Speaker 1: Texas has a lot of ground to cover, and at
Speaker 1: Texas Monthly we do just that. If there's a story
Speaker 1: to be told in Texas, and theyre always is, you'll
Speaker 1: read about it in Texas Monthly. Fifty years of stories
Speaker 1: for all y'all. There's a lot of ground to cover
Speaker 1: in Texas, and at Texas Monthly, we've been doing just
Speaker 1: that for fifty years. The complicated, the advocated, and the
Speaker 1: hotly debated.
Speaker 2: The ball that's smoked, brood.
Speaker 1: Shaken, or put into a taco. The heroes, trailblazers and
Speaker 1: bum steers, whether we're digging into our past or chronicling
Speaker 1: the present. If there's a story to be told in Texas,
Speaker 1: and there always is, you'll read about it in Texas Monthly.
Speaker 1: Fifty years of stories for all y'all.
Speaker 2: In Texas Monthly. And what's your grief like at this point?
Speaker 2: Because you can't grieve in the traditional way of parent
Speaker 2: grieves over the loss of a sudden I think.
Speaker 3: I don't think we've grieved yet because we still don't know.
Speaker 3: We've had a memorial, but we don't have we have nothing.
Speaker 3: I mean, we don't have remains, we don't have an autopsy,
Speaker 3: We don't have a forensics We have nothing.
Speaker 2: Do you sleep?
Speaker 3: I haven't slept in three more than three years.
Speaker 2: The first time I meet Tom's mom, Penny Meek, She's
Speaker 2: just gotten home from one of Canadian's elementary schools where
Speaker 2: she teaches computer classes. She's dressed casually, white blouse, blue jeans,
Speaker 2: tennis shoes. Her white blonde hair falls to her shoulders.
Speaker 2: Penny lives in a ranch style home on the outskirts
Speaker 2: of town, bordering a wide open pasture. She introduces me
Speaker 2: to her other son, Tom's big brother, Tucker. Are you
Speaker 2: going to sit in on this?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: Tucker is twenty four, an information technology specialist at a
Speaker 2: nearby school district. Penny also introduces me to her husband, Chris,
Speaker 2: who works as a line operator for an oil field
Speaker 2: supply company. Penny and Chris married in twenty twelve, six
Speaker 2: years after Penny divorced Tom and Tucker's father. We all
Speaker 2: sit down at the kitchen table and Chris serves as
Speaker 2: glasses of tap water and I want to do a
Speaker 2: deep dive more than maybe the other stories have done
Speaker 2: about Thomas's wife. And then some of the questions are
Speaker 2: going to be hard and you're okay with that? What
Speaker 2: kind of guy was he? I want you to help
Speaker 2: me out with this, Tucker. I mean we see a
Speaker 2: typical Canadian boy.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say it was typical at all, because you know,
Speaker 6: the typical person that comes out here is like farmer
Speaker 6: rancher types. They're tough guys, football stars, that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: And though Tom played football and was part of that
Speaker 6: group too, he fit in all crowds.
Speaker 2: Tom especially liked being an actor. Even as a young boy.
Speaker 2: He would put on elaborate plays.
Speaker 3: He was different, and then he would always want me
Speaker 3: and Tucker to be in his play with Them, but
Speaker 3: we didn't ever know what we were supposed to do,
Speaker 3: and so he would act his part out and then
Speaker 3: he would tell us what lines to say, like he
Speaker 3: would go. He would say something, and then he would
Speaker 3: be like, okay, you say you know this, and then
Speaker 3: Tucker and I would try to follow whatever we were
Speaker 3: supposed to do and be in his little play with them.
Speaker 2: Tom was funny, He was outgoing. He was also known
Speaker 2: for his big heart, someone who stood up for other
Speaker 2: kids when they were bullied.
Speaker 3: I have a mom who sent me just a text
Speaker 3: message shortly after Thomas went missing. And her son had
Speaker 3: been in class with Thomas since we started school here.
Speaker 3: I think he was autistic, and sometimes he would have
Speaker 3: outbreaks in class and the other kids, you know, would
Speaker 3: kind of pick on him and make fun of him,
Speaker 3: and Thomas would kind of sit there and then in
Speaker 3: a little bit he'd be like, that's enough, you need
Speaker 3: to knock it off. He just shut it down.
Speaker 2: I have to say, sitting at that kitchen table listening
Speaker 2: to a family swap stories about a beloved son, this
Speaker 2: is what small town life is all about, a life
Speaker 2: where kids don't get into too much trouble because there
Speaker 2: isn't much trouble to get into. But eventually we get
Speaker 2: to talking about the night that changed all of their lives,
Speaker 2: the night Tom disappeared. I'm Skip Hollinsworth from Texas Monthly
Speaker 2: and this is Tom Brown's Body, Episode two. Tom's luke
Speaker 2: Penny told me that on Thanksgiving Eve twenty sixteen, at
Speaker 2: the stroke of midnight, she checked her phone for a
Speaker 2: message from Tom. Tom had gone cruising around Canadian with
Speaker 2: a few friends that evening. His curfew was midnight.
Speaker 3: Well, I was kind of pammicking about five after twelve
Speaker 3: because Thomas doesn't miss curfew.
Speaker 6: Well, and he most certainly didn't just leave you hanging either.
Speaker 6: I mean, if he was going to be late, he
Speaker 6: would say, hey, i'm gonna stop off by also sing
Speaker 6: grab a burrito before I come home, and a coke,
Speaker 6: and then I'll be home, And then he was. He
Speaker 6: had ten times better communication skills that. I mean, he
Speaker 6: would let you know what he was doing. He would
Speaker 6: let you know where he was going to be. He
Speaker 6: wasn't great, he wasn't secretive by any means, and so
Speaker 6: there were times when he was late, but he would
Speaker 6: text and he would say, yeah, I'm gonna be late,
Speaker 6: but I'll be there, So yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: He told me he was going to be home in
Speaker 3: five minutes. He was home in five minutes or less.
