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The Abduction and Murder of Bradley Eugene Gilbert · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

0:01
Speaker 1: Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
0:05
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. A cool, clear November Saturday afternoon
0:11
Speaker 1: in small town, Texas, church bulletins for Sunday were already printed,
0:17
Speaker 1: the crops harvested, and the town was settling into the
0:20
Speaker 1: rhythm of an ordinary autumn weekend. Just off US Highway
0:25
Speaker 1: to eighty seven, two little boys were playing in their
0:28
Speaker 1: aunt's backyard. At one thirty pm, the younger boy, a
0:33
Speaker 1: three year old, ran to the house in a panic,
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Speaker 1: crying and trying to say what he'd seen. He was
0:39
Speaker 1: too young to make all the words line up, but
0:42
Speaker 1: the message was clear. His six year old brother, Bradley,
0:46
Speaker 1: had told him to run, and now Bradley's gone. No
0:51
Speaker 1: one heard any screams. There were no tire squeals, at
0:55
Speaker 1: least none anyone could place. No neighbor ready to swear
0:59
Speaker 1: they saw the when it happened, Just two brothers in
1:02
Speaker 1: a yard, then one. By midafternoon, the phone calls began.
1:08
Speaker 1: By evening, the searches, and by the next morning, Chillicothee,
1:14
Speaker 1: a small town that believed it was safe, didn't feel
1:17
Speaker 1: like the same place anymore. One hundred and forty one
1:22
Speaker 1: days later, two fishermen on the Peas River found what
1:25
Speaker 1: everyone feared, and an investigation that began as a missing
1:30
Speaker 1: child case became a homicide. You're listening to Gone Cold,
1:45
Speaker 1: Texas True Crime. I'm vincent, and this is the abduction
1:49
Speaker 1: and murder of Bradley Eugene Gilbert, Chillicothee, Texas, nineteen eighty four.
2:00
Speaker 1: To understand what happened to Bradley Gilbert, you have to
2:04
Speaker 1: understand where it happened. Chillicothe, ironically meaning big town in
2:10
Speaker 1: Shawnee sits on the western edge of Hardiman County, not
2:15
Speaker 1: far from the Oklahoma state line. In the mid nineteen eighties,
2:19
Speaker 1: it was a town of about twelve hundred people, a
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Speaker 1: few churches, a grocery, a feed store, cotton gins, families
2:28
Speaker 1: who'd known each other for decades. It had the feeling
2:31
Speaker 1: of a place where the kids walked home from school
2:34
Speaker 1: without a care in the world, and neighbors waved from
2:37
Speaker 1: their porches without missing a beat in their conversation. But
2:41
Speaker 1: it was also a town under strain. Drought, rising interest rates,
2:46
Speaker 1: and collapsing cotton prices had hit hard. Farming wasn't what
2:51
Speaker 1: it used to be. Jobs were thinning out. Young families
2:55
Speaker 1: were drifting to Vernon, Wichita Falls, or Lubbock. The hospital
3:00
Speaker 1: had closed its labor and delivery unit the year before,
3:04
Speaker 1: and there were whispers that it might close for good.
3:08
Speaker 1: The town was shrinking. The people were left, older, rooted, tired.
3:14
Speaker 1: But in a place like this, crime, real crime didn't
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Speaker 1: fit in. Some doors were locked at night, sure, but
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Speaker 1: it was more out of habit than fear. Chillicothe was
3:26
Speaker 1: shaped just as much by the times as it was
3:29
Speaker 1: the small and slow population. Kids rode bikes all over
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Speaker 1: town and didn't come in till dusk. Some parents yelled
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Speaker 1: from their front porch when it was time to come in.
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Speaker 1: Some kids were just expected to know when to head
3:44
Speaker 1: back or else. Then came a tragic Saturday in November
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Speaker 1: of that year that would change all of it forever.
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Speaker 1: Bradley Eugene Gilbert was born Monday, July twenty fourth, nineteen
3:59
Speaker 1: seventy eight, at ten thirty nine am at will Barger
4:02
Speaker 1: General Hospital in Vernon, Texas. He was the first child
4:07
Speaker 1: of Mitchell and Rita. Gilbert married that January. In nineteen
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Speaker 1: eighty one. A little brother, Jason, joined him, and two
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Speaker 1: years later in nineteen eighty three, a baby's sister, Kristen.
