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The Disappearance of Megan Garner · 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. By early nineteen ninety one, America
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Speaker 1: was exhausted, not because of what was happening in their
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Speaker 1: own neighborhoods, at least not yet, but because of what
0:19
Speaker 1: they had been watching night after night from thousands of
0:22
Speaker 1: miles away. For weeks. Families across the country had gone
0:27
Speaker 1: to bed with their televisions still glowing. Green tinted night
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Speaker 1: vision footage flickered across living room walls long after midnight.
0:37
Speaker 1: The Gulf War was consuming American life. It wasn't the
0:42
Speaker 1: first war Americans had watched on television That dark history
0:47
Speaker 1: technically belongs to the Korean War, though Vietnam War coverage
0:51
Speaker 1: was far more prolific. But it was the first time
0:55
Speaker 1: they were watching one unfold in real time. And now
0:59
Speaker 1: there was a twenty four hour news cycle seven days
1:03
Speaker 1: a week. Viewers saw and heard missiles firing over Baghdad,
1:07
Speaker 1: live military briefings, and constant updates. It felt relentless. Then,
1:14
Speaker 1: on February twenty eighth, nineteen ninety one, George H. W.
1:19
Speaker 1: Bush announced a ceasefire. From the American perspective, the war
1:24
Speaker 1: was over, but the country didn't settle. Less than a
1:29
Speaker 1: week later, on March third, a man with a camcorder
1:33
Speaker 1: captured Rodney King being beaten by officers with the Los
1:37
Speaker 1: Angeles Police Department in California. The footage spread quickly, and
1:42
Speaker 1: Americans who had spent weeks watching violence overseas were suddenly
1:47
Speaker 1: watching it unfold at home. Conversations changed almost overnight. Policing, justice,
1:55
Speaker 1: and racism were all common subjects at the dinner table.
2:00
Speaker 1: Something in the country felt unsettled. In Texas, just like
2:05
Speaker 1: in plenty of other states, that unease had been going
2:08
Speaker 1: on for years. Violent crime rates were high across much
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Speaker 1: of the state, and nightly news broadcasts were increasingly filled
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Speaker 1: with stories about robberies, assaults, child abuse, sexual violence, missing persons,
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Speaker 1: and drug related killings. In many ways, fear was a
2:29
Speaker 1: part of everyday life. By May nineteen ninety, the problem
2:33
Speaker 1: had become visible enough that KHOU eleven News, alongside the
2:38
Speaker 1: Houston Police Department, the Houston Chronicle, and city officials, launched
2:44
Speaker 1: a public crime prevention campaign titled It's a Crime Not
2:48
Speaker 1: to Use This Book. The guide warned Texans about everything
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Speaker 1: from home invasions and sexual assaults to child abuse and
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Speaker 1: missing Children. Entire sections explained how parents should report a
3:02
Speaker 1: child missing, things like what information police would immediately need
3:07
Speaker 1: and how quickly those reports could become life or death situations.
3:13
Speaker 1: The message wasn't at all subtle. People were being told
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Speaker 1: to lock their doors, watch their children, know their neighbors,
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Speaker 1: and pay attention to strangers. That fear had already embedded
3:27
Speaker 1: itself into American life long before. Throughout the nineteen eighties
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Speaker 1: and into the early nineteen nineties, faces of missing children
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Speaker 1: stared back from milk cartons, grocery store bulletin boards, post
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Speaker 1: office walls, and television programs like America's Most Wanted. By
3:47
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, parents across America had already spent nearly
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Speaker 1: a decade being taught two words stranger, danger, and In Tyler, Texas,
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Speaker 1: like so many other modest community across the country, most
4:02
Speaker 1: families still believed that kind of thing happened somewhere else
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Speaker 1: until one spring morning when it didn't. Tyler in nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety one wasn't the small town some people imagine today.
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Speaker 1: It still carried that East Texas identity. Churches seemingly on
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Speaker 1: every corner, Families rooted in the area for generations and
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Speaker 1: an economy shaped for decades by agriculture, particularly the rose
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Speaker 1: industry that had long earned Thayer its nickname as the
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Speaker 1: rose Capital of America. But by the early nineteen nineties,
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Speaker 1: it was no longer just a farming community, and it
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Speaker 1: wasn't moving at the slower pace outsiders might have expected.
