Shownotes Transcript
I've never been involved in something where there were so many different stories to one girl's disappearance, and we still don't know what's happened to her. And so I kind of made a vow to my family that no matter what, I was going to find out what happened to this, what happened to Sandy. And I just felt a 17-year-old girl doesn't deserve to be killed, doesn't deserve to be chopped up, doesn't deserve to be put in a well or a hole in the ground, and that she deserves some closure.
On September 19, 1984, 17-year-old Sandy Ray was last seen at the Windsor Bowling Alley in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
At the time, Sandy's cousin was working at the bowling alley, and the two had a brief conversation. Sandy made a phone call, but it's unclear exactly who she called. She mentioned to her cousin that she was going to a party and asked if he wanted to join her. Her cousin declined. He couldn't abandon his shift.
Her cousin walked away to go clean up a lane, and around 8:30 p.m., when he looked up, he saw Sandy walking out of the bowling alley. She appeared to be in quite a hurry. This is the last confirmed sighting of Sandy Ray.
In the years following Sandy's disappearance, many people have come forward with tales of what happened to the teenager. Stories that connected her to other young women in the area who had disappeared or were murdered. Some of these stories seemed unbelievable. Tales of local corruption at many levels. Several years ago, one of Sandy's cousins, a classmate and a local reporter banded together to dig for answers and hopefully find the truth.
I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 219 of The Vanished, Sandy Ray's story. I just learned that 85% of people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. You sign up for something, forget about it after the trial period ends, then you're charged month after month after month.
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Discover exclusive Audible Originals, hotly anticipated new releases, and must-listen bestsellers that hook you from the first minute. Because Audible knows there's no greater thrill than the one that speaks to you. Discover what lies beyond the edge of your seat. Start your free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonderypod. That's audible.com slash wonderypod. Back in September of 1984, Sandy Ray was just 17 years old.
but she had already moved out of her family's home and was living with a friend while sandy was known to be a good student outside of school she was also known to run with a tough crowd that liked to party before moving out at 17 sandy lived at home with her mom carol and her siblings we were contacted by sandy's cousin johnny who asked us to cover her story when
When we spoke with Johnny, he told us more about Sandy's life leading up to her disappearance. When she disappeared, I was probably 18 or 19 when she disappeared. She had just turned 17 at the time. She was living with her friend, Christy Murrell, and her mother.
And Sandy's upbringing, and I love my family, my dad's side of the family, who I wasn't around a whole lot of times growing up. But, you know, Carol was one of those kind of people that, not to say she wasn't the best of mothers. I think she loved her kids. I think Carol had her own issues. And, you know, by the time Sandy disappeared, Michelle, who was her oldest daughter, was already gone out of the house. Michelle would have been like my age, 18 or 19 at the time.
And Sandy wasn't living at home. And, you know, that just it was just a kind of a convoluted situation. I just don't think their home life was as good as it could have been. We asked Johnny if he could tell us more about who Sandy was and what her personality was like.
Sandy was, I would call her a butterfly, a free spirit. You know, she was one of those kind of girls who always had a smile on her face, always wanted to be where the best parties were at, always wanted to have fun. And I think in a way that ended up being part of her downfall is because she trusted the wrong people. But,
But, you know, I always remember her just being this free-spirited butterfly type creature. You know, it was very popular. And I wouldn't say she was in the in crowd, the real popular, popular people, because she hung around kind of a rough crowd. But Sandy got along with everybody. She'd actually just been voted VICA class treasurer or vice president.
few weeks before her disappearance. So, you know, she was what I would say a girl who attended school, did very well in school, and even though she wasn't living at home, she still attended school, made sure she went to school, made sure she kept her grades up. And I think she definitely was someone that had aspirations for her life, you know, outside of maybe the people that she was hanging around at the moment, the
that may have led to her death. That was just a very drug-induced error, and the people that she hung around with partied hard, and there wasn't probably a lot that they didn't do. I knew some of these people growing up, and even though there might have been a couple years difference in age, everybody in Shawnee knew everybody. It's a small community, 24, 25,000, so everybody knew everybody. And I knew some of the people that she hung out with, and they were not good people.
She seemed to think that she had found a niche and people that she could hang out with and have fun with. And that's what she did, basically, up until her disappearance. But, you know, as a kid, she was funny, smart, very pretty, very cute. And everybody who knew her, especially the guys, everybody wanted to go out with her. She was that kind of girl. Johnny told us what he knows about the day that Sandy disappeared.
Sandy was living with her friend, Christy, when she disappeared. And she was at the local Bowen Alley on September 19th of 1984.
And she was seen inside of the Bowen Alley. One of her family members, one of her cousins actually was working at the Bowen Alley and had seen her inside the Bowen Alley and actually had spoken with her. And she said that she was going to try and catch a ride from someone. And she was there for a few minutes and left. That was the last time she's ever been seen.
For this story, we contacted the Shawnee Police Department and asked them for an interview, but they declined. We also put in a record request. They sent us a two-page document from 1984, which gives us a little more detail about the day that Sandy disappeared. The report says that on September 21, 1984, Carol Ray filled out and filed a report of an unauthorized absence on her 17-year-old daughter, Sandy.
Sandy was last seen by her family and friends on September 19, 1984.
Sandy had left her place of residence sometime after 7 p.m., dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt. She was en route to Windsor Bowl in a convenience store to buy cigarettes. Sandy is believed to have reached the bowling alley just after 8 p.m. and left quite hurriedly around 8.30 p.m. While at the bowling alley, Sandy made a phone call, but it's unknown for sure as to who she called.
She also talked with her cousin, Jerry. Jerry works at the alley and was working that night.
