Overton County Sheriff’s Department has now officially identified the man whose body was found and the location where it was found Sunday, October 27.

According to OCSD Detective Tom Rosecrants, the man was identified as Nathan W. Reed, whose last known residence was on Muddy Lane in Crawford and who had been missing since the second week of August.

“He was found less than a quarter of a mile from where he was staying,” Rosecrants said.

The detective said investigators aren’t sure at this time what happened to Reed or whether any foul play was involved.

“We don’t know. We really, honestly don’t know. He’s at the medical examiner’s in Nashville, and they’re bringing in an anthropologist to look at the body. He was very decomposed,” Rosecrants said.

“There was some markings that we could positively identify on him, meaning some skin, tattoos, that type of thing. He was probably identified with his teeth and tattoos,” he added.

Rosecrants also revealed more about when and how the body was found.

“The call came in somewhere around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday,” he said and asked whether he could identify who found Reed’s body, he added, “They’re minors, so I’m not going to do that.”

Rosecrants said Reed had been living at a residence on Muddy Lane with other people who authorities did not name. The home was reportedly owned by his father, Mackie Reed.

Reed was born September 9, 1982, and Rosecrants said he believed based on the condition of Reed’s body that he had been dead since before his 31st birthday. It was even possible, he said, that Reed had been dead since the day he went amiss in August.

Reed was familiar to area law enforcement.

“He does have a history of drug use,” Rosecrants said. “It’s very well possible he got down there and he was drugged out and may have just fell over from being too high. We just don’t know. And we may never know that.”

Rosecrants said it would likely be five or six weeks before the medical examiner’s investigation was complete and a cause of death for Reed could be determined.

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For the second time in eight days, Overton County Sheriff’s Department and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are working a case of a dead body being found, this time in Hilham.

The story broke Monday morning, November 4, when Overton County Solid Waste Department truck driver Danny Garrett discovered the body a few minutes after 8 a.m.

Garrett said, “All I could see was legs, and I thought at the time, well, you know, Halloween, somebody pulling a prank. All I could see was shoes and pants, so I pulled the truck outside, I walked around and went down there, and seen it was somebody. It looked like they wasn’t moving. I called 911.”

Garrett said he had noticed the body while picking up a dumpster at Hilham Convenience Center on Fisk Cemetery Road. He initially said he thought the body was a male subject, middle-aged, with short, sandy-colored hair. He indicated that the subject was wearing a ball cap and was laying next to the fence outside the convenience center near the guard shack.

Overton County Ambulance Service and Overton County Sheriff’s Department arrived at the scene shortly, with the ambulance service radioing that the subject was deceased at the time of their arrival. After OCSD took a preliminary look at the scene and roped it off with crime scene tape, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent was summoned.

A silver late-model Nissan Frontier pickup parked at the side of the Hilham Volunteer Fire Department near the intersection of Old Standing Stone Road and Fisk Cemetery Road was of interest to investigators, who took a number of photos of the vehicle. OCSD officials on the scene did not say whether they thought the vehicle was driven to the scene by the person whose body was found. Neighbors on Old Standing Stone Road said the truck had been spotted at that location as early as 9 a.m. Sunday, November 3.

At press time Tuesday, November 5, OCSD Detective Tom Rosecrants said the identity of the person still had not been determined. He said investigators were headed to Nashville to do an autopsy Tuesday morning.

Rosecrants also added that the gender of the deceased was not determined at the scene Monday morning.

“Well, we didn’t actually check her or his genitals, so we don’t know. It looks like a man, and that’s all we really know,” he said.

Rosecrants added that the death “appears to be” gun-related. Specifics about the location of the possible gunshot wound were not released by OCSD.