Speaker 2: Penny told me. She called and texted Tom. Tucker, who
Speaker 2: was at the house watching a movie with a friend,
Speaker 2: did the same. Neither of them got an answer. Penny
Speaker 2: woke up her husband, Chris, who was asleep in the bedroom,
Speaker 2: and told him she was going to look for Tom.
Speaker 2: She grabbed her keys, climbed in her Chevy suburban. Tucker
Speaker 2: suggested she drive around town, passed Tom's usual hangouts, and
Speaker 2: along the route that Tom's friends referred to as Tom's loop. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Tucker and his friend got in Tucker's Toyota four Runner
Speaker 2: and scoured the roads outside of town.
Speaker 6: Me and Taylor went out and looked for a possible
Speaker 6: accident somewhere. If we could see skid marks of that animal,
Speaker 6: whether you know, where he rolled his car, so we
Speaker 6: could find him, and you know, if that's what happened,
Speaker 6: we'd get him some help and you know, save his
Speaker 6: life if that's what it came to, because we didn't
Speaker 6: we didn't know what happened.
Speaker 2: In a town as remote as Canadian, Tom could have
Speaker 2: gotten in a terrible wreck on a country road without
Speaker 2: anyone knowing it. But Tucker said there was no sign
Speaker 2: of Tom's durango. He took his friend home and then
Speaker 2: he drove around a while longer before heading back home himself.
Speaker 2: Penny was already there. She knew that Tom had been
Speaker 2: with his friend Caleb King that evening, so she called
Speaker 2: Caleb's parents. The Kings are one of canadians most prominent families.
Speaker 2: Caleb's father, Ken, runs an energy service company. He's also
Speaker 2: a politician, a Republican member of the State House of Representatives.
Speaker 2: When Penny called Caleb's mom, Robin answered the phone.
Speaker 3: She was pretty alarmed that Thomas didn't come home, and
Speaker 3: she went to wake Caleb up, and I could hear
Speaker 3: their whole conversation, and then Caleb started calling other friends.
Speaker 7: Oh granted, I mean I was asleep and I was
Speaker 7: getting kind of confused. I was just like, what do
Speaker 7: you mean show up?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is Caleb.
Speaker 7: I'm waking up and I'm drowsy, and I'm kind of confused,
Speaker 7: like why didn't he come home? So I was like, well,
Speaker 7: let's just call make sure you're that this isn't bigger
Speaker 7: than it. Yeah, And I mean it turns out it was.
Speaker 7: And so I and then I got a text from
Speaker 7: Tucker sant Wor's Tom, and I was like, oh, crap,
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Caleb called Michael castle Tyne, who had been with Caleb
Speaker 2: and Tom earlier that night. Michael said he had no
Speaker 2: idea where Tom might be.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I thought it was weird. I mean, Tiki had never
Speaker 8: missed curfew, he'd never stayed out later than he needed to.
Speaker 2: Caleb also called Christian Web, the former Canadian high school
Speaker 2: valedictorian who had gone cruising with Caleb and Tom later
Speaker 2: that night.
Speaker 4: My first thought was.
Speaker 3: That he.
Speaker 4: Had just gotten a flat tire. That was my immediate
Speaker 4: first thought. I mean, nothing ever happens in Canadian, so
Speaker 4: nothing terrible most of the time. So I mean I
Speaker 4: was concerned, but I didn't have a huge amount of concern.
Speaker 2: Caleb, Michael, and Christian each got in their own cars
Speaker 2: to go looking for Tom.
Speaker 7: We were out, Me and my mom were out. We
Speaker 7: were in some car, and Tucker had been out and
Speaker 7: Penny were out and they were in separate vehicles. We
Speaker 7: had a lot of eagles, and that's what we were thinking,
Speaker 7: was like, all this out here, surely will find the car.
Speaker 2: Christian went as far away as the town of Higgins,
Speaker 2: twenty five miles away.
Speaker 4: There was an old abandoned hotel there that we would
Speaker 4: sometimes go and just walk around and kind of explore it.
Speaker 4: Why he would go to the Bandon hotel by himself,
Speaker 4: I don't know. It was just kind of my second
Speaker 4: instinct as to where he might and I didn't see
Speaker 4: his car. So I drove back into Canadian and I
Speaker 4: just drove around all the roads that we take, kind
Speaker 4: of the roads outside of town.
Speaker 2: At roughly two thirty am, Penny called the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 2: The dispatcher contacted a deputy on duty named Pine Gregory.
Speaker 9: I was actually in my office when the call came in.
Speaker 9: It came through on my office phone from a dispatcher
Speaker 9: and she said, Hey, are y'all going to go out
Speaker 9: and do.
Speaker 10: Anything with that call? And I said what call? She said, well,
Speaker 10: I just told.
Speaker 9: Dan that we had to miss an eighteen year old kid.
Speaker 9: And he told me, well, he's eighteen, he can do
Speaker 9: what he wants to. I said, well, that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 9: Called Penny. Spoke with her and you know, basically kind
Speaker 9: of went through the rundown.
Speaker 10: Who are his friends, where would he hang out? Those
Speaker 10: kind of things.
Speaker 2: Like everyone else had done. Gregory drove around Canadian looking
Speaker 2: for Tom's durrango. He ended up at Tom's home sometime
Speaker 2: after three am.
