The Disappearance of Molly Miller and Colt Haynes - 619
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How are you doing tonight, Aaron? I am fine, Justin. How is Justin? I'm okay. He's okay. I think you're better than okay. We had a pretty good conversation before we started this.

Oh, yeah, I'm fine. It's like you rein it in before we start. I'm not trying to, I promise. So you've been working on Marooned a lot lately, huh? Yeah, Luna and I have been putting out episodes every other week. I do want to say that recently we covered a story that's also a film, and I think it's pretty interesting. But it's a story about Chris Lemons, who worked as a deep sea diver before.

And let's just say he survived a situation that seems impossible, but it's very, very compelling. The movie is also called Last Breath. There's also a documentary from one of the people that worked on the film, worked on the documentary. So check out both the marooned episode Last Breath as well as the film. And as usual, we're going to be going to CrimeCon, CrimeCon UK and CrimeCon here in the States.

Go out to the CrimeCon website and use the code GENY to get your tickets. We look forward to seeing everybody. So Aaron, tonight's case is one of those where the answer seems to be right there. It's just so close. And somebody obviously knows something, but it just seems to not get to point B. And that's really frustrating for everyone. So with that, what are we talking about tonight?

Tonight we're talking about the disappearance of Molly Miller and Colt Haynes, who seem to be unwitting participants in a wild high-speed chase with local law enforcement in rural Oklahoma. The driver of that car was James Conn Nipp, and he's one of those people that might know what happened to these two, but we'll get into it.

So you can imagine this is out in the country, country roads, Oklahoma. It's July. It's super hot. Temperatures are over 90 degrees. And it's in the town of Wilson, Oklahoma. It's very close-knit rural community located in Carter County. Population of 1,700.

The town has history as a trading center for many of the smaller communities within the region. It's like, well, you know, when you go into town, you're going into, you know, Wilson. That's called going into town here. It sits in the Chickasaw Nation. The town of Wilson has faced a lot of challenges over the years. The area has grappled with a lot of drug activity and deaths due to opioid overdoses.

And methamphetamine has been very prevalent in the area. And it's just sad to see, you know, a rural small town like this have so many problems. And I guess it's, you know, what are the kids to do? You know, if they don't have much going on, then all of a sudden drugs and alcohol become alternatives for recreational activities. Well, as older people can tell you, Justin, they used to play with just a stick in the dirt. So maybe there's a lack of creativity going on.

Geographically, just to the south of Carter County is Love County, which sits right along the Oklahoma-Texas border. Now, regarding this case, Molly's cousin, Molly's one of the people we'll be talking about,

Molly's cousin, Paula Fielder, is a staunch and unrelenting advocate for the missing young woman. Fielder has worked tirelessly for the past 10 plus years to bring her cousin home, vowing to never give up, finding out the truth of what happened to Molly and Colt. So at the time she disappeared, Molly was 17 years old. She was a junior in high school. She was known among friends and family for her kind heart. She was a very vibrant personality.

She was born April 30th, 1996. She stood 5'5 and weighed about 95 pounds. According to the Charlie Project, she had blue eyes and was a brunette. Molly's hair was dyed black when she vanished. Molly has a right side lower lip piercing and a tattoo of a star on her hip.

Molly is biracial. She's Native American and Caucasian and a registered member of the Chickasaw Nation. She and her siblings lived in Wilson with their mother and grandparents. She's 17 and in high school. According to grandfather Alex Miller, Molly was warm, outgoing, and funny, but he also said she was rambunctious, headstrong, and fearless. Known to be very feisty, she would always speak her own mind.

It was reported that Molly excelled in sports and athletics, particularly in softball, for which she won many trophies.

A good student, she also attended a vocational school in hopes of becoming a nurse, working a part-time job. In the meantime, although free-spirited, Molly was close with her siblings, and she truly enjoyed spending time with family and friends. It's said, though, when she got older, she began hanging out with different crowds and the quote-unquote wrong crowd, and she began experimenting with drugs in her teen years.

And she started getting into trouble. Given her youth and the circumstances, this is not unusual behavior for a bored teen in rural Oklahoma, as I kind of stated before. But she did dabble with methamphetamine, which by now has become a serious problem in these counties. Her family was getting concerned and worrying about the impact it had on her and her home life.

