The strange disappearance of Mike Hearon from the Great Smoky Mountains

June 27, 2021 StrangeOutdoors.com

Michael Edwin “Mike” Hearon, Disappeared August 23, 2008, Happy Valley, Blount County, Near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee.

Revised October 2023

At around 11 am on August 23, 2008, 51-year-old Michael Edwin “Mike” Hearon was last seen on his 4-wheel-drive ATV (All-Terrain-Vehicle) heading toward some heavily forested land near his 100-acre home on Bell Branch Road, Blount County, Tennessee. The area lies adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park boundary.

This was the last time Mike was ever seen. Despite an extensive search of the area around his home, no clues have ever been found apart from his abandoned ATV with the keys in the ignition in high gear and the kill switch off.

There were no footprints, no bits of torn clothing, no obvious trail through the undergrowth, and no blood, tissue, or bones. Nothing to indicate Mike Hearon had even been there.

It was assumed by the authorities he had been abducted or lost in the forest. The family believes that foul play was involved. Years on, nothing has been found. What happened to Mike Hearon that day in the wilderness around Happy Valley in Tennessee in August 2008?

About Mike Hearon

Mike was 5’ 10” and weighed around 185 pounds. He was wearing a faded red t-shirt with khaki cargo shorts and sandals on the day of his disappearance. He has a surgical scar on the back of his knee, a scar on his leg between the knee and the thigh, a snake bite scar on one foot, an appendectomy scar on his abdomen, and a tattoo on his lower back. One of his feet was one to one and a half sizes smaller than the other foot, and he had caps on his teeth.

Apart from mild high blood pressure, Mike was fit and healthy.

He was born and raised in East Tennessee and attended Lanier High School, where he played football. After high school, he worked for the park service, trimming trails. He then started building as a third-generation home builder and had a successful building business, Michael Hearon Builders, that his sons Matt and Andy also contracted with. The firm had sold much of its housing inventory in 2007 before the housing crash of 2008/2009, and there were no apparent signs of financial distress.

Mike knew the Happy Valley area well and the 100-acre farm with cattle he owned there. He would often explore caves and go deep into the adjacent Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Happy Valley and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Happy Valley (left) and the crest of Chilhowee Mountain (right), viewed from Foothills Parkway

Happy Valley is an unincorporated community in Blount County, Tennessee, with around 500 residents. It is situated in a narrow valley of the same name on the northwestern fringe of the Great Smoky Mountains. Chilhowee Mountain spans Happy Valley to the north, and it is walled off to the south by Pine Mountain to the southwest and Hatcher Mountain to the southeast. Cades Cove is opposite Hatcher and Pine Mountain to the south, and Happy Valley Ridge provides the valley's eastern barrier, splitting it off from Lake in the Sky and the Top of The World community.

Happy Valley Road, which connects U.S. Route 129 with the Look Rock section of Foothills Parkway, is the only major road access for Happy Valley.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is 522,419 acres in size and straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Smoky Mountains are commonly shortened to the Smokies. The border between Tennessee and North Carolina runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park. It was chartered by the United States Congress in 1934 and officially dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.

The park contains some of the highest mountains in the east, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The Appalachian Trail passes through it on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 12.5 million visitors in 2019, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.

The Smokies are covered with drainages eroded by creeks, with many giant boulders and steep cliffs cut with crevices. There are occasional wild cats and resident black bears, and the landscape also features thickets of trees and vegetation that can trap you if you stray from an established trail.

In March and April each year, hungry bears come out of hibernation, and they are at their most dangerous as there isn't much food around, but even in the summer, they are known to attack people in the area.

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The disappearance of Mike Hearon

Andy, Mike and Matt Hearon

Both of Mike’s sons, Andy and Matt, last heard from him on Saturday, August 23, 2008.

