John "Brent" McGhee
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July 11th, so 2024 was the last time that his mother physically seen him. She didn't report him missing until July the 22nd. It's not unusual for him to take off for a day or two. But then when 10 days rolled around and she still hadn't seen her son or heard anything from him, then she got a little worried. Where's my son? And then she started asking around about him and no one had seen him or anything.

since July the 11th. He didn't have a phone, he didn't have money, he didn't have anything on him. It's so many unanswered questions.

On July 11th, 2024, 42-year-old John Brent McGee disappeared from Leachville, Arkansas. Brent was last seen by his mother when she dropped him off at his cousin's house. A short time later, Brent left on foot, reportedly to look for his wife. According to eyewitness accounts, Brent made it to the home of his wife's best friend, but he wasn't allowed inside. And that's the last sighting of Brent McGee.

Brent didn't have a cell phone with him at the time, which meant there was no way for anyone to reach out to him, or even a digital trail to follow. Brent was very close with his mother, and it wasn't like him to go without contacting her.

Days passed, then over a week. For Brent's mother, the silence became more unbearable with each passing day. She knew something was wrong. So on July 22nd, 11 days after she had last seen her son, she walked into the Leachville Police Department and reported Brent missing. What followed was a wave of rumors. In a small town like Leachville, word travels fast.

The story suggested that Brent had met a horrible fate. But was there any truth behind these rumors? Or was it all small-town lore? I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 488 of The Vanished, John Brent McGee's story.

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Before we delve into the details of Brent's disappearance, it's important to understand more about his life and the path that brought him to July 2024 when he disappeared. We spoke with his sister Jamie, and she shared a glimpse into who Brent was and the experiences that shaped the person he became.

So me and my brother are 10 years apart, 10 years, five days to be exact. We've always lived in Arkansas. What I remember when I was a kid, like I said, we're 10 years apart. So he used to help watch me as a kid. Most of his teenage to adult life, he's lived in Leachville, Arkansas, which is where I grew up as well before I graduated high school. Now, my brother did have a history of drug addiction. He battled that.

I would say late teenage years into his adult life where he would get clean for a while, but then he would get drawn back into that addiction cycle. There were a few times that he had went to some rehabs. There were periods of time where he worked. He has a son who just turned 18, then his daughter is 17. He was married once before to a

Crystal, the kid's mother, her family actually, some of them lived in Texas. And they lived in Texas for a little while. And he was clean and working there. And then he did live with me for a little while. I think it was back in 2018. He lived with me in Jonesboro. We tried to kind of get him away from the town that he grew up in, his so-called friends. He had a really good job working for a heating and cooling place.

He was actually enrolled in some classes that they were paying for to help him get like an apprenticeship. He was really excited about that, and he did really well for a while. He was going to church and things like that. So he has periods where he'll do really well. For whatever reason, he would get back around the same friends and use again. Probably 2019, if I could guess, he met a friend in Jonesboro, Indiana.

And he started using again. He wasn't doing right, so he went back to stay in Leachville, and he's been in Leachville ever since. In the months leading up to his disappearance, Brent had been going through some changes. And like many stories of people who have gone missing, the puzzle of what happened usually starts long before the day someone vanished. It begins much earlier with patterns, choices, and turning points. Brent had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with a woman named Sarah Fletcher,

But in March of 2024, they decided to make it official. To those who knew him best, this seemed like a hopeful chapter for Brent. He had had a complicated past filled with ups and downs. There were stretches of time when he was clean, focused, and doing well. And then there were setbacks, periods when he struggled again. But according to Jamie, things were looking up. From what she could see, Brent was in a good place.

When he got married to Sarah, he was working for the city. He was doing like the trash pickup and cleaning up the city of Leachville. I wasn't for sure how long they were together. I asked my mom that and she said that they kind of had an on and off relationship. She would guess about four to five years. They got married in March of 2024 at the courthouse and then they had a ceremony on April 23rd and then

And then by July 11th, he was missing. I remember he was just extremely happy. They were both going to church a lot. One thing through my brother's addiction, he has always been a big believer in God. And I remember him saying the reason why they rushed into getting married was they had made this commitment that they weren't going to have any intimate relationship until they actually were married.

When someone disappears, hindsight has a way of reshaping the narrative. Moments that once seemed insignificant suddenly feel important. Conversations get replayed over and over. People often start seeing red flags everywhere, ones they didn't seem to notice at the time. Was Brent really doing better? Or were there signs that something was starting to unravel, just beneath the surface? According to Jamie, there may have been more going on than anyone realized at the time.

Like Brent, Sarah also had a history of addiction, and while recovery is already a difficult road for one person, it often becomes even more complicated when two people are trying to get clean at the same time, and one may not be fully committed. Not long after the wedding, things between Brent and his wife started to go downhill, and Brent began to suspect that his wife may be cheating on him.

According to Jamie, this was when her brother started to change. She had seen this happen before. Brent had a pattern, and Jamie could usually tell when he was in a good place and when he wasn't. Jamie doesn't know for sure, but she believes it's possible that Brent could have started using again just before he went missing.

I think that he was clean. I would work all week and my mom didn't have a vehicle at the time, so she would help babysit and we would come home on Fridays. I would bring her home. We would always go by and visit my brother. He seemed clean and sober and happy. And like I said, he was real involved in church. He was working. She was not. He seemed to be doing really good.

I think toward the end of it, maybe probably in July, maybe he may have started using. I don't know that for sure, but I just know with his history, when he loves someone, he loves them really hard. And when he finds out they may have betrayed him or lied to him, he would fall back into that using pattern as well as like a coping mechanism. I don't remember exactly when he lost that job. Right before he told us that he quit,

He was in a bad depression. There was a series of events that led to that, like his dog dying. And they started having problems. I think he was suspecting that she was using or she was cheating on him. And he quit going to work and he was trying to see where she was going. She abused meth. They were living independently. So my aunt, she has a few rental houses and she actually, she gave them a house to live in in Leachville, down the road from my mom's. They'd been there for a while.

July 11th, 2024. That date marks the last time Brent McGee's family ever saw him. That morning, Brent and his wife had been at his mother's home. It seemed like a fairly normal visit until tensions flared. Brent's wife got upset with his mom and stormed out of the house on foot. Later that morning, Brent and his mother ran a quick errand together. When they were done, she dropped Brent off nearby at his cousin's house. Before he got out of the car, Brent turned to his mother and said goodbye. He

He told her that he would see her the next day. In that moment, Brent's mother couldn't have predicted that that was the last time she'd ever see or hear from her son.

