In 1998, This 16-Year-Old Left For A 20-Minute Jog And Never Returned Home: Then, Her Family Discovered She Was Involved In A Relationship With Her Taekwondo Instructor, Who Was The Last Person To See Her Before She Vanished
16-year-old Tera Smith was known for having many passions, and she made room for all of them in her life. She loved nature, horses, playing basketball, writing poetry, and staying in touch with her spiritual side.
“Her freshman year of high school, she was also homecoming queen and arm wrestling champ,” added Tera’s mother, Marilyn, in an interview with Dateline.
And among her three younger siblings, Tera is remembered as always being a role model as a big sister. She was a star athlete, cherished by her friend group, and made sure that no one ever felt left out.
“She went out of her way, I think, to make everyone feel included,” Tera’s younger sister, Kyra, said.
Tera, along with her siblings Kyra, Trevor, and Sierra, was born and raised in Redding, California. And at the young age of sixteen, she impressed her family with how much she put on her plate.
Tera lived up to her role as a big sister, maintained good grades at Central Valley High School, worked at her family business, and still dedicated time to take up new hobbies– like Taekwondo.
Still, no teenager is ever perfect, and in August of 1998, Tera was grounded by her mother after she snuck out of the house.
It was not until August 22, though, that she would mysteriously disappear and leave the Smith family in shambles.
Facebook; pictured above is Tera
That day, Tera’s mother, Marilyn, spent the afternoon running errands with her daughter before dropping her off at home. Tera’s younger sister, Sierra, was also home with Tera at the time.
Then, Marilyn headed to work at the family business– known as the Oasis Fun Center– which was home to everything from mini-golf to go-karts. The fun center was located only a few miles from the Smith family’s home.
Tera was also supposed to work a shift at the Oasis Fun Center that evening. But, to Marilyn’s surprise, her daughter never showed up.
Marilyn ended up phoning home to see what was going on, and her youngest daughter, Sierra, explained how Tera had left for a jog and claimed she would only be gone for twenty minutes. According to Sierra, though, those twenty minutes came and went, and Tera never arrived back home.
So, Marilyn decided to just head home and drive down any road where Tera might have been jogging. But after combing the streets that night, the mother found no sign of her daughter.
She was also very frustrated with Tera but grew increasingly worried as time went on. According to Marilyn, Tera never missed work– a track record that indicated something horrible had happened.
“It had never happened before. So I was frustrated with her until it turned real. Until we realized she might not be coming home,” Marilyn recalled.
Still, the Smith family held onto hope that Tera might have just been at a friend’s house. So, before they contacted the police, the Smiths phoned some of Tera’s friends as well as an ex-boyfriend.
At first, no one knew where the sixteen-year-old was. But then, Marilyn received a call back from one of Tera’s friends.
“I think she was having an inappropriate relationship with Troy,” Tera’s friend revealed. Troy was Tera’s 29-year-old Taekwondo instructor, and alarm bells immediately went off in Marilyn’s mind.
At that point, she contacted the police. Then, Marilyn and her husband, Terry, traveled to Troy’s home at 9:00 p.m. that night to speak with the Taekwondo instructor. According to Troy’s wife, though, he was not home at the time.
Kyra detailed how she had no idea her sister Tera was involved in anything other than a student-mentor relationship with Troy.
“I didn’t have a clue. I knew Tera looked up to him a lot– like idolized him,” she said.
It was not until 11:00 p.m. that evening that Troy finally called the Smith family back. He claimed to have picked Tera up earlier that day, then dropped her off a mile or two away from her home in Reddington. Finally, Troy claimed he went up to a hill known as Hang Glider Hill to pray for five hours.
Facebook; pictured above is another photo of Tera
And with little information to go on from Troy, the Smiths were forced to go through Tera’s belongings in hopes of finding a clue about where she might have gone. It was at that point that Marilyn and Terry discovered a long, written letter that Tera had intended to give to Troy.
According to Tera’s parents, the letter indicated that Tera planned to tell Troy that their relationship was over. The Smiths also believe that although she originally wrote the letter and perhaps intended to mail it or give it to Troy, she ultimately decided to tell him in person.
The news of Tera’s relationship with her Taekwondo instructor shocked her family, and they began to look further into who Troy really was.
They later learned he had a prior spousal assault conviction in 1992. And according to court documents, Troy denied ever forcing his ex-wife to be intimate with him while holding her at knifepoint.
Instead, Troy told the court that he was intimate with his ex-wife. But, rather than holding her at knifepoint, he told her he was going to kill himself.
Investigators on Tera’s case eventually searched Troy’s properties and also discovered various shotguns and old sporting rifles tucked away in the attic of his Taekwondo studio. And since he was a felon, possessing these firearms was not allowed.
Troy was ultimately found guilty of possession of a firearm by a felon by a jury on June 24, 1999, and consequently sentenced to four years in jail.
Unfortunately, though, nothing from the investigation into Troy led investigators to find clues about Tera’s whereabouts or ever name him an official suspect in the teen’s disappearance.
Troy maintained that he had no involvement in Tera’s disappearance. In interviews with police, he claimed that Tera had called him while he was working and said she wanted to see him. Troy then went to Tera’s home and recalled how she had been standing at the bottom of her driveway at the time he arrived.
Tera then allegedly leaned through his window and asked Troy for two thousand dollars. He claims he told Tera that he did not have that much money but then said he would give it to Tera if he knew what the funds were for.
At that point, Troy said that the teen became angry with him. Nonetheless, she reportedly asked Troy for a ride, and he claims to have dropped Tera off at Old Oregon Trail, where she planned to go jogging.
And with Troy never being considered a person of interest in Tera’s case, the Smith family has unfortunately hit dead-end after dead-end.
At first, Marilyn and Terry were pleased with how much effort local police were putting into finding Tera. Authorities called in cadaver dogs and even practically drained a nearby lake while trying to unearth what happened to their daughter.
As time went on, though, the Smiths noticed investigators’ effort waning and their daughter’s case becoming colder and colder.
“We feel like they [the police] really gave it their all for probably six months to a year. And then it was an important case for another year or two. And since then, it’s shelved. It’s completely cold. Stone-cold,” Terry explained.
Marilyn held onto hope for a very long time. With the drawn-out investigation, she felt like she and her family never mourned Tera until later on since they hoped the teen would return home.
“It was a very gradual process realizing she was gone,” Marilyn said.
As for Terry, though, he claims to have had a gut instinct about his daughter’s disappearance within the first forty-eight hours of her vanishing.
“I think Marilyn held on to hope far longer than I did. I was convinced that she was gone from almost the get-go,” Terry revealed.
Despite their different views on Tera’s case, though, the Smiths still want justice– and hope that their cold case will not end up part of another unsolved statistic.
“There are plenty of cold cases out there that may never be solved. We just hang on to hope that ours won’t be one of them,” Terry said.
According to police, Tera’s case is still active and under investigation. Investigators are committed to following up on any leads but said there are no active search efforts underway at this time.
At the time of Tera’s disappearance, she was five foot seven, had blonde hair, weighed about one hundred and thirty-five pounds, and had an athletic build. She would now be forty years old.
If you have any information regarding Tera’s disappearance or whereabouts, you are urged to contact the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office at (530) 245-6135.
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