KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — FBI Knoxville announced Friday it is offering a $10,000 reward in hopes of finding three people who disappeared under suspicious circumstances in 2018.
Between January and March 2018, 47-year-old Bonnie Drane, 42-year-old William Inklebarger and 48-year-old Brenda Carroll were all reported missing in Knoxville. The three knew each other and were known to hang out and sometimes live together, and the FBI said none of them had a permanent home.
The FBI said the three were also associates of a person of interest in their disappearance: Jeremy Jerome Hardison, who also goes by the nickname "Big County." Hardison is serving a life sentence in prison after he was convicted of murdering a man in East Knoxville in Sept. 2021.
Bonnie Drane, 47, was a mother of five children. She was reported missing on Jan. 10, 2018, but was last seen on Dec. 27, 2017, while visiting a family member at UT Medical Center who was being treated for a gunshot wound.
She left the hospital in a 1998 silver Honda Accord, which was found a couple of weeks later on Jan. 21 at an apartment complex on Bridalwood Drive. The driver's seat was pushed back -- not the position the 5-foot, 7-inch Drane would have had it in.
Drane's mother, children and grandchildren hope anyone who knows what happened to her -- and what role Hardison may have played -- will speak up. Daughter Carlie Benton said her mother may have used counterfeit money in a drug transaction that ended up costing her her life.
Family members have handed out fliers as far south as Chattanooga to try to find Drane. They've gone down to the bridges where the homeless hang out, handing out food and pressing for answers about their loved one's whereabouts.
"And now all I can do is ask for somebody to ease that pain and that anger for me and my family," her son Danny Stephens said in 2021.
William Inklebarger, 42, was reported missing on Jan. 12, 2018, but was last seen on Dec. 29, 2017, by his father at a motel room on North Cherry Street. Inklebarger’s father went to check on his son at the motel room at least twice during the second week of January. He wasn't there, but most of his belongings were.
Brenda Carroll, 48, was reported missing on March 19 and was last heard from on January 1, 2018, when she contacted her sister on Facebook messenger. Investigators believe she was with Drane and Inklebarger, who she had been living with at the time. Carroll may have been with Drane when she was visiting her family member at UT Medical Center.
One of Drane's daughters said Carroll had dated Hardison, and that's how Drane met him. Hardison had prior drug convictions, records show.
Hardison, the person of interest in the case, was previously convicted of killing Johnathan Stewart in Sept. 2021. Authorities said Hardison shot Stewart, 33, in the back and killed him at the intersection of Selma and Ben Hur avenues in Knoxville. He is serving his life sentence in state prison at Tiptonville, Tennessee.
In 2005, Hardison also pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. He had originally been charged with murder in that incident.
Anyone with information about the three and their disappearance is asked to call the Knoxville Police Department at (865) 215-7212, the FBI at (865) 544-0751 or the East Tennessee Valley Crime Stoppers at (865) 215-7165.