My mom actually saw him on the last day, July 11th. They had stayed with my mom a few days at her house. I think it was their stove or their refrigerator wasn't working. They asked if they could come stay and hang out at my mom's a couple nights. That morning of July 11th, my mom, she gets up early and she said that they were laying in bed and she kind of turned on the light and she was like, you know, you guys need to get up and help do some chores.

chores or something. And she said she was kind of getting on to Sarah. And so her and Sarah kind of had a disagreement. She said Brent and Sarah never even said a word to each other. But Sarah got upset and said that she didn't have to listen to any of this. And she said that we wouldn't see her again. She actually left barefoot walking from my mom's apartment. And after that,

What mom said to me was that Brent looked at her and he said, you know, I'm sorry that you had to witness this, but she's been wanting to start fights with me at home and I just needed someone else to witness her behavior. She's wanting to start fights and have a reason to leave. You've lifted a weight off of my chest. After that, he asked her to take him by the liquor store and he got some liquor and root beer and she dropped him off at my cousin Mark's house.

And he told her that he loved her and he'd see her the next day. I think my mom said she dropped him off around 10, 20 maybe, in between 10 and 10, 30. And according to my cousin Mark, he stayed about 15 or 20 minutes and he left. Mark's house is not far from her friend Sean's house, which is where she supposedly went that day.

No one heard from Brent after that time, and at first, no one thought much of it. Everyone assumed that Brent would pop up soon. But this was different. As the hours turned into days, and then into weeks, everyone began to feel that something wasn't right. Brent's cousin told the family that Brent didn't stay long when he came by that day, maybe 15 to 20 minutes at most.

He recalled that Brent was restless. He wanted to go find his wife, who had stormed out of his mother's apartment earlier that morning after an argument. Brent set out from his cousin's house on foot, with no phone. From there, the timeline starts to blur. There have been eyewitness accounts that place Brent in front of his wife's best friend's house. But not

But none of those accounts are entirely consistent, and that's where things get tricky. Jamie has heard the same stories over and over, but with slight differences. Details seem to shift, and some versions contradict others. Jamie doesn't know what to believe, and she wonders if some of these stories are just that, stories, perhaps told to cover something up, or maybe to deflect attention away from the truth.

Then a lot of questioning of some people that were at Sean's, they call it his shop, that day. There is a girl that says that she saw Brent and he was standing in the road in front of Sean's house and he looked upset. And she says that another one of his friends was with him named Ronnie and that they hurried up and shut the door and said that Sean said not to let Brent in the shop.

So she's, I guess, the last person that places him in front of Sean's house that day.

Ronnie. He actually got very upset when I said that and said that it was a lie, that he wasn't with him. And then I have another person that I've talked to that said he had spoke with him after Brent was missing. And he said from his very mouth that he was with Brent that day, that Brent was very upset and that he was trying to calm him down and that they walked off together.

Brent wasn't immediately reported missing. There had been times in the past when he'd gone quiet for a few days. He just needed space or a little bit of time to himself. It wasn't a common occurrence, but it wasn't unheard of either. That's why, at first, his loved ones didn't panic. But as the days passed and no one heard from him, worry began to set in. By July 22nd, it had been 11 days since anyone had seen or spoken to Brent.

That's when his mother walked into the Leachville Police Department and reported her son missing.

The last day he was seen was July 11th. My mom did not report him missing until July 22nd, just because my brother has went off at week tops where he's gone off. He didn't want to be bothered. He's real into the Bible, so he would go off and just kind of be alone and do these retreats. Not often, but he has. Finally, by July 22nd, she did report him missing. Sarah never reported my brother as a missing person.

To my knowledge, she has not ever went out searching for him. She has not posted any flyers. She actually went to a domestic violence shelter the very next day, July 12th.

We submitted public record requests to both the Leachville Police Department and the Mississippi County Sheriff's Office, hoping to uncover what actions were taken after Brent was reported missing. Both agencies responded, but the documents we received from the Sheriff's Office were mostly duplicates, copies of what they had gotten from the Leachville Police Department. These reports offered a starting point. They described the moment that Brent's mother walked into the station and told officers that her son had disappeared.

She told the officer about the argument that had taken place at her apartment on the morning of July 11th, and how Brent's wife had stormed out on foot. She explained that later in the morning, she dropped Brent off at his cousin's house, and that he promised he'd see her the following day, but she never heard from her son again. In the days that followed, she began calling around, checking with Brent's friends to see if anyone had seen him. No one had.

She told the officer that Brent going this long without contacting her was completely out of character. She knew something was wrong. She also remembered exactly what Brent was wearing when she last saw him. A light blue t-shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and a pair of hey dude shoes. It was the last image she had of Brent, and it's the one she still holds on to, nearly a year later.

On July 23rd, a welfare check was conducted at Brent's home. Officers were unable to make contact with anyone, and it appeared that no one was there at all. They noted that the house seemed secure, a light was on in one of the bedrooms, and taped to the front door was a handwritten note from Brent's mother, asking him to call her when he got home. Two days later, on July 25th, an officer met a couple of concerned loved ones outside of Brent's house.

They told the officer that they hadn't heard from Brent in nearly two weeks. They also mentioned that they had been in contact with Brent's wife, who was reportedly staying in a shelter out of town. Desperate for answers, they had been calling everywhere—rehabs, jails, hospitals—any place they thought Brent could have ended up. But there was no sign of him anywhere. They explained to the officer that this wasn't like Brent at all.

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Brent had a very close relationship with his mother. He trusted her and often confided in her when something was bothering him. In the weeks before he disappeared, Brent had shared a few concerns with her about his wife. At the time, his mother didn't think too much of it. But after Brent vanished, those concerns came rushing back, and the things Brent said to her suddenly took on new meaning.

I found it out after, but my mom said that he had told her some things before. He thought Sarah had some different motives and things. She didn't really take it too seriously because when he was in his cycle of using, sometimes people get paranoid and it's hard to differentiate between what's real and what he's kind of made up in his mind. And so he would tell her things about Sarah like,

that she's harmed animals before and things like that. She didn't take it seriously. She's been kind of beating herself up over that. He was concerned. In the very beginning, I went into Brent's house, me and my mom. I was like, I just want to look, see if I can see anything in my own eyes that they may have missed. He always used to write me and my mom letters. That was his thing. I found this notebook. It was mainly blank. In the middle of the notebook, he had a letter that he had wrote.

In that letter, he literally said that he thought Sarah was trying to set him up or kill him. I gave that information to the Leachville police at the time. I found it on July 31st. I turned it in on August 1st to the police. The only thing that I gathered from the neighbor across the street said before Brent was missing that he would pretend to go to work.