She had run away a time or two before. Her family was firm in their beliefs that Molly never would have simply left the area without notifying them. Her disappearance is actually a total shock to her family and her loved ones. And regardless, you know, teens will take off for a weekend or two. I mean, I did that when I was a teen, so I don't really know if that's running away. That's just, I'm going to go do my own thing for a while, then I'll come back and I don't care what you say.

Now, recently, Molly had met Colt Haynes. He was 21. She was 17. She instantly fell for him. And on June 28, 2013, just a few days before she disappeared, Molly had an argument with her mother, Melissa. She left home pretty irritated and supposedly took off to stay with a friend. Now, witnesses who last saw Molly said she was seen wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and black Nike sneakers with a pink swoosh emblem.

She is currently listed as an endangered missing person.

Colt Rydell Haynes. The Charlie Project website reports that Colt Haynes was born April 28th, 1992. He's also listed as endangered missing. Colt is a male Caucasian. He stands 5'11 to 6'0, weighs between 180-190 pounds. He has brown hair, blue eyes, and was sporting a goatee at the time of this incident.

Colt has the following tattoos. He has the letters CMFH on his forearm, a Colt .45 gun on his upper abdomen, and banner reading Ride or Die on his upper chest. I think these are going to be pretty easy to spot if you see this guy. Some said he was a decent student who had many friends. Colt was also recognized to have considerable scrapes with law enforcement.

And most of the issues he faced seemed to be related to drugs, not violence. Colt's family was actually surprised and devastated by his sudden disappearance. It just wasn't like him.

Now, it was known that he struggled with addiction. He would go on a cycle of using drugs, then he would get clean, and then slip back into using drugs again. In 2011, he was caught attempting to manufacture methamphetamine, and he freely admitted to using methamphetamines and marijuana when he was arrested. Colt was allowed to defer sentencing, but was called back in 2013 to face charges when his probation officer alleged

He was making no progress in the program he'd undergone, and that he was continuing to associate with known criminals. A bench warrant for his arrest was issued on July 18th, but he was already missing by then. And it's hard. I mean, especially when you live in a rural small town and they're telling you you can't hang around this group of people. I guess you just got to stay home because there's not a lot of options for you.

Colt was also a young father. He had a son with a woman who was James Connip's ex-girlfriend. And we'll get into James here in a second. It's very possible there was an issue between them. It is speculated that is the sole reason that these two frenemies would have been together on the night of the incident was possibly scoring or using drugs together. So Colt has a son with this other guy's ex-girlfriend. Maybe.

Maybe not the best person to be hanging out with, but it's a small town. There's not a lot of options for Colt. And if he's trying to get drugs, well, this is the guy that he's going to go through.

Now, Colt and Molly were not officially considered boyfriend and girlfriend. They had been spending a good amount of time together in the days prior to their disappearance. The pair had only met about a week to 10 days prior to this incident. Molly was clearly into Colt. Molly and Colt were reportedly together on July 5th and 6th, and then they went their separate ways.

After the fight with her mother in late June, Molly had been staying with a friend, Jessica, and on Sunday, July 7th, she tried to convince Jessica to attend a house party with her. Jessica, fearing that there would be a lot of drug activity at the party, declined and said, no, and you shouldn't go either. But Molly knew that Colt would be there, so she decided to go anyways to hang out with Colt.

That's where the pair met up and eventually left with James Conn Nip, who was a distant relative of Molly's and had known her for most of her young life. So all of these people know each other. And at the time he went missing on July 8th, 2013, some sources reported Colt was wearing a gray metal ring on his left finger.

That sentence should have gone up to where his tattoos was. Anyways.

So let's talk about Kahn, also known as James Kahn Nip. Kahn typically went by that name. He was a mutual friend of Molly Ann Colt. He was driving the vehicle, and so he was basically leading this high-speed car chase that went through Carter and Love Counties. He's 21 at the time, had an extensive criminal history, multiple drug-related offenses, all on his record, known for being reckless and irresponsible.

Kahn had a reputation for defying authority. He was also known to have stolen cars and broken into houses. In 2010, Nip was convicted of marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession. In the following year, he was found guilty of driving under the influence of drugs. Kahn resided in Love County, Oklahoma, which is frequently described as a compound in the woods with his grandparents.

This large property stretched over a thousand acres and also housed several other members of the Nip family who were quite prominent in the area. They were referred to as the Nip clan and they had deep roots in the region of Love County.