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Speaker 1: It was growing. More than one hundred and fifty one
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Speaker 1: thousand people lived in Smith County by then, with roughly
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Speaker 1: half of them in Tyler itself. The county seat had
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Speaker 1: grown into a regional hub, driven by healthcare, retail, oil
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Speaker 1: related business, and service industries as much as its agricultural roots.
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Speaker 1: South Tyler in particular was changing. Apartment living had become
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Speaker 1: a common part of that growth, serving working families, young couples,
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Speaker 1: and people relocating for jobs or just starting over. Developments
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Speaker 1: like Casa Grande apartments and nearby Sherwood Forest weren't unusual.
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Speaker 1: They were a part of a city stretching outward, filling
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Speaker 1: in open spaces with apartment clusters and duplexes. Shopping strips too.
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Speaker 1: In many parts of South Tyler, those complexes sat among
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Speaker 1: residential streets, parking lots, and thick patches of East Texas
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Speaker 1: woods that still bordered much of the area. Tree lines,
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Speaker 1: drainage ditches, feeder roads, and power lines were woven between
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Speaker 1: apartment communities, businesses, and neighborhood streets, all things that were
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Speaker 1: part of the landscape and easy to overlook. Still, they
6:36
Speaker 1: were familiar to the people who lived there. Life in
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Speaker 1: those complexes had its own rhythm. Children played outside because
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Speaker 1: space was shared. Courtyards served the same purpose as the
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Speaker 1: backyards of single family homes. Parking lots were shortcuts. On
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Speaker 1: a warm spring morning, it wasn't unusual to see kids
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Speaker 1: moving betws between buildings, adults stepping outside for a cigarette
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Speaker 1: or conversation, and someone carrying groceries upstairs, or another person
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Speaker 1: heading off to work. Busy but in quiet ways. Nothing
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Speaker 1: about the morning of March twenty seventh, nineteen ninety one
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Speaker 1: felt unusual. It was spring break, the weather was warm,
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Speaker 1: and the children were home for the week. Melanie Joe
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Speaker 1: Garner lived on the second floor of the Casa Grande
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Speaker 1: apartments on South Poluxy Drive in Tyler with her three children,
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Speaker 1: three year old Megan Elizabeth Garner, six year old Chance,
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Speaker 1: and eight year old Fallon. For Melanie, living at Casa
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Speaker 1: Grande came with something every single parent values, support close by.
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Speaker 1: Her sister lived in the same complex with her own children,
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Speaker 1: giving them both a built in support system. There's great
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Speaker 1: comfort in knowing, some way the one you trust is
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Speaker 1: close by if you need help or just a break.
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Speaker 1: That morning, Melanie's sister came over with her two children,
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Speaker 1: and eight year old and a four year old. She
8:12
Speaker 1: brought a rented movie, and around nine twenty five, the
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Speaker 1: two women settled in upstairs, but the children wanted to
8:19
Speaker 1: go outside and play. Before they went downstairs, Melanie told
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Speaker 1: them where they could play, a patch of grass just
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Speaker 1: outside the apartment from the second floor. Both the front
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Speaker 1: door and the window looked down on that area, allowing
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Speaker 1: her to keep an eye on the kids below. All
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Speaker 1: of the children went outside, except eight year old Fallon,
8:42
Speaker 1: who stayed upstairs. At some point that morning, the children
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Speaker 1: drifted farther than where Melanie had told them to stay.
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Speaker 1: They crossed the parking lot and moved toward the playground,
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Speaker 1: a courtyard area surrounded by apartment buildings that now blocked
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Speaker 1: Melanie's view. The children were only about fifty to sixty
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Speaker 1: feet away. She could still hear them, but she couldn't
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Speaker 1: see them. By eleven fifteen am, the movie was over
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Speaker 1: and Melanie's sister headed back to her own apartment. Around
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Speaker 1: five minutes later, at eleven twenty the three older children
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Speaker 1: came back upstairs asking for water. Melanie asked where Megan was.
