The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages.
Listener discretion is advised.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm Ali.
And I'm Eli.
Welcome back everyone.
At the top, I just always want to say thank you.
We had some very kind reviews come in this week.
So thank you for taking the time out of your day to write and review us.
Leave comments on the YouTube or on the Spotify, which is a new feature.
So thank you so much to everyone who's been engaging.
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it so much.
We are on a missing person case this week and it is episode 116.
That's correct.
Should we just go ahead and get into it?
Yeah, let's do it.
So just as a bit of a content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person.
Today we are talking about the missing person case of Tavish Sutton.
And this takes place in March of 1993 in Atlanta, Georgia.
But first a little bit about Tavish.
Tavish is only one month old in March of 1993.
When Tavish was born in February of 1993, his mother was struggling with schizophrenia.
Tavish has other brothers and sisters, but his mother had given up her parental rights
to them.
A week after Tavish was born, the Department of Family Children and Services, or DCS as
you'll hear them referred to throughout the podcast, took custody of Tavish.
He was placed into a foster family and his birth mother went into treatment.
At this time in 1993, Tavish only weighed eight and a half pounds and was 21 inches
long.
And now a timeline of events.
On Friday, March 5th, 1993, Tavish is admitted to the pediatric unit of Grady Memorial Hospital
in downtown Atlanta.
Tavish had an abscess on his stomach that required surgery over the weekends.
Tavish was placed in a semi-private room.
Another infant shared his room and their family were staying with them throughout the weekend
while they recovered.
Their mom and their sister spent the night most often.
Over that weekend, Tavish has surgery on his stomach and was recovering comfortably in
the hospital.
Monday, March 5th, 1993, that evening, Tavish's foster parents visit him in the hospital.
They were hopeful that Tavish would be discharged the next day.
That next day, Tuesday, March 6th, early that morning at 6.45 a.m., Tavish is resting comfortably
when a nurse checks on him.
He was wearing a white flower print t-shirt and had Grady Hospital tags on his wrist and
ankle.
His roommate and their family are all fast asleep too.
Everyone seems to be resting and recovering at this hour.
Just 15 minutes later, at 7 a.m., another nurse comes into the room for a check and
Tavish has disappeared from his bed.
Police are called immediately to the hospital and a search is launched.
However, there appears to have been no witnesses to Tavish's kidnapping and the police have
no leads and no idea where to go.
Upon hearing that Tavish was kidnapped, his foster parents are distraught.
Police question them thoroughly, but his foster parents are ruled out as suspects quickly.
The next day, Wednesday, March 10th, police and the hospital turn to the media to plead
for information about Tavish and for his safe return to the hospital.
The hospital spokesperson says, quote, we're just trying to stress that the baby needs
to come back to the hospital for post-operative care, end quote.
Tavish was stable at the time of his kidnapping, medically speaking, but he still required
urgent care for his recovery after surgery.
When the hospital is asked how a baby could be kidnapped from their facilities, the spokesperson
says, quote, if someone were intent on doing this, you can certainly circumvent the best
security systems, end quote.
Police are at a loss as to what happened to Tavish, but they are treating it as a kidnapping.
A week passes and on Wednesday, March 17th, it's been eight days since Tavish was kidnapped.
Police have been able to rule out Tavish's birth mother as a suspect.
She was in treatment at the time of the kidnapping and didn't even know that her son had been
taken to the hospital.
The FBI has joined the case and search for Tavish, and they also provide a profile of
the suspect.
Police believe that a woman took the baby, that she likely was faking a pregnancy to
try to mend a broken relationship.
She would have sought to alter her appearance to appear pregnant over the course of nine
months.
Police also point to the fact that Tavish is a black baby, that if the woman was trying
to mend a relationship, it was likely to be with a black man.
The woman would have likely visited the maternity ward to plan the kidnapping as she was approaching
her alleged due date.
Investigators believe that she is likely already a mother, an ideal mom who you would feel
confident in leaving your own kids with.
Police are very hopeful that Tavish is still alive.
When an infant is kidnapped, it is usually for the purpose of raising the child as one's
own.
But police still stress that Tavish should be returned to the hospital for proper medical
care and checkups.
Police know that they are entering a crucial period where the woman would likely be able
to go to the clerk of county court to get a home birth certificate for Tavish, especially
considering how little he was at the time of his kidnapping.
Police still do not have any suspects in the case, just the profile based off of the history
of infant kidnappings.
However, releasing the profile seems to have prompted a response in the community.
Two days later, on Friday, March 19th, police released two composite sketches of women they
would like to talk to in regards to Tavish's kidnapping.
They stress that the women are not suspects, but they would just like to talk to them to
see if they saw anything.
Both of the women were seen at the hospital on the day that Tavish was kidnapped.
One of the women was seen on the floor of the hospital where Tavish's room was located.
And the second woman was around 25 years of age.