He took time to talk with Sandy, approximately 15 minutes. During the course of the conversation, Sandy made the statement, Danny's picking me up, and made mention of a party, asking Jerry if he wanted to go. Jerry advised her no, he had to work. He then left Sandy for a few minutes to go clean up a lane. When Jerry looked back to where he had left Sandy, he saw her leaving in what appeared to be quite a hurry.
It was unknown as to whether Sandy was leaving alone or if someone had arrived to pick her up. All efforts to locate Sandy have been futile. She did not have a reason to run from home and had taken no personal belongings with her. That report is the only document that the Shawnee Police Department released to us.
back when this happened at first johnny wasn't immediately aware that sandy was missing he found out in the weeks after and he told us about his initial suspicions
I had heard probably, oh, maybe a week or two after her disappearance that she hadn't been seen. Well, the first person that I thought of that needed to be questioned was her boyfriend, Danny McCloud. Now, Danny was my age, so he was a couple years older than Sandy. And I knew him as being a real rough, thuggy kind of guy. And everybody that he ran around with were what we would consider thugs. You know, back then we called them hoods. And that's what they were. They were the hoods. They were the rough guys. And they were...
They were just a very rough living dynamic with those guys and always in trouble. You always heard stories about bad things they did to girls and what they did to girls when, you know, they partied with them and things like that. So, you know, the first thing I thought of was, well, Danny McCloud's involved.
There was a witness who believes they saw Sandy days after she was last seen at the bowling alley. This was a person who knew Sandy, which makes it a more legitimate sighting than just a stranger. However, Johnny told us that, as far as he knows, the police haven't taken it seriously.
We have one person who gave us eight pages from a journal from September 21st, 1984, who said she saw her two days later at 7 o'clock in the morning at a local convenience store in Shawnee and that she was in the backseat of a green Impala and that there was a gentleman holding her down and that she was
screaming and hollering for help. And that the guy in the front seat was reaching back like he was trying to push her down as well. And this girl knew Sandy. She knew who she was and recognized her. And she said to me, she'll never forget the look in her eyes at that moment they made eye contact and she knew that it was Sandy. She said about that time another car pulled up and it was Sandy's
boyfriend and his best friend, Danny McLeod and Glenn Byrd. And they conversed with the two gentlemen and they followed each other like they might have been going towards Tecumseh, Oklahoma, which is a small town just minutes away from Shawnee.
She said she ran inside, called the local police, tried to explain to them what was going on, and she acted like they were reluctant to believe her. So she hung up the phone, gets in her car, takes off to see if she can catch up with them and could not find them. That's the only person who's seen Sandy after September 19th or after her supposed disappearance date.
So I have eight pages copies that she had given me. Now, we gave copies of that to local law enforcement, but they're reluctant to believe some story for whatever reason. Now,
If you know Shawnee back in the 80s, there were a lot of kids in that era. It was a very drug-induced era in Shawnee. So a lot of these people that we're dealing with today were partiers, drug users, and kind of all hung around this circle of people. Now, F***er, who lives in Arkansas now, told us the main reason she left Shawnee was because of those two individuals, Danny McCloud and Glenn Byrd, would see her and kind of harass her because...
She had seen Sandy that morning and saw them there with the two gentlemen when Sandy was in the car. And she had confronted them about that. And they had told her that basically Sandy was a bitch. She would never be seen again. And if she didn't stop asking questions, she would be next. And she ended up leaving Shawnee because she was in fear of her life as well. But we just happened to run across this information.
Sandy's case went cold for several decades. Lots of rumors swirled around the small town of Shawnee, but nothing concrete ever surfaced. Several years ago, Johnny and a couple of others decided to do their own investigation into Sandy's disappearance. That's when they began gathering all the information they could find about what happened to Sandy.
We created a Facebook page, oh, six years ago, called Let's Find Sandy when we decided we were going to do our own investigation. At that point, it had been 20-something years. Nothing had really been done.
And so we thought, okay, let's see what we can do to find new information that we can give the local authorities to help them. Well, it really ended up becoming kind of a mess because every time we would take some new information to law enforcement, the first thing they would do is tell the people that we brought to them not to talk to us anymore. And it was frustrating because we felt like we were gaining better information and more information about Sandy's case and what law enforcement was.
When we met with Detective Gibson at the time, when I did, this was five or six years ago,
My file was bigger than the file that he had as far as information that had been obtained over the years. And so basically we gave them every bit of information that we had. So basically, you know, the last six years, me along with a girl named Robin Reed and another girl named Mindy, who is an investigator, kind of a freelance writer, works for, I think she works out of UConn, Oklahoma now for the local newspaper there.
We've basically been doing this investigation on our own, trying to come up with new evidence as to where Sandy may be. And we have actually about three locations right now where we're trying to coordinate with local law enforcement to see if we can get some digs done and see if we can find out where she's at. And if at least she's not there, at least we're making progress and finding out where she's not.
But right now, in the past, we've had separate locations that we think that she's at. Since they've started their own investigation, they've been piecing together the different stories that they've gotten from various people in an attempt to find answers. You would think that this would start to clear things up. But in this case, there are so many stories that it's made things more murky.
And there's just some really weird things that took place after Sandy's disappearance or at the same time.
Sandy had been dating a guy named Danny McCloud off and on for a couple of years prior to her disappearance. And actually up to the night of her disappearance, she had been with him a night or two before. And there had been a fight that took place and he injured his ankle or knee in this altercation that they had. And so there was some direct contact basically right up to the time that she disappeared. Well, the night that she disappeared, September 19th,
Sandy's boyfriend's father asked to borrow my Aunt Carol's vehicle, which was Sandy's mother, which we all thought to be very unusual. On the night that Sandy disappears, Sandy's boyfriend or ex-boyfriend's father borrows Carol's car. Now, Carol stated to us that when she got the car back, that next morning that she found a lot of dirt in the truck that she thought that was very unusual.