And then he would go in the backyard and climb up the tree and watch to see where she was going. So that's what made me think he thought something was going on and he was trying to see what she was doing and where she was going.

On July 26th, an officer paid a visit to Sean, the man known as Sarah's best friend. The officer asked if Sean had taken Sarah to a shelter in Searcy, Arkansas. He confirmed that he had, on July 12th. That's just one day after Brent was last seen. When asked about Brent, Sean said the last time he saw him was on July 11th, the day that Brent disappeared. But the report doesn't mention what time that encounter happened or under what circumstances.

Then, as the officer continued the conversation, another man approached. He claimed that he heard that Brent might be staying with a woman named Stephanie. It was unverified, but the officer followed up. He went to Stephanie's home, where he spoke with her and a man who was also there. They both said they hadn't seen Brent, but they offered to ask around, at places they knew he often went.

Two days later, on July 28th, an officer followed up on a disturbing claim. They spoke with a woman who said she had heard that someone else, through a chain of people, had said that Brent was under the house. But even she admitted it was a classic whisper-down-the-lane situation, and that's how the information got to her. There was also talk of a fire, one that had burned for quite a while around the time that Brent vanished. Investigators looked into it.

One person they spoke to said locals were simply speculating, that because the fire had burned so long, people assumed something sinister, but no one had actually said Brent was in that fire. He went on to say that everyone was wondering what happened to Brent and speculating. People overheard conversations and were blowing things out of proportion. Another person mentioned hearing the same rumor, people talking about Brent being burned in a house. But again, no one with first-hand knowledge,

It was just another version of the same unsettling story. We mentioned earlier that Brent didn't have a phone with him when he vanished. According to Jamie, Brent and his wife shared a phone, and on the day he disappeared, she was the one who had it in her possession. That meant Brent had no way to call for help, no way to reach out to his family, and perhaps most importantly, no way to leave a digital trace of where he went or who he may have encountered.

They had a phone that they shared, but she kept it primarily and she had it that day. Since his went missing, she actually ordered a phone in his name and had it delivered to a nearby neighbor who found it before she did.

After Brent disappeared, something else struck his family as deeply strange. His wife wasn't looking for him. She didn't contact his mother. She didn't reach out to Jamie. As Jamie mentioned earlier, Brent's wife Sarah left town the very next day and went to stay in a shelter. To Brent's family, it felt like she vanished too. Almost like she was intentionally stepping out of the picture. And to Jamie, the timing has always felt suspicious. Did she know something that made her want to get out of town quickly? Was she afraid?

Or was she trying to avoid being questioned? Jamie doesn't have the answers, but she does have a lot of questions. Eventually, she did resurface, not reaching out to his mother, not to Jamie. But instead, she began messaging Brent's children on social media. To Jamie, this was another red flag. Not just the silence, but also who she chose to speak to when she finally reappeared.

About 56 days after he was last seen, she decided to send my nephew a message on Facebook. And at that time, she actually tried to add him and his sister and my daughter as friends on Facebook. The message that she sent him was that she had to go to this shelter because her and Brent were not doing well. She did not come.

come out and say that he abused her or anything like that. She just said that they were having problems. It didn't make sense to me because she goes to a domestic shelter. Some of the people that I talked to at Sean's that day said she came in crying saying that Brent hurt her or whatever. All of them said she didn't have any physical marks on her, that her face was red from crying, but she didn't have any marks on her. And she last saw Brent at my mother's house that morning and

And they didn't even get into an argument. They didn't speak any words. So from her leaving my mother's to wherever she went, eventually Sean's, where did they supposedly have a physical altercation to where she would have had to go to a domestic shelter the next day? And then she told my nephew also that after she stayed there, she went and stayed like 12 days in this place called Encompass Health for Depression.

and that when she got out of the hospital and she came home, she came home to a missing husband. But when she came back, she didn't go back to their house that they had together. She went and moved in with this Sean guy, and we didn't even actually know that she was back in town because as of today, she has not contacted me or my mother regarding Brent at all, not one single word. And

And that's the frustrating thing is because me and Sarah have never had an ill word said between us. I've always tried to stay kind of neutral in a sense. I don't like a lot of drama and I try to see both sides. And so me and her have never had ill words. And so I was surprised. She may be upset with my mom, but she could have reached out to me and said, you know, I'm so sorry or anything. And instead, she reaches out to three children who can be manipulated.

I just think it's very weird. And on that same day, she actually finally made a post about my brother and posted some pictures of them saying she's cooperating with the police, which she wasn't. She wants him brought home and honored. She talks in past tense when she posts this.

One of the most frustrating parts of this case has been the silence. Since the day Brent disappeared, his wife never reached out to his mother or sister to say whether or not she saw him after he left his cousin's house. Nothing except those messages to his children, which Jamie felt were inappropriate. To Jamie, that silence has always felt intentional.

like his wife was avoiding them on purpose. Eventually, officers were able to speak with her when she came back to Leachville, but whatever she told them during that interview has never been fully shared with Brent's family. But there was one thing they did learn, a key detail that stood out. Jamie told us more.

Not long after she came back to town from her hospital stay, she was picked up and arrested for failure to appear in old fines, nonpayment of fines. And I do believe at that time the criminal investigation unit questioned her because they told me that they questioned her. But they didn't tell me the extent of what her story was. They just said that she was upset that she was being questioned and that she wouldn't say very much about

They've talked to her a few times since then at Sean's house. There was this timeline that came out that was supposedly Sean's, and it shows everything they did that day, and then it has like six hours of time where his phone was turned off or he didn't have signal. And the detective was like, well, they knew everything they did that day until that time frame, and then they just forgot.

There have been several accounts suggesting that on the day Brent disappeared, he was trying to find his wife. And according to those close to him, he knew exactly where to look, at the home of her best friend, Sean. According to Jamie, Brent had always been uneasy about that relationship. He suspected that it wasn't just a friendship, and there had been tension about it before. So when Brent set out on foot that day to go find his wife, he headed straight to Sean's house. What happened

What happened next remains unclear, because various eyewitness accounts place him in front of the friend's house that day, but they aren't always consistent. But if Brent did show up at that house, did it lead to a situation that spiraled out of control? That's a question Brent's family has been asking ever since. We asked Jamie to tell us more about that friendship, and the relationship dynamic between Brent, his wife, and the man she called her best friend.

I mean, I don't know him knowing, but I've been around him when I was a kid. His stepdaughter and I were close friends. We went to school together. We graduated together. I stayed the night at her house. He was just always kind of a quiet guy. He didn't really talk a lot. He would spend a lot of time out in his shop because he's a taxidermist. He's just kind of odd. From what I've been told is they went to school together and that they've been close friends for a very long time.

