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The Jamison Family Mystery · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to just try to picture the Sandboy
0:03
Speaker 1: Mountains down in Latimer County, Oklahoma.
0:06
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it is notoriously rugged out there, it really is.
0:09
Speaker 1: Specifically, there's this unforgiving stretch of wilderness that locals call
0:13
Speaker 1: Panola Mountain. So it's October seventeenth, two thousand and nine.
0:17
Speaker 2: Right in the middle of autumn.
0:18
Speaker 1: Exactly, want you to close your eyes and just put
0:20
Speaker 1: yourself there for a second. The air is like biting cold.
0:24
Speaker 1: It smells of wet cedar and damp earth, you know,
0:27
Speaker 1: decaying leaves after days of these heavy, just relentless rainstorms.
0:32
Speaker 2: Just that really heavy, suffocating kind of dampness.
0:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it's nightfall. The darkness out there is absolute.
0:39
Speaker 1: So a team of law enforcement officers are slowly navigating
0:43
Speaker 1: this treacherous muddy, one lane dirt road which is terrifying
0:47
Speaker 1: in the dark completely and right there, teetering on the
0:50
Speaker 1: edge of a three foot drop off is a locked,
0:52
Speaker 1: abandoned pickup truck.
0:54
Speaker 2: So a responding deputy he walks up to the driver's
0:57
Speaker 2: side right and he sweeps his flo slashlight beam through
1:00
Speaker 2: the window.
1:01
Speaker 1: Thinking he's going to find a body.
1:02
Speaker 2: Probably right, he expects to find someone slumped over the
1:05
Speaker 2: steering wheel, but he doesn't. Instead, he hears this faint,
1:10
Speaker 2: just desperate, scratching sound coming from the back seat. Oh man, Yeah,
1:14
Speaker 2: So he takes his baton, shatters the truck's window, and
1:17
Speaker 2: he pulls out this tiny, emaciated dog. It had been
1:21
Speaker 2: trapped in there for days, just slowly starving to death,
1:24
Speaker 2: literally clinging to the absolute brink of life.
1:27
Speaker 1: That is so incredibly bleak. Ah. Well, welcome to the
1:31
Speaker 1: deep dive today. We are opening up the raw case
1:34
Speaker 1: file of.
1:34
Speaker 2: The Jamison family is a heavy one today.
1:36
Speaker 1: It really is. We're looking at forty four year old Bobby,
1:39
Speaker 1: forty year old Sherilyn, and their six year old daughter Madison.
1:43
Speaker 1: We're laying all the original source material out on the
1:45
Speaker 1: table for you today.
1:46
Speaker 2: We've got the original Latimer County Sheriff's reports.
1:48
Speaker 1: Right yep, the sheriff's reports, the GPS coordinates we extracted
1:52
Speaker 1: from the family's abandoned devices, and the highly contested medical
1:56
Speaker 1: examiner's autopsy documents.
1:58
Speaker 2: Because our mission today is to well, we want to
2:01
Speaker 2: treat you like a fellow investigator. We're going to walk
2:04
Speaker 2: you through this timeline to try and make sense of
2:06
Speaker 2: the impossible.
2:06
Speaker 1: Because it really feels impossible when you look at it.
2:09
Speaker 2: It does. I mean, if you look at the raw data,
2:12
Speaker 2: this case is just a labyrinth of physical contradictions. We're
2:16
Speaker 2: dealing with, bizarre clues documented to sense into a severe paranoia,
2:22
Speaker 2: and ultimately a crime scene that completely defies geographical and
2:25
Speaker 2: physical logic.
2:27
Speaker 1: Let's start with that first major contradiction, which happens the
2:30
Speaker 1: minute police catalog the inventory of that abandoned.
2:34
Speaker 2: Truck, right the stuff they left behind.
2:36
Speaker 1: Exactly so, the doors are locked, which implies a deliberate exit,
2:40
Speaker 1: but the keys they're still sitting right there in the ignition.
2:43
Speaker 2: Which makes no sense if you're deliberately locking.
