School of Humans.

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On August twenty fourth, twenty twelve, a Vietnam veteran who had been visiting the Lake Linear Club apartments off the Dawsonville Highway in Gainesville, Georgia with his daughter and grandchildren, was taking a walk through the woods behind the complex the man light taking nature walks, and he was also following up on a report that he had made to the apartment management about a missing manhole cover.

He later told police he wanted to see if that manhole cover had been replaced yet.

It was around seven or seven fifteen pm in the evening, still almost full daylight, and when the man paused near a stream bed, he saw something disturbing, something that he had first thought was a mannequin.

Upon closer inspection, he realized that he was looking at a dead body, and he called nine to one one.

The young woman was sixteen year old Hannah Truelove, a student at Gainesville High School.

Hannah had been missing since the night before, and even though her exact cause of death has not been revealed, police say she died a violent death.

She had been stabbedultiple times and left in the stream bed a quarter mile away from home.

Her flip flop was found a few yards away, tangled in some branches.

Who killed Hannah Tree Love?

I'm Catherine Townsend.

Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.

If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Hell and Gone pod.

This is Helen Gone murder line.

Hannah Truelove's autopsy reports have never been made public, but information has come out through the media over the years, and some of the investigators on the case have commented publicly on her injuries.

Hannah was stabbed several times, but because it had rained heavily the night before, a lot of crucial evidence had been washed away.

There was very little blood at the crime scene.

Even so, it seemed like a frenzied attack.

Police investigated Hannah's timeline.

They were trying to figure out her pattern of movement, what was going on in her life, and who might have wanted to hurt her.

Hannah Osborne Truelove was born on May eighteenth, nineteen ninety six.

Her parents, Jeff and mona true Love, divorced when she was seven years old, so she lived with her mother.

Hannah had two older siblings, a brother and a sister, both of them already lived on their own.

Her father, Jeff, lived in Jackson County, Georgia, which was just a short drive away.

Hannah and her mother lived at the Lake Lanier Club apartments.

It's an upscale neighborhood and generally a safe area.

It's gated and you need an access code to get in, though the area near the waterline is open to the public, and since investigators haven't released the exact location where Hannah was found, it's hard to say for sure if her the killer would have needed an access code to get in, or if they could have been invited in or possibly broken in or snuck in.

Interestingly, though Lake Lanier is beautiful and the largest lake in Georgia, it's also one of the deadliest lakes in the United States.

About seven hundred people have died there in total.

There have been a lot of news stories about the unexplained deaths in the lakes, drownings, boating accidents, and foul play.

Not only is the lake dangerous, but rescues are challenging because divers have very little visibility below the water surface, mainly because of all the debris that's there, which includes construction materials, sunken boats, and random trash.

Some people even believe that the lake is haunted, but deaths in the water aside.

The area around Lake Lanier is generally thought of as very safe, so Hannah's family and friends were shocked by the brutal attack.

Hannah's family and friends say she loved animals and had dreams of studying veterinary medicine and maybe one day becoming a vet.

She helped take care of the family pets, a Yorkshire Terrier and two cats while her mom, Mona.

Was at work.

At about six feet tall, Hannah was striking.

She seemed to take an interest in modeling.

Some reports say she actually did some modeling, others say that she was just interested in getting into it, but either way, she was very active in extracurricular activities, including gymnastics, singing, and music.

In general, Hannah was a happy and loving teenager, but she had had some issues in the past with truancy.

The Division of Family and Children's Services visited her at home for not showing up at school.

Also, Hannah and her mother had gotten into fights in the past.

Police had responded to the home at one point after one of these arguments, which Hannah said happened because of Mona's drinking.

According to media reports, Mona had had multiple dwis in the past, but on August twenty third, it didn't seem as though there was any major drama at home other than Hannah and her mother having a disagreement over whether or not Hannah could have a cell phone.

That day, Hannah went to school.

She also met with her DCFS case manager.

Hannah was behind at school and apparently taking both sophomore classes and junior classes.

As she tried to catch up, she talked to her caseworker about improving her math grade so that she could take eleventh grade math.

According to the caseworker, the meeting went well and Hannah seemed to be in a good mood.

After school, Hannah went home.

She didn't see her mom, but Mona assumed that Hannah had been inside the apartment because Hannah's normal routine was to drop her stuff off inside and then to head outside to the grassy area by the picnic tables to hang out with friends.

Police also talked to some neighbors at the Lake Lanier Club apartments who said they saw Hannah hanging out near the complex at four pm on Thursday.

They have also stated that in the late afternoon, she was sitting on some wooden steps that led to the walking trails behind the apartment complex.

She was also seen at around seven thirty pm by neighbors sitting at the apartment complex picnic tables.

