she never ran away from home before, but she did sneak out of the house once or twice. So the police thought maybe she didn't want to go to work and that she was just out hiding somewhere. That rebellious side of her.

Katie: I also think too, once it gets so far you don't want to go home even more. You're embarrassed that it had got that far. Her parents called the police and you're mortified. So you just wait it out a little bit longer. So that could be what they thought was happening as well.

Stephanie: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah. That is what I was thinking too. It's embarrassing, it goes that far when it's literally nothing at all.

Katie: Yeah, yeah. You come home and the police are there. It's like, "Oh no." You know, you're going to be in so much trouble.

AJ: Yeah. But it's also like, it's only going to get worse the longer she stays away. So I mean she's only 16. You know it's going to be awkward and weird. It's going to be the least awkward and weird if she just goes home now, then it's ever going to be the longer she is away.

Katie: Yeah. It's just going to get worse.

AJ: Yeah.

Stephanie: So Tera's mother and father, they didn't want to just wait around just in case she showed up or wait till the police decide to do something about it, so they decided to go back to their house and search her room, see if they could find any clues of where she might have went, or if there was any truth to this relationship that she was having with Troy. While they were searching her room they did find some letters that were written to Troy and after reading one of them, her parents thought that maybe she was planning on telling Troy that the relationship was over. According to this letter she planned to go over to Troy's house to say that they couldn't see each other anymore, but Tera's mother says that she was thinking of, instead of going over there, she was thinking of just mailing the letter because it was an envelope with a stamp on it. Maybe she felt like it'd be better if she told him in person, not just mail this.

Katie: Did her parents tell the police about the relationship? Because that's an illegal relationship basically, right? Or did they just not take it that seriously?

Stephanie: I will get into that in a few minutes.

Katie: Okay.

Stephanie: I'll go into more detail about Troy and who he actually...

AJ: Did Troy admit to the relationship? When he called her parents back saying, "Oh yeah, I dropped her off. I went to pray." Did they bring that up to him? Did he mention it, did he deny it?

Stephanie: He didn't deny it or say it was the truth either way. He didn't say anything. He just said," I picked her up and I dropped her off a mile and a half from home." He was sticking to the story. He didn't say whether they were in a relationship or not, or why he picked her up. Or if she was headed to his house.

AJ: I guess if she's headed to his house and he's picking her up, then obviously it implies a relationship is going on. I feel like he wouldn't do that if there wasn't.

Stephanie: Yeah. Now Tera's family know that there was a relationship going on between them and that maybe Troy did have something to do with Tera being missing. During the investigation, the family found out that Troy had a previous conviction for a spousal rape back in 1992. According to some documents, he had forced his ex-wife to have sex with him at knife point telling her that he was going to kill himself if they didn't have sex. But of course, when the police talked to Troy, he denies these claims. At this point, he's the only suspect because he was the last person to see Tera that night. So when the police decide to search his home during the investigation, they found some sporting rifles and some shotguns in Troy's attic at his Tae Kwon Do studio. He was already on probation because of the conviction of the spousal rape, so he wasn't allowed to have firearms on his property. Troy claims that these firearms were his dads who was renting the space from him. That was what he was basing his story off of. They were his dad's rifles.

AJ: Has an excuse for everything, this guy.

Stephanie: He did have to go to court for breach of probation. The jury didn't buy his whole story of the rifles not being his and he was sentenced on June 24th, 1999 to four years in prison. In 2001, he tried to appeal his conviction, but it was denied. Nothing about Tera's disappearance came out of Troy's conviction. They never did look into him as a potential suspect. He was a suspect, but they didn't find any evidence that he had anything to do with her disappearance. Troy denies any involvement into Tera's disappearance. He did come out eventually and say that on the night that Tera disappeared Tera had called him at work, wanting to see him. When he got home she was standing in his driveway. When he drove up into the driveway, Tera leaned into the driver's window and asked Troy for $2,000. But Troy said he didn't have that kind of money and that even if he did, he wouldn't give it to her. He wanted to know why she wanted the money. I don't know if I buy this story.

AJ: I feel like I'm inclined to believe. I don't know. I feel like that's just a very specific story to make up. I just think, of all the things he could have said, I feel like most times if people are trying to they won't go into specific detail about things. You know what I mean? I feel like it's a very specific conversation to mention or to make up. So I feel people usually are more vague. They'd be, "Oh yeah, I did see her. She called me from work, wanted to see me. When I got to my house, she was there." You know what I mean? Wouldn't go into details unsolicited I feel. So I would be leaning toward maybe thinking that's legit.