2:45
Speaker 1: It right, and the family's heavy winter coats are just
2:49
Speaker 1: left behind in the freezing weather Sherilyn's purse is sitting
2:52
Speaker 1: on the seat, a BlackBerry phone which was equipped with GPS,
2:56
Speaker 1: is just left behind.
2:57
Speaker 2: And then it gets even weirder because a deputy reaches
3:00
Speaker 2: under the seat and pulls out a bank bag. Oh yeah,
3:04
Speaker 2: inside is a staggering thirty two thousand dollars in cold hard.
3:08
Speaker 1: Cash, just sitting under the seat of a locked truck.
3:11
Speaker 2: Exactly. Think about the psychology of that for a moment.
3:14
Speaker 2: You have all the items necessary for survival, for communication,
3:18
Speaker 2: and for escape, just totally abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
3:21
Speaker 1: But the most disturbing piece of evidence investigators found wasn't
3:25
Speaker 1: even the money.
3:26
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't. It was this seven page handwritten letter
3:29
Speaker 2: from Cherylyn to her husband Bobby.
3:32
Speaker 1: I read the transcript of this letter and it is
3:35
Speaker 1: just a searingly toxic document. I mean, she explicitly calls
3:39
Speaker 1: him a monster in a toxic person.
3:41
Speaker 2: It's incredibly heavy.
3:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, she begs for forgiveness for things she says offended
3:45
Speaker 1: God and the Holy Spirit, which really hints at this
3:48
Speaker 1: deep religious fixation they were dealing.
3:50
Speaker 2: With, right, But then she pivots to just sheer anger exactly.
3:54
Speaker 1: She states that Bobby beat her spine with such force
3:57
Speaker 1: she is lucky she didn't have a heart attack or
3:59
Speaker 1: become para. She references him being in prison for attempted murder.
4:03
Speaker 2: And then she writes this incredibly haunting line.
4:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, she says she would rather their safe, your old
4:08
Speaker 1: daughter Madison be raised in foster care than have a
4:10
Speaker 1: dead mother.
4:11
Speaker 2: Wow. That is I mean, that's chilling. It is.
4:15
Speaker 1: But let's pause here and interrogate this because the immediate
4:18
Speaker 1: assumption that jumped into the minds of the public and
4:20
Speaker 1: the media back in two thousand and nine was murder suicide.
4:24
Speaker 2: Sure, it's an easy narrative to grab onto, right.
4:27
Speaker 1: A violently abusive marriage reaches a boiling point in the
4:30
Speaker 1: woods and one of them ends it all. But put
4:33
Speaker 1: yourself in the shoes of a detective working a crime scene.
4:36
Speaker 2: You have to look at the physical.
4:37
Speaker 1: Space exactly if you are walking into the freezing woods
4:41
Speaker 1: to end your life, or you know, if you are
4:44
Speaker 1: fleeing an abusive spouse to start over. Why on earth
4:47
Speaker 1: do you lock your beloved family dog inside the car
4:50
Speaker 1: to slowly starve to.
4:52
Speaker 2: Death, especially since Madison adored that dog, right, and why
4:55
Speaker 2: abandon thirty two grand in cash? Well, I have to
4:58
Speaker 2: defend the initial police reflex just a second an I'm
5:00
Speaker 2: re sure go to a responding rural officer in two
5:03
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, a seven page manifesto detailing physical abuse
5:07
Speaker 2: and fearing for a child's life that looks like textbook
5:11
Speaker 2: domestic escalation.
5:12
Speaker 1: That's true, it fits the pattern.
5:13
Speaker 2: It's just the most statistically probable scenario when you find
5:17
Speaker 2: an abandoned vehicle with a family missing. However, you are
5:21
Speaker 2: entirely correct that the physical evidence breaks that theory apart.
5:24
Speaker 2: It just doesn't align, no, Because if you are running
5:27
Speaker 2: away to start a new life and escape abuse, you
5:30
Speaker 2: take the thirty two thousand dollars. If you are going
5:33
Speaker 2: into the woods to end your life, you at least
5:35
Speaker 2: open the car door and let the dog go free.