Speaker 9: Went out, pulled up to the front of the house
Speaker 9: and if I remember right, they had opened They had
Speaker 9: the door opened, but they had like a glass storm door.
Speaker 9: And they saw me pull up and they met me
Speaker 9: in the yard. They didn't invite me in the house.
Speaker 9: We stood out there in the yard. Tucker, Penny and
Speaker 9: I I'd say for fifteen minutes or better, kind of
Speaker 9: going on the rundown of you know where he might be.
Speaker 9: And then Tucker and I left and went to various
Speaker 9: locations looking for Tom.
Speaker 2: But after Gregory drove around for more than an hour,
Speaker 2: Tom and his durringo were still nowhere to be found.
Speaker 2: By seven thirty am, Penny and Chris were on their
Speaker 2: way to see Nathan Lewis, the thirty two year old
Speaker 2: sheriff of hemp Hill County, of which Canadian is the
Speaker 2: county seat. Lewis has short red a neatly trimmed beard.
Speaker 2: People in Canadian say he looks exactly like the NASCAR
Speaker 2: driver Dale Earnhardt Junior. Lewis was born and raised in Canadian.
Speaker 2: His father used to be mayor. When Lewis was in
Speaker 2: his early twenties, he began working for small town Panhandle
Speaker 2: police departments.
Speaker 11: Got into some car pursuits, did some drug work, did
Speaker 11: several narcotic search warrants on houses, and so, because I
Speaker 11: was needed something to do, because I love law enforcement,
Speaker 11: I love I love Katy dors Hounge, that's what that's
Speaker 11: what I did.
Speaker 2: Lewis took over his sheriff of hemp Hill County in
Speaker 2: September twenty sixteen. He'd made the war against drugs the
Speaker 2: focus of his campaign.
Speaker 11: The biggest thing is is why I ran for office.
Speaker 11: I ran on clean enough, the town of drugs myth,
Speaker 11: and that was my focus. You know, we're peace officers,
Speaker 11: no matter what, We're going to keep the peace, no
Speaker 11: matter what. I don't have to tell people that I'm
Speaker 11: going to keep the peace, and then we're peacemakers. What
Speaker 11: I told the people is what I'm going to do,
Speaker 11: and that was to rid the druid problem.
Speaker 2: Lewis was definitely good at drug bus. He started making
Speaker 2: arrest soon after he was sworn in as sheriff, but
Speaker 2: he had never done a missing person's case, and suddenly
Speaker 2: here he was two months into his job when Penny
Speaker 2: and Chris walked into his office. Lewis and Penny, of
Speaker 2: course knew one another. They and their families attended First
Speaker 2: United Methodist Church, but they weren't exactly friends, and it
Speaker 2: all had to do with Tom. Just a year earlier,
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, Lewis was working as a sheriff's deputy
Speaker 2: in a neighboring county. Late one night, while driving back
Speaker 2: to his home and Canadian he noticed a handful of
Speaker 2: teenagers hanging around the Downtown Palace Movie Theater. One of
Speaker 2: the teenagers was Tom. Lewis thought they were trying to
Speaker 2: break in, so he pulled over and ordered Tom into
Speaker 2: his truck. Tom said they were merely looking for a
Speaker 2: friend whose father ran the theater.
Speaker 9: So I talked all of them.
Speaker 11: I said, you guys need to get you'll bluz home.
Speaker 11: Y'all don't need to be out here. It's midnight, no
Speaker 11: business open in the theater, I ain't open, and no's
Speaker 11: not there.
Speaker 9: I'llly go home.
Speaker 5: That's what I told.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 11: That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: Tom, however, told Penny a different story. According to Penny,
Speaker 2: Tom said that Lewis had accosted.
Speaker 12: Him in the stop. He was very unprofessional. He was
Speaker 12: swearing at the boys, using the F word. For whatever reason,
Speaker 12: my son seemed to be singled out of the group.
Speaker 12: He told my son several times, you need to call
Speaker 12: your mom and tell her what you've been doing, to
Speaker 12: which Tom was like, I don't know what to call
Speaker 12: my mom and tell her what I've been doing. We're
Speaker 12: just walking around town. Was the summer night. Hadn't been
Speaker 12: out of school very long. There are just kids out
Speaker 12: being kids, to which Lewis did place Thomas in the
Speaker 12: car with him. I was very uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 2: Penny filed a complain against Lewis with the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 2: The complain, I ain't went nowhere, but she began telling
Speaker 2: just about everyone she knew that Lewis should never be
Speaker 2: elected sheriff of Himpel County.
Speaker 3: And I felt like if he was elected sheriff, that's
Speaker 3: what he was going to do to our kids in
Speaker 3: the community all the time, Like he was just going
Speaker 3: to mess with him, because that's what he did.
Speaker 2: Lewis insisted that he had never abused his power and
Speaker 2: that he certainly had not mistreated Tom. He told me
Speaker 2: that after the movie theater incident, he ran across Tom
Speaker 2: at a rotary club meeting.
Speaker 11: He was doing a public speaking event with four h
Speaker 11: and he went in there and gave a public au
Speaker 11: speaking deal in the rotary club one day, and he
Speaker 11: sought me in the rotary club and he approaches me
Speaker 11: and he says, man, I'm sorry for that night. And
Speaker 11: he told me that he told his mother a lie.
Speaker 11: He said, Man, I fed my mother because he told
Speaker 11: his mother that I was brewed. I cussed at him,
Speaker 11: pulled a gun. He said all kinds of stuff to
Speaker 11: his mom, and he said, man, I'm sorry for doing
Speaker 11: all that stuff. So Tom's the past, the past, man,
Speaker 11: don't worry about it. Just always tell the truth. And
Speaker 11: that's all I told him, and I didn't seem I
Speaker 11: never dealt with him ever since, never dealt with him again,
Speaker 11: never had any issues he was letting troublemaker.
