Where Scott and Greenwood Avenues intersect, there was a gathering Monday night. There’s been a similar get-together at this location in East Nashville, year after year.  

“Who would have ever thought 16 years later we’d be standing here, it’s unbelievable,” said one community member. 

For the 16th time, Debra Tuders held a vigil for her daughter, Tabitha.   

“Not a day goes by that we don’t think about her and talk about her,” Tuders said. “But, it’s hard.”  

Debra and Bo Tuders have walked among family and neighbors, invited them to this vigil at East Magnet Middle, since 2003. As a 13-year-old that year, Tabitha was on her way to this school.  She never made it, triggering 16 years of what her father calls, misery.   

“It never gets any easier when a child is missing,” said Bo Tuders. “It’s just as tough now as the day she came up missing, I guess you just learn to live with it.”   

Tuders believes a stranger took his daughter. She was walking to a bus stop, just blocks from her East Nashville, Lillian Street home.  Tabitha vanished and has not been seen or heard from since. 

 “The hardest part is not knowing if she’s still here with us or not,” Debra Tuders said. “We have hope she is, we’ll keep on believing she is until we know otherwise.”   

Today Tabitha Tuders would be 29. Age progressions have been released to show what she may look like. Bo and Debra say they still see her as a little girl, and they’ll still keep candles burning, and hope alive, for the return of their daughter.  

“If anyone knows something or hears something please come forward and let us know,” Debra Tuders said. “Somebody out there knows something, they just got to come forward and let us know.”  

FBI and Crime Stoppers have teamed up to offer a $51,000 reward in this case. If you have any information, call 615-74-CRIME.