Stephanie: Yeah.

AJ: Or maybe that did happen just not that night. Maybe that's a story from a random time.

Stephanie: Maybe she was going over to tell him that the relationship was off because when they found those letters, maybe that's what her intentions were, but we never know because she never came back home that night. So we don't know where she went or even if she did go to his house or maybe she wanted $2,000 because she was looking to run away. Maybe she wanted to get out of the town.

AJ: But was there anything that precipitated that? Did she have a big fight with her parents the day before or that day or something?

Stephanie: Well, she was grounded. Remember she was grounded because she snuck out of the house the night before.

AJ: Oh yeah.

Stephanie: She wasn't allowed to go anywhere. She ran errands with her mom in the morning and then she was supposed to go to work that night. So she wasn't allowed to go anywhere. So maybe she felt like a prisoner in her own home. A teenager being dramatic. Her parents were being unfair because they were grounding her. You know what I mean?

AJ: Yeah. So she's going to run away and get $2,000 and leave.

Stephanie: Yeah. But we don't know.

AJ: The letter she wrote to Troy that she was going over to deliver that night.

Stephanie: Yeah.

AJ: Do they know that that was the letter for that night?

Stephanie: They don't know if it was for that night, but they did know that she did write this letter and maybe she decided to just go over to his house and tell him in person, instead of mailing the letter. The letter did have a stamp on it so it looked like she was going to mail it. But I guess she decided to go over to his house.

AJ: I keep forgetting, this is the nineties. Just text someone!

Katie: Yeah, it sounds like to me, she was ending that chapter in her life. Like you were saying, she was maybe being a dramatic teenager. Her parents grounded her and she just was thinking it's like the end of the world. So she was saying goodbye to him, asked him for money and then maybe he didn't give it to her. She decided to, you know, hitchhike or hitch a ride with somebody to get out of there because she didn't have any money. So that's kind of where my mind goes.

Stephanie: Troy does say when he didn't have the money to give her that that's when Tera got angry, but then asked for a ride back home or asked for a ride and he says that he dropped her off a mile and a half away, which is on the road called Old Oregon Drive. That's where she went to go jogging before she had to work. Even though Troy was questioned extensively into the disappearance of Tera, he was never officially considered a person of interest. Tera's father told Dateline that he felt that the police were not taking his daughter's disappearance seriously enough. He was becoming very frustrated. He said that at first they were doing their job and helping out and giving them all they had for about six months, but then her case just went cold and no one but the family were still searching for her. That's when the case just stopped. The police never really looked into anybody else. They never looked into any of her friends or ex-boyfriends. Her mother just says they just stopped looking for her.

Katie: So they never named another person of interest or a suspect at all?

Stephanie: No.

AJ: I just find it so weird. Obviously they just didn't care. They just dropped the investigation. I guess if there was no evidence of anything, there's no one else to name as a suspect.

Stephanie: I was going to say there was no body. They never found her. They never found any other evidence of foul play or anything like that. So there's nothing for them to really go off of.

AJ: But I mean, it doesn't seem like they really look too hard into this. Sorry, what's his name again? The Tae Kwon Do guy?

Stephanie: Troy.

AJ: Oh, Troy. It doesn't seem like they really looked into him that much. I mean, they searched his house and found the guns and whatever, but I don't know I feel, or maybe they did look into him more than we know.

Katie: I feel like if they did search his car and his house and they didn't find anything, what else are they supposed to do? He had an alibi or maybe he didn't, but they really hit a dead end. What are they supposed to do? I feel like six months with no other leads is a long time for them to be searching for something that's not there and it's probably still open. Right? It's just cold. So they don't have anything else to go on.

Stephanie: Yeah, the case is still open. Her family, like I said, her mother still has hope that she's still alive out there and one day she'll come home, but her dad did tell Dateline that within the first 48 hours of her missing, he lost hope that she would be coming home alive.

Katie: Yeah. And I also feel if she did decide to run away, not reaching out to your family for over 20 years is very extreme. Right? You think you'd get over that and be, "Okay, I'm fine. This is where I am." It didn't seem like there was anything that was that dramatic in her life for her to be," I'm cutting my family off and never talking to them again." Especially her sister. Right? So it does seem like something happened that she didn't plan for, because I think it's rare for people just to disappear and never reach out again.