And this individual who said she saw Sandy two days later said that she saw a gentleman, an older gentleman, driving Carol's car that night that actually picked up Danny McCloud and Glenn Bird, Sandy's boyfriend and his best friend. We felt like there might be a tie that actually the father had maybe taken part in the cover-up. And we've heard that since then that Danny McCloud's father, Jim McCloud, who just passed away,
that actually was the one that helped cover up and dispose of the body. So there's some weird ties to that family and what their relationship to the case may be. Well, this Glenn Bergfellow, who was Danny McCloud's best friend, their families are somehow related through marriage or something because we had a young girl that I talked to about four years ago, five years ago named Jamie. And Jamie's related
both the Byrds and the McClouds. And she told me that her mother told her that on her grandfather Byrd's deathbed, that he told the family never to discuss Sandy's case. So my thing is, is that, you know, when you're on your deathbed and your family is all around, why would you bring up a disappearance of some girl 20 something years ago, unless there was some direct correlation between what happened to Sandy and your family?
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So many of the stories or rumors about what happened to Sandy include this guy that she had dated, Danny. They all seem to be similar, but slightly different. One of the biggest rumors over the last 33 years was that she was buried underneath their pawn shop. About a month after Sandy disappeared, maybe two months, Max went missing.
They filled that basement in of their pawn shop with about 12 foot of sand. And there was a rumor that they had concreted that in, but I don't know that they did. I know they filled it in with something, but we were able to do a ground penetrating radar about four years ago on that property that did not show up anything. So we were a little disappointed because that was one of the main rumors over the years. But then we had someone that came forward after that and said, well, they actually didn't bury her under the,
the McLeod pawn shop side, they buried her under the Cooper pawn shop side, which was a pawn shop next door. And they did so just in case anybody ever looked. They wouldn't think to look at the pawn shop next door. Now, that's an area we have not investigated yet or had the police check, but we did have somebody come forward and say that they knew some of the people back then, and that's what the story was. So again,
Sandy's family has had their suspicions about the connection between Danny's family and local law enforcement from the very beginning.
The detective in charge was Detective Charlie Phillips. Well, one of his best friends was Jim McCloud, and Jim McCloud's son was my cousin's boyfriend. And back then, all the police officers hung out at the local pawn shop. And so I even had a witness statement from a young lady at the time. She's older now. She's probably in her 60s now. And she was a secretary and worked for Detective Charlie Phillips.
And she told me that on numerous occasions, she delivered packages from Detective Phillips to Jim McCloud. Now, when we first started doing this investigation, I discussed this case with Detective Gibson, who was in charge at the time. And he told me that he found no direct correlation between or a relationship between Detective Charlie Phillips and Jim McCloud. And I kept telling him they knew each other. They were part of the same organization.
Masonic Lodge. They bowled together. Those guys hung out. They used to eat at Hamburger King all the time. And so I think he was reluctant to believe that for whatever, but we actually had a witness that actually said that she used to deliver packages to Jim McCloud. So we felt that there was a tie between Charlie Phillips and Jim McCloud. The fact that maybe Charlie was
hiding information that he did not want to be forthright about. And about five months after my cousin's disappearance, my Aunt Carol saw Charlie Phillips as she was going to the police station one day, and he was coming out.
She stopped him and said, hey, what are you guys doing to try and find my daughter? He said, there's things about this case that I can't tell you. There's things about this case that you'll never know. But I can tell you this. We'll never find your daughter.
Now, who said that to a mother whose daughter is missing unless you know something? You know, you're still early into the investigation. She's been gone a few months. And so it's like, who says that? So, you know, that's one thing that always stuck with me. He, to this very day, has never talked to local law enforcement about anything that he may know. They
They've refused to question him because he was a police officer. He was also a police officer who was demoted from detectives back to patrol officer because he pistol whipped an individual. But he later regained his detective status. But he's never been questioned. He's still alive in Shawnee to this day.
One theory that surfaced after Sandy disappeared was that she was involved in something called suit parties. These parties were allegedly going on in the local area and involved prominent members of the community having sex with underage teens in exchange for drugs and alcohol.
So over the years, what we've found out was that two possible scenarios we felt were very prevalent over any of the other stories. And I've never been involved in something where there were so many different stories to one girl's disappearance. And one was that she might have been killed because she was pregnant by maybe someone who was higher up in the community. And back in the 80s in Pottawatomie County, there were a lot of sex parties back then, which judges, lawyers...
Business people, people in the community attended at different locations throughout Shawnee. Well, they were really smart because what they catered to basically were girls who came from broken homes, girls who, if they came up missing, might not be noticed right away. So they were very smart about who they catered to. And we've actually gotten statements from people who've attended these parties and what took place.
So we know that Sandy had been to those, and we actually – Sandy had even admitted to some people that she had stolen potentially some cocaine from a local attorney named Gary Jay at one of these parties.
Well, Gary Jay just passed away, and he was in prison for molesting boys. And he was the juvenile attorney in Pottawatomie County and handled all the juvenile cases over years and years and years, maybe 20 or 25 years. And so he actually was arrested and convicted of basically having sex with these boys and ended up going to prison for it. And Sandy had said about a month before her disappearance that,
she thought some people were after her. And she wouldn't elaborate a whole lot that we think there could have been a tie there. But other than speculation, I really don't have anything from that. You know, you want to try and sometimes believe some of these stories that may seem a little far-fetched as far as the sex parties or there being conspiracy theories. And the Red Dirt Journal came up with a really good story several years ago about
the suits and the sex parties and things like that. We certainly know they existed. Absolutely, we know. We have enough information that we know those took place. Whether or not somebody went as far as killing Sandy, we don't know, but we know that they definitely catered to a certain type of individual.