4:22
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty four, the family was separated, Rita living
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Speaker 1: in Chillicothe with the kids Mitchell in Arkansas. Bradley adored
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Speaker 1: his dad and looked forward to the visits he got,
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Speaker 1: even if they were limited. He was six years old
4:38
Speaker 1: that fall, a first grader at Chillicothe Elementary. He stood
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Speaker 1: about four feet tall, with brown eyes and light brown
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Speaker 1: hair that was kept short but not always neat thanks
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Speaker 1: to the two cowlycks on his front hairline. Bradley carried
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Speaker 1: a small vertical scar over his right eyebrow, the kind
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Speaker 1: kids get from tumbles, and he was missing his two
5:01
Speaker 1: bottom front teeth, which made his grin look even bigger.
5:06
Speaker 1: Kindergarten had been a bright spot thanks to a bond
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Speaker 1: with his teacher, missus Clay. First grade, on the other hand,
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Speaker 1: brought some challenges, but he was improving. In early November
5:18
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, he earned a good behavior award at school.
5:23
Speaker 1: A few days later, he would vanish. November tenth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: eighty four. That Saturday was cool and dry. Rita Gilbert
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Speaker 1: left her sons, Bradley and Jason in the care of
5:37
Speaker 1: her sister Becky, at her house just off US two
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Speaker 1: eighty seven, next to a business called James's Car Wash.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't a big night out, just Aaron's. She planned
5:49
Speaker 1: to be back soon. Bradley was wearing green pants, a
5:53
Speaker 1: brown short sleeved shirt with multicolored stripes, and gray tennis shoes.
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Speaker 1: Like a lot of kids in Texas fall weather, he
6:02
Speaker 1: was not in a coat. There wasn't much of a
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Speaker 1: need for one. The boys played in the backyard. At
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Speaker 1: around one thirty pm, Jason ran for the house, crying,
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Speaker 1: confused and frightened, trying to explain why he was excited
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Speaker 1: and only three years old. He struggled to get the
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Speaker 1: right words out, but the urgency was evident. The one
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Speaker 1: detail Becky understood, Bradley told him to run, and now
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Speaker 1: he was gone. By three point thirty that afternoon, Bradley
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Speaker 1: was reported missing. Within hours, searchers took to the streets
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Speaker 1: and fields. The response was immediate. Hardiman County Sheriff Chester
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Speaker 1: Ingram coordinated with local law enforcement, the Texas Rangers, and
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Speaker 1: the FBI, all of whom were happy to lend their
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Speaker 1: expertise and resources. Fly were printed and distributed. The case
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Speaker 1: was entered into the FBI's National Crime Information Center, or NCIC.
7:09
Speaker 1: On the ground, bloodhounds were deployed. Searchers moved on foot
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Speaker 1: and horseback in cars and trucks. They walked fields and
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Speaker 1: bar ditches. They circled barns, peered into outbuildings, and checked
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Speaker 1: water tanks. Small planes crisscrossed overhead. We've searched every place
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Speaker 1: we could think of, Sheriff Ingram said, we are not
7:33
Speaker 1: giving up. The people of Chillicothe did what communities like
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Speaker 1: it do. Farmers, church members, veterans, neighbors, people who had
7:43
Speaker 1: known each other since childhood dropped everything and joined in.
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Speaker 1: Some volunteers fed the searchers. Others formed side by side efforts,
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Speaker 1: calling Bradley's name as they stepped through tall grass and
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Speaker 1: along fence lines. Even with the manpower and the will,
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Speaker 1: there was nothing, no shoe, no torn seam of fabric,
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Speaker 1: no clear trail out of that backyard. The search continued
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Speaker 1: into the next day and then the next. Detectives questioned
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Speaker 1: people who might have seen something. They put known sex
8:19
Speaker 1: offenders in the area under a close watch. Through the
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Speaker 1: local paper. Sheriff Ingram urged anyone with information, no matter
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Speaker 1: how small they thought it was to come forward. Rita
8:32
Speaker 1: pleaded for her son's return. The boy's father, Mitchell, notified
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Speaker 1: in Arkansas, drove back to Texas to help in the searches.
