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In March 2023, 26-year-old Sara Ebersole vanished without a trace in Reddick, Florida. She was last seen on surveillance footage at a local gas station when she texted her older sister, Michelle, about getting into a random truck with two men she referred to as cowboys & she hoped they would take her for a ride.
After spending her evening with a few people she didn’t previously know, she disappeared. In the nearly 3 ½ years that have passed, Michelle has been advocating tirelessly to find her little sister.
Sara Gail Vann was born on September 18, 1996 as the youngest of seven children. She began her life in Michigan where she was raised by her mom alongside three of her siblings while her dad wasn’t involved in her life.
At 3-years-old, she & her two siblings were sent to live with their maternal uncle & aunt in Sarasota, Florida on the Gulf Coast of the state situated between Tampa & Ft. Meyers.
When she was 14-years-old, things became tumultuous between Sara & her uncle which is when she was sent to live 2 ½ hours north to Dunnellon, Florida to live with her older half-sister, Michelle Tullis. Although Michelle was basically a stranger to Sara at the time, she ended up becoming the only maternal figure Sara had ever known.
Michelle first came to learn about Sara’s existence when she was in 10th grade & Sara was about one. At the time, Michelle was living in Florida in the foster care system with two of their siblings while Sara was still in Michigan under their mother’s care with three of their siblings.
As the years went by, their mother kept in occasional contact with Michelle, sending her photos & drawings from her younger siblings. Knowing how unstable all of their lives had been, Michelle decided to take foster training classes in the chance that she would need to take over her sibling’s care one day since she was so much older.
As the younger kids grew, Michelle eventually tracked them down on social media, but Sara was initially disinterested in starting a relationship. One day Michelle made the 2 ½ hour drive south from her home in Dunnellon to Sarasota to meet Sara for the first time.
It was only two weeks later when her aunt called her out of the blue to say that if she didn’t take the three children, they would all be going into foster care.
At the time, Michelle, her husband & their child were living in a small, two-bedroom, two-bathroom home that they were building an extension on. Since she didn’t have room for three more children, her aunt told her that it was Sara who was the specific issue. Without a moment’s hesitation, Michelle agreed to welcome Sara into their home & into their lives.
According to Michelle, her sister was a strong-willed, free spirit who took any new experience that was presented to her. She loved the beach & spent all of her free time between Sarasota & Daytona. She dreamed of one day travelling & opening a small cat-friendly coffee cafe somewhere near the water. She had a child-like spirit of adventure with a zest for trying new things.
Sara eventually dropped out of Dunnellon High School & in 2014 when she was only 18-years-old, she married Thomas Ebersole, a young man who lived down the street from Michelle. They had a small ceremony in his front yard, but since they were so young & the decision to get married was very hasty, their relationship was short-lived. They were separated through much of their relationship & officially divorced only one year later on November 5, 2015.
Moving forward ten years to January 2025, in an incident unrelated to Sara’s case, 32-year-old Thomas Ebersole was sentenced to 11 years & 3 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to transporting a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity.
According to court records, in December 2023 he met a 16-year-old girl through online video games. On December 28, 2023, he drove from his home in Florida to Ohio where the girl lived & drove her back to his home.
After her parents reported their daughter missing, she was located on January 3, 2024 based on the IP addresses she used to play video games at his house. She confirmed, as did DNA testing, that Thomas Ebersole engaged in sexual intercourse with her multiple times during the week that she’d been missing.
According to Thomas, he hoped to hide her for the next two years until she was 18-years-old so it would be legal for them to get married.
Shortly after Sara & Thomas’s marriage came to an end in 2015, at 19-years-old, she began dating a man 16 years her senior, 35-year-old Joseph Mayton. He was a person whose own family described as viololent & manipulative. He has been accused of numerous rapes, stalking, violence against his mother as well as their family cat & he’s faced charges of criminal mischief & theft.