Andy, 26, said his dad called him about 9.30 am to let him know that he was leaving his condo in the nearby town of Maryville, Tennesee, and coming over to his house to pick up a lawnmower and trailer to cut the grass on a property in Happy Valley. Andy wasn’t at home when his dad called him, but while they were on the phone, he told him he was on his way back and could help Mike put the mower on the trailer. Matt, 25, said he got a voicemail from his dad stating the same thing.

Mike went to his farm in Happy Valley most weekends, and he was keen to mow down some grass on a neighboring 40-acre property owned by missionaries that had been out of town for a while.

Andy told his dad that if he didn’t want to wait for him, he could go ahead and transport it by himself as they lived about a half-hour apart, so he’d either see his dad loading the mower and helping him or pass him on the drive.

Andy said he passed his dad on Gateway Road as he was returning to his home that morning. Mike had the mower and was traveling toward East Lamar Alexander Parkway, probably heading toward Bell Branch Road. Andy said, "I didn't pick up on anything different, nothing in particular.” Matt and Andy said one of their dad's best friends also talked to him that morning with no sense of anything being wrong.

A few hours later, around 11.00 am, Mike’s neighbors who lived next to his property near the end of Bell Branch Road saw him pull into his driveway, and he was hauling a piece of equipment on a trailer. Mike’s house was towards the dead-end of Bell Branch Road, so he passed a lot of the other farms on the way to his property.

Thirty minutes later, neighbors saw Mike on his 4-wheeler ATV and said he waved as he drove down Bell Branch Road.

Suspicions raised

Matt and Andy went on with their weekends and said it was not unusual not to talk to their dad over the weekend as they saw each other at work. They assumed their Dad would call and return the mower and trailer to one of them when he was done in Happy Valley.

So, the brothers were surprised when, on Sunday, August 24, at around 2 pm, their grandmother, Alma, called. She was worried that she had not heard from Mike and hadn’t been able to get a hold of him on his cell phone. This wasn’t normal for Mike, even though cellphone reception in Happy Valley was virtually non-existent.

Alma told Matt and Andy that earlier that morning she and Mike’s dad had walked about 5 minutes from their house on Happy Valley Road to Mike’s house on Bell Branch Road and knocked on Mike’s door, but no one had answered. They had noticed Mike’s truck was in the driveway with a mower and trailer attached to it, just as their grandfather had seen it earlier that weekend while passing through. The lawn also hadn't been mowed.

Andy and Matt weren’t overly concerned that Mike hadn’t answered the door or unhitched the trailer as he would often be away tending to the 40 head of cattle or doing odd jobs around the farm. Matt and Andy told their grandmother that their Dad was probably just busy on the farm, and once he was back near a landline phone, he would call her.

At about 8.30 am the next day, on Monday, August 25, their grandmother called the men again and said she still had not heard from her son and she believed that something was very wrong. This raised alarm bells in the family, and Mike’s sons realized after speaking with her this second time that they needed to check on their dad. So, Matt drove to Mike’s condo on Brown Court off Amerine Road in Maryville, where he stayed three or four nights a week to be close to work. Two of Mike’s three vehicles, a Mercedes car and a Harley motorcycle, were still in the garage. His bed was made, and the lights were off. The only vehicle missing was Mike’s pickup truck, which Matt knew from talking with his grandmother was at the farm. Nothing seemed amiss.

After checking on the condo, Matt met with Andy, and the two headed to the farm on Bell Branch Road. Mike’s mom had gone back to the farmhouse in Happy Valley for a second time to check to see if he had turned up, but when she arrived, she called Andy and Matt to tell them that the ATV was still in the front yard and Mike’s truck was still parked by the house with the lawnmower and trailer attached to the back of it.

When they arrived at the farm, they checked on the truck. Strangely, the windows were down, the doors were unlocked and Mike's keys, ID, money clip, and cell phone were still in the vehicle.

They also realized the 4-wheeler their grandmother had seen was an old ATV and that the new one he had recently purchased was missing. Mike's truck was also parked in a position that he would not have customarily left it in, given that a school bus was parked on the property, and Mike always moved the truck before the bus arrived on Monday morning.