8:42
Speaker 1: When he arrived, he was arrested on outstanding felony warrants
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Speaker 1: out of Clarksville for burglary and theft, and was transferred
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Speaker 1: back to Red River County to face those charges. The
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Speaker 1: arrest did not change the urgent fact on the ground.
8:57
Speaker 1: In Chillicothee, a six year old had disappeared in daylight
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Speaker 1: from a yard beside a car wash, and the town
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Speaker 1: could not find him. As the first days passed, investigators
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Speaker 1: turned to witnesses and to a method that was sometimes
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Speaker 1: used in that era to recover details, hypnosis. The sessions
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Speaker 1: were conducted by Lewis Yocum, a special investigator for District
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Speaker 1: Attorney Gene Heatley. Three people. Three people were hypnotized, Billy Custer,
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Speaker 1: a local resident who drove past James's carwash around the
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Speaker 1: time the boys were playing outside, Mike Brake, Bradley's uncle
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Speaker 1: in whose yard the boys were playing, and Jason Bradley's
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Speaker 1: three year old brother. Initially, authorities kept the identities and details,
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Speaker 1: quiet concerned that any public release could risk Bradley's safety
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Speaker 1: if abductors realized law enforcement descriptions. Later, Sheriff Ingram authorized
10:04
Speaker 1: the release of the information. The accounts all pointed in
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Speaker 1: the same direction. Both Custer and break recalled a beige
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Speaker 1: or light yellow car at the car wash inside a
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Speaker 1: man and a woman. One witness thought the car might
10:20
Speaker 1: have had a dent on the side. The man's hair
10:24
Speaker 1: was dark, as was his clothing. Jason, under questioning, described
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Speaker 1: a man crouched beside a car who called to the boys.
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Speaker 1: Bradley told Jason to run back to the house, and
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Speaker 1: he did. Jason said he watched the man chase his
10:41
Speaker 1: brother and repeated the phrase that would become among the
10:45
Speaker 1: most chilling fragments of the case. They got him. They
10:49
Speaker 1: got him. With those details, law enforcement had a direction,
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Speaker 1: a light colored late model four door car, a man
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Speaker 1: and a woman, but what they didn't have was a name.
11:13
Speaker 1: On November twenty fifth, nineteen eighty four, fifteen days after
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Speaker 1: Bradley Gilbert's disappearance, Hardiman County Sheriff Chester Ingram said they
11:22
Speaker 1: believed they were close to a breakthrough in the boy's
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Speaker 1: missing person's case. He declined to give details, but later
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Speaker 1: admitted that the lead had fallen apart. Four days later,
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Speaker 1: on November twenty ninth, he leveled with the public, we
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Speaker 1: are at a dead end. Bradley had been taken near
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Speaker 1: James's carwash in the middle of the day, and despite
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Speaker 1: the combined efforts local, state, and even federal, no trace
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Speaker 1: of the boy had been uncovered. The only usable break remained.
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Speaker 1: The hypnosis derived descriptions of a man, a woman, and
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Speaker 1: a beige or law yellow car. They hoped the upcoming
12:03
Speaker 1: national spotlight would help provide a clue. On Friday, November thirtieth,
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Speaker 1: the television show Good Morning America featured Bradley's case. Newscasts
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Speaker 1: across the country began leading with missing children, including Bradley.
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Speaker 1: It made sense in context. Nineteen eighty four was the
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Speaker 1: year the United States began to reckon publicly with missing children.
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Speaker 1: In June, John and Revey Walsh, whose missing son Adam
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Speaker 1: was kidnapped and murdered in nineteen eighty one, alongside other advocates,
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Speaker 1: founded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Following
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Speaker 1: Congress's Missing Children's Assistance Act. Nick MECK became a national clearinghouse,
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Speaker 1: funded primarily by the US Department of Justice, tracking cases
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Speaker 1: using the FBI's NCIC system. That year, just over where
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Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand missing children reports were tracked, a number
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Speaker 1: that encompassed everything from runaways to family abductions to a
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Speaker 1: smaller number of non family abductions like Bradley's. In September
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, a dairy in Des Moines, Iowa, began
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Speaker 1: printing photographs of missing children on milk cartons. The idea spread.
