“I hope that we find him alive and well,” Paula Kekatos told Dateline. “And if we find him and he needs our help, we’re here.”
Paula’s son Ryan King has been missing for more than a year. The 28-year-old was last seen on June 3, 2025, along Shankle Road in Paris, Tennessee.
“Me, his brother, his stepbrothers, his stepmother, stepfather, his father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, everybody is here ready to welcome him home and help and support him in any way he needs,” Paula said.
Ryan grew up in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. “He was involved in all kinds of youth sports, and that was just kind of like his niche,” Bob King, Ryan’s father, told Dateline. “We live at the shore, so he became a good surfer. He became a good golfer. All self-taught.”
Paula remembers her son as a kind and gentle soul. “He’s very light-spirited, funny, just a lot of fun to be around,” she said. “Everybody that knew Ryan really just adored him. He didn’t have an enemy.”
Although Paula and Bob divorced when Ryan was 3, they remained committed co-parents. “We lived close by, so there weren’t really any kind of difficulties or a strained relationship there,” Bob said. “We were both involved with everything that him and his brother did, whether it was a school activity, a sporting activity.”
Throughout high school, Ryan’s love for athletics continued. He also grew into a well-rounded young adult. “He was in sports. He was in travel sports. He did well in school. He got straight A’s. He just was an all-around good kid,” Paula said. “There’s nothing that stands out that’s out of the ordinary.”
After Ryan graduated from high school in 2015, his life changed dramatically. He began getting sick intermittently over the summer. “He started losing weight,” Bob said. “Nobody really knew what it was, and we ended up taking him to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.”
According to his parents, Ryan was diagnosed with Addison’s disease, an autoimmune disease in which the body doesn’t produce cortisol and aldosterone. “So once we figured out what was going on, he was able to take two replacement meds daily,” Paula said. “He was a young kid, so that was a big adjustment, him having to take the daily medicine and the reminders and stuff.”
After adjusting to his diagnosis, life returned to normal. Ryan lived at home and worked as a server at a restaurant. But then the 2020 pandemic hit. “I think that kind of hurt a lot of people, especially young adults, because after COVID, he just seemed like he was struggling a little bit with some degree of depression or anxiety,” Bob said. “But, you know, even though his mother and I encouraged him to get some kind of professional help or therapy for it, he was just resistant to it.”
Eventually, Ryan saved enough money to move out on his own to Margate, New Jersey, 10 minutes from where he grew up. Once there, according to Paula, he stopped taking his medication. “He ended up in the hospital a few more times,” she said.
In March 2024, during a hospital stay, Ryan shared some news with his family. “He admitted to us that he was doing too much drinking and that somebody had turned him on to, like, some substances,” Paula remembered. “When he told us about it in the hospital, we got him into treatment immediately. He asked for help, and we got it.”
That April, Ryan entered an addiction recovery program in Florida. “Within 90 days, he was a totally different person,” Bob said. “He was doing great. He put on 35 pounds in 90 days.”
According to his parents, while at the facility, Ryan took a romantic interest in a woman also in treatment. However, since dating during the program was not allowed, the woman had to leave the facility.
At the end of the 90 days, Ryan decided to stay in Florida and move into a sober living house. “He had a sponsor. He was going to meetings. He had a job working with his sponsor doing commercial plumbing work,” Bob said.
Then Ryan reconnected with the woman from the addiction recovery program. “He stayed sober for 11 months, and he wanted their relationship – to see where it would go,” Paula said.
Then, in February 2025, Ryan told his family that he had relapsed. Bob, who was visiting Florida at the time, drove to where Ryan was and picked him up. “Ryan was upset, and he made a few phone calls and went right back into the recovery program,” Bob said.
But this time, according to Paula, Ryan faced different challenges in treatment. “Ryan was just absolutely beside himself with guilt because he got help,” Paula said. And his girlfriend did not. “His dad came and got him and got him help, and he left her on the street.”
Dateline was unable to contact Ryan’s girlfriend because the family did not feel comfortable sharing her name or other information due to the active nature of Ryan’s case.
When Ryan left his second round of treatment, he told his parents the news: He was moving to Murray, Kentucky, to be with his girlfriend. Suspecting that his girlfriend was still involved with drugs, Bob tried to advise his son otherwise. “It’s like whatever we were trying to tell our son was just falling on deaf ears,” he said.
Paula believes Ryan thought this decision to move was a new beginning. “He, you know, had his car and he had a job, and he was doing really well, and he was thriving,” Paula said. “And he thought this was, like, going to be a fresh start.”
That doesn’t appear to be what happened, according to the family.
On May 27, 2025, Ryan FaceTimed his stepmother, Regina, Bob’s wife. After the conversation ended, Regina relayed to Bob that Ryan looked terrible.