Johnny told us that he learned that the police department had hired two private investigators to look into Sandy's disappearance, and that one of them seemed to believe that Sandy's disappearance was related to these alleged suit parties and had developed a potential suspect.
One of the other stories was that, you know, it was someone who attended some of these sex parties and that maybe she had taken something that didn't belong to her that got her killed. When the private detectives were investigating the case, they seemed to think that she might have been pregnant by an attorney and that maybe he had something to do with her death. He's a very corrupt attorney in Pottawatomie County in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and
And he has a reputation for doing away with people and hiring people to do that. And we actually know some information about some of that. I've actually got witness statements from his daughters who he's estranged from because they've known some of the things he's been capable of. One thing that you learn about dealing with people like this is that everybody has everybody's back. All those attorneys have their back. Law enforcement has their backs. It's really hard to...
Another theory that they've heard involves Sandy's boyfriend and several of those close to him.
Well, the other main story that we've heard over the years that I feel probably is the most prominent was that she got picked up that night by one of her friends, potentially Danny, who was her boyfriend, and Glenn Bird, who was his best friend. She was taken to a location in Shawnee where they were partying, doing drugs. Now, we've heard two different versions of two different people who wanted to have sex with her, and she refused.
We were told that she was knocked unconscious, shot up, and they all had sex with her and then killed her afterwards. Now, we had kind of two different versions as to how she was killed. One was that basically after they all had sex with her, they shot her up and overdosed her and she died and they buried her underneath the house. And that Jim McLeod, Danny McLeod's father, bought a portable shed,
put it in the backyard of his house, and three days later, in the middle of the night, they dug the body up, chopped her up, and then they buried her by the railroad tracks. So we do have a statement there of someone who said they saw something, and he's been willing to go to police, and I don't know if they were reluctant to believe his story or what, but he said he would testify in her oath, in court, in everything. The story that we heard was that he ended up taking...
her to his mother's house where he was staying at the time, had sex with her some more, and then choked her dead and killed her. And she's buried behind this septic tank on their property still. And about six months ago, we had a girlfriend, someone who lives on that property, and it may be a relative who was working on that septic tank and actually found some human bones and a wallet. Now,
The person that told us this said it wasn't Sandy's purse that they found, but they don't know who the bones were. And this person buried the bones back there and left them.
What's real interesting about this Glenn Bird fellow is that he had told his ex-wife or ex-girlfriend that not only had he killed Sandy, but he also killed a lady by the name of Melody Garden, who disappeared about three months before Sandy. And she's never been found. Her husband was found stabbed to death. And he told her that he actually killed all of them. We also have witness statements.
from one or two people that said he'd actually held them hostage for up to a week or more before they either escaped or someone came and found them and helped them escape. So potentially this Byrd, this Glenn Byrd fellow, we think actually could be a serial killer. His cousin Richard Byrd was sent to prison, oh, 15 or 20 years ago because he
He overdosed a girl and then threw her body in a dump, and he actually went to prison for improper disposal of a corpse. So there's a very weird dynamic with this family, this Glenn DeBird family, is what we call them in Shawnee. So, you know, this is just a very interesting story with a lot of twists, a lot of turns, a lot of unusual dynamics involved.
With all of the different scenarios in this story, some of them seem too wild to be true. Were these alleged suit parties actually happening? Is there a large-scale cover-up? We spoke to a local reporter, Mindy Wood, who has been covering Sandy's case for many years. She told us how she became interested in Sandy's story.
I started doing investigative reporting for a news outlet, a digital news outlet called Red Dirt Report. I had completed a couple of investigative stories for them already.
And I ran across this case and became interested in it. And it just captivated me. I don't know. It still hasn't let go of me, despite changing places to go in terms of employment and such. I'm no longer a freelance reporter. I worked for three newspapers in Canadian County. But I do still continue to look into it when I can. I think...
I think the things that stood out to me were how old this case is to begin with. It just felt like
an underdog case. I know that the new star has always done, faithfully done a story on it every year, but I wasn't sure what was being done on the case, what more could be done on the case. And the thing that stood out to me as well is just Fandi, her personality, her story. You know, here's this bright, outgoing, sweet, friendly young girl who just vanished.
And it's just, especially in 1984, Shawnee at the time was a pretty small town. How does that happen? How do you just disappear and nobody knows what happened to you? That's a little harder to accomplish, I think, maybe in a small town. And so I was concerned about corruption. I was concerned about, I just couldn't fathom how this happened and continued to look into it. I found that
Well, first of all, there were a lot of theories. A case this old is going to have a lot of different stories, and those stories get repeated and a little bit gets added to it. It's a very difficult case to look into because there's no crime scene. There's no body. It's a hard case. But as I began to look into it more and more, a recurring story kept coming up. A recurring group of names kept coming up.
Mindy told us that she's tracked down several people who claim to have been at these suit parties back in the 80s.
I ended up actually finding first-person victims, people who claim to be victims of a scheme to pair up young girls and in some cases young boys, I would say in the teenage years between 13 to 17, 18, with the drugs that they wanted, the parties that they wanted in exchange for sex, either willingly or
or unwillingly under the influence of drugs being incapacitated, passed out. Those are the two things that I was hearing. I spoke to at least three people who said that they were victims of that time, implicating the same guys, a judge, several attorneys, at least one police officer. No, sorry, that's actually two police officers.