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Speaker 1: They told her they thought she was already upstairs. She wasn't.
9:30
Speaker 1: Melanie told them to go back and get her. At
9:33
Speaker 1: around eleven thirty am, the children came back. This time,
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Speaker 1: there was no confusion. They couldn't find her. Without hesitation,
9:43
Speaker 1: Melanie put on her shoes and went looking herself. At first,
9:48
Speaker 1: the family searched on their own. They checked the playground,
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Speaker 1: the parking lot, the laundromat, the breezeways, the stairwells, the
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Speaker 1: fence line, and the places a three year old might hide.
10:01
Speaker 1: But Megan was nowhere to be found, and under the
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Speaker 1: weight of what had begun to sync in, Melanie called police.
10:20
Speaker 1: Apartment living comes with a kind of anonymity most people
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Speaker 1: take for granted. People move in and out, people come
10:29
Speaker 1: and go throughout the day, all on different schedules. Most
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Speaker 1: neighbors keep to themselves, and unless someone gives you a
10:37
Speaker 1: reason to notice them, you probably don't you might not
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Speaker 1: even know the type of person you share a wall with.
10:45
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, tenant screening wasn't what it is today.
10:50
Speaker 1: There wasn't an instant background check system, criminal databases weren't checked,
10:55
Speaker 1: and predators weren't tracked, as the sex offender registries didn't
11:00
Speaker 1: yet exist. In most places like the Casa Grande apartments,
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Speaker 1: if you had a deposit, a few paycheck stubs, and
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Speaker 1: a name to put on the lease, that was often
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Speaker 1: enough to move in. But something out of the ordinary
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Speaker 1: was happening that spring. Starting at the first of the year,
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Speaker 1: the Casa Grande apartment complex was being overhauled. In March,
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Speaker 1: they began advertising the availability of newly remodeled units. That
11:29
Speaker 1: meant strangers moving through the property throughout the day, not
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Speaker 1: only potential renters, but construction crews moving in and out
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Speaker 1: of vacant apartments. These crews, including workers without background checks
11:44
Speaker 1: in a line of work in which transient and cash
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Speaker 1: labor were common, were often loosely supervised, but it was
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Speaker 1: the kind of movement residents saw so often that eventually
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Speaker 1: it simply stopped registering. And most of the time anyway,
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Speaker 1: none of this would have mattered but the morning a
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Speaker 1: three year old disappeared from the middle of it, it
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Speaker 1: mattered more than anything else in the world. After Melanie
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Speaker 1: Garner called police about her daughter, Meghan's disappearance, Tyler officers
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Speaker 1: responded to the apartment complex. When they arrived, Melanie gave
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Speaker 1: them a description. Megan was around three feet tall and
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Speaker 1: around thirty pounds. She had long brown hair with lighter
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Speaker 1: streaks and a slight curl at the ends, and brown eyes.
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Speaker 1: That morning, Megan was wearing a long sleeved shirt with pink,
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Speaker 1: blue and green horizontal stripes, pink corduroy pants, blue socks,
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Speaker 1: and blue and white rebock tennis shoes. Investigators immediately began
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Speaker 1: trying to piece together the girl's last known movements. One
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Speaker 1: account placed Megan near the laundromat area, standing near an
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Speaker 1: air condition unit close to her apartment. From that location,
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Speaker 1: she likely would have still been within view of her apartment,
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Speaker 1: still in the area where her mother expected her to be.
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Speaker 1: Another witness placed her near a fence line to the
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Speaker 1: north that separated Casa Grande from a cluster of duplexes
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Speaker 1: backing up to the complex. Maybe a three year old
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Speaker 1: in a moment of distraction police thought simply wandered farther
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Speaker 1: than anyone realized. But Megan had been told not to
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Speaker 1: cross the parking lot alone. Melanie had made that rule clear,
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Speaker 1: and to get to that fence line, Megan wouldn't have
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Speaker 1: just drifted a few feet from the playground. She would
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Speaker 1: have had to leave the play area completely, cross the
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Speaker 1: parking lot, walking in the opposite direction of her apartment,
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Speaker 1: and toward a part of the complex she knew was
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Speaker 1: off limits. That opened up the possibility that she was lured.
