August 23rd 2009

Gladwin, Pennsylvania

29-year-old Tony Lee Sharpless attends a party with her friend, Crystal Johns.

When Tony becomes intoxicated and starts making a scene, both she and Crystal are asked to leave.

While driving away, the two friends get into an argument which leads to Crystal being kicked out of

the car, but Tony does not return home and is never seen again. Over the next few years,

there would be some intriguing leads, including a license plate reading from Tony's car in New

Jersey, an anonymous letter claiming that she was killed during an altercation with a police officer,

but no trace of Tony or her vehicle is ever found. After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.

I'm your host Robin Mortar and we've got an odd missing persons case to cover today.

The 2009 disappearance of Tony Lee Sharpless. This is a story which was featured on the true

crime show disappeared and it is both a tragic and baffling mystery. Tony was a single mother who

struggled with bipolar disorder and seemed to be getting her life together, but decided to cut

loose one night and go out partying even though she was not supposed to be drinking alcohol because

of her medication. By the end of the evening, Tony was highly intoxicated and displaying erratic

behavior and after ordering her friend out of her vehicle, Tony drove off and vanished without a

trace. In missing persons cases where an individual and their vehicle disappeared together,

the most logical explanation is usually that they drove into a body of water which would make sense

given the inebriated state Tony was in at the time. However, multiple searches of the nearest

river have failed to find Tony or her car and there are a pair of strange leads to suggest that

Tony made it to New Jersey at some point and that there might be more of this story, including

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