SEVIERVILLE, Tenn — Before they leave this world, the siblings of Reba Catlett would like to know what happened to her in 1992.
What really happened to her.
They put no stock in the idea that the Sevierville homemaker and real estate investor just decided to pick up and go, to start a whole new life somewhere else at age 57.
She might leave her husband Darrell -- everyone knew she'd done that before -- but she wouldn't abandon the rest of her family without a word. Forever.
If someone murdered Reba on June 15, 1992, and that's certainly what the siblings think happened, it's baffling that absolutely no trace of her has ever been found. No blood, no prints, no tracks.
It's a mystery that Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Maria Cutshaw is determined to solve. She remembers when she was young hearing about Reba's disappearance. Today, it's her case.
There's no evidence Reba is still alive, she said. She likely was killed, the agent said.
"There's been several people that have looked in to see -- her money was still in her account, all of her personal belongings were still at the house. There's no evidence she just simply walked away," Cutshaw said.
The only solid clue to her whereabouts is her mid-1980s Cadillac, which was left abandoned, unlocked and essentially empty in the parking lot of a downtown Sevierville store.
When Reba vanished from Sevierville, her brothers and sisters collected $5,000 to offer a reward. Nobody claimed it.
As the years passed with still no sign of their sister, they decided to record her disappearance on a stone in a Jones Cove cemetery. It displays her birthday and the last day anyone saw her alive.
The surviving siblings -- once there were eight -- got together last summer with WBIR to talk about Reba, in hopes a story might lead to a break in the case.
"I hope that somebody out there will see this and can have some compassion of what we've been through and are still going through, and we'd just like to put some closure to it," sister Sara Whaley said.
If former husband Darrell Catlett ever knew what happened, he took it to his grave. He died in 2007 at age 70.
If you have any information, you can pass tips to the TBI through 1-800-TBI-FIND.
SEPARATE LIVES, SAME HOUSE
It's fair to say the Catletts had a sometimes difficult marriage.
She left him at least twice during their 37-year union, her sister Mary Nell Lewelling said. He could also be mean and abusive, said the siblings.
Together, they had a boy born prematurely who died in 1955; a girl, Debra, born in 1956; and a son, Danny, born in 1960. Danny had serious physical problems including seizures; he died in 1985.
The Catletts lived their whole lives in Sevier County.
She was always a homemaker. He farmed cattle and worked at a textile mill.
Together, they also built up a respectable portfolio of real estate -- some 800 to 900 acres, Darrell Catlett would later tell lawyers.
Reba collected the rent on a handful of properties. She'd always wanted to be a lawyer; managing real estate gave her a sense of pride and importance, family members said.
By 1992, the Catletts had holdings valued at about $3 million -- good money back then. Their assets included Douglas Lake waterfront acreage prime for development in Jefferson County, court records show.
They also had a nice ranch house on Foxwood Drive, a short drive to downtown Sevierville.
But they lived separate lives, court records show. He worked the graveyard shift at the mill and took up residence downstairs at Foxwood. She had the run of the upstairs, court records show.
When they saw each other it typically was for meals before he went off to work at night, records show.
"We never did go on vacation. I worked all the time," Darrell Catlett said in a Sevier County Chancery Court deposition in July 2000 after she'd been missing eight years.
She usually did her own hair. If she clothes-shopped, it was mostly at yard sales, daughter Debra Catlett recalled in a July 2000 deposition.
"She was very inexpensive, very quiet, very self -- in-her-self person," Debra Catlett told lawyers.
Reba had high blood pressure, for which she needed medication, and was a borderline diabetic.
She tended to Catlett properties, Darrell Catlett would later tell lawyers. She also enjoyed her grandchildren. Debra Catlett, married for a time to a man named Mike Chambers, had three sons.
Reba told her husband the night of June 14, 1992, a Sunday, that she'd be heading the next day to the Dandridge courthouse to check on some tax records. They talked before he went to work. According to Darrell Catlett, it was the last time he ever spoke to her.
"Did you notice anything unusual whenever you talked with her?" attorney Douglas Taylor, who represented Reba's estate, asked him during a deposition in 2000.
"Never noticed a thing," Darrell Catlett replied.
