Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Disappearance of Jimmy Farenthold Part 3: Running Out of Road

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The Disappearance of Jimmy Farenthold Part 3: Running Out of Road · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

0:01
Speaker 1: Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
0:05
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Most disappearances come with noise, police reports, searches,
0:14
Speaker 1: and families begging for answers in front of cameras. But
0:17
Speaker 1: when Jimmy Farenthald vanished in the spring of nineteen eighty nine,
0:22
Speaker 1: there was none of that. No bulletin, no headlines, just silence.
0:28
Speaker 1: Jimmy was the youngest son of one of Texas's most
0:31
Speaker 1: powerful families, a dynasty built on oil, money and politics.
0:37
Speaker 1: From the outside, the Farenthald name meant privilege and influence,
0:42
Speaker 1: but for Jimmy, it meant living in the shadow of grief.
0:47
Speaker 1: He was a twin, and his brother Vincent's sudden death
0:50
Speaker 1: due to the combination of the family's inherited blood disorder
0:54
Speaker 1: and a late night fall, marked him forever. Jimmy carried
0:59
Speaker 1: that absence like a scar, telling friends half in jest
1:03
Speaker 1: that in his family's eyes, the good one died. As
1:07
Speaker 1: an adult, he tried to outrun that pain. He was charming,
1:13
Speaker 1: but reckless, sensitive and self destructive. He fought addiction and
1:18
Speaker 1: drifted from one city to another, always chasing change but
1:22
Speaker 1: never catching it, And then in April nineteen eighty nine.
1:27
Speaker 1: He promised a new beginning, a Florida rehab program was
1:31
Speaker 1: going to be a fresh start. His ticket was booked
1:35
Speaker 1: and his bags packed, but Jimmy never got on the plane.
1:40
Speaker 1: In fact, he was gone, his car, his passport, his
1:45
Speaker 1: clothes all abandoned. What followed wasn't the frantic search you'd
1:50
Speaker 1: expect for the son of a famous family. Instead, his
1:54
Speaker 1: disappearance was met with hesitation, division, and decades of unanswered questions.
2:01
Speaker 1: Jimmy Farenthald didn't just vanish from Texas. He vanished from
2:06
Speaker 1: history itself. James Robert Doherty Farenthald, or Jimmy, was born
2:36
Speaker 1: on February eighth, nineteen fifty six, the youngest son in
2:40
Speaker 1: a family already split between two powerful legacies. To his father, George,
2:46
Speaker 1: he was often seen as the prodigal son, the one
2:49
Speaker 1: who wandered but might someday return with purpose. But he
2:53
Speaker 1: had another side. As a child, Jimmy was quiet and watchful,
2:59
Speaker 1: his world shaped by contrasts privilege paired with absence. The
3:04
Speaker 1: weight of a famous name balanced against the silence inside
3:08
Speaker 1: his home. His mother, Sissy, was rising into political activism,
3:14
Speaker 1: moving from the courtroom to the Texas House of Representatives,
3:18
Speaker 1: and eventually onto the national stage. His father was immersed
3:23
Speaker 1: in oil and gas ventures, with business stretching from Houston
3:27
Speaker 1: to overseas. The household was ambitious, high achieving, and often
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Speaker 1: emotionally cold. Cissy's role as the only female member of
3:38
Speaker 1: the Texas House forced her into a stark choice. If
3:42
Speaker 1: she prioritized her children, her male colleagues mocked her for weakness.
3:48
Speaker 1: If she committed fully to her work, the children paid
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Speaker 1: the price, and her colleagues would spin it the other way.
3:55
Speaker 1: During her run for governor in nineteen seventy two, she
3:58
Speaker 1: brought along Dudley, George Junior, and Emily, all college aged
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Speaker 1: and all willing to cut their long hair and drop
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Speaker 1: out of school to bolster her campaign. Jimmy, just sixteen,
4:12
Speaker 1: was different Labeled a troublemaker by Saint Stephen's Episcopal School
4:17
Speaker 1: in Austin. He was prohibited from living on campus and
4:21
Speaker 1: sent instead to stay with family friends during the campaign.