Speaker 2: In fact, Lewis told me when he first spoke to
Speaker 2: Penny and Chris that Thanksgiving morning, when Tom went missing,
Speaker 2: it did not occur to him that Tom was in
Speaker 2: any sort of trouble.
Speaker 11: Well, be honest with you, I figured that we had
Speaker 11: a high school kid that went out and partied and
Speaker 11: didn't come home on Tom.
Speaker 2: But shortly after his meeting with Penny and Chris, Lewis
Speaker 2: got a phone call. Tom's duringo had been found.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ground to cover in Texas and
Speaker 1: at Texas Monthly, We've been doing just that for fifty years.
Speaker 1: The complicated, the advocated, and the hotly debated. All that smoked, brood,
Speaker 1: shaken or put into a taco the heroes, trailblazers and
Speaker 1: bum steers, whether we're digging into our past or chronicling
Speaker 1: the president. If there's a story to be told in Texas,
Speaker 1: and there always is, you'll read about it in Texas Monthly,
Speaker 1: Fifty years of Stories for all y'all.
Speaker 2: Early that morning, Tom's friend Christian Webb, had asked her father, Trey,
Speaker 2: to help her search for Tom. The Webs are another
Speaker 2: prominent Canadian family. Trey owns a helicopter service company, and
Speaker 2: he's an experienced pilot. They boarded one of the company's
Speaker 2: four Cedar helicopters, and Trey flew low all over Canadian
Speaker 2: and the surrounding area. It didn't take long for them
Speaker 2: to spot Tom's duringo, parked under a small grove of
Speaker 2: trees near the water treatment plant northeast of town.
Speaker 4: I was confused because his car was in a spot
Speaker 4: that I didn't know about, and I was I was
Speaker 4: almost sure that Thomas didn't know about. It was in
Speaker 4: a weird spot that was typically not accessible because of
Speaker 4: the gate, so I I was more concerned.
Speaker 2: At that point, Trey maneuvered his helicopter over the car.
Speaker 2: He asked Christian to turn her eyes away to protect
Speaker 2: her from seeing a potentially violent scene, but the Durango
Speaker 2: was abandoned. Trey called the sheriff's office and Lewis raced
Speaker 2: to the plant.
Speaker 11: It was myself, in another depth to Jerry Lynn Ortega,
Speaker 11: that actually went to the car first. And when we
Speaker 11: got to.
Speaker 2: The car, we looked in every window.
Speaker 11: We walked around the car several times, looking around seeing
Speaker 11: what we could see. There was nobody in the car,
Speaker 11: and then we started circling around, you know, kind of
Speaker 11: looking in the area to see if we could see
Speaker 11: anything find anything.
Speaker 5: There was nothing.
Speaker 11: The car was pulled up into the trees, and so
Speaker 11: right before the car, it's kind of sandy and there's
Speaker 11: some there's clay dirt out there, but where he was
Speaker 11: was a pull up in there, and right when you
Speaker 11: open the driver's door, there was just a little bit
Speaker 11: of dirt and then the rest of it was grass
Speaker 11: and brush and you know dead stuff that you know.
Speaker 2: But it looked like there were some footprints coming out
Speaker 2: of the driver's side.
Speaker 11: It was definitely there was definitely a shoeprint that get
Speaker 11: that that you could see outside the driver's door. And
Speaker 11: then there was a you know, distinct yurine mark right
Speaker 11: there outside the door. It was just like you open
Speaker 11: the door, you step out. There was one one print down,
Speaker 11: but you could you could hardly see what kind of
Speaker 11: print was. You could tell it was a shoe print.
Speaker 2: So that you're and mark had to have been made.
Speaker 5: It was very fresh, fresh, just sir, It was very fresh.
Speaker 2: The duringo was unlocked. Tom's keys, cell phone, and wallet
Speaker 2: were not inside. Lewis did find Michael castle Tyne's debit
Speaker 2: card which had fallen in between the front seats. He
Speaker 2: also noticed a thin streak of blood on the inside
Speaker 2: of the driver's front door on.
Speaker 5: And it was very dry.
Speaker 11: It was very dry, it was not fresh, and it
Speaker 11: had not been there that night on the drivers kind of.
Speaker 5: By the handle.
Speaker 11: But it looked like it was probably like a nuttle
Speaker 11: cut or something, or a finger cut or a paper cuts.
Speaker 11: And that's the only blood that was in the car.
Speaker 11: There was no other blood in that car period.
Speaker 2: There was one other thing that Lewis and his deputy spotted,
Speaker 2: a twenty five caliber shellcasing on the floorboard. Lewis said
Speaker 2: he was bewildered.
Speaker 11: Because there was no there was nothing in the car
Speaker 11: that said that there was a gunshot.
Speaker 5: That went off in that car. Period nothing.
Speaker 11: There was no splatter, there was no there was no
Speaker 11: gunpowder residue in the car. There was nothing. There was nothing.
Speaker 2: The news about Tom was soon racing through town like
Speaker 2: a prairie fire. Some residents postponed their Thanksgiving meals, drove
Speaker 2: to the water treatment plant and searched for Tom on foot, horseback,
Speaker 2: and four wheelers. Trey and Christian Webb kept looking for
Speaker 2: Tom and their helicopter, and Christian's brother joined the search
Speaker 2: and a second helicopter. Game Mordens arrived with a tracking dog,
Speaker 2: but no one spotted any trace of Tom, and the
Speaker 2: dog could not find a scent to follow. As the
Speaker 2: day wore on, friends and neighbors dropped by Penny's house,
Speaker 2: bringing leftover turkey and pumpkin pie and words of encouragement.