Mona worked long hours from around seven am to seven pm, and when she got back to the apartment that day, the mail from the house and Hannah's belongings were inside, and Hannah presumably was outside.

But Hannah might have been outside for another reason besides her routine.

She may have been avoiding her mother.

Hannah's father, Jeff, was on Nancy Grace in September twenty twelve along with one of the detectives working the case, and he shed some light on the timeline.

On August twenty third, he told Nancy Grace that Mona called him at around nine pm saying that Hannah hadn't come home.

Jeff said that she asked him if Hannah was with him, and when he said no, Mona said that she hadn't come home and that was starting to get dark.

Both Mona and Jeff were immediately concerned.

Jeff said that after Mona called him to say that Hannah was missing, he kept calling back every few minutes, but Hannah never showed up back home, so Jeff said that Mona called him back at around ten fifteen PM and let him know that she had called the police to report Hannah missing.

At that point, Jeff said, quote, she said that she'd called the law and that she's sure she is run away.

And I said, well, why would she run away?

She goes she's upset with me, and I said, well, okay, you know, but.

She wouldn't run away.

End quote.

This made me wonder about the family dynamic.

It sounds like Jeff and Mona didn't agree on everything, but that they were trying their best to co parent, which of course is not uncommon in parenting teens after divorces.

Jeff said that Hannah and her mother had been arguing because her mother would not allow Hannah to have a cell phone, and Jeff said he didn't necessarily agree with that decision.

He said that he was going to get his daughter a phone.

According to a verified friend of the family who posted on websleus, without a phone, Hannah was only able to communicate with her father if he called her mother or if he came by the apartment and parked in a space that she could see from the apartment.

Despite these difficulties, Hannah and her father were in touch a lot.

That friend on websleus so that Jeff had spent a lot of time with Hannah that summer and that they had standing dinner dates.

The Gainesville Police.

Department initially responded to Mona's missing persons call, but when Hannah's body was found the next day on Friday evening across the county line, Hall County Police took.

Over the investigation.

Sergeant Stephen Wilbanks from the Hall County Sheriff's Office told Nancy Grace that police believed Hannah's body had not been taken elsewhere and then dumped.

They believed that Hannah was killed at the location where her body was found.

He also said on the program that he believed that whoever killed Hannah was familiar with that area and familiar with the walking paths running back by the lake, the ones that ran past the apartment complex where Hannah lived.

Several residents posted online complaining about a lack of safety at the Lake Linear Club apartments.

This complex had a reputation as being safe, but these commenters said that sometimes gates were left broken for long periods of time, so anyone could get into the apartments without a code.

They also talked about how a lot of people had had their apartments broken into and had things stolen even during the day.

Because Hannah didn't have a phone, there were no cell phone records to go through.

There was also rumor by the way that police investigated that Hannah could possibly have had a secret cell phone, but according to media reports, this was never proven.

But law enforcement did go through Hannah's social media.

She was very active on Twitter, and she also used her Nintendo DS to communicate with friends, so they confiscated the gaming system, but according to media reports, they didn't find anything useful on Hanna's Nintendo DS.

But Hannah did have several cryptic tweets, some seem to reference a breakup.

She posted lyrics from the U two song, one which read quote did I ask too much more than a lot?

You gave me nothing?

Now it's all of God end quote.

So she seemed to be posting quotes about love and loss, and then shortly before her murder, Hannah also had other more disturbing tweets, including one that mentioned a stalker.

Hannah Truelove's case is still technically an open case, so our four yer request has not come through, and even thirteen years later, there is a lot of speculation online about what happened to Hannah.

Since there are a lot of rumors floating around about this case, I do think it's important to rule out possibilities when we can.

Some people have asked about the man who found Hannah's body, especially because in his nine one one call he mentioned that he found the body of a young woman who looked like she had been dead for two or three days.

Now.

His name has.

Never been publicly released, but it was revealed on the Nancy Gray Show.

The man who found Hannah's body was visiting his daughter and his grandchildren.

He was interviewed by police.

He was very cooperative and he was ruled out as a suspect, and police have said several times they think that Hannah's murderer was someone she knew.

Her father, Jeff, was the one who identified her body.

He told Nancy Gray's quote, it looks like she got the crap beat out of her, possibly by another girl, because she had a lot of scratches on.

Her face end quote.

Hannah's parents said that to their knowledge, she had not had a serious boyfriend, but we do have to consider the possibility that she did have love interest.

That her parents or even some of her friends may not have known about.

There are a lot of posts on social media, especially comments on old Facebook posts about the case, alluding to a love triangle with a friend of Hannah's and a local high school guy who was dating Hannah's female friend.

This person, according to multiple comments, was the son of someone who worked in law enforcement.