4:26
Speaker 1: By then, the farentheld household was unraveling. The parents lived
4:31
Speaker 1: apart more often than they were together, the children feuded
4:35
Speaker 1: with their father, and education was sacrificed for politics. Even
4:40
Speaker 1: Cissy admitted privately that she feared the family was slipping
4:44
Speaker 1: away for Jimmy, though the deeper wound had come years earlier,
4:50
Speaker 1: the death of his twin brother Vincent. From the moment
4:53
Speaker 1: Vincent died after the combination of a bathroom fall and
4:57
Speaker 1: an inherited bleeding disorder, Jimmy was changed. He wasn't just
5:02
Speaker 1: the youngest son anymore. He was the surviving twin. Cissy,
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Speaker 1: haunted by memories of her own brother's funeral, decided Jimmy
5:12
Speaker 1: should not attend Vincent's. She thought she was shielding him,
5:16
Speaker 1: but Jimmy later spoke with regret about being denied the
5:19
Speaker 1: chance to say goodbye. Outwardly, Jimmy seemed fine. He was sweet, generous,
5:28
Speaker 1: and loved animals and plants, but he was also heedless,
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Speaker 1: prone to risk, and often wondered into danger. He was
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Speaker 1: a daredevil, diving into pools before he could swim, speeding
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Speaker 1: on motorcycles, and taking reckless chances. Despite the family's hereditary
5:47
Speaker 1: bleeding disease, Willibrand's cissy tried to protect him, but Jimmy
5:52
Speaker 1: tested limits. The loss of a twin left scars. Science
5:58
Speaker 1: now recognizes show that surviving twins face a sharply elevated
6:03
Speaker 1: risk of psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, and long term struggles
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Speaker 1: with identity. The risk of psychiatric illness spikes sevenfold in
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Speaker 1: the month after a co twin's death and lingers for decades.
6:19
Speaker 1: Jimmy fit the pattern. He grew up, carrying both Vincent's
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Speaker 1: absence and the disorder that had killed him. He struggled
6:27
Speaker 1: with dyslexia, drifted from school, and grew quieter than his siblings.
6:34
Speaker 1: As he entered adulthood, addiction took hold. Jimmy cycled through
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Speaker 1: treatment centers and carried the stigma of being the one
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Speaker 1: who lived. He struggled with jobs, bouncing between temporary work
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Speaker 1: from a stint as a Georgia insurance salesman to laboring
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Speaker 1: in one of his father's businesses. Friends and family grew
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Speaker 1: used to him vanishing for weeks or months. He floated
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Speaker 1: between relatives, friends, and surrogate families, leaving wardrobes scattered across Texas,
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Speaker 1: and Jimmy's recklessness continually deepened. He survived a motorcycle crash,
7:14
Speaker 1: was stabbed in a bar fight, and was once beaten
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Speaker 1: and dumped in a dumpster outside a topless bar He
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Speaker 1: took drugs, heavily favoring cocaine, and slipped in and out
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Speaker 1: of rehabilitation programs. Sometimes he agreed to go only to
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Speaker 1: appease his mother. Other times he escaped. Once, after being
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Speaker 1: dropped off at a halfway house, he fled the same
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Speaker 1: night and caught a plane to Houston. Despite everything, Jimmy
7:45
Speaker 1: could be magnetic. He was charming and funny. He often
7:49
Speaker 1: called himself the family's black sheep, joking darkly that the
7:53
Speaker 1: Farenthals preferred him hidden away. He spoke bitterly of being
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Speaker 1: barred from Vincent's funeral, and at times confided to others that,
8:02
Speaker 1: in his family's eyes, the good one died for Jimmy
8:06
Speaker 1: Farenthald survival was not freedom. He had lived while his
8:11
Speaker 1: twin had not. In many ways, he never escaped the
8:15
Speaker 1: moment Vincent died. The fate of the Farenthald children was
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Speaker 1: not to uphold the family's legacy of wealth and achievement,
8:24
Speaker 1: but to grapple with its curses. Each child bore scars
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Speaker 1: from that burden. Some would eventually push through. Jimmy would not.