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Speaker 1: By late January nineteen eighty five, dairies around the country
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Speaker 1: were participating. Bradley's face would be among those printed. By
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Speaker 1: December nineteen eighty four, communities were adopting county wide finger
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Speaker 1: printing initiatives, part of a broader movement aimed at quick
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Speaker 1: identification if a child went missing. The fear was national,
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Speaker 1: the tools were new, and in Hardiman County, a family
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Speaker 1: waited for news after more than five hundred man hours searching.
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Speaker 1: Sheriff Ingram said one report stood out as the most promising,
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Speaker 1: a sighting in Amarillo, about one hundred and sixty miles
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Speaker 1: west of Chillicothe on Friday, December seventh. He and Chillicothee
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Speaker 1: Police Chief Ken Gilbreth drove there to interview two female
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Speaker 1: clerks at a truck stop. The women said they had
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Speaker 1: seen a boy who looked like Bradley with a man
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Speaker 1: and woman on or around November sixteenth, days after the abduction.
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Speaker 1: They recognized the adults as people they'd seen before, but
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Speaker 1: never with a child. The clerks noticed the boy's hunger
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Speaker 1: he ate, as if he hadn't had a proper meal
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Speaker 1: in some time. The man and woman used the truck
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Speaker 1: stop showers and paid for gas with a credit card.
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Speaker 1: With local authorities and the FBI. Investigators worked to obtain
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Speaker 1: those credit card records. For a time, this lead had legs,
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Speaker 1: a location, a date, two witnesses, a purchase that left
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Speaker 1: a trail, but like so many other threads in this case,
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Speaker 1: it didn't hold. On Friday, January eighteenth, nineteen eighty five,
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Speaker 1: a woman in Amarillo reported that she'd seen a boy
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Speaker 1: at Walmart playing video games who resembled Bradley. According to
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Speaker 1: the woman, he told her his name was Eugene, which
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Speaker 1: is the missing boy's middle name, that they had given
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Speaker 1: him a new name, and that he lived in another town.
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Speaker 1: She later saw Bradley's photograph in the newspaper and contacted authorities.
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Speaker 1: Three days later, Monday, January twenty first, there was another
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Speaker 1: reported sighting, this time in Wichita Falls, about sixty six
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Speaker 1: miles east of Chillicothe. A child resembling Bradley was seen
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Speaker 1: with a woman who matched the Amarillo description. They left
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Speaker 1: in a dark car with Oklahoma plates. Witnesses wrote the
16:03
Speaker 1: license plate number on a paper bag, but claimed they
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Speaker 1: later lost it. One week later, on the twenty eighth,
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Speaker 1: the nationwide milk carton program that included Bradley's photograph formally
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Speaker 1: launched in North Texas. Preston Darian Burke Burnett participated. Sunday,
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Speaker 1: September seventeenth brought a call from New York. A woman
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Speaker 1: there believed she'd seen Bradley in a vehicle with Texas plates.
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Speaker 1: Sheriff Ingram spent the day on the phone with a
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Speaker 1: New York officer working the lead. It dissolved the child
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Speaker 1: was not Bradley, but another boy being taken by his
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Speaker 1: mother from Beaumont back to New York. In mid March,
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Speaker 1: AMC Theaters announced a nationwide campaign photos of missing children,
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Speaker 1: including Bradley, would run before movies on eight hundred screens
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Speaker 1: at one one hundred and fifty seven theaters in one
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Speaker 1: hundred and three cities across twenty six states. The idea
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Speaker 1: was simple to get the case seen by millions of eyes.
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Speaker 1: On Wednesday, March twentieth, a woman in Pensacola, Florida, saw
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Speaker 1: a man and a boy at a car dealership. The child,
17:21
Speaker 1: like Bradley, had a scar near his eyebrow. Police investigated immediately.