It sadly came as no surprise when their relationship became very tumultuous & unstable during a time when Sara realized that she was pregnant. After he attacked her during her pregnancy, she got a restraining order against him. When their daughter Dahlia Marie Vann was born on March 19, 2018, only Sara’s name was put onto the birth certificate since Joe had thankfully fallen out of her life.
When Dahlia was 3-months-old, she & Sara moved in with Michelle & her family which allowed Sara to work more, save money & get back on her feet.
Three years before she vanished, Sara applied to work as an exotic dancer at Cafe Risque in Micanopy, Florida without Michelle’s knowledge. She had been struggling to make ends meet working at Walmart & Subway so she hoped this would allow her to save more money so she & her daughter could live independently. Very quickly, she realized how much more she could make in this industry.
Toward the beginning of 2019 when Dahlia was nearly one, Joe suddenly came back into the picture when the restraining order against him was up. He & Sara immediately started down a road of legal & custody disputes & unsurprisingly, he remained highly controlling & manipulative.
Since his name wasn’t on Dahlia’s birth certificate, he took Sara & the baby down to the health department by force to edit the paperwork, adding himself to the birth certificate. He also legally changed the baby’s name from Dahlia Marie Vann to Cora Dhalia Mayton.
Two days later, he took their daughter across state lines to Kentucky without Sara’s permission. The baby was with Joe until she was able to get a pick-up order to get her back. He eventually moved back to Florida where he lived & worked at the Ocala Suites in Ocala, Florida, a 40 minute drive northeast from where Sara & Dahlia were living with Michelle in Dunnellon. During this time, he had visitation rights with their daughter.
About three months before Sara vanished, she moved out of Michelle’s home after succumbing to Joe’s constant threats to harm Michelle’s family if she didn’t. Michelle knew this was yet another tactic to isolate her sister so he could control her with less resistance.
Sara & Dahlia moved into a small home in Reddick, Florida, a small town in Marion County that’s 45 minutes northeast from where Michelle lived in Dunnellon. They lived with a roommate, Deborah Ritchie, who also had a daughter.
Now away from her sister’s support & protection, Joe’s harassment & abuse only escalated. Despite the fact that he’d broken into Sara’s home on a number of occasions & had been threatening, according to Michelle, the Marion County Police never took these threats seriously. He was essentially stalking her & seemed to know where she was at all hours of the day.
He eventually broke Sara down, convincing her that if she didn’t pay him, he would take their daughter from her. At one point, she was paying him over $2,000 a month.
Sara tried everything that she could to escape his grips, including filing a restraining order against him for the stalking. In January 2023, two months before she vanished, she changed her phone number & messaged her sister to let her know that Joe had been illegally logging into her Gmail account & monitoring everything she did, including her 24-hour location, emails, texts & photos. About a week later, she got a new device, an iPhone 8.
With the ongoing custody disputes with Joe, at the time of her disappearance, Sara had only supervised visitation rights with her daughter while Joe had full-custody of Dahlia. Despite these visitation rights, most days, Joe refused to allow Sara to see her daughter.
When Sara vanished in March 2023, Dahlia was only a couple of weeks away from turning five & Sara had been saving as much money as she could. She told Michelle that she had a couple thousand in cash & she planned to show up unannounced at the Ocala Suites where Joe & Dahlia were living so she could see her daughter who was being withheld from her.
On Thursday, March 2, 2023, Sara went to work at Cafe Risque in Micanopy, Florida until 7 pm. She texted Michelle after her shift, asking if she was able to give her a ride home. Since Michelle wasn’t able to, she got a ride from someone else. At 7:50 pm, Sara texted again, asking her sister to tell the kids she said hi.
Later that night, she got a ride to a nearby Circle K gas station in Reddick from an acquaintance named Lonnie & his girlfriend. Michelle came to find that while Sara was buying a four-pack of mini wine bottles & two tall boy beers, she met two men at the station.
At 10:11 pm, she texted Michelle, I’m getting into a random truck with cowboys I hope they take me for a ride. Michelle texted back, reminding her sister to be safe & this was sadly the last she ever heard from her.