Speaker 2: Tom's and Tucker's father, Kelly Brown, drove in from his
Speaker 2: home in Perryton, forty five miles away.
Speaker 13: I was in such shock. I think at the time,
Speaker 13: Skimp that if I would have tripped across his body,
Speaker 13: I wouldn't have known. I mean I would have, but
Speaker 13: I was pretty much in shock. Just go say, but
Speaker 13: that's something I think all, we all, all of us
Speaker 13: parents fear that. But then when it does happen, I
Speaker 13: will tell you that it takes it to another eleven.
Speaker 13: I was pretty pretty shaked about that.
Speaker 2: That afternoon, Sheriff Lewis also dropped by to update Penny
Speaker 2: in the family on everything he'd found.
Speaker 5: He just said that he asked us.
Speaker 3: He said there was a showcasing the twenty five caliber
Speaker 3: in the car. He asked us if we had one,
Speaker 3: and we said no, we don't have a caliber gun
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 10: And then.
Speaker 3: I don't really remember what else he said. He just
Speaker 3: said he was returning the car, and I questioned it.
Speaker 3: I said, why are you bringing the car back? And
Speaker 3: he said, well, we're done with it. We don't need
Speaker 3: it anymore. And I said, you're telling me you process
Speaker 3: the car like you've gotten fingerprints or whatever from the car. Well,
Speaker 3: we don't need it anymore. Okay.
Speaker 2: When I talked to Lewis, he told me his deputies
Speaker 2: had tried but been unable to lift any fingerprints from
Speaker 2: the Durango.
Speaker 11: That car was filthy, dirty. I'm talking dust on all everything,
Speaker 11: dust everywhere and every The car was so dirty. You
Speaker 11: don't get fingerprints Because this isn't CSI, This isn't a
Speaker 11: TV show, and people don't understand that. People don't understand that.
Speaker 11: You know that you can't, you know, you don't solve
Speaker 11: a case within forty five minutes of a TV show.
Speaker 11: But you can't get fingerprints off of something that has
Speaker 11: dirt on You just can't do it. It's it's impossible.
Speaker 11: Maybe some FBI person can do it, but we can't.
Speaker 11: And so we looked everywhere that we could possibly get
Speaker 11: prints off of.
Speaker 5: We couldn't find anything to get print off of.
Speaker 2: Lewis had the Durango towed back to Pennies in Chris's home.
Speaker 2: Apparently he wasn't thinking, at least not yet, that the
Speaker 2: Durango could be part of a potential crime that needed
Speaker 2: to be preserved. When the Durrango arrived at the house,
Speaker 2: Tom's brother, Tucker, and a friend promptly did their own search.
Speaker 6: So we kind of dug through. We didn't make a
Speaker 6: huge we didn't make a mess, but we were just
Speaker 6: kind of looking at stuff, and you know, looking under stuff,
Speaker 6: like is there anything in ere a shred of evidence
Speaker 6: that you know, And of course we were all in shocks,
Speaker 6: so we we didn't find anything. I mean, we didn't.
Speaker 6: We didn't see anything out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2: Lewis told me he did not sleep that night. The
Speaker 2: next morning, he got to his office and ordered his
Speaker 2: deputies to have the Durrango towed back to the sheriff's department.
Speaker 2: He said he wanted to check things out one more time,
Speaker 2: just to make sure he was doing everything by the book.
Speaker 11: The second time, we did everything again. We re walked
Speaker 11: the blood spot, we have the Q tip in the
Speaker 11: dew for evidence.
Speaker 14: We went and we.
Speaker 11: Put more ink on that car, fingerprint dust, and you
Speaker 11: can imagine, to make sure we didn't miss anything, because
Speaker 11: I mean, you got to realize that when the things
Speaker 11: that are going through your mind, could you miss something, Yeah,
Speaker 11: you could miss something. So I wanted to make damn
Speaker 11: sure that I didn't miss anything the second time.
Speaker 2: Actually, something was missing from the Durango, which no one
Speaker 2: noticed until the superintendent of the Canadian Public Schools dropped
Speaker 2: by the house. The superintendent asked if anyone had checked
Speaker 2: Tom's school computer. He said that if Tom had been
Speaker 2: using it to get online, it could potentially be traced.
Speaker 2: Penny and Tucker said that Tom kept his computer and
Speaker 2: his school books in a backpack, which he almost always
Speaker 2: left in the back of his Durgo unless he needed
Speaker 2: to bring it inside the house to do homework. Curiously,
Speaker 2: no one had seen Tom's backpack when they searched the vehicle,
Speaker 2: and attempts to trace the computer were unsuccessful. What's more,
Speaker 2: phone records showed that Tom's cell phone had been turned
Speaker 2: off since midnight and had not been turned back on.
Speaker 2: For those who knew Tom well, nothing was making sense.
Speaker 2: Why had Tom parked the Durrango by the water treatment plant,
Speaker 2: a place he was never known to go, And why
Speaker 2: in the darkness had he walked away carrying his wallet,
Speaker 2: his keys, his cell phone, and strangely, his backpack which
Speaker 2: contained his books and laptop. Why would he do that?
Speaker 2: And where in the world was he going.
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to get you closer now, to sort
Speaker 4: of see what it would have been like walking out
Speaker 4: through this without actually having a walk.
Speaker 14: Out to me in the dark, no flashlight as far
Speaker 14: as we know.
Speaker 2: On the afternoon, Larie Brown drove me around town. She
Speaker 2: took me to the spot where Tom's Durrango had been found.
Speaker 2: I wanted to see for myself the patch of land
Speaker 2: where Tom supposedly had disappeared.
