“You know, in the back of my mind, I know Tina’s dead and gone. She’s been murdered. But you see these stories on TV and there are things that give you hope that somewhere, maybe, she’s been held somewhere and she got away. You get all these crazy ideas. It does something to a person. I can’t even begin to explain what it does to you,” says Lisa Lott as she talks about her sister, Tina Snipes, a Nicholls native who disappeared on Edisto Island, South Carolina, on August 15, 2018.
Tina was living on Edisto Island in a camper. Her fiancé was in prison. She disappeared under suspicious circumstances and authorities have few leads regarding her disappearance. Investigators have determined that Tina has been killed. But they have little else.
August 15, 2018, was a Wednesday. Earlier that day, Tina had been seen at a convenience store on Edisto Island, the Horizon EZ Shop at 2410 Highway 174. Tina would often hang around the store and knew everyone there. “She would sit in that store during the day and kind of volunteer. She would hang out with the girls who worked up there and sit at this little booth by the window,” says Lisa.
Tina was in the store on the afternoon of August 15. The last known image of her is from video surveillance footage from inside. While there, Tina had a confrontation of some kind with a man colloquially known as Fats, whose given name is Anthony Brown. Tina and Fats did not get along, says Lisa. “He was harassing the women in the store. He already didn’t like Tina because he had some problems with her fiancé. Tina stood up to him and kind of got in his face,” says Lisa.
A woman named Darlene picked Tina up from the store. The two of them ended up at a club later that night. There were card games going on and, Lisa says, Fats was there. A little while later, maybe around 9 p.m., Darlene took Tina home to her camper.
Tina hasn’t been seen since.
Investigators found blood and hair at her camper. They found a shirt outside near the camper. Lisa says it looked Tina ran from the camper, possibly to get away from someone chasing her. There was also an abandoned vehicle in the yard. There were footprints on the vehicle. “Maybe she was running around the vehicle, darting around it, trying to get away from whoever was chasing her. If someone was chasing her, he was big enough and tall enough to literally leap on top of the vehicle to get her. It’s crazy. There were handprints,” says Lisa.
Lisa did not know that Tina was missing until the following Sunday. Someone from South Carolina who knew Tina sent Lisa a message through Facebook saying she was sorry about what happened to Tina. “I didn’t know what she was talking about. I had no clue,” says Lisa. The woman sent Lisa a copy of the news bulletin with Tina’s picture and information. “Law enforcement didn’t call me. I had to call the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office and get them to contact South Carolina.”
Plenty of theories have circulated regarding what may have happened to Tina. Lisa has been told that Tina was wrapped in a bag and placed in a septic tank. She’s also heard that Tina was dumped in the marsh. Or even fed to alligators. Investigators have searched by boat and by air. They’ve even followed up on the septic tank lead. Nothing. A human bone was found in a nearby marsh. Investigators determined it did not belong to Tina.
Officers have even reached out to Fats, who is currently in prison on unrelated charges. “They offered him some kind of deal but it never worked out. He’s not talking,” says Lisa.
Though officers have few leads, they don’t consider the case to be cold. They continue to investigate Tina’s disappearance and follow up on any new leads when they receive information.
Lisa wants to make sure no one forgets Tina and that officers don’t slough off her disappearance as just one of those things that happens in an at-risk neighborhood. “She was just there trying to make a living. Her fiancé was in prison and she was trying to survive until he got out. Instead of coming home to her family, she got involved with the wrong people, people she thought she could trust, and got herself killed. Was she terrified? How hard did she fight? What did they do to her? That I’ll never know,” says Lisa.
Tina is a mother of two adult children, both of whom live in the area. If Tina were alive today, she would be 51. Lisa knows the likely outcome of Tina’s disappearance. But she holds to a little bit of hope that one day, she will get a call and Tina will be on other end of the line. “What if she gets ahold of a phone somewhere and calls me? My number is the one number she knew. I’ll never change my phone number,” says Lisa.
According to investigators, the investigation into Tina’s disappearance is active and ongoing. At the time she went missing, Tina was 5’3” and 113 pounds. She was last seen wearing a necklace, sunglasses, tank top, yoga pants, flip-flops, and her hair was in a bun. The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the case. Anyone with information regarding her disappearance should call 843-743-7200.