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Speaker 1: Her mother later said she did not believe Megan would
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Speaker 1: willingly go with a stranger. It's something most parents want
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Speaker 1: to believe, but children understand something early. Adults have authority,
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Speaker 1: and that's something predators also learn early on. Sometimes coercion
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Speaker 1: is enough, and sometimes a few seconds is all it takes.
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Speaker 1: But Megan was small, small enough that if someone decided
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Speaker 1: to pick her up simply snatch her, it may not
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Speaker 1: have taken much at all. If she was taken by
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Speaker 1: someone in a vehicle, the layout of South Tyler in
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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one could have given that person an easy
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Speaker 1: and unassuming getaway. Casa Grande sat off South Peluxey Drive
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Speaker 1: near Loop three twenty three, one of Tyler's main traffic routes.
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Speaker 1: From the apartment complex, a driver could have been out
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Speaker 1: of the parking area and onto surrounding roads in a
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Speaker 1: matter of seconds. Within one to three minutes, a vehicle
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Speaker 1: could have reached major roads, shopping corridors or business area
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Speaker 1: where unfamiliar traffic didn't stand out. Within five to ten minutes,
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Speaker 1: that same vehicle could have been heading toward White House, Jacksonville, Longview,
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Speaker 1: or onto rural Smith County roads where traffic thinned out
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Speaker 1: and witnesses became harder to find. At first, hope was
15:27
Speaker 1: still abundant even after the search for Megan expanded beyond
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Speaker 1: the Casa Grande apartments, which was almost immediately Tyler officers
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Speaker 1: canvassed the complex and surrounding streets, while additional units were
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Speaker 1: called in as the urgency of the situation became clear.
15:47
Speaker 1: The Smith County Sheriff's Office joined the effort, along with
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Speaker 1: local firefighters, mounted patrol units, volunteers, neighbors, and residents from
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Speaker 1: the surrounding areas. Authorities searched roughly a one mile area
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Speaker 1: surrounding Casa Grande, moving through nearby apartment complexes, residential streets,
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Speaker 1: and open fields surrounding South Tyler. Helicopters were brought in
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Speaker 1: to search from above while the mounted units worked terrain
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Speaker 1: that was harder to cover on foot. Searchers moved through
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Speaker 1: tree lines, vacant lots, drainage areas, and thick wooded patches,
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Speaker 1: looking for any sign that Megan may have wandered away
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Speaker 1: or any evidence that someone may have taken her. In
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Speaker 1: the days that followed, the weather began working against them.
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Speaker 1: Rain moved into Tyler, soaking the ground and turning the
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Speaker 1: dirt into mud. Melanie Garner would later remember those first
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Speaker 1: days as three soggy, rain soaked days. Search crews kept
16:54
Speaker 1: search crews kept working, but the changing conditions made it
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Speaker 1: harder to preserve or identify anything that might have been
17:02
Speaker 1: left behind, things like footprints, tire tracks, scent trails, or
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Speaker 1: disturbed ground. As the search continued and efforts turned up nothing,
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Speaker 1: specialized resources were brought in. CAESAR Children's Education, Search and
17:21
Speaker 1: Recovery out of North Richland Hills joined the search with
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Speaker 1: trained volunteers, bloodhounds, German shepherd tracking dogs, and a mobile
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Speaker 1: command unit built from a converted free delay delivery truck.
17:35
Speaker 1: Their teams went back over areas that had already been searched,
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Speaker 1: reworking thickets, drainage areas, and the properties surrounding Casa Grande
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Speaker 1: in case something had been missed during the chaos of
17:48
Speaker 1: those first hours. Later, additional search teams from neighboring counties
17:53
Speaker 1: joined the effort, and the FBI would eventually become involved
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Speaker 1: in the case. Despite all of it, nothing was found,
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Speaker 1: no clothing, no scent trail, and no physical evidence. Nothing
18:09
Speaker 1: to explain how a three year old child vanished in
18:12
Speaker 1: the middle of the day. In the meantime, detectives chased
18:17
Speaker 1: every lead, no matter how uncertain or unlikely. Then, on
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Speaker 1: April fourth, nineteen ninety one, the Tyler Police released what
18:27
Speaker 1: appeared to be their first potentially significant witness lead. Newspapers
18:33
Speaker 1: published a composite sketch of a man who had reportedly
18:36
Speaker 1: been seen at a local grocery store with a little
18:39
Speaker 1: girl matching Megan's description, approximately four hours after she vanished.
