Account
Apr 02, 2009
Dec 18, 2023
Tammy
Akers
62
14
64 inches
85 lbs
White / Caucasian
Female
On a cold day in February of 1977, two teenage friends, 14-year-old Tammy Lynn Akers and Angela Rader, were dropped off at William Ruffner Junior High School in Roanoke, Virginia. However, the girls never attended their classes that day and were last seen hitchhiking with the intention of traveling to Florida. Tammy was a young girl with red hair and blue eyes, and had several distinguishing marks including a protruding navel, scarred earlobes, and a black mark on her left cheek. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing a green short-sleeved sweater, jeans, a suede jacket, and suede shoes. Because both Tammy and her friend had a history of running away, law enforcement initially did not treat their disappearance with a high degree of urgency. This initial assessment, however, would give way to a decades-long mystery that would leave their families searching for answers. In the months that followed their disappearance, a few glimmers of hope emerged, only to be quickly extinguished. One of the girls' mothers received a phone call from someone claiming to be her daughter, assuring her that she was alright. There was also an unconfirmed sighting of the two girls in a grocery store. As time stretched on with no concrete leads, the families' fears grew. A significant development in the case came years later, in 1980, when two young women reported a disturbing incident from a party they had attended. They told police that a man named Earl Conrad Bramblett, a friend of the Akers family for whom both girls had worked, had drunkenly fired a gun and cried out that he wished he "hadn't hurt Tammy". This information shifted the focus of the investigation, and Bramblett became a person of interest. Despite the suspicions surrounding him, Earl Bramblett was never charged in connection with the disappearances of Tammy Akers and Angela Rader. He maintained his innocence in their cases until his execution in 2003 for the 1994 murders of a family of four. Authorities did excavate the yard of the home where Bramblett lived at the time the girls vanished but found nothing of significance. The case of Tammy Lynn Akers and Angela Rader remains one of the oldest cold cases in Roanoke. The passage of time has not diminished the hope of their families for answers and closure. The investigation into what happened to the two young girls remains open, a haunting reminder of two lives interrupted and a community left with unanswered questions.
Feb 07, 1977
Roanoke
Virginia
Roanoke County
25667
ROANOKE POLICE DEPARTMENT
ROANOKE
Virginia
Roanoke City
24016
348 CAMPBELL AVE, Virginia
5408532211
Local
Law Enforcement
06-120677
ROANOKE POLICE DEPARTMENT
6743
Red/Auburn
Blue
Blue
06/02/2026
