Back in 1986, Alice Mae Sullivan, a Tennessee college student, dropped her young son at a babysitter’s before vanishing without a trace.
Decades later, fresh developments are shedding light on her mysterious disappearance.
On October 13, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department revealed that a skull had been positively identified as Alice’s, a breakthrough achieved by forensic experts at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. Read the full announcement here.
The skull, which bore no indications of violence, was initially unearthed on February 20, 2004, by a contractor working on a residential development in North Nashville’s Stokers Lane. Although police conducted an exhaustive search of the vicinity, they were unable to locate additional remains, as reported by officials.
Over two decades passed before the skull could be conclusively connected to Alice.
When Did Alice Mae Sullivan Disappear?
At the time of her disappearance on August 28, 1986, Alice was a 20-year-old student at Tennessee State University.
That morning, according to police, she dropped off her 3-year-old son at a babysitter’s house before heading to class. She was last seen walking campus near the Gentry Center, according to WTVF. However, she never made it to her 1 p.m. class, and when she didn’t make her usual nightly call home, her parents reported her missing.
“It’s strange when she don’t call me,” her mom Lilly Sullivan told the news outlet in 2022. “She would call me at night, sometimes twice.”
At the time of her disappearance, Alice lived at the Town Terrace apartments near campus with her boyfriend. According to Lilly, her daughter told her that she wanted to move out and move back to her hometown in Gallatin, but she never explained why.
After Alice disappeared, Lilly told WTVF she called the apartment and spoke to her daughter’s boyfriend, who told her that Alice never came home that night and he was watching her son.
Years later, Lilly is still tormented by not knowing what happened to her daughter.
“The pain don’t go away,” she told WTVF. “It still hurts. It hurts like it happened yesterday.”
Metro Police Detective Matthew Filter told WTVF in 2022 that investigators suspect that Alice’s death was likely the result of foul play.
Police said Oct. 13 that the investigation into Alice’s disappearance is “continuing.”