On July 7, 2013, this trio of Molly, Colt, and Conn were driving recklessly in a black 2012 Honda Accord. Now Nip, who was driving, deliberately began spinning his wheels and making donuts directly in front of a marked Wilson County police vehicle driven by Captain Ryan Parsley.

Now, he was perpetually in trouble with the authorities, and he garnered a reputation for doing this in order to bait law enforcement. His actions resulted in the Honda spraying gravel and rocks at the police car, which instigated the high-speed chase across these two counties. Police lost sight of the vehicle somewhere along or near Long Hollow Road and Oswalt Road in Love County, Oklahoma.

The trail went cold at a rural intersection 13 miles outside the town of Ardmore, Oklahoma, and it was eventually determined it had crashed near Long Hollow Road, a dead-end road right near Nipps' family property. Molly and Colt vanished sometime after the pursuit ended in a wreck, although phone records confirm that both made calls after the vehicle became disabled.

He's been doing this. He has been baiting cops for months, if not years, into high-speed pursuits. He gets off on it. So this is nothing new. The cops know who he is. The cops are very familiar with him. I just want to make sure that's clear, that this isn't a one-off situation where he was doing donuts and he happened to do it in front of a cop. No, he did this intentionally and he would do this all the time.

So some sources say that, according to Nip, the trio split up after the wreck, with Molly and Colt going in one direction towards the woods and him heading towards his family property. There was an article in Oprah Daily, however, reporting that Molly's cousin Paula Fielder told host Payne Lindsay of Up and Vanished that when she questioned him directly, Nip adamantly denied ever being with the pair, despite the fact that phone records dispute this.

I wasn't with them. No, they were in the car and you were running from the police. But his initial statements are, no, no, no, I wasn't with them. We can prove otherwise. It's not a correction. It's a denial. Yes, exactly.

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So in January of 2014, Conn Nip and his girlfriend Sabrina Fincher Graham, who is 32, were arrested on various charges related to the high-speed police chase. Graham had reported the vehicle stolen the day of the chase and was eventually prosecuted for making a false report and for insurance fraud. I don't know that anyone needs this explained, Justin, but maybe we should.

I mean, essentially his girlfriend reported the car stolen, but all that happened was her boyfriend drove it away. So this is a way they get the damages covered. Yeah. And this is a way to try to get him off the hook. Like, oh, he wasn't driving. It was stolen that day. So it's fraud lying in all of those things.

Well, the DA, Craig Ladd, asserted that he'd had sufficient evidence to prosecute Nip for the high-speed chase and maintained that he'd prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Conn Nip was convicted of endangering civilians while eluding police and sentenced to 10 years in prison, although he only ended up serving four years.

Now, after this car chase, this is where we have, we've never heard from Colt or Molly again. And it said that this car chase was called off. You know, it's kind of, oh, well, Nip got away when really there was a call saying, hey, back off. We don't want to endanger any more people with this high-speed pursuit.

Let's talk about how Conn Nip has strong ties to the Love County Sheriff's Office. He was the cousin of the sheriff there, Joe Russell. Let's get into this chase a little bit more because I think it will highlight how this connection might be a problem. So there's this high-speed chase, Justin. Obviously, Conn has riled up this officer, this captain, Ryan Parsley, and led him on a chase.

According to KXII.com, the infamous car chase began around 10.30 p.m. on the evening of July 7th when Nip, possibly high on meth, pulled into a convenience store parking lot on Main Street in Wilson, Oklahoma and decided to do donuts in front of this officer. He's kicking up gravel and scattering rocks and everything. And that's when Captain Ryan Parsley turned on his lights and started pursuing.

They reached speeds of 120 miles per hour and then led local police careening down Highway 76 into Love County, where Nip further taunted authorities by turning off his headlights and driving in the wrong lane or oncoming traffic lane. He continued to drive erratically on numerous dirt roads while heading towards his family's property adjacent to Long Hollow Road. So obviously he's fleeing, but he has a destination.

The pursuit would be picked up by Love County authorities who were unable to catch up with the Honda, and they got dusted out by the dirt and gravel kicked up during the pursuit because these are dirt roads, and they claim they eventually lost sight of the vehicle. It was reported at some point that Sheriff Joe Russell of Love County Sheriff's Office called off the chase and said,

It's said that it was to avoid further damage to county vehicles and possible injuries to deputies. However, it is suspected that he ended the chase for other reasons. And to add insult to injury, it is widely known among law enforcement circles that Kahn had done this before, stolen a vehicle or gone on joyrides and crashed them. This is just an ongoing situation.