18:46
Speaker 1: According to the police, the witness described a white male
18:50
Speaker 1: around thirty five years old, approximately five foot eight to
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Speaker 1: five foot nine, with a muscular build, dark hair, dark eyes,
18:58
Speaker 1: and roughly two days of beard growth. He was reportedly
19:03
Speaker 1: wearing blue jeans, a long sleeved khaki work shirt, and
19:07
Speaker 1: a maroon cap with Nokona boots across the front. It
19:11
Speaker 1: was even noted that he appeared to be someone who
19:14
Speaker 1: worked out doors. The lead was impossible to ignore, of course,
19:19
Speaker 1: but it was just as difficult to fully trust. Since
19:23
Speaker 1: this sighting happened four hours after Megan disappeared, then it's
19:27
Speaker 1: highly unlikely the average person and Tyler would have already
19:31
Speaker 1: known a three year old child was missing. This was
19:34
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. There were no Amber alerts, most homes
19:39
Speaker 1: didn't even have a computer yet, and smartphones as we
19:43
Speaker 1: know them today were still a couple decades from hitting
19:46
Speaker 1: the market, so there were no neighborhood apps or social media.
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Speaker 1: In the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, most people were
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Speaker 1: at work or moving through their day without an idea
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Speaker 1: a three year old girl had vanished from an apartment
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Speaker 1: complex in South Tyler. At best, word of Meghan's disappearance
20:06
Speaker 1: may have started spreading locally through phone calls, gossip, or
20:11
Speaker 1: scanner traffic, before later reaching television broadcasts that evening, when
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Speaker 1: her photograph and description began appearing in the news. But
20:20
Speaker 1: earlier that afternoon, most people in Tyler would have had
20:24
Speaker 1: no reason to connect a man and a little girl
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Speaker 1: inside a grocery store to an active missing child case,
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Speaker 1: much less recognize what Megan looked like. There were plausible
20:36
Speaker 1: explanations for these discrepancies, However, this wasn't the only reason
20:41
Speaker 1: to doubt that the child scene was Megan. If someone
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Speaker 1: had just abducted a three year old, why risk taking
20:48
Speaker 1: her to a public grocery store in the same city.
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Speaker 1: It's somewhere crowded with employees and shoppers, somewhere either of
20:57
Speaker 1: them could have run into someone who recognized Megan or
21:01
Speaker 1: recognized him. That doesn't make it impossible. Some offenders do
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Speaker 1: reckless things like hide in plain sight or blend in
21:10
Speaker 1: by acting normal, but it does make the sighting harder
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Speaker 1: to take at face value. And then there's the witness
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Speaker 1: memory itself. They got his height, build, and beard growth.
21:23
Speaker 1: They even got the impression that he looked like someone
21:26
Speaker 1: who worked out doors. That's an extraordinary amount of detail
21:31
Speaker 1: to retain about a stranger, especially when there's no reporting
21:35
Speaker 1: indicating that the child appeared frightened, no indication she was crying, resisting,
21:40
Speaker 1: or trying to get away, and no suggestion that the
21:44
Speaker 1: man himself was acting suspiciously. It doesn't automatically make the
21:49
Speaker 1: witness false. People can be completely sincere and still be wrong.