A lot of people around town say that Sean has had feelings for Sarah, but Sarah does not reciprocate those feelings. But a lot of people say he's in love with her. He would do pretty much anything for her. Even some of her family that had to kick her out of her aunt's house because she was supposedly abusing her aunt is what they said.

They said she always runs to Sean anytime that she needs help. They've been friends for a long time, and I think he wants more. But according to her, it's never been anything but platonic. So I don't know. I think my brother did not like their relationship. According to my mom, the day they had their ceremony, they supposedly made a pact that she wouldn't be going over to his house anymore. But then at their ceremony also, he walked her down the aisle.

He gave her away. The only questioning that he has had, to my knowledge, from what they have told me, is that they have pulled up to his residence in the very beginning and they talked to him outside with another person present, Ronnie, because Ronnie was hanging out. They have came into his house and questioned him about the timeline. But as far as where he comes into the police station and has questioning, no.

If they have, they have it shared that information with me or my mom. So I looked up his arrest on Court Connect and he does have one prior arrest. It was years ago, but he got terroristic threatening first degree. And what the report said was something along the lines of he had barricaded himself in his house was threatening to like shoot the officers.

Another person we spoke with is Christy. She's originally from the Leachville area, but moved away several years ago. Still, Christy said that when someone reached out and asked for help with Brent's case, she didn't hesitate. And once she started looking into it, she was all in.

She began digging into the past, looking at patterns and incidents that might shed light on Brent's disappearance. She wanted to know more about the people surrounding Brent, including this man described as his wife's best friend. She did some digging into what Jamie just mentioned had happened years ago to see if it could tell her anything further about this man.

I left there in 2017, and I started helping because one of Brent's friends reached out to me because I have a big social media influence. Well, I wouldn't say big. It's just more than they have, wanting me to help get his name out there and get his case heard and stuff so that way he didn't be another cold case in Arkansas. I know that in 2012, I think it was, he had a standoff with the police, and he had his family held hostage.

I went in and looked at the court record, and it said that his mother called because they heard a gunshot. He had a standoff with the police for so many hours, and then he only got 36 months probation out of it. And so here it is. It says the Leachville man at the center of an eight-hour standoff with Mississippi County law enforcement is scheduled to appear in court.

Leachville police charged Sean with three counts of terroristic threatening after he barricaded himself in a trailer with at least 1,000 rounds of ammunition inside the trailer on Highway 119 in Leachville. Two charges are from threatening police officers. Police said they initially went to the trailer for a welfare check after Poe's mother told police she heard gunshots when she was on the phone with her son

then lost contact with him. The standoff began around 6.15 on Sunday, October the 21st and ended around 1 a.m. on Monday. No one was injured.

Leachville is a small city in Mississippi County, tucked away in the northeastern corner of Arkansas. It's home to just over 2,000 residents. The kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and where, if someone's out walking around, especially in the middle of the day, people tend to notice. So when Brent disappeared while on foot on July 11, 2024, his family hoped someone might have seen him, or maybe a security camera had picked him up somewhere along the way. In many missing persons cases, they

There are at least a few reported sightings. Some turn out to be false leads or mistaken identity, but they can help generate momentum in the search. But in Brent's case, it's been unusually quiet. In the records we obtained from the Leachville Police Department, there were a handful of reported sightings, but they read more like cases of mistaken identity than solid leads. They began surfacing in early August, and oddly, they all placed Brent in Missouri.

One man claimed to have seen him at a Missouri gas station. An officer reached out to the police in that town and asked them to be on the lookout. Another person thought they saw Brent in a Missouri casino, not far from the state line. An officer followed up, tracked the man down, and sure enough he did look like Brent, but it wasn't him. Then there was a woman who believed she saw Brent working at a fair. She said the man introduced himself as Brent and even offered her his phone number, but she didn't take it. She had a boyfriend.

But again, local police were alerted. Another tip came from a gas station in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Officers contacted local authorities there, too. Each one of these leads ended the same way. They went nowhere. Still, the pattern raised questions. Why did every sighting place Brent across the state line? Leachville is just miles away from Missouri, so it could be coincidence. But Jamie wondered if it wasn't. Could

Could someone have been trying to lead the investigation away from Leachville and away from Arkansas entirely? Frustration has grown with each dead end. With no credible tips or confirmed sightings, no one seems to know where Brent went after he was reportedly seen near his wife's friend's house.

It's a very small town, and like I said, he worked for the city right before he went missing. And I went around and talked to some neighbors, and some of the elderly ones would say, oh, yeah, they knew Brent. One of them said, you know, I had a knee surgery, and I was in a wheelchair, and Brent made sure to take my trash out, and he would wheel it all the way back up to my house for me. It is a small town, and it's one of those small towns where there's lots of rumors, and everybody's saying different things.

And then it was quiet for a time, too. So that's what was kind of weird to me is like it's such a small town. Someone should have seen him. I mean, he walks everywhere and he's very outgoing and usually always smiling and like don't meet a stranger. He talks to everyone. Someone had said they thought they saw him the day of at the local gas station in Leachville get into a black Dodge Charger.

We, at the time, created our own Facebook account, Justice for Brent, and we asked the public to please check your security cameras to go back and see if you may have saw him because he would be walking to try to piece this timeline together of where he may have been. At some point later on, I myself went to the surrounding streets of where Sean lives, all the neighbors, and each person that had a camera

I asked them a few questions. I said, have you went back and looked at your footage? Did you find anything? My third question was, did the police ever come by and ask for any of your footage? And every single person that I talked to that had a camera said the police never came and asked for any footage. Most of them had either said they went back and looked and they didn't see anything or their camera didn't hold footage for that long. One thing that I found very odd to me is the chief of police's mother-in-law

She lives facing like a field and she's a street over from Sean's. I mean, she has, I believe they're ring cameras. And from what I'm told, they hold footage for like three months. When I asked her about her footage, because I thought surely he may have walked by her house to go to Sean's. She told me that she deletes her footage every day and was very short with me and did not want to talk. I don't know. I delete my stuff every day. I found it very odd. Why would you have a security camera if you delete your footage every day?

Despite how quiet things have been in terms of sightings of Brent, the rumor mill has been anything but silent. In small towns, word spreads fast, and it doesn't always come with proof. From the earliest days of the investigation, Brent's family has heard whispers. Some of them are vague, others are shockingly specific. But most of them share one thing in common. They're difficult to verify. And that's what makes this part of the case so tough.

It's been nearly impossible to tell what could actually be true and what's just a distraction. Jamie believes that some of the rumors may have been shared with more sinister intent to mislead the investigation or even to extort money from the family in exchange for information. And when you're desperate for answers, even the most unlikely lead can start to feel like a lifeline. But so far, none of it has brought them closer to finding out what happened to Brent.