So people question why Sheriff Joe Russell called off the chase because he's saying, I don't want the public to be endangered. Well, they're on back country roads where there isn't a lot of traffic, if at all. And then he says, well, I don't want to put my deputy's lives in danger, which is true. I don't.

I don't want any more damage to our county vehicles, which, yeah, rocks and pit holes and stuff are going to mess up your vehicle. But he also is related to the driver of this vehicle. So people see that as maybe he's giving his cousin a pass, right? That's the idea.

So, phone records obtained by Philip Klein, who was a private investigator hired by the Miller family a year after Molly vanished, confirm that a number of phone calls were made and received from the pair's phones after the vehicle crashed. Molly's phone records show that at 12.57 a.m. on July 8th, Molly called 911. A five-second phone call was logged into Marietta Dispatch, who claimed to have called her back immediately with no response. No

No officers were dispatched to the area due to this 911 call. Both Colt and Molly's phone records show that the pair made multiple distress calls to friends as well. Molly's phone records show 33 incoming and outgoing calls for the time period to the same person, a man named DJ, who was a friend of Colt's.

Molly's cousin, Paula Fielder, told Up and Vanished host Payne Lindsay that DJ attempted to find the two but mistakenly went to Bear Hollow Road instead of Long Hollow and so was unable to find his friend.

And I think that kind of makes sense because if you don't have very good reception or cell phone signal out there, she's trying to say long hollow and he might interpret that as bear hollow. I get it. But they're out in the middle of nowhere, so they need a ride and they're not going to go ask the cops for it. So they're trying to call their friend.

But I think this is interesting because it's right after the crash. There are all these calls going out and there's this idea that Khan has just left them there.

According to KXII.com, the pair called several friends that night seeking water, assistance, and a ride out of the dense wooded area. At 6.33 a.m., Molly called a friend for a ride, but the person couldn't come and get her. At 9.33, she spoke to another friend, telling him she was lost in the woods, but he was unable to leave work to get them. Meanwhile, Colt, attempting to get a bird's eye view of their location in relation to the road, or perhaps get a cell signal, had apparently climbed a tree. How

However, he fell from that tree and was injured. According to his sister, Monique Stewart, Colt told friends he had a broken ankle and was coughing up blood. It sounds like they're in a desperate situation here now. They know they're in trouble. They are not making it back to a road and they don't have good cell phone signals. So walking home is not an option. But just so everyone understands, this is going on for a while.

The Cinemaholic and other sources report that Colt had told friends that he was lying in a ditch near Long Hollow Road. His friends, Devin and Rob, along with a couple of other friends, went to search for him, but they couldn't find him. At some point, Colt instructed them to go to Nip's house to obtain information about their warehouse, but Connip denied having been with them or even knowing where the two were. This seemed very ridiculous because the friends had been communicating with Colt on the phone

who told them to hand the phone to Khan. And when they did so, Colt implored Khan to let his friends know of their location. But the guy claimed total ignorance of their whereabouts. He's the one that was driving. He should know. Well, he said he wasn't, though. I know. That's the problem here is he's being chased by cops, so he's got to deny everything.

So it turned out while searching, the four friends were in roughly the right general area, I guess, but had gone too far down Pike Road past the location where Molly and Colt were waiting desperately for help. And as a result, Colt and Molly never heard them honking their horns or calling for them. They were just too far away.

It's reported that Molly's phone went dead at 9.39 a.m. and Colt's phone at 9.57 a.m. on July 8th. All activity had ceased on their phones and no one had heard from either Molly or Colt since then.

Now, Aaron, a lot of people look at that and say her phone died at 939 and his at 957. That's like almost simultaneously they both die. And I don't know if that's just because our phone batteries suck that bad. And if you've been on them all night and all morning, that's just when they died. Other people read into that and say, no, something happened at that time and somebody turned their phones off.

Yeah, I don't know. It's still, I know you're saying it's pretty close, but it's still what, 18 minutes? But for phone batteries to die within 18 minutes of each other, people read into that. And I understand why, because it is close enough where I think if I'm at 12% and you're at 2%, our phones are not going to die within 18 minutes of each other.

Yeah, I really don't know the details of how the phones were being used, but if they're both being used heavily, we know the battery could drain pretty quickly. But either way, at least we know when their phones died. And we can assume at that point, we're talking about a serious bit of trouble there for the couple.

