A 31-year-old Colorado man who flew to Nashville for a work conference has not been seen since early Sunday morning, when he flagged down two East Precinct officers near Woodland and Main Streets in East Nashville to report that two strangers had just walked off with his $20. He agreed to order a rideshare back to his hotel instead of filing a formal police report. He never made it there.
According to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, Conor Anderson told the officers he had given two unknown men $20 to show him around the area near a bar, only for the pair to take the cash and leave. Anderson declined to provide his driver's license so officers could file a theft report, and instead accepted their suggestion to call a rideshare back to the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel, where he had checked in after flying into Nashville on August 15 for the conference. As WSMV reports, that brief roadside encounter is now the last confirmed contact anyone has had with him.
The spot where Anderson was last seen sits near East Nashville's Five Points nightlife strip, roughly 3.5 miles from his hotel across the Cumberland River in the MetroCenter area, according to Wikitravel city maps. Getting back would have meant crossing the river from East Nashville into North Nashville, a route that typically requires a car or rideshare rather than a walk, especially in the middle of the night.
Detectives Turn to Phones, Bank Records and Cameras
Missing Persons Unit detectives are now reviewing surveillance footage and checking Anderson's phone and bank records in an effort to reconstruct his movements after he parted ways with officers. Under Metro Nashville Police Department policy, missing person investigations are handled by specialized detectives who lean on mobile device location tracking, financial record requests, and regional surveillance video analysis, tools particularly suited to piecing together the timeline of an out-of-town visitor unfamiliar with the city's layout.
The Millennium Maxwell House Hotel at 2025 Rosa L. Parks Blvd, where Anderson was staying, is a 287-room convention property that regularly hosts multi-day business conferences and corporate travelers, per Millennium Hotels and destination-industry materials. Police are asking anyone with information to call 615-862-8600.
A City Still Reckoning With Visitor Safety
Nashville's tourism machine is enormous: the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp has projected more than 17.8 million annual visitors in 2026, with local tourism and conference spending expected to top $12 billion in Davidson County. That volume of out-of-town business travelers, cycling through hotels like the Maxwell House week after week, has made cases involving visitors who lose contact with their group a recurring concern for local police.
Anderson's disappearance inevitably echoes the 2024 case of Riley Strain, the out-of-town visitor whose disappearance and death near Nashville's riverfront drew national attention and pushed Metro Council to approve $1.5 million in December 2024 for riverfront fencing, lighting, and camera upgrades, as Hoodline detailed in its report on lagging riverfront safety fixes. The legal fallout from that case continued into July, when Missouri courts dismissed most wrongful death claims against fraternity organizations tied to Strain's disappearance, ruling that adult companions do not hold a legal duty of care over one another during nighttime outings, according to Hoodline's coverage of that ruling.
New Tools, and a Recent Case With a Happy Ending
Metro police have also been expanding their technological toolkit. In July, the department launched a trial Drones as First Responder program out of its Madison Precinct, deploying aerial video tracking within a two-mile radius during missing person calls and active searches, alongside expanded partnerships with private security camera networks citywide.
Not every case like this ends badly. Hoodline reported that a 38-year-old woman who went missing during a work conference in Central Texas earlier this month was found safe nearly a week later after investigators tracked her movements through regional school and business surveillance cameras, in a report on the Buda woman found safe in Texas. That case, like Anderson's, involved reconstructing a visitor's timeline through camera footage after contact with the group was lost.
Davidson County records show Metro Nashville Police field hundreds of missing person reports every year, with the Missing Persons Unit prioritizing cases involving out-of-state visitors who are unfamiliar with local geography. For now, Anderson's whereabouts remain unknown, and detectives are continuing to work the phone records, bank activity, and surveillance footage that make up the bulk of any investigation into a traveler who vanished far from home.