8:35
Speaker 1: In the Farenthald household, the children inherited not only privilege,
8:40
Speaker 1: but also dysfunction. Their father, George, drank heavily after a
8:46
Speaker 1: few two many he often turned his anger toward his children,
8:50
Speaker 1: especially the boys. He ridiculed their long hair, their liberal ideals,
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Speaker 1: their refusal to become the kind of disciplined aristocrat airs
9:01
Speaker 1: he expected. They disappointed him, and he made sure they
9:05
Speaker 1: knew it. Drugs became another battleground. The boys experimented, and
9:12
Speaker 1: George flushed their stashes down the toilet when he found them,
9:15
Speaker 1: which was fine, but after proceeded to rail that they
9:19
Speaker 1: were failures. Jimmy, the youngest, absorbed these conflicts most deeply.
9:26
Speaker 1: To his father. He was both the prodigal son and
9:30
Speaker 1: the greatest frustration. Jimmy never wrestled the family's infirmities into submission.
9:36
Speaker 1: He embraced them. Addiction took root, feeding on his lifelong
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Speaker 1: grief from losing Vincent, and the relentless judgment at home.
9:45
Speaker 1: While his siblings stumbled but recovered, his life became the
9:49
Speaker 1: newest reflection of the family's unhealed pain. Through the nineteen
9:55
Speaker 1: seventies and into the nineteen eighties, drugs remained the family curse.
10:00
Speaker 1: Alcoholism and addiction ran through the Farenthalt bluntser Dougherty bloodline,
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Speaker 1: claiming family members and even a cousin who died of
10:09
Speaker 1: a heroine related illness. For Sissy, this reality was devastating.
10:15
Speaker 1: She admitted her family had been ravaged by drugs. Some
10:19
Speaker 1: of her children emerged scarred but intact, not Jimmy. By
10:35
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, George and Cissy Farenthald's marriage collapsed entirely.
10:41
Speaker 1: They divorced that summer. Jimmy meanwhile slipped further into instability.
10:48
Speaker 1: He continued to seek his parents' approval, but carried both
10:51
Speaker 1: the burden of Vincent's death and the weight of his
10:54
Speaker 1: own failures. Addiction shadowed him, pulling him deeper onto the
11:00
Speaker 1: edge he seemed to crave. By the late eighties, Jimmy
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Speaker 1: was running out of road. Addiction had consumed his days.
11:09
Speaker 1: His family ties were frayed, and he drifted between treatment centers,
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Speaker 1: borrowed couches, and late nights at bars across Texas. He
11:19
Speaker 1: lived like a man circling the end, leaning closer each time.
11:25
Speaker 1: Then one day he simply stepped off the edge. Jimmy
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Speaker 1: slipped away, without fanfare, without a trace. There would be
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Speaker 1: no police report, no explanation, only silence, and the kind
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Speaker 1: of silence that gnaws at everyone left behind. By April
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Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty nine, Jimmy Farenthald was twenty three years
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Speaker 1: removed from his twins' death and more than a decade
11:52
Speaker 1: into his own battles with drugs and instability. That spring,
11:57
Speaker 1: he resurfaced in Houston to spend time with his mother.
12:01
Speaker 1: For a couple of weeks, he seemed to be trying.
12:05
Speaker 1: He went to alcoholics anonymous meetings, sometimes several in a
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Speaker 1: single day, and spoke about wanting to change the trajectory
12:13
Speaker 1: of his life. His drug use, particularly crack cocaine, had
12:18
Speaker 1: taken him to dangerous places, and at least once he
12:22
Speaker 1: had been found unconscious with paraphernalia scattered around him. In Houston,
12:28
Speaker 1: though Jimmy seemed defined some resolve. He talked about a
12:32
Speaker 1: treatment center in West Palm Beach, Florida, where a friend
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Speaker 1: had turned his life around. He made the arrangements himself
12:41
Speaker 1: and booked a PanAm ticket for April seventeenth. His mother
12:45
Speaker 1: agreed to pay for the program, encouraged by his apparent commitment.
12:50
Speaker 1: For once, it looked like Jimmy might be serious. But
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Speaker 1: when April seventeenth came. He never made it to Florida.
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Speaker 1: A few months later, his mother received a refund for
13:02
Speaker 1: the unused ticket. She tucked it into a folder that
13:05
Speaker 1: already held another boucher, a reminder of a Vienna trip
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Speaker 1: Jimmy had promised to take with her but skipped, spending
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Speaker 1: time instead in Corpus Christy with drugs. The pattern was
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Speaker 1: familiar to Sissy Grand declarations of change followed by collapse.