5:38
Speaker 1: Right, You don't condemn the dog exactly.
5:40
Speaker 2: The physical reality of the truck completely contradicts the psychological
5:44
Speaker 2: profile of the latter.
5:45
Speaker 1: So if the evidence tells us they didn't walk away
5:48
Speaker 1: voluntarily and they didn't plan to die out there, we
5:51
Speaker 1: have to figure out what led them up that mountain
5:53
Speaker 1: in the first place.
5:54
Speaker 2: You have to rewind a bit.
5:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have to look at the rapidly deteriorating world
5:58
Speaker 1: that Jamisons were trapped in before October of two thousand
6:01
Speaker 1: and nine, and.
6:01
Speaker 2: Their descent was steep, and it was multifaceted. Bobby, you know,
6:06
Speaker 2: he used to be known as a smart, creative game.
6:08
Speaker 1: We have pretty normal life before.
6:10
Speaker 2: Right, But in two thousand and three he suffered this
6:13
Speaker 2: crippling back injury in a car accident. He was left
6:16
Speaker 2: in chronic agonizing pain, which led to a severe painkiller.
6:20
Speaker 1: Addiction, and Scharylyn was struggling too.
6:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. Meanwhile, Cherylyn had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, severe depression,
6:27
Speaker 2: and ADHD, and over time she completely stopped taking her
6:31
Speaker 2: prescribed medication.
6:32
Speaker 1: Which is a recipe for disaster. We need to talk
6:35
Speaker 1: about what happens to the human brain when physical ruin
6:39
Speaker 1: collides with financial ruin.
6:41
Speaker 2: It's a total collection.
6:42
Speaker 1: Neither of them could hold down a job anymore. They
6:44
Speaker 1: were on the verge of losing their beautiful lake house
6:46
Speaker 1: and you falla Oklahoma. But then in two thousand and seven,
6:51
Speaker 1: they get a sixty four thousand dollars settlement from Bobby's
6:54
Speaker 1: car accident lawsuit, and they split it evenly, right, exactly
6:57
Speaker 1: thirty two grand each, which perfectly explains the stack of
7:01
Speaker 1: cash found under the truck seat. It was quite literally
7:04
Speaker 1: their entire life savings.
7:05
Speaker 2: And when people run out of options and resources like that,
7:09
Speaker 2: extreme financial stress physically rewires the brain's threat detection centers.
7:13
Speaker 1: You just start seeing enemies everywhere.
7:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the isolation was compounding. Bobby engaged in this bitter,
7:21
Speaker 2: toxic feud with his own father, Bob Jamison, over a
7:24
Speaker 2: gas station business.
7:26
Speaker 1: It got really ugly, didn't it.
7:27
Speaker 2: It escalated to the point where Cherylyn was spreading rumors
7:30
Speaker 2: that Bob was in the Mexican mafia. Bobby even filed
7:33
Speaker 2: a protective order against his own father, claiming Bob tried
7:37
Speaker 2: to run him over with a vehicle.
7:38
Speaker 1: So by the late summer of two thousand and nine,
7:41
Speaker 1: this family was just in a state of absolute crisis,
7:43
Speaker 1: total crisis. Sharylyn had lost custody of an older son
7:46
Speaker 1: from a previous marriage due to allegations of physical abuse,
7:49
Speaker 1: and then in September, just a month before they vanished,
7:52
Speaker 1: she attempted suicide and was hospitalized for three weeks.
7:56
Speaker 2: And this is where the raw facts of the case
7:58
Speaker 2: file take a deeply unset into the supernatural.
8:02
Speaker 1: This part is so wild to me.
8:04
Speaker 2: The psychology at play here closely resembles a phenomenon known
8:07
Speaker 2: as shared psychotic disorder or fly ado. When two isolated
8:13
Speaker 2: people with untreated mental health issues feed off each other's delusions,
8:16
Speaker 2: those delusions become their shared reality.
