“We want to know that he’s OK,” Dionne Rose told Dateline.
Dionne’s son, Christopher Tillery, vanished on December 6, 2024. The 36-year-old was last seen in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
“If anybody has seen him, please just give us a call,” Dionne pleaded.
Christopher was raised in Maryland, the oldest of two. “He’s always been a happy, quiet kid,” his mother said. “He loved playing basketball through school.”
As her son got older, Dionne began to notice changes in his behavior. “Chris had been experiencing some mental health issues. You could tell something was off,” she said. “For the last 10 years he’s been experiencing it and we tried to get him help.”
She says the shift became more noticeable when Chris was in his late 20s. Dionne urged him to seek help. “I was like, ‘Chris, please just go and see somebody. All they’re gonna do is talk to you, you know?’ And he agreed to go and — and talk. And I had made him an appointment,” she recalled.
But when the time came, Dionne says he refused. “He was like, ‘No, I’m not gonna go.’ You know, ‘Everything is fine.’”
Things weren’t fine. According to Dionne, Chris’s struggles impacted his ability to hold down a job. “So for the last three years he had worked at Burlington Coat Factory and that was the longest job he held,” she said.
At the time of his disappearance, Chris was still working at Burlington and living with Dionne and his stepfather.
In November 2024, Dionne says he told her he wanted to leave Maryland. “He said, ‘Mom, I think I’m going to go to California,’” she recalled. “And I thought for a second, and I was like, ‘Well, Chris, you know what? You’re not married. You have no kids. You’re about to be 36.’ I said, ‘A change in your pace might do you some good.’”
Dionne says she told her son to hold off until she could get him a cellphone and a few other items to keep him safe during the trip.
Then, on December 4, she got a call from Chris while she was at her mother’s house. He told her he was leaving for California. “I was like, ‘Chris, wait a minute. I haven’t gotten you your cellphone.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t need a cell phone, Mom,’” Dionne said. “He’s like, ‘Just pray for me, Mom. Just pray that I get there safe.’”
She says he told her he would call once he arrived so he could get the contact information for his supervisor at Burlington back in Maryland. “Because he said Burlington had jobs all over the place so he would get a job at another Burlington.”
When Dionne returned home that evening, Chris and his bookbag were gone.
Weeks passed. Then a month. Still no word from Chris.
January 17, 2025 — Chris’s 36th birthday — came and went in silence. Dionne filed a missing person report.
The Prince George’s County Police Department confirmed to Dateline in an email that Chris was last seen on the 4900 block of Trotters Glen Drive in Marlboro, Maryland on December 6, 2024, when he said he was going to California. He was reported missing by his mother on January 22.
The police department said they interviewed Chris’s mother and his work manager, and subpoenaed his bank records.
Dionne told Dateline that in the months following her son’s disappearance, someone in Mexico attempted to withdraw money using his card. “The police subpoenaed his records and they were able to find that out,” she said. “But they don’t know if it was him or not.”
When asked about the latest update in Chris’s disappearance, the department said Chris may be “missing possibly in Mexico.” Foul play is not suspected in his disappearance.
Dionne believes her son may have experienced a mental health crisis. “He may have gone to California, he may not have,” she said. “I believe my son may be living on the streets somewhere.”
Wherever he is, Dionne has a message for Chris: “His family loves him. We want to hear from him.”
Chris is 6’2” and weighs approximately 160 lbs. He was last seen leaving his home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
Anyone with information about his disappearance is asked to call the Prince George’s County Police Department at 301-772-8970.