She wore black pants, a long black coat, and large earrings and had her hair pulled back
with a large bow.
She was seen carrying a baby from the hospital the day that Tavish was kidnapped.
Despite having these two composite sketches, a month later on April 15th, so it's been
about six weeks since Tavish was kidnapped, and police are out of leads.
They don't have any suspects.
They don't have any people of interest.
The special agent in charge for the FBI, Carol Touhey, says, quote, we've done everything
you can think of and we're looking for assistance from the public to help us find the child,
end quote.
And truly the case appears to go cold after this.
Tavish's birth mother will sue the hospital for negligence in Tavish's kidnapping in
1995, two years after it happened.
She'll ultimately settle out of court for around $600,000.
In 1996, so three years after the kidnapping, a composite sketch is made and sent out across
the nation on mailers of what Tavish might look like at around three years old.
The composite is created by using photos of his siblings to try to generate what he could
look like.
In 1998, Tavish's case is ran again in local media.
However, there are no updates.
All of Tavish's biological family have been rolled out as suspects.
The detectives working the case at this time say, quote, we never really had any good information,
end quote.
Police believe that it is likely that Tavish is still alive, living with another family
under a different name.
Because of the surgery that he was admitted into the hospital initially for, he would
likely have a scar on his left buttock from the surgery.
However, this is all we know about the kidnapping of Tavish Sutton.
He would be 31, almost 32 years old as of recording in 2025.
So if you know anything about the disappearance of Tavish Sutton or his whereabouts today,
please call the Atlanta Police Department at 404-546-4235.
So that is the missing person case of Tavish Sutton.
I was scribbling down just a bunch of information about Tavish and the circumstances and details
and info surrounding his case at the top of you talking about his case.
And it's a case involving an infant, I felt frantic listening to this case even though
it's over 30 years ago.
What a harrowing journey he had at the start of his life.
There are so many things to say about how his journey began, but what a resilient little
soul to exist.
I have so many questions for you, but I just, you know, I always appreciate how much you
go into detail about who the person was and I still felt like I got to learn a lot about
him even though there was little information.
I'm very glad to know his name.
Yeah, I get what you mean about the immediacy of an infant going missing.
I felt that in this case too about learning on it and researching it.
I did feel franticness of like needing to find him even though like you said it happened
over 30 years ago.
There is something about a missing infant that just feels like it makes something in
me go like berserk, you know, I just short wire in some way.
Yeah, I felt almost like an internal egg timer.
Just the tick tick tick tick of I don't know, I could feel time moving too fast in a case
like this.
And that is, I mean, that's the case for every case, right?
That time moves too fast and there's never enough information found within that lost
time.
And that's certainly the case here.
No one knew to be on the lookout for something like this happening.
Like of course, you know, a case can be filed against the hospital for negligence.
But like the spokesperson said in a very diplomatic way, of course this is possible.
An infant is very small.
And if you're someone who looks like you're caring for an infant as you're moving through
a hospital, I can imagine that not a lot of people would be questioning you as to why
you are doing that.
I agree with how easy it would be to slip out with an infant.
But I do just want to say this that this is something that made me raise an eyebrow in
this situation.
This specific hospital in Atlanta has had seven instances of infants going, being kidnapped
from their facilities.
Five of them were returned safely.
However, two of them still remain missing and Tabish is one of them.
Yes, it could be easy to move something small in and out of that space.
But still, that institution should be dedicated to protecting what's inside at all costs.
Yes, it does just make me raise an eyebrow that you have seven infants go missing from
your facility, which is pretty high.
This kind of crime doesn't happen very often.
So it makes me wonder in the realm of possibilities in this instance, you know, like, what's
going on here?
Is there somebody on the inside that's possibly helping?
Of course, that's speculation.
The police and FBI gave a profile.
But it just makes you wonder when you see something like that happen seven times, like,
why is it why is it so easy to do it from here?
I think, you know, kind of what we're talking about really, like begs the question, is there
cameras or any kind of security, any sort of monitoring?
I don't know.
I know it's 1993.
But I can't imagine that there is a ton.
But because it is a hospital, maybe there's a chance that there is more security.
To be honest, I'm not sure what is or isn't there in 1993.
But based off of the police and like what they were saying about how little they had
to go on and how they were really leaning on witnesses, I would think that if there
were security footage, that it is very minimal and not useful, that it was easy to circumvent
in 1993.
Well then that brings me to my next question, which is, who are those women and how are
they related?
How it seems like they, the suspect, or not even suspect, but the persons of interest
were drawn up out of thin air.
And I'm, I know that that's not the case, but I'm curious as to why those two women
and were they related to anyone close to him in any way?
Yeah, so to me it appeared that these women came from witnesses at the hospital that came
forward after the FBI released a profile.
It did seem like in the beginning, everyone thought that Tavish would be returned very
quickly.
