One of the little known of the many LBL mysteries is that of the Standing Dead Man at the Model, Tennessee Fire Tower in Land Between the Lakes. This is not a second-hand account or one that I heard someone tell someone else about. What I am going to convey is my first-hand account of how an unknown man was found dead, and standing up, in the woods near the Model Fire Tower.
Fall of 1975: One cool job
I graduated from Stewart County (Tennessee) High School in May 1975 and after a cool trip to Florida with some guys I graduated with, I took a job with the CETA (Comprehensive Employment Training Act) program. I worked with the Tennessee Forestry Division on the CETA program for a year.
My job duties were to work with the rangers and ranger aides at the fire towers in Stewart, Houston, Dickson and Humphries counties. My assignment in the fall of 1975 was for me to be stationed with the two ranger aides who manned the Model Fire Tower.
Now this was one very cool job. I cut grass. I swatted red wasps. I picked up trash. I climbed the fire tower. I watched out for smoke in case I could see a fire before it spread through Land Between the Lakes. I slept on the mossy banks in the woods near the fire tower.
I helped sweep up and clean the tiny cabin at the fire tower. I washed the Forestry Division trucks. I slept. I ate. I did whatever the two ranger aides wanted me to do and actually they asked me to do very little.
There wasn’t all that much to do. One day, an afternoon as best I remember, we got a visit at the Model Fire Tower from two Tennessee Valley Authority Land Between the Lakes police officers. These officers came up to the cabin at the fire tower where the two ranger aides were at the time. I think they were playing cards. I’m not sure. There was a lot of card playing at the fire towers as we waited for a fire to break out.
Fires did break out and when they did, well then man we worked. But when there were no fires. Not much happened and the lazy fall days just unwound gracefully.
TVA cops arrive at Model Fire Tower : “See anything strange?”
On that particular day when the two TVA officers arrived, I was standing around probably not doing anything and paying very little attention to anything. However, I did pick up on the fact the officers were in a pretty serious frame of mind.
I got close enough to hear what they were talking about and asking about. Here is what I remembers. One of the officers asked the two ranger aides (I do not remember them asking me anything. In fact they pretty much ignored me. They talked in front of me, but I am not sure they even thought enough about me listening in to even consider asking me any questions.)
The officers asked the ranger aids if they had seen anything at all unusual recently. The two ranger aides, both men in their 60s or so, just looked at each other and said, “No, not especially.” The officers asked if there had been any unusual or strange cars or vehicles in the area. Again the reply from the Ranger aides was negative.
Unusual Story unfolds: Suit and sunglasses
Then the TVA cops asked if anyone had seen a helicopter flying around recently. Again, no; but that perked up my ears. One of the officers lowered his voice and said to the two aides, “Don’t tell anyone about this, but we just found a dead man in the woods over there” and the cops pointed off into the general direction of the woods behind the fire tower. “We found a dead man standing propped up against a tree. He was just standing there.”
Well of course that got everyone’s attention. Rather than us asking questions, I just remember all of us standing there, pretty quiet, seeing if the TVA cops were going to tell us more. The second cop went into more detail. Turns out someone in the woods, a hiker a hunter, someone had walked up on this man just standing upright and dead next to a tree.
Young dead man standing: No one knows his name
The person who’d found the man came out of the woods and either called or personally contacted the TVA cops and they all went back into the woods and there was the dead man standing up against a tree at the Model Fire Tower. There was no one else around. There were no vehicles. The man, according to the second cop, was a younger man.
The age was not told, but I remember them saying he was a young guy. They also said the young dead man was dressed in a dark suit with a neck tie. They said he was wearing a suit, hard sole, Sunday type of dress shoes, a necktie and he was also wearing sunglasses.
Now this is what I heard the cops tell the ranger aides. I can remember one of the aides saying something like, “Would you repeat all of that again?” So the first cop went all over it again. Dead man, young, suit, necktie, Sunday shoes and sunglasses. No vehicle. No tire tracks.
No vehicles or tracks. Helicopter?
The cops did, however, say they saw no sign of a car or truck coming or going from the dead man, but they did say there was a clearing near where the dead man was standing near the Model Fire Tower. It appeared to the TVA cops that a portion of the tall grass was flattened down and flattened recently. I looked to the cops as if, possibly, a helicopter had landed in the spot and had hovered there a while and then taken back off.
Speculation was the helicopter landed in, never shut off its motor, and someone or someones took the dead man out of the helicopter and placed him, standing up, against a tree in the woods near the Model Fire Tower.
Then the cops came around asking if anyone had seen anything unusual and none of us had. (They did not ask me, but I had not seen anything unusual except for the TVA cops coming in and asking if we (or at least asking the ranger aides) if they had seen anything unusual up to and including a helicopter that may or may not have deposited a young dead man in a business suit, necktie and sunglasses up against a tree in the woods near the fire tower.
Don’t tell anyone! But I have and did
The cops told the rangers not to say anything to anyone until they got it all checked out. Of course the aides told the next ranger to check in at the fire tower later that day. And when I got home I made sure to tell my father the story.
The next few days, and even a week or so after that first encounter, the TVA cops would come by, speak briefly with the ranger aides and go off. Every so often the ranger aides would ask a TVA cop who may come by if there were any updates. My father told me a bit later on he had heard something about the TVA cops looking into something unusual or mysterious in LBL, but nothing else really came of it.
A few years later when I graduated from Murray State with a freshly minted degree in Journalism and a head full of questions, I did, on occasions to speak with TVA cops, ask about the episode. I never got a straight answer from a TVA cop.
I also asked the local sheriff and some sheriff’s deputies in Stewart County. The deputies genuinely seemed to not know anything at all. The sheriff never indicated he knew anything at all; but he never really came out and said he did not know anything about it at all either.
Still an LBL mystery: Ever hear this one?
Through the years I have asked some folks who had dealing with the TVA cops at the time, LBL mysteries and unsolved murders or suspicious deaths in the area. I have no idea if there was a case file on this unusual death or not. No TVA cop would ever confirm to me that any such event ever happened. But I know what I heard.
And on that fall day in 1975 I heard it come straight from the mouths of two TVA cops that they were looking into the unusual and strange death and circumstances surround the death of an unknown young man in a dark business suit, necktie, hard sole shoes and sunglasses who was standing upright against a tree in the woods near the Model Fire Tower.
If you know anything at all about this, please let US know! Thanks.
Story and Photos by David R. Ross — LBLUS.com
https://www.middletennesseemysteries.com/
