What happened to Roy Whited? Preview Dateline: Missing in America Season 4

Hi, I'm Josh Mankowicz with a preview of Dateline Missing in America.

In our podcast's fourth season, we share six new unsolved mysteries.

And we hope someone listening may have a clue that could help crack one of these cases.

Could that someone be you?

Here's Dateline Missing in America

tucked into the rolling hills and valleys of Middle Tennessee is Sparta, a rural community where neighbors aren't strangers, and many who live here see each other every week at church.

For almost a decade at the DeRossett Church of Christ, gospel music and the sermons of Pastor Roy Whited made the Sunday morning service soar.

He was a good preacher, you know, he had the way with the word.

Doug Watts says Roy is the reason he started going to church again, more than 20 years after he'd quit.

I told him he did it, and he said, no, God done it.

Yeah, I said he did it through you, you know.

And

I believe that.

In the first week of May 2024, something happened in Sparta that seemed almost impossible to believe.

That's when 64-year-old Roy Whited

vanished.

He's just gone like a puff of smoke, isn't he?

Yes, sir.

It's just unbelievable.

For White County Sheriff Steve Page,

Roy's case is personal.

Me and Roy are friends.

The sheriff is as baffled as anyone else, wondering how anyone as recognizable as Roy could disappear in plain sight.

I would dare to say 95% of the people in this county know Roy Whited, or maybe even 100%.

It is a mystery that has forced Roy's closest friends and family into the fellowship of the missing.

It's a group no one chooses to join.

Certainly not Roy's brother, Lynn Whitett.

I pray, I pray, I pray that he is somewhere and we will find him

because

otherwise I have to think the worst.

Thanks for listening.

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