Jamison Family Mystery, broadcast by OETA on September 16, 2011
http://www.oeta.tv/component/video/2479.html
Key to participants:
NAR: Narrator
SRB: Sheriff Robbie Brooks
SJ: Starlet Jamison
NS: Niki Shenold
DJA: Deputy Jeremy Anderson
NAR: The disappearance of the Jamison family of Eufaula, Oklahoma is a complex mystery. For nearly two years, missing persons posters have been circulating, asking for clues as to what happened to them. Bobby Jamison, his wife, Sherilyn, and their six-year-old daughter, Madyson, were last know to be alive on October 8, 2009. There are no solid leads in the case.
SRB: It doesn't make sense to anybody. None of their actions make any sense to anybody that's ever looked at the case.
NAR: Latimer County Sheriff Robbie Brooks says he has a few theories, one being:
SRB: Well, I believe that she could have taken him out and committed, you know, murder-suicide. Committed murder on him and Madyson, and killed herself.
NAR: Bobby Jamison's mother, Star Jamison, thinks this:
SJ: It just doesn't sit right with me. I think they were abducted. I really do. I just don't know what else could have happened.
NAR: Sherilyn's best friend, Niki Shenold, feels this way:
NS: I can't say why or how, but I think that somebody killed them, and I think someone has Madyson, and I'm going to find her. I'm going to find her.
NAR: What is known about the case is that the family left their $300,000 house on Lake Eufaula, that they couldn't afford anymore, for a road trip on October 8. With GPS coordinates in hand, they headed for a remote area in Latimer County 60 miles from their home. Finding it is no easy task. The journey is a 7-mile trek up a small mountain with many options for turning onto other dirt roads. It's a treacherous climb. After several turns, you finally reach a small plateau. It was created for a well site. Deputy Jeremy Anderson is our guide.
DJA: Most of the people that come up and live up in this area are people that are more or less interested in kind of separating themselves from society.
NAR: The property for sale is up and beyond this bluff. Investigators say they know the Jamisons spent some time here. An abandoned vehicle had been spray-painted with religious graffiti. It's believed Sherilyn did the painting because it matches similar graffiti on a metal container they had purchased to move to the wilderness and live in. Another indication of their time here: a picture of little Madyson taken on a family cell phone as she sat on rocks in the area. That cell phone was found inside the family's locked truck on October 17, nine days after the Jamisons were last seen. Their truck was discovered on a dirt road used to enter the well site property by some people on four-wheelers.
DJA: This area was, like, right in here is where the truck was found. The nose was, nose down like it was leaving the location.
NAR: Inside the truck was Madyson's small dog, Maisie. She was near death. Everything appeared as if the family planned to return.
DJA: They'd left the cell phones, their dog, and a substantial amount of cash, and jackets and everything else. And, like I said, it was getting toward the cooler time of the year.
NAR: Extensive searches of the area took place days after the Jamisons' truck was discovered. Three hundred thirty volunteers, along with law enforcement, scoured the area by air, foot, and with horse teams. Did they simply get lost in a vast, dense, uninhabited area? Or was there something more sinister at play?
SRB: She claimed to her neighbors that she was a witch and she was going to cast spells on them and this and that.
NAR: The investigation showed that Sherilyn had a very troubled mind. She suffered from bi-polar disorder and was on and off her medication. Her journal writings were found in the abandoned vehicle and in their Eufaula home. The large case file includes some of Sherilyn's writings. Some indicate a marriage in ruins.
"You're a very toxic person. You need to find happiness. You contaminate everything that you're around. It breaks my heart. I'm sad to my soul that you have turned into the monster you are. I would not wish my daughter to be raised in foster care because of you being in prison for attempted murder and her mother dead."
NAR: But just three days before the family went missing, she wrote this:
"Bobby Jamison, a genius, a man with special gifts, a loving and tender soul. With all my love and soul always and forever, Sherilyn, Hippy Chic."
NAR: According to the case file, Bobby was troubled in the days before they disappeared. He and Sherilyn met with a minister. These are investigative notes from that meeting:
"Sheri said in a meeting that she could speak to the dead and her daughter had the same power. Bobby told Gary Brandon, the pastor, that he was afraid of the demons and was looking at high-powered shells online. Bobby said between 2 and 4am, spirits walking on the roof. October 2nd and 3rd the last time he saw them. Bobby on the phone trying to find special bullets, reading Satanic Bible for natural remedies."