For Matt, the missing ATV really concerned him. It meant that Mike might have had an accident and got injured badly and was unable to get back to the farm.

Around noon on Monday, August 25, the men alerted some close family members that Mike was missing and called their mom. She and Mike had been divorced for six or seven years at this point, but she still lived in Maryville. She drove to Happy Valley to help her sons try to find Mike. Jerry Hearon, Mike’s brother, learned about the search for Mike from his wife.

Matt and Andy repaired a flat tire on the old 4-wheeler and began searching their dad's property. They said they drove all of the ATV trails and checked the campgrounds in the nearby National Park. But there was no sign of their Dad.

Around 3 or 4 pm, the sons decided they should call 911. They initially spoke to the National Park Service because the farm is so close to the National Park but not actually in it, who transferred the report to the Blount County Sheriff's Office to file a missing person report.

The search

Between 6 and 7 pm, the Sheriff’s office and search teams began arriving at the farm to start the search just as it was getting dark. They talked to Mike's friends in the neighborhood and tried to pick up a scent with a sniffer dog but could not track him. About 30 minutes to an hour into the search, it started raining heavily, and it didn’t stop for several days.

They agreed that members of the sheriff's office, park service, emergency personnel, and the family would meet before daylight the following day to search.

One of Mike’s next-door neighbors on Bell Branch Road, Grady Whitehead, volunteered to lead some of the search parties even though he was in his 80’s. Grady had briefly seen Mike the day he disappeared as he drove past his house on his ATV and waved to him. The Hearon and Whitehead families were very close. Grady had been a park ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from 1955 until 1988, so he knew the area well and had excellent tracking skills. He was sure he could locate Mike, as the extensive vegetation in Happy Valley would give up indications like trampled foliage, broken twigs, or bushes if someone had walked through an area or fallen and then tried to find help. His wife said he was so passionate about finding Mike that he was the first one on the search and the last to finish.

Mike Hearon’s ATV found

The next day, Tuesday, August 26, Mike Hearon’s missing ATV was found by a friend at 12.05 pm, who just happened to be checking the area near Happy Valley Loop, a road that leads to Bell Branch Road and about a mile from Mike’s house.

The ATV was found in a location that Mike did not frequently visit, near an abandoned cabin and was close to the National Park but not inside it. It hadn’t been parked, and it looked like someone had jumped off of it in a hurry or it had been ditched in the thick brush at the spot. It had not been damaged or wrecked in any way, and there was fuel in the tank.

Matt said, "Once they found it there, I knew whatever happened was not an accident. The 4-wheeler was found in high gear on a steep hill, and the ignition switch was left on. with the kill switch off”. Matt said his Dad would never leave his ATV on as it would drain the battery. They were sure he would have wrecked his four-wheeler if he had an accident, as they had feared. The brothers saw the ATV and knew right away that it was the one that belonged to their Dad, but they had no idea why the four-wheeler would be where it was. They suspected straight away this was no accident!

Matt Hearon said, “Once they took me where the 4-Wheeler was found, I knew right away, I thought, “Yeah. There was foul play involved.” Because it didn’t make any sense where and how the 4-wheeler was left. That he would have put it there or that he… Something happened that wasn’t right. It’s how the 4-wheeler was there. It wasn’t on his property. It was in between his property and the property that I had mentioned that he was mowing for hay for the missionaries, which was probably about a mile and a half, maybe a mile up the road. It was kind of in between those properties. It was a three-minute walk to the National Park.”

The following day, Wednesday, August 27, deputies and more than 50 community volunteers searched the vicinity near where the ATV had been found. There was no trace of Mike or where he had gone, with the rain not helping the authorities’ attempts to gather valuable forensic evidence. No footprints could be found on the ATV, nor any trail through the dense underbrush that he could have used. Additionally, dogs could not pick up a scent, apart from in the truck back at the house, and searchers could find no evidence of an animal attack or foul play - torn bits of clothing, blood or tissue, bones, and there was no sign of a struggle. There was zero evidence that Hearon had ever even been there at all. It was as if he had just spontaneously ceased to exist.