AJ: Yeah. Especially a fickle teenager, who's going to be angry one minute, and then, you know, two days later say, "Okay, I'm homesick. I want to go home." You know what I mean? Not someone who's going to stay away for 24 years.

Stephanie: Yeah. I know that this case, there's not a lot to it. The reason why I chose it was because it was just one sided. They only interviewed one person and that was it. They didn't interview any of her friends. They didn't interview any of her ex-boyfriends or anybody like that, they just interviewed this Troy guy. They didn't find anything on him and that was that even though he had a previous conviction of abuse.

Katie: Well then what were they doing for six months? They must have been looking into other people. They just didn't release any details because they didn't find anything maybe.

Stephanie: Yeah. Well maybe. That's what I'm thinking. They probably did look into people, but they just didn't come out with...

AJ: They're probably dissecting all of her notes and journals. That's probably what they were doing for six months. Try to see if there was a clue in any of it, but it doesn't sound like there was really any other clues besides this Troy guy. I guess what Katie was saying before, if that doesn't lead to anything there's literally nothing else to go on besides her own writings or her own journals and if that doesn't give them anything then...

Katie: Yeah, and also I feel like if she was going to run away she'd probably at least tell one of her close friends so they would at least know what was going on. But the fact that none of them knew anything it makes me think that she was not planning on, you know, leaving for that long on purpose.

AJ: If they had looked through all of her notes and stuff, you'd think, because my other thought was well, was there someone else that maybe she was secretly with or something? She was running away to be with this person. But I mean, obviously if they went through her notes and all of her journals and stuff, then that probably would've come up if she's writing in her journal every day. The fact that nothing like that came up, obviously that's probably not it, but so either potentially this Troy guy possibly did something or she hitchhiked and met someone. Wrong place, wrong time. I feel like that has to be the only two...

Stephanie: Or maybe, and this is just me thinking out loud, maybe she needed that $2,000 because she was in some type of trouble and needed to pay somebody $2,000. You never know. Teenagers hide things sometimes depending on who they are, but maybe she had some type of debt that she had to pay. Who knows?

Katie: Yeah that's true. I guess why $2,000? Maybe that's just the amount she came up with, but that seems like a lot for her if she wanted just to catch a bus somewhere or something, but I don't know.

AJ: That's why I don't know when you were telling that part of that story that Troy told about her mentioning to him about wanting $2000, that is a specific number. If she just wanted to catch the bus she would just need a little bit. $2,000 is a lot for whatever she was planning to go away for. I just don't feel like that's a story that someone would make up if they were lying. You know what I mean? No one's going to say that unprovoked. That's just what I feel.

Katie: Yeah. I think it is a weird thing just to make up. There probably is some truth to it.

AJ: It could have just been another night that happened, that's unrelated to this. It could have been before that and he just is saying that for that night, but I feel like at some point maybe that did happen because it is a very random story to just create.

Stephanie: Well, that's what I was going to say. I feel like maybe he's just making up this whole story. Maybe he did pick her up and something happened and he didn't want to break up with her. There's no evidence to prove that he did anything.

Katie: No.

Stephanie: There's no body anywhere.

Katie: He could also know what happened to her as well. Like you were saying, he was in jail before. Right? So I don't know. Maybe he just met some people and then she met those people as well and then just got into the wrong crowd. He may know who did something to her, but isn't going to say anything. Or he could have been in on it together, you know. Who knows?

Stephanie: He did have those sporting rifles. Maybe he was part of this sporting team or something that she was a part of and something bad happened and he just doesn't want to admit it.

Katie: Yeah, maybe because he's around guns, he's not supposed to be, so that would just get him into more trouble, I guess, if something happened while they were playing around. I don't know. But you'd think if it was an accident, and he was a decent person, he would tell people what happened. Even still you'd have to hide the body. It would just be more work than just coming clean.

AJ: But I feel like, you know, also though when you think about it, if something did happen by accident and she accidentally got shot playing with the guns and it was just an accident, I feel like he's going to think, well, you know," I have this criminal record. No one's going to believe me if I just say it's an accident. Who would believe it? I have this record of a violent history." I feel like in the heat of the moment, or in a panic, he could have just tried to cover it up because who's going to believe that it was an accident even if it legitimately was. Who knows? I don't know what goes through someone's mind in that scenario.