NAR: Contrary to Bobby's disturbing thoughts and behavior is a statement from a man who talked to Bobby on October 7. That was the day the family drove to the remote Latimer County location, where they were unable to find their way to the land for sale.
"He was upbeat and friendly and we talked a long time, as I do with many folks. Most often I meet with people but he mostly wanted my GPS numbers so he could go find the land. He said he had a Blackberry phone with GPS on it, and they were adventuresome and wanted to check it out themselves."
NAR: Sheriff Brooks doesn't see the couple that way.
SRB: I believe that they were probably high on drugs, high on methamphetamine at the time that they went up to visit the property, the last time they went to visit the property. That they got out of their car and they wandered off into the mountains.
NAR: From what you're gathering, from the information you've gathered, both were frequent meth users.
SRB: Yes.
NAR: Every day?
SRB: Yes.
NAR: However, Bobby's mother, Star, and Sherilyn's best friend, Niki, don't buy that. We met with them at the Jamisons' home on Lake Eufaula. The couple renovated it. Everything in the home is high-end. The house is the antithesis of their talked-about new life living in a container in the wilderness. Star lived with the couple here for four months, taking care of Madyson when Sherilyn was suffering from depression.
SJ: So if I was out in the yard, she'd be right there with me. But it'd be funny, she had the best time.
NAR: Star explains she was estranged from the couple in the months leading up to the disappearance because of Sherilyn's emotional problems. Niki says she last talked to her friend ten days before the family vanished.
NS: She showed up at my door with Madyson.
NAR: Niki says Sherilyn wasn't in her right mind, but she knows from her experience with meth many years ago that Sherilyn was not using.
NS: When someone is on that drug, you just know how they act. And Sherilyn was acting like she wasn't on her medication, but she was not using. I mean, and I can tell you that, had she been, there definitely would have been something found in the house.
NAR: Both Niki and Star say there was also no meth evidence in their abandoned truck. Star says everything was normal in the house, but there was evidence the two were searching for religious guidance.
SJ: They had their Bibles laying out on the table. They had all of the dictionaries and things of the Bible, I mean, big thick books.
NAR: She says Bobby's actions were not that of a man going off the deep end.
SJ: And the day before all this happened, Bobby was checking into schools for Madyson.
NAR: Star believes the couple was back on track in their marriage. Still, both Star and Niki are troubled about so many aspects of the case. Niki says Sherilyn and Bobby had a handyman living with them in the weeks before the disappearance. Niki says Sherilyn, who boasted about her Native American heritage, was scared of him.
NS: He sat down right next to her, probably as close as we are, and told her, you know, I'm a white supremacist and people like you should die or I should kill you or something like that because you're not pure.
NAR: She says Sherilyn retrieved a gun from upstairs and shot at the ground outside near the handyman when he refused to leave. After that he did leave. Star and Niki are also disturbed by the picture of Madyson taken in the area of the well site.
NS: The picture of Madyson on the cell phone is a big one for me.
NAR: Why?
NS: She looks terrified. That's not her smile. That's not her face when she's happy.
SJ: They showed Madyson with her arms crossed and Madyson never did that before. And she was looking away from the camera. She wasn't looking at the camera.
NAR: Sheriff Brooks believes the family's bones are somewhere on the mountain. He thinks they were either the victims of a double murder and suicide, or they got lost and died of exposure.
SRB: But, you know, I may be wrong. The Mexican Mafia could have done it.
NAR: Why do you say Mexican Mafia? Where does that come from?
SRB: That's the theory. Because Bobby's dad, it was alleged that he was linked to the Mexican Mafia and they had burned one of his businesses down in Oklahoma City.
NAR: Bobby's father died of natural causes in December of 2009. According to investigators, he was estranged from Bobby and left his estate to Madyson. Niki and Star agreed to this interview in hopes of restarting an investigation that has stalled.
NS: I'm just saying it seems like people are just too quick to sweep this family under the rug. It's not right. They're people.
Though I can in another case, the one that really made me focus on WS. (Not the McStays)