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Speaker 1: It was typical of those struggling. On April fourteenth, a
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Speaker 1: few days before the scheduled flight, Jimmy phoned a friend
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Speaker 1: in Fort Worth. He admitted he wasn't going to Florida. Instead,
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Speaker 1: he said he planned to travel to San Antonio to
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Speaker 1: meet with his brother in law, Alan Stewart, who had
13:43
Speaker 1: been holding onto money Jimmy believed might help him start
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Speaker 1: a business. He talked about a fresh start, new car,
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Speaker 1: new job, new place to live. To the friend, Jimmy
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Speaker 1: sounded sincere, but that was the last she ever heard
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Speaker 1: from him. Alan Stuart later confirmed that Jimmy flew into
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Speaker 1: San Antonio on April sixteenth. Jimmy pressed him for money,
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Speaker 1: but Stuart resisted. He told Jimmy the family was willing
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Speaker 1: to help set him up in something legitimate, but only
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Speaker 1: after he completed the treatment. Jimmy, however, was already wavering.
14:21
Speaker 1: He worried aloud that the Florida program would be too restrictive,
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Speaker 1: that he might need access to a car, and that
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Speaker 1: he had loose ends back in Corpus Christie. Despite those doubts,
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Speaker 1: he assured Stuart that he still planned to go. That afternoon,
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Speaker 1: Alan dropped him off at the airport, believing he was
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Speaker 1: on his way to Florida. From that moment forward, Jimmy
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Speaker 1: Farenthald was gone. There were no more phone calls, no
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Speaker 1: more sightings, no paper trail. The youngest son simply disappeared
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Speaker 1: into silence. In the weeks after April nineteen eighty nine,
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Speaker 1: the silence around Jimmy Farenthald began to worry those who
15:05
Speaker 1: knew him best. An Austin couple who had long served
15:09
Speaker 1: as one of his surrogate families noticed that his absence
15:12
Speaker 1: had stretched unusually long. They had been in regular contact
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Speaker 1: with him for years and now found it strange that
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Speaker 1: he had not called. Around the same time, a friend
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Speaker 1: in Corpus Christi reported having spoken with Jimmy on April
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Speaker 1: twenty ninth. In that phone call, Jimmy said he still
15:33
Speaker 1: intended to travel to the Florida treatment center and wanted
15:36
Speaker 1: to meet before leaving. They made plans, but Jimmy never arrived.
15:42
Speaker 1: When the friend went to his house afterward, no one
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Speaker 1: was home. On the kitchen table sat Jimmy's driver's license.
15:50
Speaker 1: The signs grew more troubling. Although he had told several
15:55
Speaker 1: folks he was headed to Florida, he never boarded a plane.
16:00
Speaker 1: At the house he had been renting in Flower Bluff,
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Speaker 1: an area of Corpus Christie, Jimmy left behind nearly everything
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Speaker 1: his car, motorcycle, passport, clothing, and other personal belongings. He
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Speaker 1: simply disappeared. Weeks turned into months, and there was still
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Speaker 1: no word for his family. It was a familiar and
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Speaker 1: painful silence. Jimmy was thirty three years old, but in
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Speaker 1: many ways he remained defined by the loss of his twin.
16:33
Speaker 1: Those who knew him understood how fragile his hold on
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Speaker 1: life had become. Mother's Day came and went without his
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Speaker 1: customary telephone calls to his surrogate families and own mother.
16:46
Speaker 1: By June nineteen eighty nine, two months after Jimmy's last
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Speaker 1: known contact, Cissy and her daughter Emily went to the
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Speaker 1: San Antonio Police Department to file a missing persons report.