It's very disconcerting to think that this was going on. And these victims don't know each other. You know, I'm finding them, talking with them. One of them was a male prostitute at the time who was servicing some of these attorneys and the judge and walked in and saw about a 10, 11-year-old little boy sitting next to the judge with
with the judge's license plate sitting next to the boy. Well, at the time, there was a judge in Shawnee who I believe had a license plate that said judge on the back of it. So if you're going to show up and you're going to commit a crime, you don't want to do that with a car that will stand out. So there was a lot of cocaine. Cocaine was king in the 80s. That was a big drug. That's still the rich man's drug. But that's what was coming through, mostly was cocaine.
marijuana, some other drugs, I guess, but cocaine was the big thing. And one of the attorneys, as you know, was eventually caught abusing the minors that had been entrusted to his care as legal counsel, and that's Gary Jay. But nobody else, nobody else went down with him. And I, to this day, I still don't know why. I don't know why he did try to make a deal. If he didn't try to make a deal, I don't know. But he was implicated in an incident
Between himself and some minor boys, cocaine was on the table, marijuana, pornos, you know, playing. And one of the boys actually testified against him for sexual abuse. He is now dead. I spoke to a gentleman who used to run an organization to fight human trafficking. It's called Oklahomans Against Trafficking Humans.
And I brought this investigation before him and said, you know, are you seeing this in other places? Is this still something that's going on? And he informed me that it is going on in every major city in the United States. But this stuff is still happening. Where you have supply and demand, you have a system of exchange. It's simply the nature of it, good or bad.
We also spoke to one of Sandy's classmates, Robin. She has an interest in the unsolved cases in their local community and has worked with Johnny and Mindy to gather information about Sandy's disappearance. I was Sandy's friend in high school. We were in a lot of classes together. She went missing her junior year, never got to graduate with us. Several other girls also have gone missing through the years.
Robin told us more about Gary Jay.
Gary Jay was a public attorney in Shawnee and he went to prison finally. He had molested a 10-year-old boy and before he did that, he made the boy shave all his hairs and everything off and he was disposing of them. Well, the little boy after he was molested told his parents what happened and said, "I hid my hair that he shaved from me in the cabinet in his bathroom behind whatever."
And the cops went there and found the damn hair and he's in prison. Now, if you go to topics on Shawnee, about Shawnee, and find Gary J.'s name, there's 200 victims of his as grown men that are speaking forward. You know, he's just the only one that really got caught. We don't know for certain that these parties had anything to do with Sandy's disappearance.
But if they were in fact happening, it does seem to suggest that there was some sort of corruption going on locally. Because of who was involved, you have somebody, this attorney at the time,
worked for the district attorney's office. I mean, not, you know, not very high on the total poll at the time, but, but if, if he truly was involved, he's working for the DA's office, you'd have somebody in there. And then you've got a couple of other attorneys, a judge, a couple of cops. I mean, you have, you've kind of got your bases covered. And so who do you get on your side when you start to blow the whistle?
And how is it not going to be covered up? We're dealing with well-educated, sophisticated men of means.
They know how to cover up evidence. They know how to pick their victims. They know that these guys, nobody's going to believe them. To the credit of the Shawnee Police Department, and I cannot stress this enough, they caught Gary J. They had heard the stories for 30 years what he was doing to these kids. And it took the right circumstances, the right place at the right time to get him. What had been a problem in the past trying to nail Gary J.,
was they would get a victim and the victim would say, yeah, I'll do it. I'll talk. And then the next thing you know, they stopped talking and they're driving around a brand new red Corvette. They got bought off. They had a pressure to silence. So,
tough to deal with when you're a kid. You may or may not have the support of your parents behind you. You know, you could be completely alone in that. You know, there's probably, we had heard that there were witnesses who were threatened into keeping their mouths shut. So it's very hard to catch them. It really is. But I will say the SPD, they got Gary Jay and I applaud them for that. We have different people in positions and positions of power now that I think have a bit more courage or weren't connected to that corruption in the past.
It's also more difficult because of the technology age, too. A cop can't really hide from GPS. They have to check in. They have to report their locations. That location is, you know, with attorneys, that's a different story. There's so much more accountability with the digital age than we had with the paper and pencil age, as it were. Mindy told us about some evidence they've uncovered that ties Sandy to these parties.
The night before Sandy disappeared, she went to a party. She calls up her sister and says, oh my gosh, I'm at this party. You won't believe who's here. Everybody's here. And she's talking about everybody who's anybody in Shawnee. You know, her mother told me that the kids called it soup parties. You know, her mother talked about what Sandy had told her about them and Carol didn't want her doing that, but she couldn't stop her. And there's just too many people telling the same story
For me to think that there wasn't something to this, that it wasn't really happening, it's sad. I don't know that there will ever be justice. The night that Sandy was last seen, there was a party at the lake. It looked to me like the address and who owned the property at the time, it looked like it was probably a suit party. And this is on a Wednesday night in September in 1984. So because they never could identify a crime scene, they never could identify which party she was actually at.
There were several different parties that night and people said, oh, yeah, she was here. Yeah, I think I saw her. Well, she couldn't have been at all those parties that night in this time span. I mean, come on, you know, where was she actually? That was a problem, too, identifying precisely where she had been after she left the bowling alley.
Well, with whom she left the bowling alley. That was a problem, too. She did run around with a crowd that was kind of rough around the edges. We have reason to believe someone in her circle of peers, of friends, may have been responsible for her death. But there's also a story that's gone around fairly consistently that she had stolen cocaine from Gary J. And Gary J. may have, you know, may have...
forced her to pay retribution for that crime against him. I don't know. But I did speak to a detective in the Shawnee Police Department, and he did make a good point. When you have a case like this, and you haven't found the body all these years later, he said it's usually going to be one guy that did it and kept his mouth shut.