He's been identified on social media, but I have no idea if the love triangle rumors are true or not, so I'm not naming him here.

There are other tweets from Hannah that reference possible fighting with her mom, including one from May that talked about Hannah making her mother's nose.

But again, there was no evidence that Hannah and her mother were having any kind of a serious conflict on August twenty third, or that they interacted much at all, because by the time her mom got home, Hannah was already outside.

But the family drama was a prevalent topic on social media and on comments below.

A lot of articles about the murder.

After an initial flurry of articles, by the way, Hannah's case pretty much disappeared from the headlines.

A lot of commenters seemed to feel that that could be because of what Hannah was going through at home.

They and I wonder if Hannah didn't get as much coverage as some other cases due to the DCFS investigation.

Maybe she wasn't seen as the perfect victim.

Still, even in twenty twenty five, way too often we see that coverage of missing teen cases where the victims are described as straight A students or beauty queens get preferential treatment.

It's not right, but it still happens.

In the weeks and months that followed Hannah's murder, a lot of theories were getting posted on social media, including on Facebook, and a lot of people claiming to be in hand to social circle were weighing in.

But in the actual police investigation, Sergeant Wilbanks of the Hall County Sheriff's Office said on Nancy Grace that police had run into some problems because some of the people in Hannah's community were not cooperating with law enforcement.

Commoners online wondered were the people in her social circle afraid or was there some other reason why they weren't cooperating.

There is a lot that we don't know about Hannah's last movements, like which friends she was seen with.

We know that Hannah was talking.

To people at the picnic tables, but we don't know who those people were.

They haven't been named publicly.

We do know that some of her friends apparently told police they last saw her at seven thirty before they left the apartment complex to go home, and at around the same time, some neighbors at the complex told police.

They saw her at the picnic tables.

So seven point thirty seems to be the last time when Hannah was seen alive.

But there's another theory that Hannah had a stalker.

Looking back through Hannah's tweets, she talked about being afraid.

On August twelfth, she tweeted, quote, I have a scary ass stalker end quote.

We don't know the full history of those tweets, so it's very hard to judge with no context.

Could she have been talking about her mom maybe being sarcastic, or was there.

Someone she was actually afraid of.

Hannah's father, Jeff, also made some comments on a news program about Hannah not wanting to ride the school bus and possibly being afraid to ride the school bus.

The school bus comments could have been because Hannah was a afraid of encountering someone, but then again, her dad was teaching her to drive, and like a lot of teens, Hannah was focused on getting a license and getting your own car, so that could have been while she was making comments about not wanting to ride the bus.

There was another tweet that caught my eye.

On August twenty third, she tweeted, quote, I've got to get out of these.

Dang apartments end quote.

She was tweeting that she wanted to move out of the apartments where she and her mom were living.

The police chalk the.

Stalker tweets up to teenage drama rather than any specific threat.

The original detective assigned to the case, Lieutenant Franklin, told The Gainesville Times quote, with the help of family and friends and numerous interviews, we were able to build the context of those tweets and to vet them out, and basically they were just her venting, and there was nothing that was a legitimate threat that came from those end quote.

Lieutenant Franklin said the tweet was referencing a guy at Hannah's school who liked himana, but apparently Hannah didn't like him back.

Lieutenant Franklin said the boy had shown up at her house with flowers.

He was interviewed and eliminated as a possible suspect.

Lieutenant Franklin reiterated that police believed Hannah's killer was not a random stalker, that she knew her killer, and Lieutenant Franklin also said something else publicly for the first time, that he believed Hannah may have been killed by more than one person, or that at least more than one person may have been present while she was attacked.

He talked about how he hoped that detectives would be able to talk to those people, saying, quote, who we try to reach are not necessarily the person that had the knife in their hand, but anybody that was present and maybe would be less culpable and didn't have as much responsibility, but was just there, maybe in a situation they didn't want to be in.

End quote, but investigators.

Do have one lead that they've been chasing for years.

Police did a lot of interviews, but at first had no clear suspects.

The investigation was also complicated because the knight Hannah disappeared, it rained heavily two to three inches, and this rain washed away a lot of physical evidence.

Ten years after Hannah's murder, Lieutenant Franklin talked to a local news channel eleven Alive News and took the reporter to the ravine where Hannah's body was found.

Lieutenant Franklin told the reporter he believed that the spot where Hannah was killed could be an important clue because it was kind of a perfectly chosen spot.

He believed that if Hannah was killed elsewhere, someone would have heard or seen something, but that spot was just remote enough, probably further pointing to the theory that Hannah's killer or killers knew the area.

It would also presumably have been difficult to drag Hannah to that location kicking and screaming again.