When Michelle tried to reach her sister the next day on Friday, March 3, 2023, each call went straight to voicemail. Sara’s roommate, Deborah Ritchie, messaged Michelle on Saturday, asking if she’d heard from her. Deborah was out of town that weekend at a retreat for veterans & she was concerned since Sara had agreed to watch her dogs, but she wasn’t responding to her texts or calls which was very much out of the ordinary.
When Deborah asked a friend to go over to their house to check on her dogs, it was clear that Sara hadn’t been there. The dogs didn’t have food or water & they’d made a mess inside since they hadn’t been taken out.
Deborah was really worried since she’d always been able to rely on Sara in the past & she knew she would have never willingly left her dogs alone. They last texted on Thursday, the day Michelle last heard from her sister, about what was going on at the house when Sara asked her a question about their garbage pick-up.
When Deborah came home on Sunday, March 5, she found nothing concerning other than the fact that Sara still wasn’t there.
Since she’d left the dogs unattended, paired with the fact that she wasn’t responding to any messages or phone calls & she hadn’t posted to social media as she so routinely did, Deborah reached out to the Marion County Sheriff’s Department.
Unfortunately, authorities wouldn’t take the missing person report for Sara until three days later on Wednesday, March 8, which was five days after she was last seen. Detective Ryan Stith was finally assigned to the case on March 15, ten days after Deborah initially tried to report her missing & 12 days after she was last seen.
In the meantime, Deborah posted missing person fliers around town in hopes that someone had seen her. She also pressured detectives to get the surveillance video from the Circle K gas station, Sara’s last known location on Thursday night. Employees from the gas station told Deborah that the footage gets recorded over after a certain period of time.
Since Sara & Joe were in the midst of a custody battle that involved domestic abuse, Michelle asked Marion County officers to do a welfare check at the Ocala Suites hotel where Joe was staying with Dahlia.
When the officer called Michelle back, he explained that Sara wasn’t there, but according to Joe, Sara is a prostitute & an addict who disappears all the time. Michelle told the officer that this was a blatant lie & although her sister did go off with her friends in her free time & she occasionally drank, she always told her family where she was.
The officer questioned why Sara didn’t have custody of her daughter while Michelle explained that she’d been bullied & harassed into signing over custodianship. She had visits under his direct supervision which gave Joe complete control.
When detectives obtained surveillance video from the Circle K in Reddick, it depicted Sara willingly getting into a 2005 black Chevy Silverado truck with two men. Learning this information, Michelle drove around town, assuming the men were local. Within five minutes, she found the truck at a nearby house which she then relayed to authorities.
They identified the truck’s owner as Leonard Anderson, who had been out with his friend, James Bubba Robinson, on Thursday night when they picked Sara up at the gas station. From there, Leonard dropped Sara & Bubba off just around the corner at Bubba’s house on North Highway 441. Bubba shared a subdivided home with two other people, James Schaller & his girlfriend, Teesha McDermitt, who lived on the other side of the house.
Since James Schaller had seen Sara’s missing person fliers around town, he got in contact with Michelle on April 18, 2023 to confirm that she had been at their house that night. James told Michelle that while he was charging Sara’s phone for her, she used his phone to take some pictures that night. He sent Michelle the photos she’d taken with the last photo time-stamped at 1:21 am on March 3.
Michelle didn’t have access to Sara’s phone since it was missing & her service had been shut off on March 6. Since she used a prepaid service, Michelle thought that she was just overdue on paying her bill.
When she did finally get access to Sara’s iCloud, there were photos & videos taken at about 11:08 pm that depicted Sara, Bubba, James & Teesha posing outside by a tree with the phone set to automatically take the photos. There was also a video of Sara & Teesha waxing hair off of Bubba’s chest.
Based on these photos, as well as the ones that James shared from his phone, Sara wore both a gray cardigan with beading as well as a black faded sweatshirt with a hoodie that had a logo of a hockey goalie & the words, Goalie Academy on the front.
