Unsolved TN: What happened to toddler who vanished from RiverGate Mall in 1996?

GOODLETTSVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Over the years, age progression photos have shown what Lucy Rebecca Meadows would have looked like as she grew from a toddler to a young woman, but the mystery of her disappearance remains unchanged.

Lucy was just 3 years old when she seemingly vanished on July 25, 1996. Her mother, Young Meadows, told authorities she had taken Lucy with her to the RiverGate Mall in Goodlettsville that day.

At the time, the mall, which now sits mostly empty, was bustling with life.

While in the parking lot, Young said she let Lucy out of the back seat of the car on the driver’s side and went to the passenger’s side to grab some items. When she looked back for Lucy, she was gone.

Mall security was contacted, and the area was immediately searched. However, Lucy was nowhere to be found.

In the days after, Goodlettsville detectives launched an extensive investigation. One of the initial detectives on the case told News 2 he interviewed witnesses who said they heard Lucy’s mother scream.

A security camera focusing on the parking lot panned slowly side to side over the area, but by the time it got to the car, investigators said it didn’t show a child there. Since then, authorities have exhausted thousands of possible leads and scenarios.

Detectives searched the property where Lucy and her family lived in Clarksville, and some leads took them as far as Chicago, but all were dead ends.

According to police, Lucy disappeared at a time when her mother, who’s from Korea, and father, Tom Meadows, were in a custody dispute. The couple eventually divorced, and Tom passed away.

Before his death, he told News 2 in a 2001 interview, “No closure, no end to this, just wish we could find her.”

Officials later confirmed that Tom had passed a lie detector test during questioning about his daughter’s disappearance. However, news reports listed Young’s polygraph test results as “deceptive.”

In a 2018 interview, retired Goodlettsville Detective Harry Bell told News 2 they were not getting “a lot of cooperation from some family members,” making the case even more difficult to solve.

Investigators have had to consider whether Lucy was ever at the mall in the first place, but her reported abduction is the only information they’ve had to go on for decades.

Today, Lucy would be 31 years old. When she was last seen, she weighed just 30 pounds. She was reportedly wearing a long button-down blue denim dress with buttons on the front, white socks and white canvas shoes.

The latest age progression photo shows what she would look like at 20 years old.

Anyone who has seen Lucy or has information related to the case is asked to contact the Goodlettsville Police Department at 615-851-2236 or the TBI at 1-800-TBI-FIND.