I wanted to bring these important posts from
OkieGrannie forward from Thread 1 #36 #37 in case some of you hadn't seen them:
Transcript of BlogTalk Radio interview with Brandon Lawson's wife, Part 1
January 27, 2014
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/newcolo...day-with-orion
Key to Participants:
H: Host
LL: Brandon's wife
Caller: A call-in guest
(Any unexplained snips are just extraneous wordy bits; you're not missing any vital info, I promise.)
H: Tonight's topic is Brandon Lawson. Let's go ahead and bring L on while I give just a brief interview here. L, are you there?
LL: Yes, I am.
H: <snip> On the phone with us now, as you heard, is LL. That is the wife of Brandon Lawson that went missing near Bronte, Texas. And it was quite sudden, and a lot of serious details surrounding this. Would you like to give just like a quick brief overview on what happened, L?
LL: Yeah. Brandon went missing August 9, 2013. We got in an argument, he left our house, and he ran out of gas. And he called his brother and said he ran out of gas and, when he went there, Brandon wasn't at the truck and the cop, Deputy N, pulled up at the same time. We didn't know at the time that Brandon called 911, but Brandon did call 911 at 12:53, then he called his brother at 12:38, and then they arrived at 1:10, the cop and his brother did, and Brandon wasn't there. It's been, on Friday it'll be six months. We still don't have one clue of where Brandon is or what happened, but we do have his 911 call saying that someone was after him, chasing him. And that's about it. That's all of the clues we have, and that Brandon was in the middle of a field. But, besides that, we don't have any clue or any suspicions where Brandon's at. That's all I have.
H: All right. And just so our listeners know, we did spend quite an amount of time on the phone last night, discussing everything, trying to come up with as many ideas as we could, and basically going over everything that we were going to talk about tonight. To lead off everything so everyone will know the sequence of events, I'm going to give a little timeline. <snip/utter confusion> But at 11:53, Brandon left his house in San Angelo, Texas. And at 12:38, he called his brother K, saying that he had run out of gas, and (unintelligible) some gas, whatever. And that was at 12:38. And at 12:54, that there was a 911 call placed by Brandon saying that somebody was running after him and, on the 911 call, you said it did sound like he was running?
LL: Yeah, you could tell he was running. He was just out of, the way he was talking on the phone and you could hear it. In the Texas weather in August, there wasn't really any wind, so you could kind of hear Brandon running and he was a little bit out of breath
H: Oh, okay. And my producer did just ask me to clarify that he left the house at 11:53pm, at night. And at 12:38, 38 minutes past midnight is when he called his brother K, and six minutes till 1am is when he call 911. And you said that they both arrived at 1:10am or 1:19am?
LL: 1:10. 1:10.
H: <snip> They both arrived at the truck at 1:10am and Brandon was nowhere to be found.
LL: No. Brandon's truck, the front of it was over the white line. The front of it was in the highway, a little bit on the road, and then Brandon's doors were not locked. And also, there was a second 911 call. The only thing that I'm not sure about is I don't know if Brandon called 911 first or if the truck driver did. But I'm pretty positive Brandon called 911 first, and then the truck driver called afterwards because he almost hit Brandon's truck because it was parked on the highway, and on 277 you can go pretty fast there, like 75 miles an hour. So he called 911 telling them that he almost hit a vehicle.
H: Okay. And that truck driver didn't seem like he (unintelligible).
LL: Yeah, I don't know who the truck driver is. I haven talked to him. I don't know his name. The cops talked to him.
H: Oh, okay, so the cops did make contact with him?
LL: Yeah, they told me that they, when I talked to WM, he told me he did.
H: Okay. And once again, to reiterate, the reason why he was out that late was because that there was an argument at the house. <snip>
LL: Yeah, we had an argument. Brandon was about to start a new job. We have three children, but there are four altogether. I have a stepdaughter. I was working at the time, so there was a little stress.