17:28
Speaker 1: The man said the boy had broken his glasses and
17:30
Speaker 1: gotten stitches, which explained the scar. Investigators verified the story
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Speaker 1: with the child's doctor, and within four hours the lead
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Speaker 1: was ruled out. On the night of Saturday, March twenty third,
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, a couple in Lawton, Oklahoma, visiting the
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Speaker 1: sheriff's office on an unrelated matter, saw Bradley's photo on
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Speaker 1: a bulletin board. They said they'd seen a similar looking
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Speaker 1: child near Bridgeport, Texas, in early January, with two Mexican
18:02
Speaker 1: American men in a white station wagon. They provided a
18:06
Speaker 1: Texas license plate number that traced to San Antonio. Agencies there,
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Speaker 1: the Police Department, Bear County Sheriff's Office, and the Missing
18:16
Speaker 1: Persons Bureau tried to follow up on the lead. Nothing
18:20
Speaker 1: came of it. Sometime in March, the credit card records
18:25
Speaker 1: from the Amarillo truck stop finally arrived. They too, went nowhere.
18:31
Speaker 1: Those several weeks produced activity, miles and phone calls. With
18:37
Speaker 1: each one came hope. That hope was dashed every time.
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Speaker 1: None of the leads produced Bradley. Only chance would. On
18:49
Speaker 1: the morning of Saturday, April thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, one
18:53
Speaker 1: hundred and forty one days after Bradley disappeared, two local
18:57
Speaker 1: fishermen on the Peas River, about a mile north of
19:00
Speaker 1: Vernon and roughly fourteen miles south of Chillicothee near Highway six,
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Speaker 1: saw what looked like a bundle or object caught on
19:09
Speaker 1: a sandbar in a slough off the river. It was
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Speaker 1: not a bundle, but instead a small body. They contacted authorities.
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Speaker 1: Hardiman County Sheriff, Chester Ingram, and others responded. The remains
19:26
Speaker 1: were partially clothed and badly decomposed, but they were identified
19:31
Speaker 1: almost immediately, though tentatively, as six year old Bradley Eugene Gilbert.
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Speaker 1: The location was not far from where searchers had concentrated
19:41
Speaker 1: their efforts in the early days. Sheriff Ingram later confirmed
19:46
Speaker 1: the area had been searched before, but the geography of
19:49
Speaker 1: the river and fluctuating water levels often hide and move
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Speaker 1: what lies beneath. The body may not have been visible
19:57
Speaker 1: then or may have shifted. An autopsy in Fort Worth
20:02
Speaker 1: confirmed what everyone feared, Bradley's death was the result of
20:07
Speaker 1: homicidal violence. No water was found in his lungs, indicating
20:13
Speaker 1: he was already dead when he entered the river. The
20:16
Speaker 1: decomposition prevented an exact cause of death from being publicly released.
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Speaker 1: Will Barger, County Justice of the Piece Joe Crebbs, who
20:26
Speaker 1: conducted the inquest, stated that he believed Bradley had been
20:30
Speaker 1: brought to that swampy area the night he disappeared. In
20:34
Speaker 1: a phone conversation with a doctor at the Dallas County
20:37
Speaker 1: Medical Examiner's office, Crebbs said he was told Bradley's throat
20:42
Speaker 1: had been cut. In that same discussion, Crebbs said the
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Speaker 1: doctor and the investigating officer believed Bradley had been sexually abused,
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Speaker 1: though the condition of the remains left no physical evidence
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Speaker 1: to prove it. Crebs estimated the time of death to
20:59
Speaker 1: be around round seven thirty PM on November tenth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: eighty four, just hours after Bradley was last seen. The
21:08
Speaker 1: case was no longer a search for a missing boy.
21:11
Speaker 1: It was now a homicide investigation. On Monday, April first,
21:18
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, search teams combed the area around the
21:22
Speaker 1: Slow on the Peas River for additional evidence, including clothing
21:27
Speaker 1: and personal items not recovered with the body. Meanwhile, investigators
21:32
Speaker 1: awaited autopsy results to confirm both identity and cause of death.