8:19
Speaker 1: They start validating each other's hallucinations.
8:21
Speaker 2: Exactly, they were planning to buy off grid land and
8:25
Speaker 2: live in a shipping container. That container was just sitting
8:27
Speaker 2: in their driveway and Cherylyn started spray painting these erratic,
8:32
Speaker 2: terrifying messages on it, things like witches don't like their
8:36
Speaker 2: black cat killed.
8:38
Speaker 1: And Bobby was spiraling right alongside her. I mean he
8:41
Speaker 1: was actively asking a local pastor where he could purchase demon.
8:44
Speaker 2: Killing bullets, which is just terrifying.
8:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was reading a Satanic Bible, telling friends he
8:50
Speaker 1: needed to learn how to exercise malevolent spirits from their home.
8:54
Speaker 1: Sharylyn was telling people that their six year old daughter
8:56
Speaker 1: was having regular conversations with the ghost of Cherylyn's deceased.
9:00
Speaker 2: It just consumed their entire household right.
9:02
Speaker 1: A family friend even reported visiting their house feeling instantly
9:06
Speaker 1: physically sick and claiming she watched a huge gray mist
9:10
Speaker 1: slowly float down the Jamison staircase.
9:13
Speaker 2: We really have to view this not as a ghost story,
9:15
Speaker 2: but as a severe medical emergency. Oh, you have genuine,
9:20
Speaker 2: untreated mental illness violently colliding with heavy drug dependency. Their
9:25
Speaker 2: ability to distinguish between a real world threat like a
9:28
Speaker 2: foreclosed mortgage or an angry family member and an imaginary
9:33
Speaker 2: demon had completely dissolved.
9:35
Speaker 1: I like to think of their mental state la like
9:37
Speaker 1: driving a car with a shattered windshield.
9:39
Speaker 2: That's a good way to put it.
9:41
Speaker 1: Like every shadow looks like an oncoming truck, every crack
9:44
Speaker 1: in the glass distorts your vision, and eventually you steer
9:47
Speaker 1: right off a c life just trying to avoid things
9:49
Speaker 1: that aren't actually there.
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Speaker 2: Wow.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the reality they woke up to on
9:53
Speaker 1: the morning of October eighth, two thousand and nine, the
9:56
Speaker 1: day they drove into the Sandboy Mountains.
9:58
Speaker 2: And the timeline for that that specific morning is incredibly precise,
10:03
Speaker 2: and it creates another massive contradiction.
10:05
Speaker 1: Walk us through that morning.
10:06
Speaker 2: So at eight am, Bobby makes a phone call to
10:08
Speaker 2: a real estate agent named Peggy. He is negotiating to
10:12
Speaker 2: buy a forty acre plot of off grid land up
10:15
Speaker 2: on Banola Mountain.
10:16
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's doing business right, And.
10:18
Speaker 2: The call lasts for two full hours, and according to Peggy,
10:22
Speaker 2: Bobby sounds totally normal. He is lucid, he's excited about
10:26
Speaker 2: moving and homeschooling Madison, and he's asking highly detailed, logical
10:30
Speaker 2: questions about the property.
10:31
Speaker 1: But then we pull the home surveillance footage from just
10:34
Speaker 1: thirty minutes after that call ends.
10:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, the contrast is jarring.
10:38
Speaker 1: From ten thirty am to eleven zero am, the cameras
10:41
Speaker 1: capture Bobby and Sherylyn walking back and forth from their
10:44
Speaker 1: house to their pickup truck, over and over again. But
10:48
Speaker 1: they are barely carrying anything, just kind of wandering. Yeah,
10:51
Speaker 1: their movements are entirely devoid of purpose. They walk in
10:54
Speaker 1: total silence, just pacing, staring blankly.
10:57
Speaker 2: When the media eventually got hold of these security clips,
11:00
Speaker 2: they immediately dubbed it the trance video.
11:02
Speaker 1: I remember seeing it everywhere.
11:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it heavily promoted the theory that the Jamisons were
11:06
Speaker 2: in a drug induced stupor.
11:07
Speaker 1: But there is one crucial detail in that footage. At
11:11
Speaker 1: one point, Cherylyn is seen carrying a brown briefcase.
11:14
Speaker 2: Right, the briefcase. Keep that in mind, because when the
11:16
Speaker 2: truck is later found abandoned on the mountain, that brown
11:19
Speaker 2: briefcase is entirely missing from the crime scene, along with
11:23
Speaker 2: Cherylyn's registered point two Teliber handgun.
11:25
Speaker 1: I'm going to throw a massive red flag on the
11:27
Speaker 1: play right here. Though I heavily pushed back on this
11:30
Speaker 1: trance or drug stupor theory that everyone accepted as gospel
11:33
Speaker 1: back then, Why is that? Because Bobby just conducted a
11:37
Speaker 1: highly complex two hour negotiation about land acquisition and zoning.
11:43
Speaker 1: You do not switch from high level real estate planning
11:45
Speaker 1: to a mindless zombie stoopor in thirty minutes without introducing
11:49
Speaker 1: a massive, immediate chemical catalyst.
11:52
Speaker 2: I get that, but you have to look at it
11:53
Speaker 2: from the perspective of law enforcement. In two thousand and nine,
11:56
Speaker 2: fair enough, you have a couple with a known history
11:58
Speaker 2: of self medicating and extreme paranoia pacing aimlessly in their driveway.
12:03
Speaker 2: The immediate reflex for a rural cop is meth aanthetamine use,
12:07
Speaker 2: erratic pacing, and repetitive, pointless tasks that looks exactly like tweaking.
12:11
Speaker 2: It is a very easy box to check.
12:13
Speaker 1: I see why they want there.
12:14
Speaker 2: But I agree with your assessment of the timeline. The
12:17
Speaker 2: biology of a two hour lucid phone call directly abutting
12:21
Speaker 2: a total catatonic state is highly improbable. It is far
12:25
Speaker 2: more likely they were simply exhausted, stressed, and methodically packing
12:29
Speaker 2: for a major.
12:30
Speaker 1: Trip, regardless of their state of mind. They get in
12:32
Speaker 1: the truck, they drive up the mountain. Around noon, they
12:35
Speaker 1: stop and have a totally normal, coherent, forty five minute
12:38
Speaker 1: conversation with a local landowner named Dan Clemens.
12:42
Speaker 2: Right, just a normal chat, Yeah.
12:44
Speaker 1: Dan, gives them directions to the specific coordinates of the
12:46
Speaker 1: land they want to buy, and at two point five
12:48
Speaker 1: to one pm, using that BlackBerry phone, they take a photograph.
12:52
Speaker 2: It is the final known moment of the Jamison family.
12:55
Speaker 1: It's so sad.
12:56
Speaker 2: It's a candid photo of little Madison. She's standing in
12:59
Speaker 2: the woods, arms cross looking directly at the camera. Her
13:02
Speaker 2: mouth is slightly open, like she's in the middle of
13:04
Speaker 2: talking to whoever is holding the phone.
13:06
Speaker 1: And then they just vanish. The trick is found facing downhill,
13:09
Speaker 1: as if they had finished looking at the land and
13:11
Speaker 1: were turning around to leave.
13:12
Speaker 2: But they never left.
13:14
Speaker 1: No, the doors are locked, the dog is trapped inside
13:17
Speaker 1: the life savings hidden under the seat. The GPS just abandoned.
13:21
Speaker 2: And for four agonizing years, that mountain keeps its secrets.
13:26
Speaker 2: Massive search parties comb the area. Law enforcement and volunteers
13:29
Speaker 2: spend weeks hacking through mud, briars and wet brush in
13:33
Speaker 2: a massive radius around the truck, and.
13:35
Speaker 1: They find absolutely nothing, nothing at all.
13:37
Speaker 2: Until November sixteenth, twenty thirteen. A local hunter named Tim
13:42
Speaker 2: Graham is out with his wife looking for deer signs.