Michelle could see that her sister watched YouTube videos until 2:40 am & accessed her Gmail account at 2:57 am on Friday morning. She also noted that someone had tried to get into Sara’s Snapchat account at 1:47 pm on March 3, nearly 12 hours after she was last accounted for, but when the password was attempted to be reset, the security code was sent to an old email account.
James Schaller told Michelle that while Sara spent time at their house on Thursday night, he, Sara & Teesha had a threesome together. They were aware that she had been drinking a little, but when she came back from hanging out with Bubba on his side of the house, both Teesha & James said she was so intoxicated that she was no longer able to walk.
They believed that Sara had left their home sometime between maybe 3 & 5 am in an Uber with a man they didn’t know. They described him as possibly Hispanic, with long dark hair, a thin build, about 5’8” & in his mid-30s. He drove off with Sara in a blue or dark-colored sedan, possibly a Hyundai. Since Sara was so impaired, they said that Bubba & the driver carried her out to the car.
When Michelle checked Sara’s Uber account, there was no record of her having ordered an Uber that night. She did have some Uber driver’s personal contact information saved in her phone so it was possible she ordered a pick-up off the books.
Michelle reached out to each of the three drives, but only two were willing to speak with her. When she showed them a photo of Sara, they confirmed that they hadn’t picked her up in the early morning hours of Friday, March 3. However, the third driver, a man named Ryan, refused to speak with her.
Ryan was a Native American man who may have fit the description of who James & Teesha said picked Sara up. She wondered why he wouldn’t talk to her if he had nothing to do with Sara’s disappearance.
Michelle found herself doing much of her own detective work as she grew increasingly frustrated by the lack of assistance from police. She felt they were clearly not taking her sister’s case seriously, likely because she worked as an exotic dancer. She not only continued to search for Sara herself, but she became very active on social media to raise awareness about her case.
When Bubba Robinson, James Schaller & Teesha McDermitt’s house was sold, Michelle urged law enforcement to search the property since it was Sara’s last known location. However, they refused. After taking matters into her own hands, she contacted Marion County Search & Rescue, who obtained permission from the property owner to conduct a search.
According to Michelle, after volunteer searchers brought in specialty trained K9s, three different sets of dogs with different handlers hit on the same spot at the back of the property in between the two lots that were owned by the same person. They marked the location & contacted law enforcement, who ultimately concluded that there were no significant findings at that location or the property in general.
Authorities didn’t search the home that Sara shared with Deborah & her daughter until April 23, nearly two months after she was last seen.
With Michelle’s assistance, they came to find that the $1,000 in cash Sara had been saving was gone as well as three other items: A binder with documents that Sara had collected about Joseph Mayton regarding their custody battle that detailed his criminal history from 2000-2019, a teddy bear from her daughter’s birth that had Dahlia’s name embroidered on it, as well as an envelope with important paperwork about her daughter.
Since these three very specific items were missing, Michelle focused on Joseph Mayton, but he claimed to have no idea where Sara could be.
When Deborah saw photos from the night that Sara went missing, she realized that the shoes Sara had been wearing were in the house when she came home on Sunday. Since the Marion County Sheriff’s Department had told Michelle they didn’t want any of Sara’s clothing or belongings for a potential search with dogs, by this time, Deborah had already donated the shoes after she’d gotten permission from Michelle.
She had also found Sara’s cigarettes & lighter on the porch, signs that she had come back at some point after leaving Bubba’s house in what was initially believed to be an Uber. The only personal items missing were her toothbrush, hairbrush & some makeup brushes, but her makeup was still there.
As the weeks ticked by, they learned that Joe started following the Facebook page dedicated to Sara’s disappearance on March 24. Five days later on March 29, a friend came forward to say that Joseph told them that Sara was dead.
That same day, Joe was also arrested for the assault of a 75-year-old man who had been a customer at the Ocala Suites where he worked. He pushed the man, causing him to strike his head against a wall which led to a brain bleed.