21:38
Speaker 1: The recovery site close to early search grids was an
21:42
Speaker 1: awful confirmation of how easily water and terrain can frustrate
21:46
Speaker 1: a search. On Monday, April eighth, law enforcement drained part
21:51
Speaker 1: of the slow in hopes of finding missing clothing. Investigators
21:56
Speaker 1: believed those items could be critical helping to determine the
22:00
Speaker 1: sequence of events where Bradley was killed or tying forensic
22:05
Speaker 1: evidence to a suspect. At the same time, a retired
22:10
Speaker 1: FBI agent who specialized in child abduction and homicide assisted
22:15
Speaker 1: in developing a psychological profile of the perpetrator. The goal
22:20
Speaker 1: was to narrow a field with no name. On Tuesday,
22:25
Speaker 1: April ninth, Bradley's aunt and grandfather were asked to examine
22:30
Speaker 1: the clothing recovered with the body. They identified the items
22:34
Speaker 1: as the ones Bradley wore the day he disappeared. That
22:38
Speaker 1: was the day the family formally accepted the confirmation of
22:42
Speaker 1: his death. Also that day, the National Inquirer ran a
22:47
Speaker 1: story on Bradley's case, keeping the national attention alive for
22:52
Speaker 1: a time. Friday, April twelfth, nineteen eighty five, the first
22:59
Speaker 1: United Methodist Time Church in Chillicothe filled and overfilled. Many
23:05
Speaker 1: of those in attendants had never met Bradley, but they
23:08
Speaker 1: came to honor him and stand with his family. The
23:12
Speaker 1: service was officiated by the church's pastor, Reverend Danny Trussell,
23:17
Speaker 1: and by Reverend Wallace Clay, a first Baptist. The funeral
23:22
Speaker 1: was also quietly an investigative step. Law enforcement used the
23:28
Speaker 1: gathering to observe and document everyone who attended, looking for
23:32
Speaker 1: anyone who might be connected to the case. Amarillo and
23:36
Speaker 1: wichital Falls television crews filmed each person entering and leaving
23:41
Speaker 1: the only unlocked church entrance. Officers were inside the sanctuary
23:47
Speaker 1: and along the street for two blocks in both directions.
23:52
Speaker 1: Investigators in plain clothes watched who spoke with whom before,
23:57
Speaker 1: during and after the service license plates were recorded and
24:02
Speaker 1: run through the system. Bradley was laid to rest in
24:06
Speaker 1: the Chillicothee Cemetery. In the days after, officers conducted a
24:12
Speaker 1: stakeout at the cemetery to note anyone who returned to
24:15
Speaker 1: the grave site. Background checks were conducted on those who observed.
24:21
Speaker 1: One man on the video drew close attention. Sheriff Ingram
24:26
Speaker 1: described him as mid to late twenties, wearing a jacket
24:29
Speaker 1: that appeared to be too large with leather elbow patches.
24:34
Speaker 1: When he left the church, he looked around in all directions,
24:38
Speaker 1: behavior Ingram characterized as shifty. He was the only person
24:43
Speaker 1: on the footage that neither investigators nor the Gilbert family
24:46
Speaker 1: could identify. Ingram asked a local paper to keep that
24:51
Speaker 1: detail confidential on April twenty third, but a Wichita Falls
24:56
Speaker 1: television station uncovered and aired a story describing the lead
25:00
Speaker 1: that week. It's unknown whether the man was ever identified.
25:16
Speaker 1: In the months and years after Bradley's abduction and murder,
25:20
Speaker 1: his mother, Rita carried the kind of loss that doesn't recede.
25:25
Speaker 1: She became self conscious, feeling watched, scrutinized for how she
25:30
Speaker 1: treated her children In one low moment, she wondered if
25:34
Speaker 1: she should give them up just to get away from
25:36
Speaker 1: the weight of it all. She moved to another city
25:40
Speaker 1: for a time, hoping the distance would shift the grief.
25:44
Speaker 1: It didn't. It made things worse. She felt she had
25:48
Speaker 1: abandoned Bradley by leaving. She eventually came back home to Chillicothee. Jason,
25:56
Speaker 1: Bradley's younger brother, resembled him, and react did strongly to
26:01
Speaker 1: reminders of his older brother. He talked about him often.