21:54
Speaker 1: Memory doesn't work like surveillance footage, a fact detectives know
21:59
Speaker 1: all too well well. Sometimes people see something ordinary and
22:04
Speaker 1: only later, after hearing about a missing child, after talking
22:08
Speaker 1: to neighbors, after replaying the moment in their heads over
22:12
Speaker 1: and over, their minds begin filling in the gaps. Ordinary
22:16
Speaker 1: encounters can start feeling important. The Tyler police were careful
22:22
Speaker 1: with the lead, a police spokesman told reporters demand in
22:26
Speaker 1: the sketch was not considered a suspect. They simply wanted
22:30
Speaker 1: to identify him and speak with him. Despite the drawing,
22:35
Speaker 1: the newspaper coverage and the public attention, nothing ever came
22:39
Speaker 1: of it. It became just another lead in a case
22:43
Speaker 1: already drowning in possibilities and starving for proof. In missing
22:49
Speaker 1: child investigations, false leads, whether intentional or not, don't just
22:54
Speaker 1: create frustration. They burn time, manpower, and resource horses. Some
23:01
Speaker 1: people genuinely believe they're helping, Some simply want attention to
23:06
Speaker 1: feel important or be close to a tragedy. Others see
23:11
Speaker 1: heartbreak and a perfect opportunity to capitalize on it. That
23:16
Speaker 1: reality hit detectives on the same day of the tip,
23:19
Speaker 1: April fourth, nineteen ninety one, when a man named William
23:23
Speaker 1: Gordon Hunt inserted himself directly into Meghan's case. Hunt was
23:29
Speaker 1: forty years old and approximately six feet tall, according to
23:34
Speaker 1: Tyler Police. He approached Meghan's family at the Casa Grande
23:38
Speaker 1: apartments and claimed that for four hundred dollars he could
23:41
Speaker 1: bring Meghan home within thirty hours. For Melanie, those words
23:47
Speaker 1: hit hard. They were impossible to just let go of
23:51
Speaker 1: when your child is missing. Even a lie can sound
23:55
Speaker 1: like hope. Police moved quickly. Later that same day, officers
24:00
Speaker 1: arrested Hunt at the Casa Grande apartments. He was carrying
24:05
Speaker 1: a long bladed knife. Ultimately, Hunt was convicted of unlawfully
24:11
Speaker 1: carrying a weapon. He received one hundred and eighty days
24:14
Speaker 1: in jail, along with fines and court costs. But after
24:19
Speaker 1: detectives ran down the lead, they came to the conclusion
24:22
Speaker 1: that Hunt did not have Megan, nor did they believe
24:26
Speaker 1: he knew where she was. Instead, investigators believed Hunt had
24:31
Speaker 1: inserted himself into one of the worst moments of a
24:34
Speaker 1: family's life because he thought a desperate mother might pay
24:39
Speaker 1: for hope. William Gordon Hunt wasn't from Tyler at all.
24:44
Speaker 1: Police described him as a transient drifter, later linking him
24:48
Speaker 1: to Santa Barbara, California, where he reportedly used a general
24:53
Speaker 1: delivery mailing address. Days turned to weeks in the disappearance
25:08
Speaker 1: of Megan Elizabeth Garner and Tyler. Police detectives were already
25:13
Speaker 1: coming to a difficult conclusion. The searches had turned up nothing,
25:18
Speaker 1: the tips weren't panning out, and a one thousand dollars
25:22
Speaker 1: reward had failed to generate anything credible. Whatever happened to
25:26
Speaker 1: Megan on March twenty seventh, nineteen ninety one, it was
25:30
Speaker 1: becoming painfully clear this was no longer a local search
25:34
Speaker 1: for a three year old who had simply wandered away.
25:37
Speaker 1: As local leads began drying up, Meghan's photographs started moving
25:42
Speaker 1: through national missing child networks. One of the first organizations
25:47
Speaker 1: to pick up her case was the National Center for
25:50
Speaker 1: Missing and Exploited Children or neck MEG, created by Congress
25:55
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four after a series of high profile
25:58
Speaker 1: child abductions. Nick MECK was designed to make sure missing
26:02
Speaker 1: children didn't simply disappear into disconnected local police files. They
26:08
Speaker 1: serve as a national clearing house, distributing photographs, coordinating with
26:13
Speaker 1: law enforcement, fielding tips, and pushing cases across state lines
26:18
Speaker 1: when local investigations stall. Meghan's case was also picked up
26:23
Speaker 1: by the Kevin Collins Foundation, another organization born from tragedy.