Again, statistically, that's typically what you see in infant kidnapping cases.
They are returned or found very quickly.
However, once it got to the week and the FBI came in and gave a profile, it seemed that
prompted witnesses to come forward who then were able to sit down with police and release
the composite.
I don't know if police think that these women are related to each other as in if they were
working together or came in together, but it's just two women who were seen at the hospital
the day that Tavish disappeared and police just wanted to talk to them to see if they
saw anything and kind of see what they know.
But from my understanding, police never were able to track them down.
Right.
And that, you know, that all makes sense to me.
The fact that he's only a month old and his biological mother is going through mental
health treatment and it's hard to, I would imagine it's hard to draw any correlation
from a person to him when he's a baby.
He doesn't know anybody and very few people know him.
The most likely of suspects, so, you know, the family were all ruled out.
His mom was in treatment.
You know, that was all verified.
And then the other family that was sharing the room with him, you know, I believe they
were investigated pretty thoroughly as well as his foster family and they were all released.
So after that, yeah, like who could it possibly be in Tavish's little world?
Yeah.
And with his world being so small, the amount of strangers outside of that is, it's an insurmountable
amount.
The, you know, ocean of suspects, like that's what it becomes.
Just a massive possibility of a lot of different people.
Which sparked another question for me.
And this is more, I think, just for you and I to talk about, at least for right now, which
is why not look at men?
I understand, especially because it's early 90s, the most likely suspect would have been
a woman.
But I don't know, to me, especially right now, my mind immediately said that is a very
unsuspecting suspect for it to be someone to get away with this type of crime who can
cloak very easily throughout it.
Yeah, the profile seemed to mainly come from statistically what these crimes had looked
like to police and the FBI since they started like kind of recording and keeping track of
infant kidnappings from hospitals.
So historically, they had been women looking to raise the baby as their own for whatever
circumstances outside were feeling that.
So that does seem to be where the profile comes from for the FBI.
It doesn't seem to be based in any theory, or it is a theory, but it doesn't seem to
be based in any evidence of Tavish's kidnapping, except that would be like the most likely
thing or the most statistical thing to occur.
But I agree that until you can rule something out completely, it's like you can't rule
anything out.
So why couldn't it be a man?
Why couldn't it be a hospital worker?
What evidence do we have to rule them out?
That's like all stuff that I would want to know.
There's lots of room for speculation in this case, like there always is in the cases that
we cover, but I can even feel myself as we're talking about it, the questions starting to
pile up in my head because I have so many and I can feel the dead ends that they reach
even in my head before they come out of my mouth.
I still feel the very frantic energy around this case.
And again, just to echo what I said earlier, I'm very grateful to know of this case and
to just know of this area that it's happened more than once at this hospital, an infant
kidnapping.
This case is so perplexing to me.
There's so much what ifs.
There's so many what ifs that it's hard to nail them down.
So if I got to sit down with police, I would just kind of want to know what exactly do
you know?
What is a fact in this case?
What is evidence in this case?
But really, it seems like what we know is that in the span of 15 minutes from 645 to
7 a.m., Tavish was taken from his hospital room and presumably from the hospital completely
very quickly.
That really does seem to be all we know.
There are, you know, they made a composite sketch from when he was three and there's
also two other ones that were created during his teenage years.
So we do have those available and those are based off of siblings when they were at the
similar age.
So it could be pretty accurate to what Tavish could look like today.
For this case, I do have a lot of hope that Tavish is still alive and out in the world
today.
I do think that that's a real possibility here.
It is my deepest hope that if Tavish is still alive, that he was raised in a very loving
home and is a thriving, successful community member and doing something that he loves.
That is truly what I hope for him.
And if he ever questions who he is or what his roots are, I hope that he's able to connect
with his siblings and get the answers that he would need and his siblings get answers
that, you know, their brother is okay.
That's I think the best outcome that could happen here.
Yeah, I hope that too.
I hope and I think, you know, more than anything is that he is living a happy, healthy, full
life.
Of course, you know, I wish for answers for his family or for whoever wants them.
But ultimately, I hope, especially after knowing what the first month of his life was like,
that that he just got to exist in happiness and continues to.
But again, if you know anything about the kidnapping of Tavish Sutton in 1993, or his
whereabouts today, please call the Atlanta Police Department at 404-546-4235.
We will have the composite photos of Tavish up on our Instagram.
So if you're not following us, I suggest you follow us there at Cold and Missing.
You'll be able to keep up with not only our podcast, but other cases that are happening
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We also have our official transcripts on our website www.coldandmissing.com.
I know a lot of podcast players have an automatic transcript now, but if you're looking for
the official one, it is on our website.
That one has correct spelling of names and things like that.
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official ones are at www.coldandmissing.com.
But that's all I have for you.
Thank you so much for listening to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Allie.
And I'm your co-host, Eli.
Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.
Stay safe, y'all.