Speaker 14: All right, let's take a walk.
Speaker 2: It was one of those typical windy Panhandle afternoons.
Speaker 8: This car, you're gonna have to verify this. I don't
Speaker 8: know if it.
Speaker 14: Was found there or up here, but it was just
Speaker 14: pulled up somewhere right around here. So it wasn't like
Speaker 14: he tried to hide the car. Whoever was in the
Speaker 14: car tried.
Speaker 2: To hide it. The land was wooded and the grass
Speaker 2: was high, but the train wasn't all that rough. Laurie
Speaker 2: explained that as you get closer to the Canadian River
Speaker 2: three quarters of a mile to the east, the vegetation
Speaker 2: gets thicker and the ground turned soggy. In fact, when
Speaker 2: searchers crisscrossed the area and they're four wheelers that Thanksgiving Day,
Speaker 2: they didn't get very far.
Speaker 11: I just know that when they were looking for it
Speaker 11: and they were out here on forest back and on
Speaker 11: the four wheelers, that some of these guys had you know,
Speaker 11: I mean, they got stuck.
Speaker 15: They had trouble.
Speaker 2: This was another thing that didn't make sense. No one
Speaker 2: who knew Tom could imagine him trekking into that thick
Speaker 2: brush and marshy river bottoms in the daytime, let alone
Speaker 2: in pitch black darkness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that seems highly impossible to me.
Speaker 2: Here's Tom's friend, Christian for when.
Speaker 4: Tom wasn't an outdoors man at all. He liked having
Speaker 4: his you know, his phone and his video games, and
Speaker 4: he never did outdoorsy things. And I mean it was
Speaker 4: freezing cold that night, and he wasn't wearing many clothes.
Speaker 4: I mean the clothes he was wearing were really thin.
Speaker 2: In the days following Tom's disappearance, Sheriff Lewis intensified the search.
Speaker 2: He brought in a team of veteran bloodhounds from the
Speaker 2: state prison in Amarillo. The dogs were taken by their
Speaker 2: handlers to the dirt road where the durango had been found.
Speaker 2: They were given a piece of Tom's clothing to sniff,
Speaker 2: and they picked up a scent, following it east to
Speaker 2: northeast for nearly a mile. Then the sin abruptly disappeared
Speaker 2: at the edge of a slough and the dogs turned back.
Speaker 2: Lewis also organized a grid search a couple of dozen
Speaker 2: people walking side by side around the water treatment plant.
Speaker 2: They turned up nothing. Lewis even brought in a mounted
Speaker 2: search and rescue team from nearby Randall County to hunt
Speaker 2: for Tom along the Canadian River. The rescuers on horseback
Speaker 2: didn't find anything either. Lewis had better luck studying video
Speaker 2: footage from security cameras around town.
Speaker 11: It was a round curfew that car his car, and
Speaker 11: ZIP positively identified his car drove from Intown, turned up
Speaker 11: Alexander's up on Birch and goes towards his house.
Speaker 2: One camera posted in front of a convenience store called
Speaker 2: Tom Durrango just after midnight, heading up a street in
Speaker 2: the direction of his home and then coming back down
Speaker 2: the same street only a few minutes later, at around
Speaker 2: five thirty am. Lewis told me.
Speaker 11: The car goes from Ketown up Alexander Street, two minutes
Speaker 11: later exactly again goes back into town.
Speaker 2: There was no apparent purpose or pattern to the car's direction. Then,
Speaker 2: at five point fifty six am, the Durrango was picked
Speaker 2: up by a camera positioned on top of a city
Speaker 2: owned building near the water treatment plant.
Speaker 15: You see Tom's car driving on the road going through
Speaker 15: the gate and you can see it in the distance
Speaker 15: of tenlots. You can see it go up over this
Speaker 15: little hill and then that's where we found the car.
Speaker 5: That's where the car was parked.
Speaker 15: There was nobody in or out before or after on
Speaker 15: that video at all.
Speaker 2: What Sheriff Lewis is describing here is really puzzling. A
Speaker 2: camera captured Tom's Durrango parking at the water treatment plant,
Speaker 2: but in the video no one could be seen getting in,
Speaker 2: we were out of the car. What had seemed like
Speaker 2: a potential lead only raised more questions. Why would Tom
Speaker 2: be driving around Canadian in those early morning hours, dodging
Speaker 2: his family and friends and the sheriff's deputy who were
Speaker 2: out looking for him. Why might he have driven toward
Speaker 2: his home at some point? And of all the places
Speaker 2: he could have chosen to abandon the Durrango, why the
Speaker 2: water treatment planned or what if? Those weren't even the
Speaker 2: right questions? The security footage had definitely opened up several
Speaker 2: other possible scenarios. What if Tom hadn't walked into the
Speaker 2: woods after parking his Durango, for that matter, what if
Speaker 2: he wasn't behind the wheel at all? What if someone
Speaker 2: else was driving his car? And if that was the case,
Speaker 2: where was Tom. The afternoon of November twenty six, two
Speaker 2: days after Thanksgiving, Penny and Chris returned to the Sheriff's Department, Shamble.
Speaker 5: Well everything going on.
Speaker 2: This is actual tape of their interview. The interview was
Speaker 2: handled by Sheriff Lewis's chief deputy, Brent Clap. Clap is
Speaker 2: a former Panhandle cowboy with a thick old West handlebar mustache.
Speaker 2: He had been in law enforcement for more than a decade.
Speaker 2: A state trooper, clap Knew also set in on the interview.
Speaker 2: Chris was interviewed first. He said Penny was her son's
Speaker 2: main caregiver, and then he was quote an observer, that's
Speaker 2: the word he used. He said he had no idea
Speaker 2: why Tom disappeared. Chris left the room and Penny walked in.