So many crazy things, really, overall, like people coming up with stuff. And honestly, a part of me thinks that they would probably say stuff that was the opposite of what really happened. So it would get spread around town. I actually had someone who was trying to scam me out of money. They had set up a Facebook account and told me this whole story of they were related to Sean and they were Sean's cousin and they got involved in it.

I kept saying, you know, that I'd been searching for Brent. And they said, well, he's not buried or anything. And I said, well, if he's not buried, where is he? And they said, he's in a deep freezer. Even sent me a picture of a deep freezer and just horrible things. And like wanted me to send them $500 to get the location. Just terrible things.

As Christy got deeper into the case, she began hearing the same things Brent's family had been hearing for months, rumors. And they were dark, disturbing stories, the kind that keep you up at night. Christy told us that what she's heard has been hard to shake. Because once those images are in your mind, they stay there. And the real danger of rumors like these is what they do to the people who are desperate for answers. They force loved ones to imagine each horrible scenario over and over again.

For Christy, it's been difficult to know what to believe and who to believe. And that uncertainty, the not knowing what's real and what's just talk, is part of what makes not having answers so difficult. In the absence of truth, stories rush in to fill the gaps.

The story grows after every mouth that it comes through. It's horrific. Some crap you see in a movie, not something that happens around the corner in a town you've been in your whole life. One of the rumors is that he chopped his body up, throwed him in acid, and set him on fire. There was a rumor that one guy had his eyeballs in a jar and his cross necklace...

that he had bragged about him. Well, you think that's bad? I got his eyeballs in a jar. I don't know who said it because nobody's told me, hey, I seen that necklace around his neck. There was this guy that got drunk and he said, we're never going to find his body because they buried him and the water rose over it. So you're never going to find him. And I don't know if they chopped his body up. I don't want to make myself believe that part. I do not

Then, in a shocking turn of events, a set of disturbing photos began circulating. Some believe the images show a man holding a machete, and possibly Brent's body, slumped in a wheelchair. The photos spread quickly, and sent a wave of fear and speculation through Brent's family. But from the beginning, there were questions. Where did the photos come from? And most importantly, are they real? The authenticity and origin of the images has been challenged.

Some believe they're staged, altered, or pulled from an unrelated situation. Jamie and her family have never been given clear answers. Whether they're real, fake, or something in between, the family was left shaken.

There were some photos circulating around. There's one, two men standing in front of Sean's house or his shop. One of the males is Sean. You can definitely tell he has a mustache. He's a smaller guy. And then there's a guy kind of behind him and he's carrying what appears to be a machete. And then the other picture is a man in a wheelchair in front of that same location. What we were told...

by someone is that Sean's parents live with him and they're not in really great health. It's actually their house and they're really good people. They don't have anything to do with it. They can't help what he may have done. But he had a wheelchair and they were saying that Sean may have used his dad's wheelchair to move my brother around because my brother was six foot four. He's a big guy and he's muscled.

But the quality of them is not great. I mean, you can't make out actual faces. It's like it was intentionally blurred. And Sean has security cameras. From what I told some of his friends, that he's a real paranoid guy, and that he has a ring camera on his shop, and he has cameras all around the back of the house. You don't get to go into his shop unless you're on camera. Allegedly...

According to neighbors, two neighbors that live on each side of his house, there is a lot of traffic. Is there terms? There's a lot of traffic at his house that goes back to his shop all hours of the night. I know personally when I've drove by there, I have seen some of these people that are walking to his house late at night. To my knowledge, he has not ever been in trouble or been arrested for any drug violations. Just the send-off, but everything...

Everyone in town seems to think that he allegedly deals drugs. We were originally told that he volunteered them, that he gave them out. And we did another YouTube. He actually messaged threatening her for defamation of character. And he said that those pictures were not the originals. And she said, OK, well, if they're not the originals, I'm inviting you to come on this. Can you give us the originals? And I don't think he ever responded after that.

So I'm not exactly sure how the pictures came about. We were told that he gave them out, but I don't know if someone else may have leaked them out that's close to him. I don't know. Christy said that she was shocked when these photos surfaced and has gone over and over them, trying to decipher what's going on.

There was photos that were leaked out, but they're so distorted. But you cannot really see a physical person. I mean, you can see that it's a wheelchair. You can see that it's a body because you can see the facial features and all that. There's a big black spot right here on the head. And a third photo of a blue barrel on fire. The rumor was that they chopped him up, they put him in acid, and burned him in that blue barrel. This is all bizarre.

I've never in my life seen anything like this. And those photos were took directly to the police, the CID, before anybody else got a hold of them. And nothing happened. A couple of people that Christy spoke to, neighbors of Sean, told her something that sent a chill down her spine.

The person that lives in the back of Sean, she said that they had a fire going for like three days after that in the backyard and that she heard a chainsaw. Another one of the neighbors had heard Sarah and Sean out in the yard and they were arguing. She was telling him, we cannot keep doing this. We cannot kill again.

As time went on and answers remained out of reach, Jamie began to feel frustrated. She doesn't believe law enforcement has done enough to search for her brother or to find out what happened to him. Yes, they did eventually search the home that Brent shared with his wife. And to Jamie, the search felt more like a formality than a serious effort to uncover the truth. The real work, the flyers, the phone calls, the canvassing, was left up to Brent's loved ones. His family, volunteers, and friends from the community have refused to let his name fade away.

Jamie has taken on a role she never imagined she'd find herself in, part investigator, part advocate, part grieving sister trying to stay strong. And it's been tough, not just that Brent is missing, but that his family has had to fight so hard just to keep his case alive.

The police searched his house. Sarah did not keep up with the house, so it was very messy. And she's kind of a hoarder. Their whole entire bedroom, you could not see the floor because it was all of her clothes all over the floor. They did go in and look, but they were not in there very long because I had family members at the time out there mowing the lawn. They were there when they pulled up, and they were still there mowing whenever they left.

They never marked it off as a crime scene. They told my mom that anyone decided to clean it up or anything, if they found any sharp objects or any blood or anything to call, which is just weird to me to say to a parent. But as far as search efforts, K8 News, they did an interview with the police. At that interview, they said they were out searching. The only other searches that they did, we had a place of interest, and they came out and searched one property.