Stephanie: Yeah. So as of right now, there is no new suspects into the disappearance of Tera Smith. The case is still open to this day. At the time of Tera's disappearance, she was 16. She was 5'7", and she weighed about 135 pounds. She had a strong athletic build, blond hair and she didn't have any scars or any birthmarks. She would now be 40 years old. If anybody has any information on Tera's whereabouts you can contact Crime Stoppers or contact the Shasta County police department at 530-245-6135. That is the story of Tera Smith. Like I said, there wasn't a whole lot of information. It was cut and dry. It's a weird story, how she just disappeared and has never been found.

Katie: Yeah. It's always eerie when that happens and there's no trace of them anywhere. There's no body and there's nobody that knows anything. What happened? It's creepy.

AJ: Yeah. How can something like that just happen? How can somebody just go missing, vanish without a trace for 24 years and no one knows a damn thing? I mean, someone knows ,obviously. It's just so crazy.

Stephanie: I'm always so hesitant to do cases like this because there's not a lot of information on it. There's not a lot of research you can do on it. But I found it interesting because up to this day nobody knows anything. There hasn't been any new suspects or anything like that.

Katie: I was gonna say, it's always interesting like you said somebody knows something. They're not coming forward or maybe they don't even realize that they know something. Did she actually disappear on purpose? Somebody could have seen her, but just not know who she was and still not realize. Also there's somebody out there that may have done something to her and they for sure know what happened or where she is. They're just never going to say anything about it. Which is crazy! How that would weigh on your conscience. I guess some people think differently.

AJ: Yeah. Unless you're just to believe that she, you know, fell off the side of the road and hurt herself and just died of, you know, in nature somewhere where no one saw her. Then no one would know literally anything, but unless that happened...

Katie: Somebody would've found something. Right?

AJ: Yeah.

Katie: Why hasn't anyone found a body on the side of the road? Or a bone, her clothes, somebody would've found something and the fact that they didn't find anything, somebody hid her really well.

AJ: Yeah.

Katie: Or you know, you always think of human trafficking. Someone took her somewhere where we will never find her. She's in a different country or something. So yeah.

AJ: Yeah. The vanished without a trace ones are always interesting because like I said, it's just always so fascinating to me how somebody can just vanish.

Katie: I know. You always go to the worst case scenario too though. There are those cases where people are abducted and they're held captive for decades and then they finally emerge. You just never know what she could be going through, even if she is alive out there somewhere. Trying to not think about those things, but you never know.

AJ: Yeah. In these ones where they've been missing for, this one is 24 years, but in those cases where they're gone for a long time, I feel like your first initial thought is like, well, there's no chance that they're actually alive still. But like you said, there are those times where you hear those cases where somebody's discovered 15, 20 years later and they're alive so those do happen. I always try to not just jump to that conclusion that they're not alive anymore because that's the natural conclusion to jump to when you don't hear from somebody for years, but it is possible. Anything is possible.

Katie: Yeah. And even like we said, it could be her choice. She just really decided she didn't want to be a part of that family anymore and she left and is not going to tell anybody where she is.

AJ: And also too, I feel like it's a lot more common for even in the nineties, the late nineties, cases where people vanished without a trace is a lot more, it's a lot easier for that to happen back in the nineties or the eighties before they had modern technology, before they had cell phone pings that could like ping your location. Obviously it still does happen where people just vanish and no one knows what happened, but I feel like now there's a lot more different ways that they'd be able to find at least a trail. Even if they don't find her, they could still find where her cell phone last pinged or like something to go on or a text message to someone where she said something. Whereas before, obviously before all that, it's just so easy for someone to just vanish.

So that does it for this week's episode. If you like the show and you want to follow us, you can find us on all the social medias. We're on Instagram @crimefamilypodcast. We're on Twitter @crimefamilypod1, and we're on Facebook @ Crime Family Podcast. You can send us your case suggestions, your feedback or tips or anything like that. Get in touch with us. Our email is crimefamilypodcast@gmail.com. You can also go to our website, which is crime family podcast.ca. There you can listen to all of our episodes. You can read transcripts of the episodes. You can even leave us a voicemail if you would like. You might be able to hear your voice on the show.

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Katie: Bye.

Stephanie: See ya.