The black 2012 Honda Accord that Kahn had been driving on the night of the chase was located two weeks later on July 22nd. It was wrecked in a field where it was last seen by police.

The vehicle was found abandoned in a wooded area just south of Allswalt Road between Long Hollow Road and Pike Road in Love County. I'm surprised it took them that long to find it. Obviously, they weren't exactly looking hard for it because it wasn't too far from where this chase ended. Yeah, but I do want to say that this was common for Kahn to abandon vehicles in the fields out by where his family's homes were.

A Love County Sheriff's deputy had noticed a missing persons poster hanging on the walls of the office. Reading the description and being familiar with Con Nip, who was quite notorious around the county for provoking police, he realized exactly where the young troublemaker would likely go. The deputy went to a nearby field adjacent to Nip's property and located the vehicle just across the fence line.

Like I said, they weren't looking real hard until this one officer was like, oh, I know that guy, and I know where he would put this car. And he went directly to it. So that's my point. Right. No, and that's what I was saying is he literally abandons the vehicles around the property where his family lives. So yeah, if they had just gone there to look, they probably would have found it quickly. Yeah. The Honda was registered to Nip's girlfriend, Sabrina Graham, who had falsely reported it stolen online.

And on the very morning of that high-speed chase, she was saying, I don't have this car and I don't know where it went. When she did, her boyfriend had it.

She eventually admitted to the authorities that she loaned it to Nip. The car had roughly $18,000 worth of damage due to him driving it through several barbed wire fences and on this high-speed pursuit. There was particular damage to the undercarriage. Following January, the two would be arrested for charges related to this high-speed chase and both would be convicted.

Graham for making the false police report and insurance fraud and Nip for endangering civilians while eluding police. As you said, Khan was sentenced to 10 years in prison, although he served only four and was released in 2018. Meanwhile, Molly and Colt have been missing this entire time.

And when their families tried to file a missing persons report, they say they were dismissed and disregarded by the police. And nobody knew where they were. And Khan wasn't talking to anyone or cooperating with the families. So we have a serious situation that resulted from this high-speed chase.

Right, and also, Connip and his family members have had requests to allow their properties to be searched, and they have not consented to those searches. There was an article for Oxygen.com that recounted that approximately eight months after Molly and Colt went missing, Connip's uncle, Colby Barrick, accidentally called 911. For all intents and purposes, the call appeared to have been an inadvertent butt dial.

In the Up and Vanish podcast, it was contended that from the sounds of things, Barrick was describing how Colt and Molly were allegedly murdered in the March 29th, 2014 call. This is the Buck call. So it's heard that he's describing how they were allegedly murdered.

The caller, Barrett, could be heard saying, you know, you're effing mad. You know, you're effing tired. Effing Moxley Lake, a buck knife. Molly Miller. They shot him in the mouth right there. I can put my finger all the way through it.

Now, this operator claimed she could hear sounds of splashing water and two gunshots. When the call ended, the dispatcher immediately called Sheriff Russell and reported that she'd heard someone talking about Molly and Colt, and I mean the girl that was killed and dope and stuff like that. Now, this operator confirmed that the phone had pinged near Moxley Lake. She said they didn't know they were on 911, and it comes from a pond just north of Long Hollow Road on Oswald.

Now, although she never mentioned Moxley Lake specifically, the sheriff appeared to know that was the location she was referencing. Why are there ridges on Reese's peanut butter cups? Probably so they never slip from her hands. Could you imagine? I'd lose it. Luckily, Reese's thought about that. Wonder what else they think about? Probably chocolate and peanut butter.

And according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Barrick was arrested on unrelated firearm charges in 2018. He was handed a sentence of 46 months in prison. While serving his time, Barrick purportedly revealed to authorities that Mollie and Colt's bodies were in the lake, which is known as Moxley Lake or Moxley Bond. So we have kind of a lead here, right?

You would think, yeah. This lake has never been searched. Molly's cousin Paula Fielder called it the most significant place to look for her loved one. After disgraced Love County Sheriff Joe Russell resigned from office, the county appointed a new sheriff. He has confirmed that he plans to search the lake for the remains of the two missing young people.

And this is because of this case. Sheriff Joe Russell has gotten a lot of backlash about it, amongst other things. But this is why he's referred to as being disgraced, because he did not take this case seriously. People claim that he did not open a missing persons report and did not search for these two.

