Tina Marcotte

Tina Marcotte

Real Name: Tina Marie Marcotte
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Rapid City, South Dakota
Date: June 24, 1994

Bio

Occupation: Forest Product Distributors Worker
Date of Birth: Unrevealed
Height: Unrevealed
Weight: Unrevealed
Marital Status: Dating
Characteristics: Caucasian female

Case

Details: Tina Marcotte was a late shift worker at Black Hills Molding, a wood processing plant. Shortly after midnight on Friday, June 24, 1994, she called Vicky Riddle, her best friend, complaining of a flat tire and asking to be picked up. She noticed a car driving up, and, a short time later, told Vicky she didn't have to come because Tom Kueter, a forklift driver who previously worked for Black Hills Molding, was giving her a ride.

Tom Kueter

It was the last time Tina was heard from. The next morning, Tom and Patrick Gleason, her live-in boyfriend of 11 years, visited Vicky. According to her, Tom became defensive when she mentioned Tina's phone call, but he finally admitted he was the only "Tom" who had worked for Black Hills Molding that she would know. When Patrick asked him if he and Tina were cheating on him, he found his passive denial to be strangely uncharacteristic of him. He suggested that they go together to report her disappearance.
When police examined her car, they discovered that her flat tire had most likely been slashed with a knife, suggesting foul play. Tom was asked to come in for questioning, which he did, voluntarily. During questioning, he denied giving her a ride and said that he had spent his evening at a softball game, taking a friend home, and fixing his car under a streetlight for 3 or 4 hours after it broke down. He pointed to the place where it did so on a map, but police could find no one in that area to confirm his story.
He had not called his wife, Nancy, to tell her about his delay that evening. According to her, when he finally arrived home around 3:30AM, he immediately began washing his clothes, including his softball uniform and shoelaces. Three days after Tina's disappearance, police came to him at his job at Forest Products Distributors and told him they had found blood in his car.
Around 9AM the next morning, just after the shift change, workers found his body with his head crushed by a rear wheel of his own forklift. An investigation by the police led them to believe that he loaded it with at least a ton of lumber, drove it up an incline, hopped out, and laid down in front of its path, taking his own life in a way that seemed accidental, hoping that his family would benefit from it. However, Nancy believes he was murdered, saying he would not leave her and their children alone. His death and Tina's disappearance remain unsolved.
Suspects: Tom Kueter is considered the prime suspect in Tina's disappearance. Investigators believe that on the night of her disappearance, Tom showed up at her workplace and slashed her tire. They believe that he waited until she was done with work to offer to give her a ride. They believe that he made sexual advances to her, and when she refused, he killed her. They also believe that his alibi fell apart when Tina told her friend Vicky that he was giving her a ride.
Extra Notes: This case first aired on the January 5, 1996 episode.
Results: Solved. In October 1995, as Unsolved Mysteries was still filming this story, Tina's body was found beneath a wood pile in the lumberyard of Forest Products Distributors, the company Tom worked for at the time of her disappearance and his death. It's believed that her body was deposited there after she was killed. The cause of death was blunt force trauma. In 2016, authorities closed Tom and Tinas' cases, ruling that Tom committed suicide after murdering Tina.
Links:

• Sitcoms Online Discussion of Tina's Case
• Tina Marcotte at Find a Grave

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