26:05
Speaker 1: He had nightmares. He feared kidnappers might come back for him.
26:11
Speaker 1: As he grew, he looked even more like Bradley, and
26:14
Speaker 1: it didn't make the nights any easier. If someone accidentally
26:18
Speaker 1: called him brad he got upset. He still had nightmares. Eventually,
26:25
Speaker 1: the children were allowed to play outside again, but Rita
26:28
Speaker 1: taught them to scream and run at any sign of danger.
26:32
Speaker 1: The loss altered how she approached life. She didn't take
26:36
Speaker 1: relationships for granted. She wanted more security. She didn't want
26:41
Speaker 1: to leave her children, She said a part of her
26:44
Speaker 1: world would always be missing. When asked if she had
26:49
Speaker 1: any idea who would have wanted to harm her son,
26:52
Speaker 1: Rita said it felt unusual that someone had been watching
26:57
Speaker 1: and knew their routines, but she didn't know who. Bradley
27:02
Speaker 1: was abducted at her sister Becky's house, and whoever did it,
27:06
Speaker 1: she felt knew they were there. One detail haunted Rita.
27:11
Speaker 1: When Bradley was scared or upset, his cries were loud,
27:16
Speaker 1: loud enough to hear from blocks away, but her sister
27:20
Speaker 1: never heard him scream that day. That's what led Rita
27:23
Speaker 1: to believe it might have been someone Bradley knew. With
27:29
Speaker 1: the recovery and the autopsy, the investigation, of course, shifted
27:34
Speaker 1: fully to homicide. The known facts were stark. Bradley was
27:39
Speaker 1: abducted on November tenth, nineteen eighty four, while playing in
27:43
Speaker 1: the backyard of his aunt's home next to James's carwash
27:47
Speaker 1: in Chillicothee. A series of reported sightings across Texas and
27:52
Speaker 1: the United States were investigated, some seemed promising, all were
27:58
Speaker 1: eventually ruled out or went cold. With the discovery of
28:03
Speaker 1: Bradley's body on April thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, those leads
28:07
Speaker 1: were rendered completely useless, as it's likely the boy never
28:12
Speaker 1: went too far. Two fishermen discovered Bradley's remains in a
28:16
Speaker 1: slough off the Peas River north of Vernon, about fourteen
28:21
Speaker 1: miles from Chillicothee. The autopsy concluded homicidal violence. There was
28:27
Speaker 1: no water in the lungs, indicating death before the body
28:31
Speaker 1: entered the river. He was likely killed elsewhere before being
28:35
Speaker 1: dumped at the site or somewhere else before his body
28:39
Speaker 1: washed there. Many authorities believed Bradley had been killed and
28:44
Speaker 1: placed in the slough the night he disappeared. Through it,
28:49
Speaker 1: all agencies at every level worked the case, the Hardiman
28:53
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office, the Chillicothee Police, the Texas Rangers, and
28:58
Speaker 1: the FBI. The community gave hours, days and months. Rewards
29:04
Speaker 1: were offered one thousand dollars from the Chillicothee Volunteer Fire Department,
29:10
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars from the Vernon Wilbarger County Crime Stoppers,
29:14
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars from Bradley's grandfather, Roy E Upton of Graham,
29:19
Speaker 1: for a total of twenty five hundred dollars. Leeds came
29:23
Speaker 1: in as the result. Most were followed. Almost all broke
29:28
Speaker 1: apart under scrutiny. By late nineteen eighty five, the case
29:34
Speaker 1: had gone cold. In the years that followed, national numbers
29:38
Speaker 1: around missing children shifted reports dropped nearly in half over
29:44
Speaker 1: the next decades, to four hundred and twenty four thousand,
29:47
Speaker 1: sixty six in a recent year. But statistics don't solve
29:52
Speaker 1: a specific case. They don't fill in the names that
29:56
Speaker 1: never made it into a report. So what remained in
30:00
Speaker 1: the case of Bradley Eugene Gilbert is what remained in
30:03
Speaker 1: those first weeks, minus the hope that a child would
30:07
Speaker 1: be found alive. There's the location and the time, the
30:12
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, a backyard in a small Texas town, around
30:16
Speaker 1: one thirty pm on a Saturday, broad daylight. There are
30:21
Speaker 1: the words of a three year old under hypnosis, they
30:24
Speaker 1: got him, They got him. There are the observations of
30:27
Speaker 1: an adult family member and a passing motorist, a beige
30:31
Speaker 1: or light yellow car at the car wash, a man
30:34
Speaker 1: and a woman inside, a possible dent on the vehicle.