26:29
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, ten year old Kevin Collins disappeared
26:33
Speaker 1: while walking home from basketball practice in San Francisco. He
26:37
Speaker 1: was never found. His family and supporters turned their grief
26:42
Speaker 1: into action, building a foundation dedicated to making sure missing
26:47
Speaker 1: children's faces stayed in front of the public long after
26:50
Speaker 1: local news coverage faded. In late May of nineteen ninety one,
26:56
Speaker 1: roughly two months after Meghan disappeared, Tyler newspapers were already
27:00
Speaker 1: reporting that her case had gone national. Then, on Friday,
27:05
Speaker 1: August twenty third, nineteen ninety one, her case was featured
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Speaker 1: on America's Most Wanted for the first time. Millions of
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Speaker 1: viewers across the United States were seeing Meghan's face, hearing
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Speaker 1: her description, and learning how a three year old little
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Speaker 1: girl had disappeared from an apartment complex in Tyler, Texas,
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Speaker 1: only to still be missing five months later. By then,
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Speaker 1: the machinery behind America's missing Child movement was fully in
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Speaker 1: motion through partnerships with direct mail companies like Advo. Meghan's
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Speaker 1: photograph was eventually delivered to more than fifty two million
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Speaker 1: households nationwide. Families sorting through grocery coupons, store flyers, and
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Speaker 1: junk mail at their kitchen tables weren't just seeing ads.
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Speaker 1: They were seeing Meghan's face. Her image also appeared on flyers,
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Speaker 1: bulletin boys, words, milk cartons, post office walls, convenience stores,
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Speaker 1: and grocery stores across the country. And while Meghan's story
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Speaker 1: was reaching the nation, fear back home and Tyler was
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Speaker 1: only growing. On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety one, just over
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Speaker 1: six months after Meghan disappeared, another child vanished. Chad Choice
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Speaker 1: was eight years old when he disappeared from his home
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Speaker 1: in Tyler. At first, investigators found no signs of forced entry,
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Speaker 1: no obvious struggle, and no witnesses who saw him being taken.
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Speaker 1: For detectives still carrying Meghan's case, the similarities were easy
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Speaker 1: to notice. Two children in the same city and in
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Speaker 1: the same year. Both were taken from places where they
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Speaker 1: should have been safe, and they were gone before anyone
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Speaker 1: realized something was wrong. When you have two children disappear
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Speaker 1: under circumstances like that, detectives have to theorize that there
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Speaker 1: may be a predator on the loose. Meghan and Chad
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Speaker 1: had joined sixty eight other people listed as missing in
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Speaker 1: Smith County. Years later, however, Chad's case was solved. Detectives
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Speaker 1: learned he had been kidnapped after keys were stolen from
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Speaker 1: his family. He was taken as leverage over a relative's
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Speaker 1: drug debt, murdered, and buried. The case eventually led investigators
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Speaker 1: to David Horne and a network of East Texas drug traffickers,
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Speaker 1: but none of it ever connected back to Megan. Still,
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Speaker 1: by nineteen ninety one, the fear wasn't just local, it
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Speaker 1: was national. Just a year earlier, the federal government had
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Speaker 1: released NISMART, the first major national study on missing children.
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Speaker 1: Data indicated that most cases involved runaways, custodied disputes, family conflict,
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Speaker 1: or children who were quickly located and brought home. A
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Speaker 1: vast majority, in fact, are either found or returned themselves
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Speaker 1: within days. But buried inside those numbers was the category
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Speaker 1: every parent feared. Most. Police two and estimated four thousand,
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Speaker 1: six hundred children each year were abducted by someone outside
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Speaker 1: the family, and of those, only about two hundred to
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Speaker 1: three hundred cases annually fit what investigators called stereotypical kidnappings,
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Speaker 1: children taken by strangers or slight acquaintances, transported, held, assaulted,
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Speaker 1: or never brought home. Statistically, those numbers were small compared
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Speaker 1: to the millions of children living in America and the
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Speaker 1: one and a half million total missing persons cases studied again,
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Speaker 1: most of which are found safe within days, but even
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Speaker 1: if the odds are low, the consequences are absolute for
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Speaker 1: the families of missing kids. In December of nineteen ninety one,
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Speaker 1: Melanie Garner traveled to Fort Worth for another chance to
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Speaker 1: keep her daughter's face in front of the public. This
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Speaker 1: time it was for the Seven Hundred Club's Child Quest segment.
