How Central KY ‘Tent Girl’ homicide victim was identified nearly 30 years later

Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.

It was a gruesome sight on May 17, 1968 — an unidentified, naked woman wrapped in tent fabric, tied up in twine, was discovered in Scott County, about 13 miles north of Lexington.

The day before, a man named Wilbur Riddle was collecting glass insulators telephone workers were replacing with cable off U.S. 25 near the Sadieville exit when he saw a tarp laying in a field.

The tarp was beside a fence and below a rock ledge, and Riddle thought he could salvage the tarp and sell it. When he investigated, he decided to kick the tarp to see what was in it. The tarp then rolled down a 30-foot embankment. When it came to a stop, Riddle realized there was a decomposed body inside of it.

Riddle contacted the authorities immediately, who concluded the body had been in the field for between two and three weeks. After checking missing persons’ reports and investigating other avenues, they were unable to identify her. The body became known as “Tent Girl.”

With no new leads or information as to who she might have been or what might have happened to her, the remains were buried in Georgetown Cemetery in 1971.

A local company donated a headstone that was inscribed “Tent Girl, Found May 17, 1968, On U.S. Highway 25 N., Died about April 26 — May 3, 1968, About 16 to 19 years, Height 5 feet 1 inch, Weight 110 to 115 lbs., Reddish Brown Hair, Unidentified.”

Over the years, people would visit her grave and leave flowers or light candles in remembrance of the unknown girl, but the case remained closed.

In the late 1980s, Todd Matthews of Livingston, Tennessee, married Wilbur Riddle’s daughter. When he heard that the “Tent Girl” case had haunted his father-in-law, he began investigating. He used the internet and began combing through files of missing persons on message boards.

He started a website dedicated to Tent Girl as a way to educate people about her discovery and to hopefully gain more insight.

In 1998, he came across a description posted by the Hackmann family on a missing person website. The report described a young married woman who had gone missing in late 1967.

She’d been living in Lexington with her husband and infant daughter. Matthews emailed information about Tent Girl to a contact for the Hackmann family — Rosemary Westbrook of Arkansas. The family believed the information matched that of Barbara Ann Hackmann Taylor, her missing sister.

Westbrook contacted the Scott County Sheriff’s Office and confirmed her identity through a distinctive gap between her two top center teeth.

Scott County officials exhumed Tent Girl’s body and were able to confirm that she was a potential match to Hackmann family members through DNA. In April 1998, 30 years after her discovery, the Scott County Sheriff’s Office identified Tent Girl as Barbara Ann Hackmann. She was 24 at the time of her death.

On April 25 of that year, Scott County held a funeral for Hackmann in the Georgetown Cemetery. About 60 mourners came, as did Hackmann’s three sisters and her two daughters. By now, Hackmann’s daughter was grown with children of her own.

The Scott County mourners had never met Hackmann, but many of them told reporters they wanted to pay their respects and express the emotional attachment they had to her.

A new headstone was placed under the original grave marker, this one with her birth name, nickname, date of birth, presumed date of death and an inscription “Loving Mother, Grandmother & Sister.”

Her married name was left off the new headstone. Police identified her husband, George Earl Taylor, as the prime suspect in her murder. A carnival worker, Taylor had not reported Hackmann missing but instead told her family she had run off with another man.

By the time Hackmann was identified though, Taylor was dead. He died of cancer in 1987.

Afterthe identification, Matthews started “The Doe Network,” a group that maintains an online database for volunteers to match missing persons with unidentified bodies. The identification of Hackmann is also thought to be one of the first Jane Doe cases solved by internet sleuths.

Have a question or story idea related to Lexington’s 250-year history? Let us know at 250LexKy@gmail.com.