13:45
Speaker 1: So they're just out walking the woods.
13:47
Speaker 2: Right and Tim sees what he thinks is a weather
13:50
Speaker 2: discolored turtle shell half buried in the damp autumn leaves.
13:54
Speaker 2: He bends down to pick it up. Oh my god, Yeah,
13:56
Speaker 2: it's a human skull. And there is a small hole
13:59
Speaker 2: right near the forehead that is horrifying. The hunter stops
14:01
Speaker 2: in his tracks. Then he sees another skull a few
14:04
Speaker 2: yards away, and then his wife spots a third, a
14:07
Speaker 2: tiny skull. Oh no, and it is missing two front teeth.
14:11
Speaker 2: She instantly remembers the missing posters from four years ago
14:13
Speaker 2: that were plastered all over the county, Madison's missing front teeth.
14:17
Speaker 2: The Nightmares confirmed they finally found the Jamisons.
14:20
Speaker 1: But as an investigator looking at the logistics of this
14:22
Speaker 1: crime scene, this is where the math completely breaks down
14:26
Speaker 1: for me. The remains were found two point six miles
14:30
Speaker 1: away from where the truck was abandoned.
14:33
Speaker 2: Think about what two point six miles means in that
14:35
Speaker 2: specific environment.
14:37
Speaker 1: It's not a walk in the park, not at all.
14:39
Speaker 2: We are not talking about a paved walking trail or
14:41
Speaker 2: a treadmill. The Sandboy Mountains are notoriously rugged. Sheriff Beecham
14:47
Speaker 2: himself stated on the record that hiking that specific terrain
14:50
Speaker 2: would take a perfectly fit athlete a half day of
14:53
Speaker 2: brutal exertion, hacking through dense, untamed brush and navigating steep
14:58
Speaker 2: elevation changes.
15:00
Speaker 1: So you have a man with a crippling back injury
15:02
Speaker 1: who can barely stand for long periods without severe pain.
15:06
Speaker 1: You have a woman recovering from extreme mental and physical.
15:09
Speaker 2: Distress and his six year old child wearing street shoes.
15:12
Speaker 1: Right, the physical reality dictates that they did not hike
15:15
Speaker 1: two point six miles into that wilderness under their own volition, which.
15:19
Speaker 2: Means someone forced them into that wilderness, or someone killed
15:22
Speaker 2: them at the truck and transported their bodies to that
15:24
Speaker 2: remote location.
15:25
Speaker 1: So we have to figure out who else was there exactly.
15:28
Speaker 2: If the family physically couldn't have walked into those woods alone,
15:31
Speaker 2: we have to look at who else was on that
15:33
Speaker 2: mountain to force them there. Now, law enforcement systematically ruled
15:37
Speaker 2: out the immediate circle, like the grandfather, Right, the grandfather
15:41
Speaker 2: Bob Jamison was in hospice care and died two months later.
15:45
Speaker 2: He physically couldn't have done it. Then there was Kenneth Bellows,
15:49
Speaker 2: a known white supremacist who boarded with them and had
15:51
Speaker 2: threatened Cherylyn in the past.
15:53
Speaker 1: He seems like a good suspect.
15:55
Speaker 2: He does, but he had a rock solid, verifiable alibi
15:59
Speaker 2: placing him far away.
16:00
Speaker 1: So this specific area of Panola Mountain was notoriously rough.
16:04
Speaker 1: It was known by locals as a haven for illegal
16:07
Speaker 1: dumping and heavy meth production.
16:09
Speaker 2: It wasn't exactly a safe neighborhood, no.
16:11
Speaker 1: Which brings our investigation back to Dan Clemmens, the local
16:14
Speaker 1: landowner who lived just a quarter mile from where the
16:16
Speaker 1: truck was found. He was the last person to admit
16:19
Speaker 1: seeing them alive.
16:20
Speaker 2: If we trace the causality of Dan's timeline, his behavior
16:23
Speaker 2: is highly highly suspicious.