30:39
Speaker 1: There is the pattern noted by children in the neighborhood,
30:42
Speaker 1: a light colored four door car circling before the abduction.
30:47
Speaker 1: The best composite suspect descriptions that emerged, a white male
30:52
Speaker 1: twenty five to thirty years old, dark brown hair, possibly wavy,
30:57
Speaker 1: about five feet ten inches tall, average bill and a
31:01
Speaker 1: white female twenty five to thirty years old, long dark hair,
31:05
Speaker 1: about five feet four inches tall, heavy build. There are
31:10
Speaker 1: the searches that ranged from barns to barred ditches to
31:14
Speaker 1: the sky above. There's a funeral turned into a surveillance operation,
31:20
Speaker 1: an unidentified man on videotape. There is a mother who
31:24
Speaker 1: taught her surviving children to scream and run, who moved
31:28
Speaker 1: away and came back, who says she will always feel
31:32
Speaker 1: part of her is missing. There's a little brother who
31:35
Speaker 1: looked more and more like the boy who vanished, and
31:38
Speaker 1: who had to learn how to sleep again. And there's
31:41
Speaker 1: a small town that learned fast that safety might be
31:45
Speaker 1: more a baseless feeling than a fact. The murder of
31:51
Speaker 1: six year old Bradley Eugene Gilbert is an open wound
31:55
Speaker 1: in Hardiman County and one of the most disturbing unsolved
31:59
Speaker 1: crimes in the regent's history. He was taken within earshot
32:03
Speaker 1: of homes and the adults within the case intersected with
32:08
Speaker 1: a national awakening about missing children, the founding of a
32:12
Speaker 1: national center, milk cartons carrying faces into millions of kitchens,
32:17
Speaker 1: theaters projecting photos before films, Yet it did not yield
32:22
Speaker 1: the name that would answer the questions that matter. Who
32:25
Speaker 1: took Bradley. Was it a couple working together or a
32:30
Speaker 1: single offender. Was it someone passing through or someone who
32:34
Speaker 1: knew the family's routine. Why were there no screams heard
32:38
Speaker 1: when everyone who knew him says his cries could carry
32:42
Speaker 1: for blocks. Why did so many leads from Amarillo credit
32:46
Speaker 1: card receipts to plate numbers on paper bags fade under
32:50
Speaker 1: the weight of time and distance. We can say what
32:54
Speaker 1: the investigator said, that Bradley did not get into that
32:58
Speaker 1: car by himself. What we cannot do after four decades
33:02
Speaker 1: with virtually no updates or even anniversary stories, is closed
33:07
Speaker 1: the loop with a name for Rita, Bradley's siblings, Jason
33:12
Speaker 1: and Kristen, and for a town that still wonders the
33:16
Speaker 1: truth is the only thing that will finally change what
33:19
Speaker 1: November tenth, nineteen eighty four means in Chilicothe, Texas. If
33:27
Speaker 1: you have any information about the abduction and murder of
33:30
Speaker 1: Bradley Eugene Gilbert, please contact the Hardiman County Sheriff's Office
33:35
Speaker 1: at nine four zero six sixty three, five three seven four,
33:40
Speaker 1: or Texas Crime Stoppers at eight hundred two five two,
33:44
Speaker 1: eight four seven seven. If you'd like to join Con
33:50
Speaker 1: Cold's mission to shine a light on unsolved homicides and
33:54
Speaker 1: missing persons cases, get the show at free and have
33:57
Speaker 1: access to bonus content, you can at Patreon dot com
34:01
Speaker 1: slash Gone Cold podcast. You can also support the show
34:06
Speaker 1: by leaving a five star rating and written review on
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen. However you choose
34:14
Speaker 1: to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,