Now, previously, there had been a search warrant requested for the NIP property, but the DA would not sign off on the request to grant the warrant. As related in True Crime Garage podcast covering Molly and Colt's case, the document describes the specifics of the vehicle chase that occurred on July 7th, 2013, and some of the particulars of the pursuit of the 2012 Honda Accord

include mentions of a witness who overheard the pursuit while monitoring scanners. The witness was able to confirm that Colt and Nip were together in the vehicle during the chase. There was also a reference to another witness who could testify that Molly and Colt were at his home on the night in question and that they both left with Conn Nip. So this, again, is just reaffirming that when Conn says, I wasn't with them that night and they weren't in my car,

Well, we have a lot more evidence that they were.

Finally, other witnesses, such as the friend Molly, had contacted early on the morning of July 8th, and four people who participated in a fruitless search for the pair. We talked to them. This is the area they were in. They said that they were with Kahn and that they were fleeing from a wrecked car. So all of these people put them with Kahn the night of this high-speed pursuit.

But to this day, the Nipp family refuses to allow authorities to access to their property. The Love County Sheriff's Office initially investigated the case with little movement. Upon hearing of the chase, family members of both the missing young people had immediately reached out to the Love County Sheriff's Office. But back then, Sheriff Joe Russell just refused to take a missing report, as you talked about earlier.

When the Marietta dispatcher who answered the call from Melissa Miller heard the worried mother's request for a missing persons report, she spoke to the sheriff right away. But she said the lawman was instantly dismissive. The sheriff said that since the chase commenced in Carter County, it wasn't his problem. It belonged within the Carter County or Wilson Police Department's jurisdiction.

The dispatcher, however, did log the information that Melissa provided. She even took the initiative to make up missing persons flyers and hang them around the Love County Sheriff's Office. Yeah, that's a hard one to wrap your head around because the chase originated from another county, but then ended in his county. But he's saying, well, it's their problem, not mine. They need to investigate it. It's just sort of punting the ball, I guess, for jurisdiction. Yeah.

Well, there's more than that being punted around because apparently, according to Paula Fielder, the reward for this person hanging up these flyers was being fired from her job.

But these flyers are what led to the discovery of the vehicle two weeks after the pair went missing. So let's talk about what happened to Sheriff Joe Russell here, because he resigned for a reason. It was July 19th of 2016. Sheriff Joe Russell was arrested on two counts of corruption in office and two counts of habitual and willful neglect of duty. He pleaded not guilty.

Molly's relatives had long viewed Russell as the major impeding factor in the disappearance of their daughter's case. About a year after Molly vanished, the Millers family had hired private investigator Philip Klein of Klein Investigations to examine the disappearance of the two young friends. Klein's efforts had uncovered most of the relevant information, such as cell phone records known about the case to date.

So Joe Russell hadn't looked into cell phone records. He hadn't looked into anything. He literally wouldn't even file a missing persons report because he said it wasn't his jurisdiction. Now he's getting charged with corruption and willful neglect of duty. Meanwhile, we have a private investigator who is uncovering all of this information about this missing persons case.

Yeah, and the official investigation by local authorities had turned up little evidence. Sheriff Joe Russell was charged with harboring a fugitive who had four warrants out for her arrest. A woman named Sarah Bamberg, who was dating his son. The sheriff, fully aware of the warrants, had allowed her to remain at the house as long as she was seeing his son.

However, Sarah met someone else, moved out, and was promptly arrested. Like clockwork, she began to sing like a canary. There were serious allegations regarding scantily dressed young girls and rampant drug use within the lawman's residence. Joe Russell was also charged with allowing his son to sell methamphetamine from the home. They shared while he was the sheriff of Love County. Finally, he faced charges that he permitted his cousin, some sources say it's his nephew, connip,

to meet with relatives in a room containing evidence with no supervision. So on Wednesday, October 12, 2016, Sheriff Joe Russell resigned his position. On March 6 of 2017, he accepted a plea deal. He was given one year of unsupervised probation and $370 in court costs were charged to him. Sounds like a very light slap on the wrist.