16:58
Speaker 1: The officers reminded them that Jimmy was an adult. Even
17:02
Speaker 1: if he were located, They explained he had the right
17:06
Speaker 1: to his privacy. They promised to do what they could,
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Speaker 1: but the reassurance rang thin. Jimmy had disappeared, leaving behind
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Speaker 1: his possessions, his family, and the last fragile promises of
17:20
Speaker 1: a new beginning. In nineteen ninety, a year after she
17:25
Speaker 1: first filed the missing person's report, Sissy returned to the
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Speaker 1: San Antonio Police Department seeking updates on Jimmy's case. What
17:34
Speaker 1: she found was another blow. Her son's name had never
17:38
Speaker 1: been entered into the police computer system. The bureaucratic oversight
17:44
Speaker 1: meant that for an entire year, Jimmy's disappearance hadn't even
17:48
Speaker 1: been formally recorded into the state's databases. The gap underscored
17:53
Speaker 1: just how quickly his case had slipped into obscurity. Another
17:58
Speaker 1: absence brushed aside almost from the day Jimmy vanished, rumors
18:05
Speaker 1: began to circulate. One tip suggested he was confined at
18:09
Speaker 1: the San Antonio State hospital. A friend joined by George,
18:14
Speaker 1: went to the facility to check. Officials denied he was there.
18:20
Speaker 1: Another story surfaced from Houston. Someone claimed to have seen
18:24
Speaker 1: Jimmy in a restaurant, saying he was in the federal
18:27
Speaker 1: Witness Protection program. George followed up with contacts in that
18:33
Speaker 1: program and confirmed that Jimmy was not listed. The father
18:38
Speaker 1: himself described his son as kind and generous, though also irresponsible.
18:44
Speaker 1: When Jimmy had money, it never lasted long. He was
18:48
Speaker 1: known to spend it quickly and freely, buying gifts for
18:51
Speaker 1: his friends, while furnishing his own rented home with little
18:55
Speaker 1: more than garage sale fines. George believed that before his
18:59
Speaker 1: death disappearance, Jimmy had been making a sincere effort to change.
19:04
Speaker 1: In the year prior, he had stayed off drugs for
19:07
Speaker 1: a time and spoke enthusiastically about his planned trip to
19:11
Speaker 1: Florida for treatment, Convinced he was ready for a new chapter,
19:16
Speaker 1: but their relationship was strained earlier in nineteen eighty nine,
19:20
Speaker 1: when George was moving property into a new house in
19:23
Speaker 1: Corpus Christie, several valuable paintings disappeared. He accused Jimmy of
19:30
Speaker 1: the theft, Jimmy was deeply offended by the suspicion, and
19:34
Speaker 1: the hurt remained unresolved when he disappeared. Despite the fractures
19:40
Speaker 1: between them, Jimmy continued to seek his father's approval. When
19:45
Speaker 1: George suffered a stroke in nineteen eighty eight, Jimmy's fear
19:49
Speaker 1: of losing him had been unmistakable. It seemed impossible to
19:53
Speaker 1: believe that he would walk away for good without ever
19:56
Speaker 1: checking back. In August of nineteen ninety twenty one, George
20:01
Speaker 1: Farenthald hired Catherine Deyounger, a private investigator and relative from
20:07
Speaker 1: the Bluntser Dougherty side of Cissy's family, to search for
20:11
Speaker 1: his missing son. She spent more than four months working
20:15
Speaker 1: the case, chasing down every lead that surfaced. One tip
20:20
Speaker 1: suggested Jimmy was in Brazil. De Younger pursued it along
20:24
Speaker 1: with other possibilities, but each trail collapsed into nothing. After
20:30
Speaker 1: exhausting her options, she concluded something was wrong, though she
20:35
Speaker 1: could not prove what, and resigned from the case. The
20:39
Speaker 1: New Wace's County Sheriff's Department was also asked to look
20:43
Speaker 1: into Jimmy's disappearance. Captain William Edge confirmed that friends of
20:48
Speaker 1: the family had approached the department late the previous year,
20:52
Speaker 1: but investigators reported no new leads. George, now seventy five
20:58
Speaker 1: and living alone in Corpus Christie, pressed on with his
21:01
Speaker 1: own search. From his rented home. He followed rumors across
21:06
Speaker 1: Texas and beyond, from Houston to San Antonio. Every inquiry
21:12
Speaker 1: came back empty. Uncertain of his son's fate, George could
21:16
Speaker 1: only hold on to one hope that Jimmy was alive somewhere,
21:21
Speaker 1: and that before his own time ran out, he might
21:23
Speaker 1: see his youngest son again, just once. Jimmy Farenthald was
21:39
Speaker 1: last seen in April nineteen eighty nine. He hasn't been
21:44
Speaker 1: heard from since. Rumors certainly swirled, but within the family
21:50
Speaker 1: the silence was heavy. For nearly three years, the disappearance
21:54
Speaker 1: remained a quiet matter, contained inside private grief that ended
22:00
Speaker 1: in the fall of nineteen ninety one, when George Farenthald,
22:04
Speaker 1: six years divorced from Cissy, launched a public crusade to
22:08
Speaker 1: find his missing son. George had always played a less
22:12
Speaker 1: public role in the family than Sissy, but he carried
22:16
Speaker 1: as much weight in shaping its atmosphere. He was a
22:19
Speaker 1: heavy drinker, often verbally explosive after too many glasses, and
22:24
Speaker 1: his anger frequently landed on his son's guilt nodded him.