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Speaker 1: Child Quest had become one of the country's most recognizable
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Speaker 1: missing child segments during the nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties,
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Speaker 1: Much like America's Most Wanted. It used national television to
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Speaker 1: feature missing children's photographs, ages, clothing, physical descriptions, and last
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Speaker 1: known locations, asking viewers across the country to look closely
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Speaker 1: and call if they knew something nothing viable concerning Meghan's
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Speaker 1: case came from the program. More than two years after
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Speaker 1: Megan Elizabeth Garner vanished from the courtyard of the Cost
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Speaker 1: Grande apartments, Tyler investigators believed finally they may have cut
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Speaker 1: a break. The case had already become one of Smith
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Speaker 1: County's most frustrating and high profile missing child investigations. The
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Speaker 1: searches were long over and tips had slowed. Most of
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Speaker 1: the public had moved on. Then came the announcement. Tyler
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Speaker 1: Police Chief Larry Robinson confirmed publicly that his department and
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Speaker 1: the FBI were conducting a joint investigation and were actively
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Speaker 1: interviewing a suspect in Megan's disappearance. Robinson made it clear
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Speaker 1: this wasn't something detectives had stumbled across overnight. He said
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Speaker 1: they had been working the lead for some time, and
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Speaker 1: because of the sensitivity of the investigation, he refused to
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Speaker 1: release further details. For a family who had spent more
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Speaker 1: than two years living with pain and uncertainty, it must
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Speaker 1: have felt like the first real breath of hope they'd
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Speaker 1: had in a long time. But not long after the announcement,
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Speaker 1: it was over. After three to four days of interviews
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Speaker 1: conducted by Tyler detectives and FBI agents, Assistant Chief Bob
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Speaker 1: Bond announced the man was not a viable suspect. The
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Speaker 1: man was from out of state and had been sitting
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Speaker 1: in the Smith County Jail on a warrant from another state,
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Speaker 1: completely unrelated to Megan's case. Detectives followed the lead as
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Speaker 1: far as it would go, and it ultimately went nowhere.
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Speaker 1: Once again, the police were back at square one. Years later,
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Speaker 1: detectives would confirm that the Tyler Police Department and FBI
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Speaker 1: agents continued receiving tips from all over the country. Every
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Speaker 1: one of them ended the same way, with nothing new.
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Speaker 1: Even advances in science couldn't bring answers. Investigators worked with
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Speaker 1: the now National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on
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Speaker 1: age progressed images. DNA comparisons were conducted. When an unidentified
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Speaker 1: child was found in New York City, Melanie and her
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Speaker 1: family gave their DNA, hoping it might finally bring an answer.
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Speaker 1: But it didn't. There was no match, and after all
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Speaker 1: these years, thirty five years, Megan is still missing. When
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Speaker 1: Melanie Joe Garner talks about her daughter, the first words
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Speaker 1: she uses are energetic and bright at just three years old,
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Speaker 1: Megan was already learning to write, she was learning to spell.
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Speaker 1: She was always moving, always playing the kind of little
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Speaker 1: girl who wore adults out just trying to keep up.
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Speaker 1: Megan loved her toys, she loved being outside. She loved
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Speaker 1: chasing her older brother and sister. That's how Melanie remembers her,
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Speaker 1: not as a case file or a missing child poster,
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Speaker 1: but as her little girl. Melanie eventually moved away from Tyler.
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Speaker 1: If her daughter were somehow listening today, Melanie says she'd
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Speaker 1: tell her exactly what she's been trying to say for
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Speaker 1: more than three decades. I love you and I'm still looking.
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Speaker 1: If you have any information about the disappearance of Megan
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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Garner, please contact the Tyler Police Department at nine
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Speaker 1: zero three five three one one thousand. If you'd like
35:38
Speaker 1: to join gon Cold's mission to shine a light on
35:41
Speaker 1: unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the show at
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Speaker 1: you choose to support Gone Cold. We appreciate you. Thanks
36:06
Speaker 1: for listening, y'all,