Yeah. I just wonder, you know, we have his son selling drugs, having parties, all of these other charges, and then he gets a slap on the wrist for that. Well, if he's willing to cover up for his son and other family members, well, we have Khan, who's his cousin, driving the car the night of the chase. You just connect the dots here. I mean, if, if

If we were to analyze a criminal who is robbing banks and we find that he owns guns and that a family member of his drives the getaway cars and he's covering up for him, you look at that pattern of behavior and you just connect the dots.

And how are we not supposed to look at ex-Sheriff Joe Russell and be like, well, you were covering up for your son. You were covering up for this and that. How are we not supposed to assume that you weren't covering up for your cousin? It's an easy connection to make. Whether it's true or not, I don't know. But that's the connection this community and all of these family members make because it's a simple one to make.

In the summer of 2015, investigative responsibilities for the case had shifted to the OSBI, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. And in 2016, Stan Florence, the director, announced that the agency was offering a $10,000 reward for information about the whereabouts of Molly and Colt. So that was in addition to a $35,000 reward already offered by the Miller family for information regarding the case.

Now, one of the things I really want to talk about, Justin, is there's that Moxley Pond, right? And at first, no one was searching it. This was something that people believe might hold the answers. Well, in 2022, this pond was searched.

Paula Fielder was there, the landowner, a former FBI agent, and a CSI technician started looking into this pond. They were using a backhoe, rakes, everything, and using screens. They were trying to get anything they could out of this pond. And pumping water out of the hole, they said it took them about 40 minutes. And then they found something. They thought it was a tongue, but tests showed that it was actually just a type of fungi.

It's not for lack of trying, but this pond was apparently searched. And it's been, what, almost like a decade since their disappearance. I wonder how much would be left if they were dumped in the pond. I'm sure their clothes would have disintegrated. Bones might have stayed longer. It's possible that it could have actually preserved the bones because they weren't exposed to antifreeze.

animal and other elements, but I'm just curious, like how long would a body last underwater in a pond? Because maybe they were dumped there and there's just nothing left, or maybe it's not where their final resting place is.

January 13th, 2021, Molly was declared legally deceased by her family. They hoped that by doing that, the investigation would be re-energized and there would be fresh eyes on the case, new opportunities for answers. In May of the same year, the FBI picked up the case under the McGirt ruling. The ruling, which was a landmark decision established in July of 2020, states that crimes committed against or by Native Americans fall under the jurisdiction of

of tribal or federal authorities, not state authorities. Since Molly is a Chickasaw native, this case was eligible. After Molly's cousin Paula went to the FBI in April with a tip she had received from an informant suggesting evidence that had never been previously considered, the FBI agreed to assume authority over the investigation.

They haven't gotten very far with the local authorities, so this is the next step here. I realize there was a new sheriff in town, but they can only do so much when they're left with a mess from the last one.

So it's November 2021 that private investigator Klein submitted a probable cause affidavit for a search warrant of a location in Pike County that had not been previously searched. This was off some tips they received. Hopefully it could result in new information about the missing pair. The location in question, which would require excavation, was a property on Lane Road near where the two young people were last seen.

However, judge denied the warrant, citing that it was still a missing persons case and that there was no evidence of a crime having been committed. So that's essentially the judge is saying this isn't a murder case, this isn't a homicide, this isn't a criminal case, so a warrant isn't exactly proper here. But to soften the blow, the new Love County Sheriff, Marjorie

Marty Grisham pledged to continue allocating and allowing resources towards working the case, despite the fact it has been turned over to the OSBI. He's vowed to follow up with any credible leads and tips that they might receive, which is a good sign when he's saying, hey, I will pass along information. I will grant resources to this because I feel for you.

But this denial of the search warrant of this area obviously is a crushing blow to Molly and Colt's families, right?

Yeah, but they're remaining cautiously hopeful because the FBI and the tribal authorities are investigating this. And in November of 2023, the Bureau of Indian Affairs joined the investigation, bringing additional resources and perspective to the case. So the good news is this case has not been dropped. It is being followed up on. Leads are being followed up on.

But this is a tough one. You know, it's one thing if this vehicle had crashed and then we never heard from Molly and Colt again, you know?

But there was a good amount of time where there were calls going out and coming in and they spoke to people. It's very strange because if they had just gone missing straight away, then you could totally say, well, James Kahn Nip is right there. Right. And he's very much seeming to play this off as either I wasn't there at all or, you know, according to some, he headed right towards his family's property. So he's

he doesn't even know what happened to them. But how do these two go missing? That's the real good question because according to the information that we have, Colt is injured. He's got a broken ankle. How far is he going to get? I really wonder if they weren't all on drugs.