If you had a group of her friends who gang raped her or they're at a party and she passes out and they find out that she's actually dead and they bury her, it's typically a matter of time before one of those guys comes forward or they talk about it and tell somebody and ultimately give the location of that body, which we've heard that story many times. We've heard that story, but yet nobody has come forward to tell us where she's buried. So I don't know.
I think it could have been a person acting alone. It could be a group of people who are scared of each other and scared of the law and don't want to go to jail.
More than a year before Sandy disappeared, a 14-year-old friend of hers died in a local motel room in what appeared to be a botched abortion. She had been injected with several nerve-suppressing drugs that had been stolen from a local medical center. Mindy, Johnny, and Robin believe that there are ties between those involved in the death of Sandy's friend, Cindy Terry, and those who some say are involved in Sandy's disappearance.
Cindy Terry and Sandy were good friends. And the night that Cindy Terry went to the motel for a party, Sandy told her, don't go to the party. I've got a bad feeling about that party. And she went and sure enough, she was shot up with nerve suppressing drugs. A mock abortion was performed on her. She was pregnant with Glen Bird's child.
A couple of these attorneys show up. She's gargling and gagging to death on the bed. They don't do anything about it. And this all comes out in court. I have the transcripts. You know, she was connected to some of these people. She knew what was going on. She was around, but I don't believe she was in the hotel that night. Robin told us more about Cindy Terry and another young woman who died at one of these parties.
to Cindy Terry, 14 and pregnant, brought to a hotel room to abort her child. Perm solution was in douche bottles and coat hangers in the hotel room. She was injected with four different nerve suppressing drugs. That's what killed her. The guy that rented the room got a nine month contributing to the delinquency of a minor charge.
Two attorneys were in the room to deliver him a $42,000 check for a civil rights violation that they did when they arrested him on a burglary of a pharmacy. Long story short, that's the drugs they used to shoot her up.
And two attorneys were in that room at noon. She was half nude and gurgling. They didn't call for assistance. They covered her with a blanket because they didn't think she'd want to be exposed. At 10:30 at night, they call for assistance and she's dead. And so is her child. So her death certificate and autopsy read four different nerve suppressing drugs within her system.
Now, my point to that is after the first nerve suppressing drugs, there's zero chance she could have given herself the other three. Why did the death certificate read OD when she didn't do this to herself? And then a year after the trial was over for the boy who rented the room, who had stolen those nerve suppressing drugs from a pharmacist, once that trial was over,
The death certificate was changed from overdose to homicide. Now, the transcripts, the one guy that we think had something to do with Sandy, he claims it's his baby. We all think it's the attorney's baby. Well, because those are the guys that did the soup party. So they would have these young guys get these young girls addicted. So they would get everybody addicted. And then the girls would start coming for the party, you know, coming for the party to get the drugs.
And then the next thing they're knocked up and that's when they go missing. Jo Beth Land, pregnant and almost decapitated and dumps, you know, just dumps. It's disgusting.
It's easy to look at similar situations and wonder if they're connected. Is there some sort of pattern? Robin told us about another woman who disappeared a month after the death of Cindy Terry and before Sandy Ray went missing. Her name was Melody Jones. She was just 19 years old. Robin says that there are some circumstances that could connect these cases. Circumstances that she simply cannot ignore.
So Cindy Terry, the little girl in the hotel room that I told you about, Melody Garten-Jones, still missing, murdered husband, worked at that hotel as a cleaning lady. And two weeks later, she's missing and her husband's dead. So the question is, did she know too much? Did she see everybody in the room? What'd she know? We did our due diligence. We've seen the court transcripts, 300 pages. We know those attorneys were in there. We know they covered her with a blanket. So my next question is,
Josh Lunsford, who is the one that rented the room and had the civil rights violation case that was being paid the $42,000 when the attorney showed up, his girlfriend, who he married during the trial, brought Cindy Terry to that location. She was never tried for the murder of Cindy and the child.
Glenn Bird claims it's his baby. We suspect he's the one that injected her with Josh's drugs. Nobody was tried for that. Glenn wasn't. He wasn't. Josh Lunsford got the nine months for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Okay, so two more factors that are quite important. Cindy Terry's death certificate.
Red overdose at the time of Josh Lunsford's trial. After the trial was completed, Mr. Snow Snowden or snow. I think it was Snowden. He changed the death certificate to read homicide, which it currently reads. And we actually have a copy of both of those. So, and so Josh Lunsford gets contributed to delinquency because it was an overdose. She did it to herself. So Sandy Ray, uh,
She was known to frequent what we call suit parties. The definition of that are businessmen. They always wore suits. They were attorneys. They were judges.
They were police officers. They were always had a suit. So that's why we coined the phrase suit parties. So Sandy had told her mother she'd been to some of these suit parties. We suspect Sandy was pregnant, but we do not know for sure. It kind of turns out that are these girls going missing once they become pregnant? Because all of these suits were married.
and we can't have any little babies popping up and all these problems. So we have three that were pregnant and disappeared if Sandy was pregnant. We don't know about Melody's condition, if she was pregnant or not. We suspect that Sandy was pregnant due to a letter that her mother has that says, if Sandy comes back from Oklahoma City with a baby, we're going to have to tell somebody. So it was...
It was just a suspicion on our part from a letter given to us by her mother. We think it was a lot of corruption within the town. We think all these cases are really connected through cover-up, through what have you. We do know there's missing evidence from the evidence room in Shawnee PD for Melody Garten-Jones. Paul Jones' mother had located a pair of scissors with tissue that was crammed down in the couch.