16:25
Speaker 1: Break that down for us well.
16:27
Speaker 2: He claims he spoke to the family for forty five
16:29
Speaker 2: minutes on October eighth, a conversation ending around twelve four
16:33
Speaker 2: to five pm, But the GPS data from the Jamison's
16:36
Speaker 2: abandoned phone shows they didn't arrive at the land coordinates
16:40
Speaker 2: until two point one five pm.
16:42
Speaker 1: Wait, that is an hour and a half entirely unaccounted for,
16:45
Speaker 1: just a quarter mile from Dan's property.
16:46
Speaker 2: Exactly where were they during that gap and his.
16:49
Speaker 1: Actions after they vanish are even stranger. So fast forward
16:52
Speaker 1: a week to October seventeenth, Dan claims two unidentified men
16:57
Speaker 1: on ATVs approach him and tell him about an abandoned
16:59
Speaker 1: truck up the dirt road.
17:01
Speaker 2: Just some random guys, right, So.
17:03
Speaker 1: Dan goes to Luck and he realizes it perfectly matches
17:06
Speaker 1: the Jamison's truck, but he doesn't call the cops.
17:08
Speaker 2: He creates this very deliberate, calculated distance between himself and
17:12
Speaker 2: law enforcement. He waits. He calls the realtor, Peggy, He
17:16
Speaker 2: waits for a friend to arrive so they can go
17:18
Speaker 2: investigate the.
17:18
Speaker 1: Truck together, just delaying the police involvement.
17:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even when he walks up to the vehicle
17:23
Speaker 2: and sees the starving dog inside, he still refuses to
17:26
Speaker 2: call the police himself. He makes Peggy, the realtor, plays
17:29
Speaker 2: the nine to one one call.
17:30
Speaker 1: You have to ask yourself, why are you so desperate
17:33
Speaker 1: to keep the police away from you if you are
17:35
Speaker 1: just a helpful neighbor checking on an bandoned vehicle.
17:38
Speaker 2: Well, when you dig into the background of Dan Clemens,
17:41
Speaker 2: a massive bombshell drops on this case file.
17:43
Speaker 1: This part blew my mind.
17:44
Speaker 2: During a subsequent background check years later, investigators discovered that
17:48
Speaker 2: a Dan Clemens of the exact same age was arrested
17:51
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma in twenty seventeen for what the charge was
17:56
Speaker 2: a murder that took place in California back in nineteen
17:58
Speaker 2: ninety seven. He allegedly shot a man, stolen his truck,
18:02
Speaker 2: fled across state lines, and lived entirely off the grid
18:06
Speaker 2: under a fake name for decades.
18:08
Speaker 1: That is just insane.
18:09
Speaker 2: He eventually pled no contest of voluntary manslaughter for that
18:12
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven crime.
18:13
Speaker 1: So he shot a man and stole his truck, and
18:15
Speaker 1: he was living under an assumed identity off the grid,
18:18
Speaker 1: literally a quarter mile from where the Jamisons vanished from
18:21
Speaker 1: their truck.
18:21
Speaker 2: It's terrifying.
18:22
Speaker 1: The original police reports on the Jamison case from two
18:25
Speaker 1: thousand and nine claim they thoroughly checked Dan Clemmens with
18:28
Speaker 1: negative results. But you have to wonder did they know
18:31
Speaker 1: his true identity back then? Did they know they were
18:34
Speaker 1: interviewing a fugitive hiding out on the mountain.
18:37
Speaker 2: It introduces a terrifying variable into this mystery. Imagine a
18:41
Speaker 2: fugitive living off the grid. He sees a family driving
18:44
Speaker 2: up the mountain, waving around a brown briefcase openly discussing
18:48
Speaker 2: a thirty two thousand dollars cash land purchase.
18:51
Speaker 1: The financial motive rits itself right there, It really does.
18:55
Speaker 2: The sheriff at the time, Israel Beacham, stated on the
18:58
Speaker 2: record before retiring that he firmly believes it was a
19:00
Speaker 2: double murder, with little Madison left to die of exposure
19:04
Speaker 2: in the elements. His final advice to anyone looking at
19:06
Speaker 2: this case was simple, follow the money.