We actually asked them to give us the information of where they searched so we wouldn't search the same places. And they were like, oh, you should probably go ahead and just double check those areas. They wouldn't give us any information as to where they've actually searched. And there was actually someone on Facebook that said her husband was a farmer. And he said that he didn't see any police searching. He said he saw him sitting in his vehicle all day. They went out to one property that we had got tips on. They use their drone.

for a little bit, and that's the only technology I've seen them use. We had one search team that helped us search a few times, so really it's been me and volunteers out there searching. On July 29th, the Criminal Investigation Division got added to the case. That's the county, Mississippi County Criminal Investigation Unit, or division. I really hate to speak badly, but I feel like we gave them a lot of time

They kept saying, you know, we got added onto the case late. Well, I mean, he wasn't reported missing until July 22nd. You got added on the 29th. Not that big of a difference. I don't feel like they honestly took his case seriously in the beginning. With his history of a drug addiction, they probably were like, he's an adult. He may have went off on his own. I don't, I honestly do not feel like...

They have followed through with a protocol that they should have. When I was telling you about my family member over there, Moen, that was actually CID that came out, went to Brent's house. And like I said, they didn't stay very long. We wanted to get a scent dog to come out and track my brother's scent to see where, if the dog could figure out where my brother may have went. I will tell you, we had to kind of push and fight to get him.

the search dog south to come. The police kept giving us every excuse not to bring them. And finally, we got enough people on social media involved that they were calling the search dog south and search dog south kept reaching out to the police. And finally, they did actually come. And she told me, you know, don't be upset with our dogs because it's been so much time that they may not be able to pick up his scent.

So the Search Dog South, they only work with police. So the only way that they would come is if the police went with them. They came out on September 1st. The dog did actually pick up Brent's scent. They did give me information. The detective told me that he did not want me to disclose that information, but it has already been spread around because people saw the dog. It was daytime when they were out.

The dog left my cousin Mark's house and went up the gravel road and cut across the field, which is what Brent would have done. He would always use back roads and field roads. It led to Sean's property. It showed interest at Sean's property. When they turned around the corner to exit away from Sean's house, it lost my brother's scent. So they circled back by Sean's property and it showed interest again. Sean had no trespassing signs up, so they could not go further onto the property.

and they told me that that's still circumstantial, that they could not get a warrant to get on that property because the dog tracking has sent, basically, it could have been from a previous time that he went there. I think maybe they used to have a friendship in the past, but when him and Sarah got together, I think that he was jealous of their relationship, and he did not trust their relationship, and he wanted to work on being sober, and if

If she's going over there, she was not. So no, I don't think that was a place that he frequented recently when they were together. I don't. Who's to say that he wasn't following her to see where she was going? And that's why I just thought that was weird. The search dog people didn't say that. The police said it could be a pastime. And I'm like, well, I don't understand that. What was the point of bringing the scent dogs? I'm actually normally a very introverted person.

Doing this, I've kind of had to come out of my comfort zone a lot. I mean, I'm trying to see the positive parts of it, you know. I know Brent would be proud of me for doing all that. Jamie told us that during some of the volunteer-led searches, they came across some items that were concerning. But her family doesn't know what happened to those things or whether they were ever tested at all. Once again, Jamie and her family were left in the dark.

We had some places of interest. We were trying to get a cadaver dog out in that Search Dog South place. They didn't have one that was certified yet. They were all in training. I actually reached out to some people. The police didn't offer to do it. They just said it was going to be a few weeks. So I called around and they did bring out a dog.

What I wrote was he wasn't certified for foul play and he came with a police officer. So I don't know if he was more trained in like finding drugs versus finding people. But we had a place that they searched that was of interest. And then after we got done, they took the dog and that dog did actually go on Sean's property. Sean let that dog come on his property, but it didn't find anything.

But on the property that we thought was a place of interest, when we come back and searched it after the dog, our own selves, we found some really weird things. It used to have a house, but it had burned down. We found like a bathtub. It had tin all covered over it, and it was filled all the way up with soil. And we got to digging through the soil, and we found teeth in there. What appeared to be, it looked like charred pieces of bone. And we gave all that information to the police.

Some of the stuff from the searches where we found like knives and bats, we've never heard anything back. I don't know that they actually sent that stuff to the crime lab. From what I'm told, that crime lab is very specific on what they'll accept because they're so backed up. So, I mean, there have been instances where we have found weird things and gave that information to them, but we never got like any updates on what was being done with it.

The police reports also document a search that took place on August 2nd. This was the search with scent dogs that Jamie described. The dogs began at the home of Brent's cousin, the last place he was dropped off on the day he disappeared. From there, they followed a trail down a road, through a field, onto a few other streets before suddenly turning back. That's where the trail ended. The dogs lost Brent's scent. The handler believed that he'd likely been picked up by a vehicle at that spot. They tried again.

The dogs led officers to Sean's residence. When they approached the driveway, the dog pulled back near a van parked outside. The handler noted the dog didn't like something about the area and went on to say that their dogs are trained to avoid drug scents. The handler believed that that's what triggered the reaction. They moved along to the next property, but there was no scent. Brent's trail was gone. And then it started to rain, and the search had to be called off. But that wasn't the last lead.

On September 18th, police received a red cell phone from a woman who said she got it from someone who wished to remain anonymous. She told officers there was evidence of what happened to Brent on the phone. She showed them a map where they could find him. Officers quickly confirmed that the phone belonged to Brent's wife, Sarah. They called her number, and the red phone began ringing. The location on the map was just outside of the Leachville city limits. Officers coordinated with the property owner and planned a search.

Five days later, they returned with cadaver dogs. They searched the area carefully, but once again, they found nothing. In October, another tip came in, and this one was disturbing. Someone claimed that Brent had been given a lethal dose of drugs by three individuals, allegedly while at the home of Sarah's best friend. According to the tipster, after Brent died, his body was cut up and buried near a bridge.

Officers followed up. They brought in a dog to search the area and got a hit. They began to dig. They uncovered what they believed might be a human bone. A photo of the bone was sent to two medical professionals, and they both initially confirmed. It looked human. But when the object was examined more closely, doubts began to surface. Melted edges suggested it wasn't a bone at all, but plastic. By now, it was 10 p.m. Leachville has a city ordinance.

Quiet hours start at 10, and nearby residents were calling in noise complaints about the equipment. The dig had to be shut down. Tensions ran high. Everyone on the scene was upset. Officers tried to calm the bystanders, stating that the site was now being treated as a crime scene and would be under 24-7 surveillance. They spoke to Jamie and told her there was a disagreement about the object. They couldn't confirm for sure if it was a bone or not. The plan was to send a photo to the Arkansas Crime Lab.

If the lab believed it could be human remains, they would accept it for testing. A follow-up report from the next day documented that more items had been recovered, a possible bone, a bat, and a knife. All were collected as potential evidence. Then, months later, on February 1st, another search was conducted, this time near an abandoned house. Several bones were recovered. The report noted concern about how fragile they were. Also on the property, there were barrels filled with a strange purple liquid.

