Eric Franks Missing – According to his brother-in-law Chad Baus, Eric Franks, who was 38 years old at the time, had two significant goals in life. “One of them was that he had a desire to become an actor in Hollywood. And he traveled out to California for a bit and worked on a few different sets there,” Chad revealed to Dateline. The second one was to start a family of one’s own. Beth is Eric’s younger sister, and Chad is married to her brother.
“It was just the two of them,” Chad explained. The clergyman that Eric and Beth grew up with as their father. “They had grown up in different places,” Chad explained to Dateline. He added that the Franks stayed in the South for the majority of their upbringing. “The vast majority of it was in Tennessee,” he explained. In December of 1995, Chad first made the acquaintance of Beth when the Franks were residing in Nashville, Tennessee.
Eric was around four years Beth’s senior at the time. “I met Eric while I was dating his sister,” Chad added. “That’s how we got to know each other.” “Their family invited me to join them for dinner at a restaurant,” she said. Chad stated that he did not recall being particularly apprehensive, but that “there’s always the concern” of how protective an older brother is going to be while meeting his younger sister’s partner for the first time.
“When I first met him, he was on the quiet side,” Chad recalled. “When I saw him again, he was much more outgoing.” Before he would open up and talk a lot, you “kind of had to get to know him” before he would talk a lot. Two years later, in December 1997, Chad tied the knot with Beth. Chad informed Dateline in an email that Eric was in their wedding party and stood by Beth’s side during the ceremony.
According to Chad, Eric called Tupelo, Mississippi, home for “quite some time” when he was there. Following the passing of Beth and Eric’s father in 2006, their mother, Jo Ann, relocated to Ohio, which is where Beth and Chad were residing at the time. In the end, Eric came after “during the financial crisis of 2008.” When Eric went missing, Chad and Eric had been brothers-in-law for a combined total of 14 years.