On April 10, 2023, Joe was fired from his management position at the Ocala Suites, but he refused to vacate rooms 119 & 121 where he had been living on the condition of his employment. He didn’t move out until an official eviction was filed against him.
After he left, Michelle asked authorities to search those rooms, but they refused. Soon, Joe left Florida for Kentucky with their daughter. He refused to speak with Sara’s family or to allow them to see their 5-year-old niece.
Moving forward to December 2023, nine months after Sara went missing, law enforcement surprised everyone when they arrested a man no one had ever heard of before in relation to Sara’s case, Tyrone Morman.
The arrest came after Bubba told authorities that Tyrone stopped over that night & had offered to give Sara a ride home. The exact time of when she left with him is unclear, but authorities have concluded it was just about 4 am.
According to Bubba, Tyrone was his friend & marijuana dealer who lived about 5 miles away in Micanopy. Since Shayla Richardson, Tyrone’s fiance & the mother of his three children, didn’t allow him to drink or smoke in their house, he came over every now & then to hang out.
Bubba indicated that he gave Marion County investigators Tyrone’s name when they first talked to him about Sara. He told them that he & Tyrone were texting at 1:24 am on March 3 when Sara was over at his house. It’s unclear if Tyrone knew Sara, possibly from Cafe Risque, but he asked Bubba if Sara would be interested in spending time with him & if he could come over. Bubba agreed & he came over at about 1:30 am.
According to Bubba, he never came inside & only walked up onto the porch. Bubba said that he & Sara had sex that night & she left with Tyrone shortly after. In his three interviews with police, he indicated that since Sara was so intoxicated, he & Tyrone had to carry her out to the car by her hands & feet.
On the contrary, when Bubba spoke with a private investigator in a recorded conversation, he indicated that Sara never passed out & that she had walked out to Tyrone’s car herself. When the PI mentioned the rumors of Sara being carried out he said, I heard that.
Bubba, James Schaller & Teesha McDermitt all indicated that Sara left in Tyrone’s blue 2017 Hyundai Sonata that was registered to his fiance, Shayla Richardson. Bubba indicated that after Tyrone was gone for about ten minutes, he came back as if he’d forgotten something before he left again.
Exact timeframes in this case are hazy due to discrepancies in witnesses’ accounts, but authorities believe that Tyrone left Bubba Robinson’s house at 4 am. However, if Tyrone got to the house at 1:30 am as Bubba claimed & never came inside, what happened in the 2 ½ hours between that point & 4 am when authorities believe Sara left with Tyrone?
On March 3, 2024, the one year anniversary of Sara’s disappearance, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office announced that 28-year-old Tyrone Morman was a person of interest in Sara’s case.
When he was arrested three months before this point in December 2023, Tyrone was charged with misdemeanor obstruction of an investigation before he was released the following day after his family helped him post his $10,000 bail.
The arrest came after he was interviewed by police when he claimed to have been out of town at the time of Sara’s disappearance, saying he never had any contact with her, statements that have been contradicted by witnesses.
With this false information, a search warrant was obtained for his phone. Tyrone claimed he threw his phone away because it was broken, but another witness told authorities that he still had it. Another warrant was issued to search his home & seize his phone, which is when Tyrone handed his phone over.
Following search warrants paired with witness statements, detectives not only confirmed that he left Bubba’s house with Sara, but they also discovered information suggesting that Sara & Tyrone were together at an unnamed 24-hour convenience store in northwest Marion County sometime on Friday morning after they left Bubba’s house.
Tyrone Morman remains a person of interest in Sara’s case, but he has declined to cooperate further with investigators. According to authorities, without a crime scene, a potential murder weapon or a body, a homicide case cannot easily move forward.
Although the clothing Sara wore that night was not at the house she shared with Deborah, her shoes, cigarettes & lighter were. This has led Michelle to believe that Tyrone may have brought her sister back home at some point.