H: Oh, yeah.
LL: I guess, what couple don't have arguments? I think everybody does. We've been together ten years, so who doesn't have arguments?
H: If you don't have arguments, something's wrong.
LL: Yeah, definitely.
H: But after the police and K arrived at the truck at 1:10 am, there was another phone call from Brandon to K at 1:19. Can you describe the nature of that phone call?
LL: Yeah, see, K talked to Brandon a couple of times back and forth, but Brandon's call was in and out a little bit because of service, but Brandon stated that he was in a field and that he was bleeding, and then it just cut off. A, my brother-in-law's girlfriend, texted Brandon and said, "Hey, bro, the cops are at your truck" because, yes, my husband does have a warrant out for his arrest. But it was from two years ago. He's not running from the warrant. We lived in the same place for a year, Brandon had the same job for 13 months, and we even didn't know about the warrant until probably a few months ago, before this happened. We knew because we purchased a truck and Brandon was changing the title over and they said, "Mr. Lawson, are you aware you have a warrant?" and he said, "No, I didn't." And he called a bail bondsman and told him he had a warrant. At the time, Brandon was just working and saving money and then he would have, we already had a lawyer that we wanted and we were just going to do a little walk-through, and then Brandon was going to face that. Brandon wasn't running from the warrant, so I would like to get that cleared up.
H: Okay, all right. And that's just about as fair as you can get right there.
LL: Yeah.
H: But there weren't a lot of details released to you, that phone call to K because of the very poor reception?
LL: Yeah. Well, they said that they thought Brandon was running, and that he stated that he was bleeding and he was in the field. So I, that was Brandon's last phone call. They didn't know Brandon called 911, we didn't know Brandon called 911 until Tuesday, when Brandon went missing on Friday, so we didn't know.
H: Okay. Did the police ever say why they didn't tell you that he had called 911?
LL: Yeah, they said that a stranded motorist did call 911. The 911 calls go through a nursing home. Coke County has two towns. One is Bronte, Texas, and the other one is Robert Lee, Texas. Coke County is a small county. There's only five, I guess a sheriff's department, there's a sheriff and a sheriff's deputy and three other deputies. There's only five officers that work in that county. Robert Lee Nursing Home, or I'm not sure of that name, but the 911 calls go through them. So maybe it wasn't a good, they didn't communicate good with each other. That's how I feel.
H: Okay, and just so I can clarify, when you say it goes through a nursing home, I'm sure that it isn't just a night nurse sitting at the nursing station just taking the 911 calls in their spare time. I'm sure that they have a trained 911 operator there in the facility. Is that correct, that you know of?
LL: Yeah, I really don't know. I think the nurses take them. Hopefully after all this, that they'll, I don't know who pays for them, but the state or somebody needs to pay for them to have a better service on 911 calls. I'm not sure if a nurse does. I don't think an operator, the operator for the nursing home probably doesn't want to take them. I don't know. But I think it does need to be a lot better system because you never know what's going to happen.
H: No. <snip> And to reiterate, from the time he left the house to the time of the first call to K, which was at 12:38, was a period of about 40-some-odd minutes.
LL: Yeah.
H: And from the location of his home to Bronte, Texas, to where the car was, it was what? You said 37 miles, is that right?
LL: Probably about 35. It doesn't matter with what the speed limit is.
H: Okay, and I just want to point that out, that there wasn't really any missing time. He basically had time to leave the house, get there, call K.
LL: Yeah, but we don't know what happened from 12:38 all the way to 1:10.
H: Right.
LL: I mean, that's a long time that something could happen, or let's say somebody was after Brandon, I don't know. I really don't know what happened. I think through this, you just think of all kinds of things like, you just don't know. It's the hardest thing I've ever been through, just not knowing. I mean, it's devastating. You don't know what to do anymore. Sometimes I just can't believe that this has happened. I guess you watch stuff on TV and listen to radio stations and you look at the person and you hear something really devastating or bad and you listen to it for a minute and a lot of people just go on. But this, it's me. Now it happened to me. So now, when I see other stuff, I try to share it as much as I can or care more, because you never know what's going to happen in life.