They were handed over to Sheriff, at the time, Paul Abel, and then I assume to the evidence room, and they are no longer in the evidence room. You were in the party scene. They were doing some really horrific things. They were doing meth. They were doing heroin. They were doing crack. They were doing coke. They were doing everything you can imagine.
Now we bring these people forward 35 years later for Sandy's disappearance, and they discredit them because they were all druggies. So now the problem is, if you are the gatekeeper, if you're discrediting everybody because of what they did in their past, we're never going to move forward. You know, it just seems like everything is being blocked from the higher up.
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Johnny told us that he doesn't feel like local law enforcement has done enough to find Sandy and bring those responsible for her disappearance to justice.
I feel like the local law enforcement really haven't been aggressive enough to find out where she stopped because you still have all these unanswered questions because you're really not being proactive enough. And I understand that, you know, when it comes to cold cases, you might have limited resources. There's a lot of new things that you're taking care of in the process. But we just want to make sure that Sandy's not forgotten because we feel that there are people that are responsible for her disappearance who are still walking this earth to this very day.
Some of the problems that you run into is that law enforcement just considers it hearsay. Every time we give them new information, hey, this person said they saw this. Well, it's just hearsay. Unless they saw the bones themselves, all they heard was their friend said they saw the bones. And so, again, they're reluctant to act upon that. Basically, what they told us is we need to find a body, and once we find a body,
Then we'll start making arrests. But, you know, we've got to have the right information from the right person in order to find the body. So it's a little frustrating on our end, but, you know, you just have to keep plugging away and you just have to keep digging and digging and trying to find as much new information as you can.
I feel like over the years, part of the biggest problem coming from Pottawatomie County is the reluctance of the local law enforcement to get involved to the point that we were ready and tried to get them to turn it over to the OSBI. You know, the OSBI, the only way they can get involved is from the attorney general, local district attorney, chief of police, and there's one other way to get involved. And we tried to get the local law enforcement to hand it over to them because we just felt like it was too close to home.
for them to delve into it properly. But they're still in charge of it, and supposedly there's a new detective who's in charge of it now. We just hope that they're actively pursuing this, that they realize, too, that there are people that committed murder who are walking the streets of Shawnee to this very day that are still alive, and that it's worth it to pursue this in a way that they're aggressively seeking information as to what happened to her.
Mindy believes that possible corruption around the time of Sandy's disappearance may be why no one ever came forward with the information that could solve this case.
Even in cases where you are absolutely terrified of the perpetrator, time and distance tends to create more courage and boldness, too. You know, if you're living 10 states away, I'm not afraid of that guy. He's in prison anyway. Another problem, too, is that particularly in the 80s and even all the way into the 90s and early 2000s,
A lot of these guys didn't trust the cops because they knew cops were kind of part of the problem. They knew they were part of allowing the cocaine and the drugs to come in. There were a couple of cops spotted at one of these parties. So they're like going, no, I'm not going to the cops. Are you kidding me? Same thing was happening in Ada around that same time, too, where there was a couple of cops who were dealing cocaine in Ada around the same time.
Mindy also wrote about another theory in one of her pieces about Sandy. This theory involved Sandy's stepfather. A friend of Sandy's said that her stepfather Jim had an inappropriate sexual conversation with Sandy. Sandy had also told a sibling that she had caught him peeping on her when she was in the shower. Beyond his alleged inappropriate sexual interest in Sandy, it's unclear if there's any further evidence that would point to him.
One man that gets brought up a lot in this story is Glenn Bird. He was a friend of Sandy's boyfriend and had connections to the suit parties as well. He also claims to be the father of Cindy Terry's baby. I looked at Glenn Bird's criminal record and to call it extensive would be an understatement.
He has been charged with drug-related offenses, kidnapping, arson, assault, and assault with a dangerous weapon. The list just goes on and on and on. Johnny thinks it's possible that Glenn Bird could be a serial killer. Johnny told us earlier that Glenn Bird had allegedly admitted to killing Melody Jones and her husband. Robin told us more about Glenn Bird.
I mean, I have a guy, Glenn Bird, that we think did most of this. He's been sentenced to over 100 years, probably approaching 120 years at this point in Pottawatomie County. Okay, so having said that, 100 plus years he's been sentenced to. The last charge that he had was two counts of arson as he poured gasoline on two people and their vehicle, and it was too windy to keep his lighter lit to set them on fire.
He got 20 years for that. He served three and a half, and he got out of prison Christmas. And he's 100 plus years sentenced. He had a previous kidnapping charge, holding somebody against their will. He's had the arson charges and multiple escape from jail, controlled substance. I mean, his record is longer than my arm, and it doesn't even all show. And now he's free.
Even though it's been more than 35 years since Sandy disappeared, Johnny remains hopeful that there are still people out there who know what happened to her and they will eventually come forward with those answers. There's been maybe two or three instances where...
In the Pottawatomie County area, maybe Lincoln County, Oklahoma County, adjacent counties where there have been some bones found. And, you know, someone would say, hey, they found some bones somewhere. Of course, you know, we're always our ears perked up. OK, could this be Sandy? And nothing has ever transpired. It's always been someone else. And we're certainly glad that some other family has found some closure. That's what it's all about.
Not knowing is the worst part. You know, what happened to your daughter in those last moments? What was done with her? Where is she at? And so, you know, you always keep hope. I'm very optimistic. And even though we never thought we would be doing this six or six and a half years later, I'm very optimistic that we'll find Sandy still. I think there are enough people out there.
who are still alive, we know what happened, that we will find her. You know, and back then, I think a lot of people were afraid of these individuals that are still alive. If they were young back then, maybe more intimidating. Some of these people that are still alive are getting older, their health not great. And I think people aren't quite as afraid as they might have been 20 years ago. So I think that more people might be willing to talk as we move forward. And that's certainly something that we hope for is that we can get the right information.
