Was missing a Tennessee woman murdered or did she willingly disappear?

This story previously aired on June 29, 2019. Produced by Josh Yager and Tom Seligson When Marsha Brantley, 50, of Cleveland, Tenn., suddenly vanished in 2009, her husband Donnie eventually became a suspect in her murder.

But was Marsha even dead? The case was unusual from the start because for months after Marsha disappeared, nobody reported her missing – not her friends, her family or even her husband. No one took much notice until her hairdresser, Kelly DeLude, worried about a missed appointment and started asking questions. "I felt compelled to find out what happened to her," DeLude tells "48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant.

"I wasn't trying to be a detective. I was trying to be a concerned friend." DeLude eventually called police, and investigators later picked up the case.

The investigation was full of seeming contradictions from the start. Donnie Brantley claimed he hadn't reported Marsha missing because she had left him. Then, police say he lied repeatedly about where she had gone and what she'd taken with her.

Still, there was almost no physical evidence of a crime – no blood, no fingerprints, no crime scene at all. And with no body to prove there even was a murder, the investigators' biggest hurdle in solving the disappearance of Marsha Brantley may have been Marsha herself. When Donnie Brantley was deposed in a 2013 civil suit, he didn't seem to want to talk much about his feelings for Marsha.

In answering questions on video, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment o.