Speaker 2: At the start of her interview, the officers asked Penny
Speaker 2: to describe Tom.
Speaker 5: He has a soft heart for especially for the underdog.
Speaker 13: Whether he is growing up with a good school with
Speaker 13: and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 7: He'll do that.
Speaker 10: Frame.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Penny also wants the officers to know that Tom rarely,
Speaker 2: if ever gets in trouble.
Speaker 5: He's just a good kid.
Speaker 3: I don't I mean, I just don't really have to
Speaker 3: disappoint him very much.
Speaker 5: He just normally does what he's supposed to do.
Speaker 2: Then the DPS trooper asked Penny about her initial fears
Speaker 2: when she heard the DURINGO was found that the water
Speaker 2: treatment planned.
Speaker 11: Now, when he found out that Trump was there, what
Speaker 11: was your first thought?
Speaker 5: I thought he committed suicide.
Speaker 2: I thought he committed suicide, Penny says, tell me what.
Speaker 3: Because it runs in my family, and I just figured
Speaker 3: maybe at that point he was just strong about breaking
Speaker 3: up with his girlfriend, and.
Speaker 5: If he thought of suicide, how did.
Speaker 8: He go about doing that?
Speaker 5: I figured it would have been like the choking game.
Speaker 2: The choking game, Penny says, you might have heard of it.
Speaker 2: It's garnered occasional headlines over the years, and most commonly
Speaker 2: at tempted by teenage boys. Someone intentionally strangles himself for
Speaker 2: someone else, and the lack of oxygen leads to a
Speaker 2: feeling of euphoria in a very brief loss of consciousness.
Speaker 2: It's resulted in some accidental deaths. But Penny quickly pivots,
Speaker 2: telling the officers that she didn't actually know much about
Speaker 2: the choking game, except for hearing about a boy in
Speaker 2: a nearby town who had tried it. The thought randomly
Speaker 2: occurred to her that Thanksgiving morning, she says, because she
Speaker 2: could not fathom how else Tom might have killed himself.
Speaker 5: But that's or hanging.
Speaker 3: I guess, so we want I don't know because he's
Speaker 3: not again the person I had already checked for the
Speaker 3: ends of the house, olivers.
Speaker 5: Were accounted for. I had already checked man's everything was
Speaker 5: accounted for.
Speaker 2: It turned out that Penny and her family had dealt
Speaker 2: with suicide in the past. Her father suffered from depression
Speaker 2: and he shot himself to death almost two decades earlier.
Speaker 2: So Penny's sensitive to suicide was understandable. But why was
Speaker 2: that her initial fear about Tom. During one of my
Speaker 2: own interviews with Penny, I asked her about that.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I was thinking, he's a senior, his
Speaker 3: boat is loaded as far as academics, he doesn't really
Speaker 3: know where he wants to go to college. I mean,
Speaker 3: he kind of has an idea, but he's not you know,
Speaker 3: he doesn't have it nailed down, and he's he's broken
Speaker 3: up with his girlfriend. I mean, the kid had a
Speaker 3: lot on his plate, and so was it completely out
Speaker 3: of the realm of possibility? No, not really. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's out of the realm of any of our
Speaker 3: high school kids to commit suicide at all. I mean,
Speaker 3: so I did check for all of that stuff. There
Speaker 3: wasn't anything missing or out of place, so that thought
Speaker 3: went away.
Speaker 2: During her inner at the Sheriff's department, Penny was asked
Speaker 2: if she had seen any changes in Tom that would
Speaker 2: suggest he was suicidal.
Speaker 5: So if that.
Speaker 3: Was the case, you know, anything you've seen, any change
Speaker 3: of behavior that you can.
Speaker 5: Tell us about.
Speaker 2: Penny is adamant that Tom is just fine.
Speaker 5: As far as changing behavior.
Speaker 3: Nope, and not Tuesday with I mean nothing. And I
Speaker 3: have been in contact with several of his teachers, and
Speaker 3: his teachers have said he was doing great in school.
Speaker 3: His grades are probably better than they have been, you know,
Speaker 3: they're a little bit higher. Even the teachers who don't
Speaker 3: have even class this year that maybe had even past years,
Speaker 3: were like, I've seen him in the hall.
Speaker 5: And he's laughing, he's smiling. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm just I'm baffled.
Speaker 2: The officers change directions. They ask if it's plausible that
Speaker 2: Tom could have left Canadian maybe with someone Penny did
Speaker 2: not know.
Speaker 5: I'm just getting in a car with somebody that you
Speaker 5: don't know. I mean, I just I don't think.
Speaker 2: He would do that.
Speaker 5: I don't think you can rule it out, and just
Speaker 5: don't see him doing it.
Speaker 2: But Penny offers up a theory of her own about
Speaker 2: Tom's disappearance. Maybe he's run off to one of those
Speaker 2: professional wrestling schools he had always talked about, and.
Speaker 3: I don't know it maybe kind of a It may
Speaker 3: be a stretch, and I don't even know how he
Speaker 3: would get there. But he also tells me he loves
Speaker 3: w W wrestling, and he is Dad and I both
Speaker 3: have taken him to against my best.
Speaker 5: Wishes, to so matches. We went to the big.
Speaker 3: One down in Dallas, and he has asked me before,
Speaker 3: well can I be a wrestler? And I'm like, you
Speaker 3: do whatever you want when you get out of college,
Speaker 3: you know, And he's like, we pay for it, and
Speaker 3: I'm lighten.
Speaker 5: I'm paying for college and that's it. There are wrestling
Speaker 5: schools around.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he would ride to one of
Speaker 3: them and try.