Debra Catlett recalled having a similar conversation with her mother the following morning. Reba was getting ready to leave when they talked on the phone; they talked daily, she recalled.
Everything seemed normal, Debra Catlett recalled.
Investigators would later hear that Reba told someone she needed to stop by the Big Lots downtown for cleaning supplies. There also were some reports that a Cadillac matching Reb's had been seen at the Big Lots parking lot the afternoon of June 14, 1992.
But, Debra Catlett would testify later, "She didn't indicate to me anything about Big Lots."
When he got off work from the mill the morning of June 15, 1992, Darrell Catlett said, he went straight to bed in his windowless, downstairs room.
A few hours later, he had to get up to attend a meeting at work. Then he went back home, took a nap, and when he got up later that night, Reba was nowhere around.
He called his daughter and Reba's sister, Mary Nell Lewelling.
"He called me and told me, 'She's missing.' And I said, 'Well, we'll find her.' You know, if anybody on Earth knows where she's at, it'd be me," Lewelling told WBIR.
The next day, Darrell Catlett reported her missing to police.
Clearly, evidence shows, the Big Lots in downtown Sevierville had some significance in Reba's disappearance.
That's where her dark-colored, four-door Cadillac ended up, left by someone for good.
It was parked in the store parking lot at about 5:15 a.m. Tuesday, June 16. There was no sign of the owner.
ABANDONED CADILLAC
They searched everywhere. Except for the Cadillac, they found no trace of Reba.
Lewelling quickly knew something was strange about the car.
For one thing, it was unlocked. Also, after it was found, she said police asked her to drive it back to the Catlett home on Foxwood. But when she got inside it, the seat was pushed way back, much too far for her sister to reach the pedals.
"She wasn't the last one that drove it," Lewelling said.
Eventually, the car ended up in police custody. They processed it but it yielded no clues, Cutshaw said.
To the family, It appeared as if someone had wiped it clean.
Darrell and Debra Catlett said police also searched the Foxwood home and parts of the property. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The couple's bank accounts appeared undisturbed.
Some theorized that Reba had been buried somewhere on the property, Cutshaw said.
"Unfortunately, they were not allowed to go on some of the property where she was said to be buried, so I know that there were other ways that they used to maybe fly over the property and look to see if anything looked disturbed, and nothing was found," the agent said.
Eventually, authorities would search the Douglas Lake area where the couple owned property. They found no evidence of her there, either.
Four months after he last spoke to his wife, Darrell Catlett filed for divorce, Sevier County records show. By the end of 1992, he also retired from the mill job, he would later tell lawyers.
"Well, I just had to go on with my life," Darrell Catlett told lawyers years later as they worked to resolve her estate. "I mean, she wasn't going to come back. I mean, she had plenty of time to come back."
The court granted his motion for a divorce in 1994, and Darrell Catlett remarried. He and his daughter split up Reba's assets.
She filed the paperwork later to have her mother formally declared dead.
The court made it official in October 2000: Reba Catlett was dead.
'GIVE US SOME CLOSURE'
After he died in March 2007, Darrell Catlett's obituary made no mention of his first wife Reba. When Debra Catlett's son, Aaron Brent Chambers, died in July 2023 in a motorcycle crash, no mention was made of his maternal grandmother in his obituary.
Reba's sisters suspect Darrell was involved in her death. The fact that he filed for divorce four months after she disappeared strikes Agent Cutshaw as "interesting, to say the least."
Cutshaw said she has a theory about what happened to Reba, but "it's something I can't really go into."
She continued: "I think there's a potential that there's more than one person involved here, or that there's more than one person that knows, I'll say that."
This is the perfect opportunity for someone who knows something to step forward and tell investigators, the agent said.
"I think this is one of those cases where it's very important that, if somebody is still out there that knows something, that they come forward and tell us," Cutshaw said.
Debra Catlett told WBIR she would grant an interview for this story, but then she stopped returning phone calls.
"I tried my best to solve it," Lewelling said. "There was no way. And so I said, 'Lord, I'm taking it to you, and I'm a-laying it down because I cannot do anymore.'"
Sister Sara Whaley said: "We just want to know what happened to her 'cause he's gone, and I think he's the one that done it. But it would just give us some closure to what did happen to her."
