A Colorado man who vanished during a business trip to Nashville has been found dead, authorities confirmed Thursday evening.
Metro Nashville Police said officers located the body of 31-year-old Conor Anderson in a wooded area next to a parking lot on James Robertson Parkway. Investigators said there is currently nothing pointing to foul play, though the county medical examiner will formally determine how he died.
A Business Trip That Turned Into a Mystery
Anderson had traveled from Colorado to Nashville on August 15 for the REMAX Broker Owner Conference and checked into the Millennium Maxwell House hotel downtown, according to police. He worked as a client executive at Marsh, a Denver-based insurance and risk management firm, and had only joined the company a little over a year earlier. Before that, he spent roughly a year as an account manager at National Corporate Housing and several years at the New York IT firm Presidio. He was a graduate of Harborfields High School on Long Island and later studied economics at both the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado Boulder.
He was reported missing after failing to return to his hotel, check in with family, or use his phone or credit cards in the days that followed.
The Last Confirmed Sighting
The final known contact with Anderson came in the early hours of August 16, when he flagged down two patrol officers near the corner of Woodland and Main Street in East Nashville. According to police, Anderson wanted to report that he’d handed $20 to a man outside a nearby bar in exchange for being shown around the neighborhood — but said the man pocketed the cash and left without holding up his end of the deal. Anderson told officers he then gave the man a second $20, with the same result, and said the man and an associate made a vague threat before he walked away alone.
Bodycam footage released by police shows the roughly 11-minute exchange. One officer pressed Anderson on whether the encounter had actually been an attempted drug deal gone wrong, noting that repeatedly handing cash to a stranger who walked off each time didn’t add up to a simple sightseeing arrangement. Anderson firmly denied it, insisting there was no drug transaction involved and that he simply felt taken advantage of.
When officers asked for identification to file a formal report, Anderson declined, and the conversation ended with him asking only that they note the license plate of the vehicle the men had been in. He told the officers he wasn’t seeking any kind of payback — just $40 he didn’t really need back — and thanked them for their concern before one advised him to call a rideshare and get back to his hotel safely.
That was the last confirmed interaction anyone has acknowledged having with him. Police say that shortly afterward, Anderson stepped into the nearby Up-Down Bar, stayed only a few minutes, and then walked out. He was not seen again.
Family Says Disappearance Made No Sense
Anderson’s relatives went public with an appeal for information as the search stretched on, describing his vanishing as wildly inconsistent with who he was. In a statement posted by his uncle, Tom Anderson, the family recounted the bar encounter and the police interaction, stressing that no trace of him turned up afterward — his phone stopped pinging, his cards went unused, and calls to family went unanswered.
“Wherever he is, we just need to find him,” the family wrote before his body was found. “We need to bring Conor home.”
What Happens Next
Metro Nashville Police have not said whether Anderson’s death is being treated as suspicious, and stressed that a cause of death won’t be confirmed until the medical examiner’s office completes its review. Marsh has not yet issued a public statement regarding his death.
This story may be updated as more information becomes available.