H: And that's a real sobering reality, and I think you hit the nail on the head on that one. That when you see these things, it's always someone else.
LL: Now it's me.
H: And now that someone else is you yourself.
LL: Yeah.
H: And you tend to look at everything else, other people in that situation. It's no longer it's happening to somebody else. It's what happened to me is happening to more people.
LL: Yeah, it definitely is. The state of Texas has, actually they say in the whole world, every 20 seconds a person goes missing. So that's just pretty devastating, just thinking about that.
H: <snip> Let's go on with the timeline for a little bit. On that call at 1:19 where he was bleeding and he was out, the phone call was coming in and out and he was out in this field somewhere. Last night you said there was a ping that was about 4 miles away from where the vehicle was.
LL: Yeah, it was about 4 1/4 of a mile. It was pings at the Colorado River, but my private investigator, her name is BP, and she is awesome. She is just, God couldn't have gave me a better PI, a caring PI that's just been here for me and my family and my children, and she's cried with me during this, and it's hard to find people like that, but she cares about people. And she was able to do research and we absolutely got what the Rangers were working on, but we got a better ping of Brandon's area because the last ping was two to three miles off and B was able to pull some strings and do different things and was able to find out that we could get a closer ping. And we thought the records was not with us no more. The records, because so long, they don't keep up with the pings if it's been so long. But I'm looking forward to knowing that and maybe we will have a bit more indication of where Brandon is, because I don't think it'll be a lot of fee. I'm not sure.
H: All right. And was that area down there by the Colorado River where they had indication where he was, was that area searched at all?
LL: Yeah. Let's see, when this first happened, the Texas Rangers and WM, they did a helicopter search around all that area on that Tuesday. Also, they waited 21 days and did another search, and they didn't find anything around the truck. And then TEXSAR came in about, I'm trying to think when they came in. I want to say they came in in October. Yeah, October they came in sometime, TEXSAR did with some cadaver dogs and they searched that area and they searched around the truck. I'm not for sure, it's on the Help Find Brandon Lawson page, how far that they searched but they said that they did have them around the area that Brandon pinged. But that ping, they say it would have been off two or three miles at the most. But the other ping would be more accurate than this, because this one's not very accurate. Because I don't think Brandon could have made in the rough terrain out there 4 1/4 of a mile because when you're out there it's dark. It's pitch black. It's rough out there.
H: Right.
LL: It's hunting land. It's really rough.
H: And I think that's something we may have skipped over right quick, was that this is an extremely rural area of Texas.
LL: Yeah.
H: The area he went in is basically nothing but wildlife.
LL: Yeah, it's deer hunting. There's a lot of wild hogs out there. There's rattlesnakes. And, you know, in the Texas weather, it's hot. And the rattlesnakes are not rattling because of the wild hogs. There's been a lot of rattlesnake bites out there in the past and stuff, so you've got to be real careful. When it's hot, they're out more.
H: Okay, and when the police were there, was there any type of investigation done that night?
LL: Not really. They just, when I called, my phone was in my van charging, because I told K that I was going to put the gas cans outside the porch, because I was, it was my son that was sick for two days. He had a double ear infection at the time. Well, I told K, go give your brother gas and tell him to come home, or let him cool off at your house, because my brother-in-law was the only one that, any family we had in San Angelo. Well, I went to sleep and then I woke up at 4:30 and I kind of was having a bad dream, panicking, and when I woke up, I went and looked at my phone, and I had three missed calls from Brandon and I had like ten from K and I had a text message that they were going to tow the truck, and they couldn't find Brandon. Well, I got scared and I called Brandon many a time and it went straight to voice mail. I could not get ahold of him. I called K and, when I told K, K was kind of panicking, and he couldn't find Brandon. He didn't know where he was at. The cop was there at the time. He didn't know where Brandon was at. He thought once the cop left, Brandon would come out. We still never knew Brandon called 911, or it would have been a whole different situation.
