Key facts
- Name: Terry Lynn Pendergraft Tersak
- Age at disappearance: 33
- Last seen: June 1, 2009
- Location: Asheville, North Carolina
- Status: Still missing — not reported missing until May 2011, nearly two years later
- Investigating agency: Asheville Police Department, (828) 259-5945
The phone call
On June 1, 2009, Terry Lynn Tersak called her cousin in Garner, North Carolina, and said she was driving over with her son to visit. Garner is 250 miles east of Asheville, where Terry lived. She never arrived. Her family hasn’t heard from her since.
That much is certain. Everything after it comes secondhand — mostly from her husband, Stefan Tersak, and filtered through a family that was estranged from Terry and didn’t report her missing for nearly two years.
Two years of silence before the report
Stefan’s account, as documented in her Charley Project file, is this: Terry left with a woman named “Jen” the day after she spoke to her cousin. Stefan was supposed to pick Terry up on June 20, but the address she gave him turned out to be nonexistent. When he returned home from the failed pickup, he said, someone had gone through his storage unit and cleaned it out — and when he called police about it, they refused to take a report.
Then, in October 2009, Stefan claims Terry stopped by the apartment he’d moved into after her disappearance. They had a brief conversation, he says, and she told him she’d been staying in Boone, North Carolina. Then she left, and he never saw her or had any contact with her again.
Terry was estranged from her family. Her father and brother didn’t file a missing-person report until May 2011 — nearly two years after the June 2009 phone call. Stefan described Terry as a drug addict who was planning to enter a rehabilitation program; she was on probation for a 2007 misdemeanor marijuana conviction and had previously worked as a stripper, though not in the year before she vanished. One of her friends pushed back on that picture: she smoked marijuana, the friend said, but she wasn’t addicted to it, and she didn’t drink much.
She left behind the vehicle she’d just purchased. Stefan traded it in after she vanished.
Stefan has said he believes Terry deliberately abandoned him and their son, who is autistic. Her family — the ones who eventually filed the report, who maintain her Facebook page — believes something else happened to her. The case has been covered by the Crack House Chronicles podcast (episode 294, “What Happened to Terry Tersak?,” December 2025) and discussed on Websleuths and Reddit’s r/UnresolvedMysteries, where the central frustration is always the same: the two-year gap. What was lost in those two years — witnesses, phone records, surveillance footage, momentum — can never be recovered.
Terry was 33 when she made that call to her cousin. She would be about 50 today. Seventeen years, no confirmed sightings, no bank activity publicly documented, no body. A phone call about a visit that never happened.
Theories: what might have happened
She left voluntarily. Her husband believes it, and parts of the record don’t contradict it: the October 2009 visit (in his telling), the cleaned-out storage unit, the nonexistent pickup address. She was estranged from her family, on probation, struggling. People do walk away. Against it: she left behind a car she’d just bought, and in seventeen years she has never contacted her son.
Foul play involving someone close to her. The delayed reporting, the contradictory accounts, the storage unit, the traded-in car — online sleuths have focused on Stefan’s story for years. But suspicion is not evidence. No one has been named a suspect or person of interest, and Stefan has never been charged with anything in connection with her disappearance. He is presumed innocent, and the claims about what happened in 2009 are his alone.
A life on the margins that ended quietly. If Terry was, as her husband described, heading toward rehab and entangled in drugs, she was in one of the most dangerous demographic categories for an unsolved disappearance. People in that world vanish and are never reported — or are reported two years too late. Her own family waited twenty-three months.
The hardest fact in the file isn’t a theory. It’s the calendar: June 1, 2009 to May 2011, and nobody called the police.
Have information?
Contact the Asheville Police Department at (828) 259-5945. In an emergency, dial 911.
Timeline
- ~1976 — Terry Lynn Pendergraft is born.
- June 1, 2009 — Calls her cousin in Garner, NC, saying she’s driving over with her son to visit; never arrives.
- June 20, 2009 — Husband Stefan says he tried to pick her up at an address that didn’t exist.
- October 2009 — Stefan claims Terry visited his apartment briefly, said she’d been in Boone, NC; no contact since.
- May 2011 — Her father and brother file a missing-person report, nearly two years later.
- 2025 — Crack House Chronicles devotes episode 294 to her case.
- Today — Still missing.
FAQ
Is Terry Tersak still missing?
Yes. As of October 2026, Terry Lynn Tersak has been missing for more than 17 years.
Was Terry Tersak ever found?
No. She was never found, and no trace of her has ever been publicly documented.
How old would Terry Tersak be today?
Terry was 33 when she disappeared in June 2009 — she would be about 50 today.
Why wasn’t Terry Tersak reported missing for two years?
She was estranged from her family, and her father and brother didn’t file a police report until May 2011 — nearly two years after her last contact. Her husband, who was in touch with her in 2009, believed she had left voluntarily.
Who is Stefan Tersak?
Terry’s husband. He has said he believes Terry deliberately abandoned him and their son. He has never been charged in connection with her disappearance and is presumed innocent.
How can I help?
Share this case file. If you have any information, contact the Asheville Police Department at (828) 259-5945.
Sources
- Reference: The Charley Project, “Terry Lynn Tersak” (charleyproject.org/case/terry-lynn-tersak).
- Media: Crack House Chronicles, Ep. 294, “What Happened to Terry Tersak?” (Dec 2025).
Found an error? Tell us via the About page and we will fix it promptly and note the change here. Last verified October 2026.