22:29
Speaker 1: Now living alone with his memories and advancing age, he
22:34
Speaker 1: alternated between lashing out at the absent Jimmy and breaking
22:38
Speaker 1: down in tears at family meetings. Sissy and the children
22:42
Speaker 1: urged him not to go public. He ignored them and
22:46
Speaker 1: gave his story to the San Antonio Express News. By
22:50
Speaker 1: January nineteen ninety two, George found himself cut off from
22:54
Speaker 1: Cissy and the children. The newspaper published unsubstantiated things gathered
23:00
Speaker 1: from friends who resented Cissy's silence. They suggested she was
23:05
Speaker 1: relieved Jimmy was gone, or even responsible for it. There
23:10
Speaker 1: was no evidence of this, of course, and the story
23:13
Speaker 1: deepened divisions inside the family. George admitted he was no
23:18
Speaker 1: closer to answers, just pain and confusion. No one, not police,
23:24
Speaker 1: private investigators, family, or friends, knew where Jimmy was. Eventually,
23:31
Speaker 1: Cissy Farenthald did break her silence, acknowledging the pattern that
23:36
Speaker 1: haunted her family generation after generation. The Bluntser Dougherty Tarlton
23:42
Speaker 1: Farenthald line had been touched by some sort of tragedy,
23:46
Speaker 1: whether it be addiction, alcoholism, manic depression, or early death.
23:52
Speaker 1: Jimmy's struggles were part of that larger cycle, a family
23:56
Speaker 1: story of self destruction that could not be denied. His
24:01
Speaker 1: mother eventually spoke of him in the past, tense, convinced
24:05
Speaker 1: he was dead. By July nineteen ninety two, George admitted
24:10
Speaker 1: he was no closer to finding his son than he
24:13
Speaker 1: had been when he began the search. He asked the
24:17
Speaker 1: New Wace's County Sheriff's Department to take another look, but
24:20
Speaker 1: he felt investigators quickly lost interest. To press forward, George
24:26
Speaker 1: offered a ten thousand dollars reward through the Heidi Search
24:29
Speaker 1: Center in San Antonio and hired Corpus Christi Police Captain
24:34
Speaker 1: Sam Grenado to investigate privately, but the leads went nowhere. Exhausted,
24:41
Speaker 1: George admitted he had spent thousands chasing false trails. At
24:46
Speaker 1: seventy six years old, he said he could not wait
24:49
Speaker 1: much longer. Despite the search, Jimmy was never found. George
24:55
Speaker 1: also came to believe his son was dead, saying he
24:59
Speaker 1: wanted to bury him next to Vincent, his twin. Jimmy
25:04
Speaker 1: Farenthald's life was marked from the beginning by contrasts privilege
25:09
Speaker 1: and absence, expectation and loss. He was born the youngest
25:15
Speaker 1: son a surviving twin after Vincent's sudden death, that absence
25:21
Speaker 1: defined him. Studies show that the loss of a co
25:25
Speaker 1: twin can heighten lifelong risks of addiction, psychiatric disorders, and
25:30
Speaker 1: self destructive behavior. Jimmy became a living example of those findings.
25:37
Speaker 1: Through childhood. His mother, Sissy, was increasingly consumed by politics,
25:42
Speaker 1: while his father, George was distant, volatile when he wasn't,
25:46
Speaker 1: and critical of his sons. Jimmy drifted through school, through
25:51
Speaker 1: surrogate families, and into addiction. He tried treatment programs, cycled
25:57
Speaker 1: in and out of rehabilitation, and clung to the hope
26:01
Speaker 1: of rebuilding his life. But in April nineteen eighty nine,
26:05
Speaker 1: after making plans for a treatment center in Florida, he vanished.