Imagine if it was your child and people weren't willing to help out and help do whatever they could to obtain information. You know, this could be anybody's child, anybody's daughter, you know, and the worst part is just not knowing or being on your deathbed and not knowing whatever happened to your daughter. There have been so many stories about what may have happened to Sandy. It makes it really difficult to figure out what may have happened because each new story has added a layer of confusion and murkiness.
You know, you don't want to go, well, these conspiracy theories, you know, there's probably just a more down-to-earth story that probably is what happened to her. And certainly you can't turn a cheek to some of these stories because you never know where the truth may be. And sometimes, even though there may be a lot of lies, there could be a little bit of truth in every one of these stories to a degree. Honestly, I feel that she was killed by the people who knew her. I think that she was at somewhere that night. She got picked up. They were doing drugs.
They either OD'd, panicked, and dumped her body, or they tried to have sex with her. She refused, so they knocked her out, shot her up, had sex with her, and disposed of her body.
So, you know, it's just crazy because, you know, you have all these people. I have people that reach out to me all the time and will send me stuff, say, hey, there's some stuff I think you should know. It's really weird that there's so many different stories floating around as to what potentially could have happened to her. You know, my thinking is only one can be true. You know, the people just make this stuff up. It's manifested on their own or, you know, that they hear a story from somebody else. You know how stories can change over the years. I mean, I
I could tell you a story you could tell someone in a week later to be completely different. So imagine over 33 years. So, you know, some of this I've learned to take with a grain of salt as well. I am not going to give up. In my heart, she needs to be found. My family needs closure. Sandy needs a proper burial, just like any other person that disappeared. Mindy told us what her hopes are for the future of Sandy's case.
I wish the public would take a greater interest in justice. This is not the Sandy Ray family's problem. This is everybody's problem. This is the citizens of Shawnee. This was their loss. This was their problem that needed to be fixed in the 1980s. And I think we remove ourselves too often from these cases. We don't see them as one of our own.
And I think there are a lot of people who have been interested in this case who knew Sandy and would like to see it solved, even people who don't know Sandy. But I wish especially that churches would be praying for justice for these victims. As much as they pray for the causes that they support, the missionaries that they support, why are we all praying for justice?
for these victims and asking questions of the police department and asking questions of those who are entrusted with delivering justice. If it was more than just Sandy Stanley coming forward and saying and calling and making these phone calls and asking these questions, I mean, can you imagine the offering any kind of assistance to help to put up flyers? I'd
I just wish that there was more ownership of justice. Our police officers are tasked with doing this, but we step in as a community in other ways, too, with soup kitchens and other things. Why not justice? Why don't we feel a sense of ownership when it comes to justice? But only when it affects us do we act. And I think that's sad.
So what happened to Sandy Ray on September 19th, 1984? We know that she stopped in at the bowling alley and chatted with her cousin. She mentioned that she was going to a party that night, but it's unclear exactly where she planned to go. If someone picked her up from the bowling alley, no one knows who gave her a ride. In the police report we were given, it does state that she told her cousin that Danny would be picking her up, and Danny was her boyfriend.
Because the police department declined to speak with us, we don't know how much Dani was investigated or any of the other shady characters surrounding Sandy. We also know that there was a sighting of Sandy a few days later and the witness knew Sandy. She claims that she saw Sandy being held down in a car. With all of these stories that have been told about what happened to Sandy, some of them seem stranger than fiction.
There seems to be so many shady characters who were part of Sandy's life. From Danny to his friend Glen Bird and the people that she mentioned that she had partied with. Was there large-scale corruption going on back then involving a judge, attorneys and police officers? I always consider myself a skeptic of conspiracy theories because the more people you involve the harder it is to keep quiet.
Johnny, Robin, and Mindy have uncovered documents and spoken to many witnesses. The information that they've found seems to suggest that there is something to these stories about the parties. From the attorney Gary Jay getting busted decades later, to Cindy Terry's death, and the death of Jo Beth Land, what remains unclear is if these parties had anything to do with Sandy's disappearance.
Johnny, Robin, and Mindy remain hopeful that someone will come forward with the information that will solve Sandy's case. It's been a long 35 years with no answers and so many horrific stories that keep adding to the confusion. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Sandy Ray, please call the Shawnee Police Department at 405-273-2121.
They have a community on Facebook you can follow. It's called Remember What Really Happened in Shawnee. What is it going to take for the people of Shawnee to believe? And I said, apparently it takes a body. Give me a body. Show me where a body is. That's all it's going to take to believe anybody because that's what they want.
You know, we don't want people to stop thinking about it. We want it to be at the forefront. So we just got to keep talking about it and keep bringing it up. There comes a time in your life that you really look at what your purpose is and what are you doing and how can you make a difference. And if there's ever a time in someone's life that
If you can make a difference like this and help close something out of someone's life, help someone get a proper burial and really do something that is going to make a difference, it's times like this that you have to decide, are you willing to step up or not?
And so for me, it's one of those things that I will look and look and look till the day I die if I don't find her. And in the meantime, you just do what you gotta do. You resource, you obtain information, you do what you can and you don't stop. - That brings us to the end of episode 219. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this story.
If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and a discussion group on Facebook. I'm on Twitter at The Vanish Pod and also on Instagram. If you enjoy this show, subscribe now and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you're listening right now.
Thanks for listening.
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