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Over the past several months, Jamie has worked tirelessly to gather information about her brother's disappearance. She's followed up on rumors and tracked down tips. She's handed all of that over to law enforcement, but their response has been disheartening. Authorities have said that all of the information they have is circumstantial. There's no concrete evidence, nothing that clearly points to what happened to Brent, and that, they say, is the roadblock.

Without one piece of undeniable evidence, the investigation has stalled out. And for Jamie, it feels like being stuck in place while time keeps moving forward. She knows what her gut is telling her. But in the eyes of the law, that's not enough.

From what I understood, they kept telling us that the evidence that they have is circumstantial and it's not enough for warrants for phone records or anything, which I don't understand that part of it because I feel like we helped give them a lot of information.

As the months continued to drag on, and the case remained at a standstill, Jamie's frustration grew into something else, resolve. She couldn't sit back any longer and wait for answers that weren't coming, so she took matters into her own hands. Jamie went into Brent's home herself, armed with a bottle of luminol. Jamie told us more about her search.

November 10th, I went to my brother's house. We had some luminal, which they don't really use in investigations anymore, is what I've come to find out after doing it. And we just decided that since the police never marked it off as a crime scene and they were not investigating anything further, that we were going to test it and see if we saw anything ourselves.

Whenever we hired this PI in the very beginning, he had came into my brother's house and taken some pictures and he took a picture of the hallway tile and it looks to be smeared blood. So I was like, let's start here and see what we find. And we sprayed there and it lit up the hallway floor and it led into my brother's room and it had dots, spots, and it lit up from the bottom of one wall to the top of it and

And it didn't on the adjacent walls. So at that time, we did call the police and they came and took pictures of a spring and it lighting up. And they took a few pieces of evidence from my brother's house and sent it off to the crime lab. They actually held the evidence for five weeks before they sent it to the crime lab.

As of right now, we've just been told that it is still processing. They've actually finally marked it off as a crime scene now. They kind of got upset with me for doing that, and I understand that to an extent, but also, if I never did that, we would have never found it. I mean, this is November. They weren't going back to his house and doing anything with it. They actually told us that we could clean it. We only sprayed his bedroom wall, one wall and part of the floor, and

And we sprayed doorknobs. And the whole living room hasn't been touched. The bathroom sink, if something happened here and they washed their hands, you should get the drains. There's going to be DNA evidence. And what was really weird was both door handles were fluorescent blue and the locks too. It was like something bad happened there and somebody was in a hurry to lock the door.

Then they kept trying to tell me, you know, luminol reacts with everything. And I'm like, but my aunt said she did not clean this house with any chemicals whatsoever. She has not cleaned it. She painted his walls, all four walls, the same color paint and only one wall is lighting up. I just find it weird. Jamie didn't stop there. In addition to her own search efforts, she took another step. She sought out the help of a couple private investigators.

We had one, and he's from Missouri, so a little bit of a drive for him. And he worked on everything in the beginning, and he tried to talk to Sarah and Sean, and they weren't very cooperative. We got another guy. His name's Cody. He got added on the case September 19th. He is still helping with the case. He's the one that has actually done a lot of the interviews of the people that were at Sean's that day.

He sent all those to the police. That's how we've kind of pieced together some of the things that started to kind of match up. He's done a few live things on Facebook to try to get some attention and keep Brent's name alive. He took our case actually pro bono.

One aspect of this case that Christy believes can't be overlooked is the dynamic between Brent's wife and the man she called her best friend. It's something that comes up again and again. To her, this relationship doesn't just raise questions. It potentially shifts the entire focus of the case. Was it really just a close friendship, as it was always presented? Or was there more to it? Brent himself had his suspicions. He voiced those concerns before he disappeared.

And Christy, like Jamie, can't ignore that. Because if Brent went looking for his wife that day, and he went straight to this man's house, what exactly did he walk into?

I'll show you this picture right here. This is Brent and her getting married. And this is him over here creeping in the corner that he actually gave her away at their wedding. Brent's cousin was supposed to give her away or something at their wedding. And she disappeared for a few hours that morning before their wedding. And when she come back, she had him with her and he was going to give her away. Initially, she agreed to take a polygraph test and then she evaded the polygraph test

And then in late October or the very first part of November, she went and took the polygraph test. And I know this, my friend, she was actually working both sides at one time until they figured out what she was doing. She was trying to get Sarah by herself. She thought that she would tell her what happened to Brent if she could ever get her alone, but he would never let her alone. He would never let anybody talk to her without him.

him being there. But she went and took the polygraph test and my friend went with them. It was done by CID. She failed it. They asked her three questions and the first one was, did you kill Brent? She said no. Well, she passed that question. And the other question was, do you know who did? And she said no. And she failed that one. And they asked her, do you know where he's at? And she said no. And she failed that one. He has not taken one. She's not telling anything. I think

I think at first she said that they had threatened her life with white supremacy, that if she told that they was going to kill her. She didn't say who. She just said that they threatened her life. I don't know. It's just crazy.

We weren't able to reach Brent's wife, Sarah, for comment, but Christy shared something that offers a rare glimpse into her mindset. She obtained a series of text messages exchanged between Sarah and another individual shortly before she was scheduled to take a polygraph. Here's Christy reading a portion of that conversation when Sarah discussed Brent directly. I really just want you to go so we can get your name as cleared from this matter as we possibly can.

Thank you. I didn't do anything to him. I never wished, must less have anyone to hurt him in any way, nor do I know where he is. I want to know. I just want him back. I want him home. I will not protect a single solitary person about anything to do with Brent missing. We will find out what happened and where he is. I pray to God for them and walk away with my heart shattered, but head up. I just want to do the right thing. I truly love him. I know that he knows that.

Those are the texts between her and my friend when she went to take the lie detector test.

In the months since Brent vanished, various theories have taken hold. Some are rooted in facts, while others are pure speculation, fueled by small-town whispers and the painful void left behind. But there's one thing Brent's loved ones agree on. He didn't just walk away from his life. Brent was close to his mother. He had plans. He told her he'd see her the next day. And he never would have gone this long without reaching out to her, unless something stopped him.

We asked Jamie to share what she believes happened to her brother on July 11, 2024. And though it's just a theory, it's one shaped by months of searching, listening, and living with the unanswered questions.

Yeah, I do have a theory. I think from people that we've talked to that were at Sean's that day, that Sarah showed up at Sean's upset and crying. And what they were told was, do not let Brent in. This girl sees Brent standing in front of the road and she says he's upset and he's with another friend named Ronnie. And she says they shut the door.