H: But the situation you were in at the time, at that time, especially when K first arrived at the truck with the police, at that time there was really no suspicion that anything had happened.
LL: No, just the way Brandon's truck was parked was weird because, even though you run out of gas, you can still pull your vehicle all the way on the side of the road, or push it. You know what I mean?
H: Right. And when they did that search, especially when they had the cadaver dogs out there, I missed it. Did you say they were or were not able to (unintelligible) out there? Because, if he was bleeding, there is some kind of blood trail somewhere.
LL: No, the cadaver dogs didn't pick up anything. But I believe LM, the sheriff's wife, she owns the Observer-Enterprise, and she informed me that they did pick up some hog scent. I guess because the hogs' blood out there is real strong. I'm not sure, but she informed me of that.
H: Okay, that they picked up on hog scent but they didn't pick up on anything on Brandon at that time, or when the cadaver dogs were there?
LL: Yeah, they didn't pick up anything with Brandon. But I believe that the whole time we have been searching the wrong area. We're not searching the right area. We keep on focusing on by the truck. We don't need to focus on the truck. We need to focus on Brandon's, the accurate last ping and do a five-mile radius around that.
H: Right.
LL: It's hard to search out there but, I mean, if everybody would cooperate and just let, if we all had at least 150 people, if he's out there we could find him. I believe in my heart Brandon's out there because if not, we would have more calls to CrimeStoppers. There's four kids involved in this situation. It's not just me. I have a one-year-old, a two-year-old, and a seven-year-old, and Brandon's all the father of those children. M, my stepdaughter, she's ten. There's four kids waiting for their dad, you know, to no answers, and I think as a parents, I think this is the hardest thing I've ever been through, just coming up with answers for them because I don't know what to tell them sometimes. It's very hard. It's very difficult.
H: I can only imagine some of those moments there at the house, when they're asking questions about their father and there's really not a lot you can tell them, besides y'all are trying to find him, y'all are trying to bring him home so that he can be there for them.
LL: Yeah, I tell my daughter stuff, like I'm pretty trustworthy and tell her. I don't want to lie to D through the situation but I don't want to hurt her at the same time, because she is older, and M is too, but D lives with me and it's really hard. They have high hopes that Brandon's alive and I just feel like, when we do find him, I'm going to be devastated myself. I'm already devastated, but I have to be strong for my children, and telling them is going to be probably the hardest moments of my life if Brandon's not alive, but I know Brandon's actions as a person. He would never do this to his family. You know, what if Brandon was captured somewhere? But, I don't know. He would never do this. I mean, he's missed our son's first birthday, our other son's second birthday. He's missed Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, all kinds of things. I mean, I know Brandon. Brandon's my best friend, besides he's my soulmate. I've been with him since I was fifteen and he was sixteen. We're high school sweethearts, like inseparable. We were each other's best friends, like this would never happen. You know what I mean? Like there is no way anything would keep him away from us, or telling me anything, you know?
H: Right. If he would've left on his own or something to that effect, he would've let you know.
LL: Yeah.
H: You know, that he left. He wouldn't have put you through...
LL: Oh, no, uh-uh. And my in-laws, I'm really close to them. They're like my parents and they have been just real supportive and they've been helping me with the kids and helping a lot, and my family and my friends have been here for me and a lot of people from Facebook, or the Help Find Brandon Lawson page, and through this I've made a lot of good friends and just people that have supported me and donated. And I've had some bad things, with people saying mean things to me or messaging me, but you know what? Sometimes I want to fight back but I don't, because I'm better than them. I'm not going to do that. It's not going to help find Brandon. It's not going to help my children. At the end of the day, I still have to be strong and look for him.