Bob says he called his son shortly after Regina had spoken with him. “I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’” he remembered saying. “Just, ‘Hey, listen, it didn’t work out the way you thought. Just come home.’”
Bob says Ryan was quiet during the conversation, but he believes his son heard him. “When the phone conversation ended, you know, we both said we love each other, and so it’s kind of a blessing,” he said.
Because that was the last time Bob spoke to Ryan.
Eleven days after that phone call was Father’s Day. Bob did not hear from his son.
Paula says that while Ryan wasn’t the best communicator, he always found a way to let his family know he was OK. “We, you know, stayed in contact. Between his dad and I, we would text and call, you know, three, four times a week, each of us,” she said.
Ryan not contacting his dad on Father’s Day was very out of character. “I just thought it was strange,” Bob said.
The next day, June 16, 2025, Bob called Paula and told her he hadn’t heard from Ryan on Father’s Day.
Sensing something was wrong, Paula says she called Ryan multiple times. No response. Finally, she turned her caller ID off and called again. This time, she says, Ryan’s girlfriend picked up his phone. “When I asked her, you know, ‘Where’s Ryan? Can I talk to him?’ She’s like, ‘Oh, he’s not here,’” Paula said. “And when I asked where he was, she broke down crying and said she has no idea, ‘He’s missing. I can’t find him.’”
According to Paula, Ryan’s girlfriend said she last saw him on June 3. “So from there, we called the Kentucky State Police, and we made a missing persons report,” Paula said. The case was eventually transferred to the Henry County Sheriff’s Office in Paris, Tennessee, after investigators learned that Ryan was last seen there. Paris is about 30 minutes from where he had been staying in Murray, Kentucky.
On July 29, 2025, the Henry County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook about Ryan’s case. They stated that Ryan was last seen in Henry County in the Shankle Road area around June 3. “Information provided throughout this investigation is that Ryan King had made a statement that he was going back to Florida,” police wrote. “After Ryan made that statement, Ryan presumably left walking from the residence on Shankle Road going towards Old Paris Murray Road.”
Paula says she learned from Ryan’s girlfriend that the two were in Paris visiting a group of her friends. “Supposedly, they got into an argument, and she left to go calm down,” Paula said. “And when she came back 20-so minutes later, he was gone.”
Paula and Bob told Dateline that Ryan had also left behind his phone and wallet. “He didn’t just walk off. I know my son,” Bob said.
Searches for Ryan started shortly after the missing persons report was filed. Paula says she was told by authorities that around June 20, they went out to the residence where Ryan was last seen and spoke with people.
According to Paula, investigators returned about a month later with a warrant to conduct a more extensive search. “They went out, like, on foot with people and drones and did, like, a search of the whole area, and literally just kept coming up empty-handed,” she said.
Dateline reached out to the Henry County Sheriff’s Office for more information about Ryan’s disappearance. “This is an active case that is still under investigation,” Sheriff Josh Frey replied in an email. “At this time no information can be released.”
Paula and Bob have worked tirelessly to find their son. As a retired New Jersey State Trooper, Bob exhausted all of his law enforcement resources. “I’ve called the New Jersey State Police, the Tennessee State Police, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the FBI. I’ve written to a congressman,” Bob said. “Like, who else can I get involved?”
Paula says the family also reached out to the CUE Center for Missing Persons for assistance. “We sent a crew down there to Paris, Tennessee, and they worked into Kentucky on the main road, talking to all the farmers and distributing posters,” founder Monica Caison told Dateline. “Now we’ve moved on to getting a billboard, which – we hope it’ll go up in the next week or so.”
The CUE Center also has Ryan’s case details listed on their site.
In April 2026, Bob says he received a call from the Henry County Sheriff’s Office, and the lead investigator told him that 13 FBI agents, 3 detectives from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and his entire Henry County detective unit had recently reviewed Ryan’s case from the very beginning.
“It has been like pushing a boulder uphill for the last 13 months trying to have my son found,” Bob said. “I pray every day that my son is found, you know, alive or deceased. But for him to never be found? I don’t even have words.”
Paula wants Ryan — if he’s out there — to hear this message. “There’s no judgment. There’s no, ‘Well, you coulda, shoulda, woulda,’” Paula said. “It is just ‘Come home and let’s deal with this head-on and get you to a point where you’re happy and healthy and thriving, and you can put this behind you.’”
Ryan is 6’2” and 160 lbs. He has brown hair and green eyes. He was possibly last seen wearing a purple shirt, khaki shorts, and black tennis shoes. He would be 29 years old today.
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Ryan King, please contact the Henry County Sheriff’s Office in Paris at 951-776-1099.
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