And then another person says, Ronnie says that he was with Brent and that they walked off together. I think at some point after his friend may have calmed him down, I think that he did go back to his house. And then from other witnesses that we talked to that were there, they all said that Sean and Sarah left the shop that day and that they said they were going to go to my brother's house to get her some clothes. They said what was weird was when they showed back up, they said,

They didn't have any clothes with them. And what I think happened is that they showed up to maybe get her some clothes. And obviously that didn't go over well with my brother and he was probably upset. And I think someone hurt him in his house and it would have had to been off guard. And I think they were in a hurry to lock the doors and clean up the mess. With Sean being a taxidermist in a shop,

I mean, he has lots of access to chemicals where he can clean up stuff. I've heard from a neighbor that she heard chainsaws going off after Brent went missing at 2 o'clock in the morning. A neighbor of Sean's, it kind of goes along with the pictures. If they're real, if that's Brent in that wheelchair, they use that wheelchair to maneuver him around. I think something bad happened at Brent's house, and I think that they...

Maybe they took care of it at Sean's. They finished everything up. They made a plan for her to go to this shelter the very next day to where she could not be questioned. Just her behavior alone, never reporting him as missing, never looking for him, never posting a flyer.

never contacting his family. I mean, it just don't make any sense. She moves in with the guy as soon as she gets out of this place. That's the address she gives the police. They lived together in that house for a little while, and then what we were told supposedly was Sean's brother didn't like that she was staying there. He didn't like the attention in it, and what we were told was he told her that she had to get out.

And so she actually lives across the street from Sean now. She's staying at her friend's house in a camper. And she has no trespassing signs put up on her camper now.

Christy goes back to the timeline of events, and there are a couple of things that stand out to her. There's a defined timeline of things that Brent's wife and her best friend did on the day that he went missing, but there's also this six-hour gap of time. And on top of that, the fact that Sarah immediately left town and went to a shelter has never sat right with Christy.

On July the 11th, we have his timeline of that day to where they went to a pawn shop. They went to a Cracker Barrel to eat. They went to a Motel 6, stayed the night. There's also on there a six-hour period that his phone was either turned off or they were out of an area that had service. July the 12th, she checked herself into a domestic violence shelter in Searcy, Arkansas.

Arkansas. So she went to the domestic violence shelter, supposedly to a mental health facility after that. When she came out, she was arrested for some old warrants. And when she got let go from being arrested, she moved directly in with the friend. It was 54 days later before she ever one time inquired. And then she only sent a

a message to Brent's minor children. In that message, it said, I wanted to message you and Shay since I first found out about your dad missing. I was in Searcy at a domestic violence shelter and then in Compass Mental Health Hospital for depression for 12 days before I got to come home.

I can't imagine your pain, grief, or anger about not knowing what happened or why or who could be so heartless to cause your dad any harm if someone did. I wanted you to know that I never loved anyone any purer and truer and respected anyone any more than I did your dad.

I always wanted to see him succeed and have peace and happiness, never feeling less than. I tried to show him that there was other ways to live than what he had lived in the past. Always better for him because he deserves it. I know what has and is being said on social media by someone I would have never dreamed would

would be so selfish and cruel. She had made a post on her Facebook, I'm Brent's wife and I just want to bring him home and lay him to rest as he deserves. Everything that she posted was a past tense. She also commented on someone else's Facebook where she said, I had to get out before I couldn't get out. No one really knows why she checked herself in because there wasn't any kind of domestic violence thing that had happened. For

prior to or at this given time. No one's ever got a warrant to go on his property. The only thing he can say is he's innocent. They had just got married. He had had some crazy feelings about it. Something on his Facebook where he posted about he thought he was marrying evil and they were going to take his life and crazy stuff. It was like he knew something was going to happen to him. From what I hear, they had been fighting addiction.

as a lot of people in that area do. But he was trying to stay clean and the wife didn't want to stay clean. Drugs and love did not mix. It kind of was a conflict that he didn't like the friend at all. He kind of felt that they had more of a relationship than just a friendship.

So what happened to Brent McGee after he left his cousin's house on foot on the morning of July 11th, 2024? We know that there are unconfirmed and contradictory eyewitness accounts that place Brent in front of the home of his wife's best friend, someone that Brent had suspected was more than a friend. After that, Brent's trail goes cold. Brent didn't have a phone on him, so there's no digital trail to trace. There was no footage of him and no verifiable sightings. We also know that the day after Brent vanished,

His wife left town and checked herself into a shelter, and later a mental health facility. She never reported her husband missing, nor did she contact his mother or sister to see if they had seen or heard from him, and she hasn't taken part in the search efforts to find her husband. She later resurfaced more than 50 days later, and contacted Brent's children on social media, who were minors at the time. We also learn that there's a gap of time when Brent's wife and her best friend were unaccounted for on the day that Brent disappeared.

Later, photos surface that some believe depict what happened to Brent. While others claim they're fake or they've been doctored, no one knows for sure. The rest of the case has been swallowed by a swirl of disturbing rumors. Some so outlandish, they seem more like scenes from a horror film than anything resembling the truth. Law enforcement has told the family that everything they have is circumstantial, and without hard evidence, there's little more they can do. For now, Brent McGee's disappearance remains a mystery.

But Jamie and Christy refuse to let it stay that way. They won't stop asking questions. They won't stop searching. And they won't stop fighting for answers until the truth about what happened to Brent finally comes to light. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of John Brent McGee, please contact the Mississippi County Sheriff's Office at 870-658-2242 or Crimestoppers at 844-910-STOP.

I mean, they keep saying that they're willing to help and that we haven't given them the opportunity to speak their side, but that's not true. I mean, every time that we try to reach out to them, they don't ever respond or say anything. I mean, it don't make any sense. If you don't have anything to hide, then why don't you give out the information that you have, like where you were that day?

It's all been crazy. I mean, and the lack of cooperation from the police department is like, I don't even know. Of course I have a theory. I mean, I've been doing this since day one, since they contacted me. My brain only thinks of this. I figure in that six-hour period that his phone is off or out of service, where it says driving 0.1 miles, so from 2:16 p.m. to 8:27 p.m., his phone was out of service.

So he was supposedly seen standing in that yard around noon. So I figured between 2:16 p.m. and 8:27 p.m., they were killing him and disposing of his body. That's my theory.

That brings us to the end of episode 488. I'd like to thank Jamie and Christy for speaking with us. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a key submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook.

You can also find us on Instagram. If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and review. You can also support the show by contributing on Patreon, where you can get early and ad-free episodes. Be sure to tune in next week. We'll be covering a case from Colorado. Thanks for listening.

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Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.