Police believe Hannah knew her killer and went down to the area willingly, knowing that she was seen at the picnic tables, and the witnesses reported seeing her sitting on a wooden staircase that leads down to the trailhead.

Was Hannah waiting on someone, did someone lure her into those woods, or is it possible that she walked down the path with someone and they left and someone else was watching her.

Police have stated publicly they believed that because Hannah was seen sitting on the wooden steps, that she encountered someone, maybe more than one person, and that she went willingly with that person or person's to the stream bed.

After the rains, the waters started flowing fast, and Hannah's body was left in that fast moving water for an hour or more during the storm, so we know that a lot of the physical.

Evidence was lost.

Police have not released whether or not Hannah had clothes, on whether or not they looked for them or found evidence of sexual assault.

Police have said they are withholding evidence because they want to protect the integrity of the investigation, but they have shared a lead, one that they've been trying to figure out for years.

Police are looking for a distinctive vehicle that was seen in the apartment complex.

It's been described as the nineteen nineties to two thousand silver four door Chevier Dodge with significant front end damage and a lighter colored driver's side door.

They are hoping that someone saw that car, and Lieutenant Franklin has said he strongly believes Hannah was in the presence of more than one person at the time of her death, which makes me wonder if Hannah's father, Jeff, could be right about her facial wounds being inflicted by a female, if there was a female involved somehow, and if this could have been some kind of love triangle gone wrong.

In twenty fifteen, Lieutenant Franklin said at a press conference, quote, we've had several persons of interest that we've taught to that remain persons of interest.

What we're looking.

For is someone on the fringe, someone with knowledge that has a piece of information that'll open the door to these people that we've already looked at but aren't ready to discount yet.

End quote.

He added, quote, We're confident we know who is responsible for her death.

We've had a suspect since the beginning.

Our issue is that we have a lack of evidence to tie that person to the crime.

It's not to say we have zero evidence, but we just didn't have enough end quote.

Police have not released the name of this potential person of interest.

Lieutenant Franklin has dropped a few clues, saying that the suspect is.

Mail and that he knew Hannah.

He said police have talked to this person multiple times and that this person has denied any involvement in Hannah's murder.

Hannah's mother, Mona, died in August of twenty twenty two, just before the tenth anniversary of Hannah's murder.

She died without ever knowing who killed her daughter, and Lieutenant Franklin said that even though he got a promotion and wasn't officially on Hannah's case anymore, he asked to stay and keep investigating.

He said that he had a teenage daughter of his own and felt a personal connection to this case to this day.

Lieutenant Franklin said he keeps Hannah's Nintendo DS on his desk as a reminder to never give up on searching for answers and justice in Hannah's case.

Lieutenant Franklin said he hopes that someone who knows something will come forward, may be someone who knew the suspect or Hannah's friend group, or who may have seen the car and can help police establish some sort of connection.

Again.

The car was spotted around the Lake Lanier Club apartment complex on Thursday, August twenty third, around the time when Hannah true Love went missing.

Police believed the occupants of that car may have important information other than the car.

Lieutenant Franklin has said he hopes that advances in DNA technology could one day provide the break that police need to crack this case.

This case actually reminds me of another recent case we covered the Caroline Glacken case in Scotland.

That case was solved decades later and they had zero physical evidence.

In that case, Caroline was part of a love triangle.

Her killers attacked her in the woods near a body of water.

Police were able to catch the killers by going back to the original scene of the crime in interviewing every single person in the apartment complex where their suspect had been spotted, and all of Caroline's neighbors and friends as well.

There could be a similar situation here.

There may have been people who were afraid to speak out at the time, who were friends with Hannah's friend group, who may have children of their own now and may feel differently about coming forward.

Before she died, Mona wrote a public plea.

She wrote quote, I would like to send a message to anyone who may have information about Hannah's death to please come forward and help me in this nightmare.

I am haunted by Hannah's death, as any mother can understand.

Please help my family by coming forward with your information, even if that information is about your son or daughter.

I feel sure you know they can't come to grips with Hannah's death until they are truthful about what happened to Hannah.

We can't go back and save Hannah, but we can honor her memory and bring closure to her tragic death.

I pray to Almighty God you are willing to do for Hannah, even though you may not have known her.

I know in my heart Hannah would have done the same for you.

End quote.

I'm Catherine Townsend.

This is Helen Gone Murder Line.

Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School You and iHeart Podcast.

It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.

Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review.

Noah camer mixed and scored this episode.

Our theme song is by Ben Salek.

Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and l.

C.

Crowley.

Listen to Helen Gone adfree by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plush channel.

On Apple Podcasts.

If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram.

At Helen Gonepod.

If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone murder line at six seven eight seven four four six' one four.

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