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It's a lot of years. It's been a slow, long process. I believe it's coming up on the fourth year.

March and April, the month of this month, it's always like it hits you all over.

It was a really sad case, more for the kids, because they loved them, they were everything.

And they couldn't straighten up enough for them. The spite of everything he done, I mean, they still sunned and a brother.

And they have few grandkids, they lose track of that. It's someone that only dirates it just one less than a lot of people love.

But it's still their human. I mean, we all was put here for the same purpose. A lot of people don't look at it like that.

On March 31st, 2019, in the far northern part of the state of Tennessee, 33-year-old Adam Baird was seen for the last time in rural Campbell County.

He had been behaving oddly that day and for several days prior. And his family didn't know what was going on. But they had a couple of clues.

Adam wanted to connect with his wife, despite their separation several months prior. And he wanted to regain custody of their children.

But he was struggling. No one knew how severe his struggles were until he was gone. And there was no way for his family to know that when they saw him take off in his mom's car,

headed to an unknown destination that they'd never see him again.

I'm Marissa and from Wondery, this is episode 383 of The Vanished. Adam Baird's story.

Hey, I'm Cassie Depeckel, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, a team of American and Indian climbers are on a top secret Cold War mission to place a nuclear-powered spine device atop a deadly Himalayan mountain.

Listen to Against the odds on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

At the time of his disappearance in 2019, Adam may have felt that he had lost it all. His marriage had fallen apart. His children had been taken first by the state and subsequently adopted to another family. After Adam vanished.

When it was clear that Adam, nor his wife, could meet the requirements to have custody of their children back. It could easily be argued that Adam had every reason to disappear. But we know how rare that is.

So when we first started to try to get a grasp on Adam's disappearance and what may have happened, we asked his mom Brenda, who he had been living with at the time to tell us what she remembered.

Often I don't even talk about leaving and getting him a job, talking about going to Georgia down there and working for my brother's son, living down there in Langeon. And then he was talking about going to the Kentucky. But he never did make no effort to do that.

He wasn't in right mind. It's hard to figure out somebody like that. You can't figure out what to go under mine. They just sold suddenly. Go, you know, he lost his kids and then he lost her and singer with a man and everything.

And I was talking about going to Kentucky, like I told him that he was talking to me, you know, you just came up and go to somebody if you need to call and find out, you know, if I've got a job or hey, what are you going to come in and got him? Isn't that nail?

What in good shape appeared? It was in March, March 31. He'd been down to three days and he came back in. He had been out with the lady by his brother and wanted him to go somewhere with him.

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