Hundreds of volunteers and officials covered about 450 acres, with some areas being searched more than once and included an aerial search with assistance from the Knox County Sheriff's Office helicopter, cadaver dogs from North Carolina, sheriff's deputies on horseback, private citizens with horses, ATVs and grid searches of the backcountry on foot. About 50 miles of hiking trails were also searched. Drones were also deployed to map the area. The sheriff’s office also brought divers to drag two ponds on Mike’s property. On the following Wednesday, cadaver dogs were also brought into the area but picked up no signs of human decay.

The Blount County Sheriff’s office called off the official search for Mike Hearon on Friday, August 29, 2008.

In January 2009, another search was undertaken, and an article of clothing near the area where Mike’s ATV was located was found, but it didn’t come back as a match for him. They also found some bones in a fire pit not far from the ATV location, but they turned out to be from a cow.

All these years later, no trace of Mike, his clothes, or his belongings has been found. The woods around where the ATV was combed, and authorities have never seen any sign of Mike. Searches by friends and family have turned up nothing in the years since the disappearance.

Matt and Andy began organizing an annual hike called “Hike for Mike” along the trails near Mike’s property in Happy Valley. That event continued for several years but has now ended as no new leads have turned up despite a $15,000 reward.

What happened to Mike Hearon?

The weather, in theory, could have washed away tracks and sharply diminished the scent trail that dogs were asked to follow, and the only hit was on the truck.

Voluntary disappearance or suicide

Both sons say he would not have voluntarily abandoned his family. He was looking forward to grandchildren. Andy Hearon was married to his wife, Kacie, about three months before Mike’s disappearance.

Andy Hearon said, "Dad was big on family. He loved being outdoors and being here on the Bell Branch property.” Matt said, “We definitely don’t think that happened. He was too close to his mom. Me and my brother had just gotten married. There’s no reason he would have gotten up and walked. You know? That’s one thing my brother and I can clear, that he didn’t just make himself disappear. He added, “I think (Mike) would have been an excellent grandfather. I just know he would. He’d already been talking about how he was going to build him a cabin on the property and have a pool for the baby — he was going to take the baby up to the pool for a swim — he had a lot of plans.”

Matt said his Dad didn’t suffer from depression and was very unlikely to have disappeared into the woods to commit suicide. The Hearon building business never was in financial trouble, and Mike didn’t have any obvious personal or business enemies.

Foul Play

The fact that the ignition was left switched on in his ATV indicates that, for some reason, Mike suddenly left the trail and perhaps saw or heard something in the woods or was confronted by something or someone forcing him to abandon his vehicle immediately.

Andy Hearon later said, "We don't feel like he put the 4-wheeler there" backed into some bushes. It was not on property Hearon owned and on a road he did not frequent, "I don't know why he would have been on that road," Matt Hearon said. "That makes me believe it was foul play."

Some think that Mike went missing in a suspected drug deal gone bad or by stumbling across an illegal pot farm.

Other explanations

There have been many strange disappearances from the area around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park over the years. Some figure it could be an attack by Big Foot an extraterrestrial abduction, or other paranormal activity. The lack of any evidence of Mike’s disappearance gives credibility to those believing it is not just a case of pot farm smugglers or murderers incited by business debts.

Read more strange stories from the Great Smoky Mountains

The disturbing death of Jenny Bennett in the Smokies

The bizarre disappearance of Dennis Martin from the Great Smoky Mountains

The mysterious disappearance of Trenny Lynn Gibson from Clingmans Dome in the Smokies

The mysterious disappearance of Derek Joseph Lueking from the Smokies

The strange disappearance and death of Susan Clements at Clingmans Dome

The Strange Disappearance of Polly Melton from Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Member Only)

See the list of Exclusive members-only articles on StrangeOutdoors.com

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Valley,_Blount_County,_Tennessee

https://charleyproject.org/case/michael-edwin-hearon

http://www.findmikehearon.com/