19:09
Speaker 1: This brings us to the agonizing bureaucratic tragedy of this
19:12
Speaker 1: entire deep dive. Right now, as we speak, this case
19:16
Speaker 1: is frozen in absolute.
19:17
Speaker 2: Legal limbo, entirely stalled.
19:19
Speaker 1: Because of a paperwork technicality.
19:21
Speaker 2: Let's explain the forensic science behind why this case is stalled.
19:24
Speaker 2: When human remains are exposed to harsh elements and animal
19:27
Speaker 2: activity for four entire years, nature strips away all the
19:31
Speaker 2: soft tissue.
19:32
Speaker 1: There's just not much left, right.
19:34
Speaker 2: You lose the cartilage, you lose the organs, It lose
19:36
Speaker 2: the hy ode bone in the neck, which means a
19:38
Speaker 2: medical examiner loses the ability to detect toxins. They can't
19:42
Speaker 2: find soft tissue stab wounds, and they can't prove strangulation, so.
19:45
Speaker 1: They are completely in the dark.
19:47
Speaker 2: Unless a bullet happens to nick a bone a skeletal
19:50
Speaker 2: remain cannot tell you how it died. Because of that
19:54
Speaker 2: biological reality, the medical examiner had no choice but to
19:57
Speaker 2: classify their cause of death on the officials certificates as undetermined.
20:02
Speaker 1: Think about the legal ramifications of that single word undetermined.
20:06
Speaker 1: Without a classification of homicide, there is no active murder investigation.
20:11
Speaker 2: The police are totally hamstrung.
20:12
Speaker 1: They really are. They cannot compel suspects to sit for interviews,
20:16
Speaker 1: They cannot execute search warrants on properties of interest. The
20:19
Speaker 1: bureaucracy simply dictates that it is a closed matter. The
20:22
Speaker 1: evidence screams foul play, that the paperwork ties the hands
20:26
Speaker 1: of the investigators.
20:27
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate catch twenty two of the justice system.
20:30
Speaker 2: We have missing weapons, missing briefcases, impossible geographical movements, and
20:35
Speaker 2: a known violent fugitive living a quarter mile away.
20:37
Speaker 1: But legally no crime has occurred. I want to leave
20:40
Speaker 1: you with a chilling thought. Team all over tonight. The
20:43
Speaker 1: person who did this, they didn't pull off a brilliant
20:47
Speaker 1: masterclass cover up. They made massive mistakes, us mistakes. They
20:52
Speaker 1: left the GPS behind to track their timeline. They missed
20:55
Speaker 1: the thirty two thousand dollars sitting right under the seat.
20:59
Speaker 1: They left the truck facing the wrong way. But they
21:02
Speaker 1: are getting away with murder right now, simply because the
21:04
Speaker 1: elements destroy the evidence and the medical examiner's hands were tied.
21:08
Speaker 2: The killer is still out there. They know the exact
21:12
Speaker 2: sequence of events that took a vulnerable family from a
21:16
Speaker 2: hopeful real estate negotiation to a shallow grave two point
21:20
Speaker 2: six miles deep in the brutal wilderness.
21:22
Speaker 1: They know exactly what happened to that brown briefcase. They
21:25
Speaker 1: know where Cherylyn's point to two caliber gun is buried
21:28
Speaker 1: or hidden, and they are sleeping soundly tonight, knowing that
21:31
Speaker 1: the laws and even looking for them anymore.
21:32
Speaker 2: The mountain keeps its secrets, but someone down here knows
21:35
Speaker 2: the truth of how they got there.
21:37
Speaker 1: So, if you know anything about the shadows on Panola Mountain,
21:40
Speaker 1: if you know what actually happened to Bobby Charylyn and
21:43
Speaker 1: little Madison jameson, the Latimer County Sheriff's Office is waiting
21:47
Speaker 1: for your call,