Speaker 5: To attempt it. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Like I said, that might be a stretch that he had,
Speaker 3: and he's researched it. I don't know.
Speaker 2: As the interview comes to a close, Penny offers one
Speaker 2: more theory.
Speaker 5: I would think at this point he's hiding somewhere.
Speaker 12: We just don't know where.
Speaker 5: I honestly, my gut tells me he hasn't left hip
Speaker 5: Hill County.
Speaker 2: My gut tells me he hasn't left himp Hill County.
Speaker 2: The officer responds, that's mom's intuition right there. When the
Speaker 2: officer asks why she thinks that, Penny sounds almost hopeful,
Speaker 2: at least for a moment.
Speaker 5: And I could be wrong. I mean, I've been wrong
Speaker 5: about a lot of this. That easier somewhere.
Speaker 2: For the most part, Penny sounded overwhelmed searching for answers,
Speaker 2: which is perfectly understandable. Her life, after all, had just
Speaker 2: been upended, her son had gone missing. Still, when Sheriff
Speaker 2: Lewis watched the video feed of the interview, he immediately
Speaker 2: wondered if Penny was revealing everything she knew.
Speaker 10: I would pay, you know, on that skip. I was
Speaker 10: amazed of how this mother would say those things. You know,
Speaker 10: if your son or your daughter didn't come home, you're
Speaker 10: the first thing you're going to tell authorities is your
Speaker 10: son committed suicide and even possibly done it by the
Speaker 10: choking game. I mean, who says that there has to
Speaker 10: be a backstory behind it.
Speaker 2: After and Chris left the Sheriff's department, Lewis heard what
Speaker 2: seemed to be a potential backstory. His deputy, Jerry Lynn Ortega,
Speaker 2: walked into his office. She told him that she had
Speaker 2: just conducted an interview with Tom's ex girlfriend, Sage Pennington,
Speaker 2: and Sage had told her that Tom had been hiding
Speaker 2: a secret, one that Sage yourself had only learned about
Speaker 2: earlier that spring.
Speaker 8: Deputy Jerry Lynn Ortega had just finished interviewing Sage Pennington.
Speaker 8: Sage brought up one thing that just hit me. I
Speaker 8: couldn't believe. What she was saying was that Tom was
Speaker 8: struggling with wearing dappers. He was wearing men's dappers even
Speaker 8: up to the day he disappeared.
Speaker 2: After hearing this, Lewis arranged another meeting with Penny. She
Speaker 2: arrived at his office with a couple of friends. Lewis
Speaker 2: began with a routine update on the investigation. Then, according
Speaker 2: to Penny, he asked her what she knew about Tom
Speaker 2: wearing diapers. Penny said she was furious.
Speaker 3: He just asked me about it, and I was, you know,
Speaker 3: I said, I don't even know what you're talking.
Speaker 5: About, Like where I don't know where you got that information.
Speaker 5: I said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Penny told me she was already upset with Lewis for
Speaker 2: the way he had been running the investigation, not processing
Speaker 2: a potential crime scene, and returning Tom's durango the same
Speaker 2: day it was found, and now she was convinced the
Speaker 2: sheriff was trying to trash her son's reputation. She told
Speaker 2: her friends that she suspected that Lewis was still holding
Speaker 2: onto a grudge from that incident at the movie theater.
Speaker 2: In twenty fifteen, one of Penny's friends sent her an
Speaker 2: article about a man named Philip Klein, the owner of
Speaker 2: Kleine Investigations and Consulting, based just outside of Beaumont in
Speaker 2: southeast Texas. In the missing person's world, Kleine is a
Speaker 2: celebrity of sorts. The NBC showed Dateline once hired him
Speaker 2: to travel to Mexico to try and track down on
Speaker 2: Olivia Newton, John's missing boyfriend, who had allegedly faked his
Speaker 2: own drowning. Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison described clein this way,
Speaker 2: if you ask him, or even if you don't, Kline
Speaker 2: will tell you that he's one of the best there
Speaker 2: is at finding people who don't want to be found.
Speaker 2: Over the last twenty five years, Kleine says he's investigated
Speaker 2: eighteen hundred missing persons cases, and he says eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the time he's found the person he's looking for.
Speaker 16: I could tell you one hundred of these cases that
Speaker 16: we've done that you would.
Speaker 5: Go, oh my god.
Speaker 2: That's Cleine.
Speaker 5: And you see why people turn to us. It's because
Speaker 5: we take the hard stuff. We don't take the easy,
Speaker 5: gravy stuff.
Speaker 2: Penny became convinced that Klein could find her son, so
Speaker 2: she gave his office a call. Days later, the private
Speaker 2: investigator arrived in town. His investigation was about to turn
Speaker 2: Canadian upside down. Next week, on Tom Brown's Body.
Speaker 16: It brings you to reality. Done it on a Sunday morning. Thanks,
Speaker 16: you want to get over there to the church and
Speaker 16: get on your knees and say a few words. Right,
Speaker 16: I got you, We've seen it all. That's gospel. Evil
Speaker 16: has come to Canadian Texas.
Speaker 2: Tom Brown's Body is a Texas Monthly production. Executive producer
Speaker 2: is Megan Kricht, produced and engineered by Brian Standeffer, who
Speaker 2: also wrote the music. JK. Nichol is our editor and
Speaker 2: Paul Knight is our fact checker. Audio assistants are Sean
Speaker 2: Cronin and Emma Jane Hopper. Our theme music is No
Speaker 2: Hard Feelings by the Avid Brothers. I'm your writer and host,
Speaker 2: Skip Pollinsworth. If you like the show, please leave us
Speaker 2: a review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. See y'all
Speaker 2: next week.
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