Although witness accounts have painted various pictures as to Sara’s level of consciousness that night, since her ID listed a Sarasota address rather than where she lived in Reddick, she would have had to have been awake enough to tell Tyrone where she lived if she did go back after leaving Bubba’s house.
So many questions still remain at this point despite the passage of nearly 3 ½ years since Sara went missing: Where did Tyrone take Sara if she did leave Bubba’s house with him? Did she die of a drug overdose in the home, causing the panicked group to dispose of her body?
Did Sara actually go to the 24-hour convenience store with Tyrone sometime that morning, or did he just have her phone with him? If he did drop her off at home based on her belongings found there, did something else happen to her, potentially involving Joseph Mayton?
To further complicate this case, James Bubba Robinson died of a drug overdose a little more than a year after Sara disappeared on May 18, 2024 which eliminates the possibility of authorities getting more information from him.
Sara’s normal pattern of life ceased entirely on March 3, 2023. There has been zero financial activity, her social media accounts have remained untouched, she has not contacted her loved ones & her personal belongings have been left behind. A death certificate was officially signed & issued by the court on October 22, 2025, listing Sara’s date of death as March 3, 2023, the night she vanished from Reddick.
Despite this, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office continues to treat her disappearance as an active missing persons case rather than upgrading it to a homicide investigation.
Michelle believes that her sister is no longer alive. She works diligently to get answers to all of the questions that remain, to put the pieces of the puzzle together so Sara’s remains can be recovered, that she can be laid to rest & the person or people responsible for whatever happened to her can face justice.
When Sara went missing, she was 5’1”, 120# with dirty blond hair & blue eyes. She has a tattoo on her lower right hip of Kokopelli, a fertility & trickster deity. She would be turning 30-years-old in September this year.
As the years have gone by, Michelle Tullis continues to live in a nightmare not knowing exactly what happened to her sister. She spends the majority of her days advocating for Sara, refusing to allow her to be forgotten. She has organized protests, spoken publicly & has been very active on social media, all the while, enduring ongoing hardship. She wants to know where Tyrone drove her sister that morning so she can be found.
In the meantime, a little girl has been forced to grow up without her mom. Sara’s daughter was weeks away from turning 5 when she vanished, making her 8-years-old today.
According to Michelle, Sara was a young woman who was a free-spirit, someone who was trusting to the point that she thought everything was sunshine & rainbows. She was an explorer who was never one to turn any experience down, whether it be four-wheeling, swimming or surfing, she was in.
If you have any information about Sara’s disappearance, please call Detective Ryan Stith at (352) 368-3542 or the Marion County Sheriff’s Office non-emergency number at (352) 732-9111. To remain anonymous, you can call Crime Stoppers of Marion County at (352) 368-STOP (7867) & reference 23-71 in your tip. An anonymous donor is offering a $35,000 reward for tips that lead to finding Sara Ebersole.
References:
- Wikipedia: Reddick, Florida
- Joseph Mayton Arrest Affidavit
- United States Attorney’s Office: Marion County man sentenced to more than 11 years for transporting a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity
- Case Files for missing & endangered: Sara Ebersole missing Florida woman
- Fox 35: Cadaver dogs may have found ‘something’ on property missing Marion County woman was last seen
- Facebook: Marion County, Florida Unsolved Homicides – Citizen Page
- Facebook: Marion County, Florida Unsolved Homicides – Citizen Page
- Facebook: Marion County Sheriff’s Office
- Ocala Gazette: Where is Sara Gail Ebersole?
- Apple Podcasts: Going West: Sara Ebersole: The cowboys in the truck
- PodBean: Unnatural Podcast: The unexplained disappearance of Sara Ebersole
- NBC News: Investigators announce person of interest one year after disappearance of Florida woman Sara Ebersole
- Medium: The suspicious 2023 disappearance of Sara Ebersole
- NBC News: Sister dedicated to finding answers in the March disappearance of Florida woman Sara Ebersole