26:10
Speaker 1: He left behind his motorcycle, passport, clothing, and home in
26:15
Speaker 1: Flower Bluff. At first, his disappearance remained private, the family
26:20
Speaker 1: clinging to silence, but after nearly three years without word,
26:25
Speaker 1: George went public, hiring investigators, offering rewards and chasing rumors
26:30
Speaker 1: across Texas and even as far as Brazil. None of
26:35
Speaker 1: it led anywhere. Cissy eventually acknowledged the painful truth that
26:41
Speaker 1: drugs and self destruction had ravaged her family and that
26:45
Speaker 1: Jimmy was gone. In two thousand and five, the family
26:49
Speaker 1: held a funeral in Jimmy's absence, presuming him dead. George
26:55
Speaker 1: would die in two thousand and Sissy in twenty twenty one,
26:59
Speaker 1: never knowing what became of their youngest son. The Farenthold
27:05
Speaker 1: story is one of dynastic promise undone by private grief.
27:10
Speaker 1: Oil wealth, European titles, and political ambition built the family's
27:16
Speaker 1: name into Texas history, but behind the public successes ran
27:21
Speaker 1: a darker legacy loss, addiction, and tragedy. The Farenthald family
27:27
Speaker 1: name has long carried both influence and infamy in Texas.
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Speaker 1: Son of murdered Randy, Blake Farenthald blended law and business
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Speaker 1: into a career that moved him into conservative talk radio
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Speaker 1: before he was elected to the US House of Representatives
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Speaker 1: representing Texas's twenty seventh congressional district. He first won the
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Speaker 1: seat in twenty ten, defeating longtime Democratic incumbent Solomon or Tees,
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Speaker 1: but Blake Farenthald's political rise and in scandal. He resigned
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Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen after it emerged that eighty four thousand
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Speaker 1: dollars in public funds from the Office of Compliance had
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Speaker 1: been used to settle a twenty fourteen sexual harassment suit
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Speaker 1: filed by his former communications director, Lauren Green. He denied
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Speaker 1: the allegations, but acknowledged fostering and overly permissive, unprofessional office culture,
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Speaker 1: initially pledging to repay the money before reversing course on
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Speaker 1: lawyer's advice. His image had already drawn scrutiny, most memorably
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Speaker 1: from a campaign photo of him in duck patterned pajamas,
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Speaker 1: and after Congress, he briefly worked as a South Texas
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Speaker 1: Port Authority lobbyist before returning to radio. He died in
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Speaker 1: Corpus Christi in twenty twenty five at age sixty three,
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Speaker 1: with his longtime consultant Steve Ray, citing liver and heart ailments.
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Speaker 1: This closed another chapter in a family history defined by wealth,
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Speaker 1: public life, scandal, and loss, a legacy as fractured as
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Speaker 1: it was prominent, It was Jimmy's disappearance that always kept
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Speaker 1: the circle closed. He was the youngest, the last twin,
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Speaker 1: the one who could not outpace the family's curses. His
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Speaker 1: absence remains unresolved, a void that carries the weight of
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Speaker 1: an entire dynasty's unraveling. Official records describe Jimmy as endangered missing.
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Speaker 1: He is a white male born on February eighth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: fifty six. He would be sixty nine years old today.
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Speaker 1: He was thirty three years old when he disappeared. Jimmy
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Speaker 1: stood five feet ten inches tall and weighed one hundred
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Speaker 1: and fifty pounds. He has brown hair, brown eyes, and
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Speaker 1: sometimes wore a mustache. If you have any information about
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Speaker 1: the disappearance of James Robert Jimmy Farenthald, please contact the
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Speaker 1: San Antonio Police Department at two to one zero two
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Speaker 1: zero seven eight nine three nine. If you'd like to
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Speaker 1: join Gon Cold's mission to shine a light on unsolved
30:18
Speaker 1: homicides and missing persons cases, get the show at free
30:22
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Speaker 1: you choose to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you. Thanks
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Speaker 1: for listening. Y'all