They were at a party together. I'm sure there was some drug use going on there. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm just saying like for these people to be stuck in a ditch or what have you and not leaving the area or walking to try and find help, it really makes you wonder what's going on there.

So I'd really like to see this case solved. It seems like we're not dealing with a huge area unless, of course, someone took them away. But I just find that kind of unlikely, you know, but either way, this seems like a solvable case. And I think one of the biggest problems with it has been the refusal to allow properties to be searched because we know they're right next to the NIPs property or on it.

it, essentially. So this shouldn't be that difficult. But again, when, like, as you said, law enforcement was dragging their feet and not wanting to get involved in the first place because not their jurisdiction, then we're kind of left trying to play catch up here. And while the authorities have come along later, like the OSBI and what have you, they're coming from such a distance to when this incident happened that

I can see why this is challenging. The fact that they were alive for hours after this police chase ended, it's not out of the scope of belief, I guess, that they ended up dying in a ditch. They ended up going and just not being able to get help. Doesn't mean that there wasn't foul play. It doesn't mean that there wasn't bad things happening, but...

They could have died from the elements, but the fact that there was no searches and there weren't any searches allowed, it just shows that like, yeah, it's really hard to find bodies when you don't know where to start to look because there was no investigation. But that's the only piece of this that I think might point to not foul play is the fact that they were alive for a little while after the car chase was over.

It'd be weird if Khan had ran off in one direction and they ran off in another and then Khan came back and took them out. And that butt dial phone call, I don't know how that would work into this because why would you need to get rid of them unless it's just, oh, I stole my girlfriend's car and I want to continue this fraudulent thing, which, hey, that's motive. It is a possibility. But I...

But I look at this and I think, I wonder if they ran off and just were not able to find help and ended up succumbing to the elements, which is tragic and sad in itself. And the fact that there was no help, no searches for them, I mean, the family searches, but law enforcement and official searches weren't happening right away. This was totally preventable. And it's just heart-wrenching that

this turned out the way it did. And I think we can kind of point to one source of why it all happened. Now, people are murdered all the time for reasons we can't fully understand. So I think it's very possible this was foul play, maybe because people out there, either with the Nip family or Khan himself,

This is just a theory, but could have come back and killed them because they were calling too much attention. But that almost seems a little unlikely just because they were doing this for so long. I mean, if the chase starts the evening before and then they're doing this well into the morning, I mean, how long do you leave someone doing that? I mean, does it take eight hours for you to change your mind and say, that's it? I'm not going to let them stay out there anymore.

I mean, it's just something that doesn't make sense to me, but I think exposure to the elements is possible too. If they were well under the influence and were making bad calls, pardon the pun, they could have ended up in a pond or who knows what. People who are under the influence can do that.

But it's Conn Nip who makes me feel like this is foul play because from the get-go, he's lying. From the get-go, he's saying, I wasn't with them. And he's even come back and said that the two were bound for Wichita Falls. Okay, they're going to Wichita Falls?

after a police chase. And I mean, just what? They would just disappear. But no vehicle. Yeah. Colt with a broken ankle, no vehicle and a son. Molly, who has no intention of just running off with a guy she's only known for two weeks. Like this, just everything out of this guy's mouth doesn't add up. So he makes himself look very suspicious. Meanwhile, you have a police force that didn't investigate it.

It's either they were murdered or they were in that wooded area and they couldn't find help. And those are the two options that I think are possible. And it's sad. This didn't need to happen this way. This was a simple solution here. And people know what happened. They're not coming forward. Well, I could also see Khan just denying everything because he doesn't want to admit to anything, even if he didn't kill the pair.

If people are looking for updates, we could keep going through and giving updates that have happened over time, but I think a good place for everyone to go if you want to learn more is go to Paula Fielder's Facebook page on this case. It's titled Operation Find Molly Miller. If you go there, there

There are all kinds of updates and people discussing this. I really hope that all this work that Paula has done will lead to something because she's put in the work. There are other people that are helping as well. But this case, it's really going to come down to a discovery, I think, or a tip. Very possible that someone knows something and could call that tip in or do it anonymously. You can submit a tip anonymously or not through a tip line at

lovecoshariff.com. I know people are worried in this digital age that everything could be tracked, but there are ways to leave your tip anonymously if you don't want to be found out.

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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.