Transcript of Paradise Lost: The Jamison Family, Part 2
From the program "Disappeared" on the Investigation Discovery Channel
http://youtu.be/ImJbfVTu2kQ?t=4s
Key to participants:
NAR: Narrator
SJ: Starlet Jamison
NS: Niki Shenold
SIB: Sheriff Israel Beauchamp
HH: Heather Holland
SJ: It's the last picture that we have of Madyson.
NAR: It appears to police that, after taking the photo, the Jamisons return to their truck and start to leave. What happened next is shrouded in mystery. Then, while scouring the cab for more clues, a deputy sheriff makes a stunning discovery.
SIB: And he said, "I've got something to tell you and I think you need to come up here." And I said, "Okay, what's going on?" And he told me, he said, "Hey, there is a substantial amount of money in this vehicle."
NAR: A bank bag, hidden beneath the driver's seat, contains $32,000 in cash.
SIB: I wondered why. Why is all this money in here?
HH: Any time a large amount of cash is found in a vehicle, it raises a lot of red flags.
SIB: So, at that moment, I said, "Okay, get everybody away. Tape it off as if it was a crime scene." Don't know, you know, what's going on yet, but tape it off.
HH: We really weren't sure why they disappeared.
NAR: Coming up, evidence points to a violent event in the Jamisons' disappearance.
NS: I think they were probably forced out at gunpoint. I mean, why would you struggle if someone has a gun to you?
NAR: While looking at a plot of land on Oklahoma's Panola Mountain, Bobby and Sherilyn Jamison and their six-year-old daughter, Madyson, have disappeared. Investigators find the family's truck abandoned in the Oklahoma back country.
SJ: A pickup sitting down there, you know, with all of their goods and the dog locked inside the car was very suspicious.
NAR: Investigators are confounded by their most recent discovery, a hidden bank bag containing $32,000 in cash.
HH: It's very unlikely that they would leave the vehicle there and lock their cell phones and their wallets and leave all of that in the car on their own accord, but we really didn't know.
NAR: Investigators are also baffled that the family dog was apparently left to die in the cab of the truck.
NS: Madyson, once she had that puppy, never went anywhere without the puppy.
SJ: It doesn't make any sense because that was Madyson's friend, and she would have screamed and hollered if he'd left the dog in the car.
NS: The whole fact that the dog was in the truck locked up and they're nowhere to be found tells me that they got out of the truck in a hurry.
NAR: Even the cell phone picture of six-year-old Madyson prompts speculation among some of their friends.
NS: I don't think her parents took that picture. I think that somebody else that she did not know took that picture. She had her arms out like this and her hand was over it in a weird position. She was looking off. It wasn't a real smile. She looked very uncomfortable to me. Very uncomfortable.
NAR: Police theorize that the Jamisons were in their truck heading back down the mountain when they were interrupted.
SIB: It seemed to me like they were leaving, and that someone came up that one-way road, and they stopped. Maybe they knew them, maybe not well. They stopped and talked to the person. From there, obviously, I don't know what happened.
NAR: But investigators find no signs of a struggle at the scene of the truck.
SIB: Signs of a struggle for life or death would be violent. That's not going to be some small tussle.
HH: There was no blood found on the vehicle. There was no broken glass.
SIB: You're obviously looking for disturbance on the ground. When people fight, there's clothes that's shredded, there's things fall out of pockets. Whenever it's that violent, something would be left to show that there was something had happened there.
NAR: Still, friends and family think the scene suggests that the Jamisons left against their will.
NS: I think they were probably forced out at gunpoint. I mean, why would you struggle if someone has a gun to you?
NAR: Hopeful for a lead, investigators process every item found in the truck.
HH: At this point, there were so many different things that led us in different directions. We weren't sure if they were lost. We weren't sure if they were abducted.
NAR: Then, buried in the clutter filling the cab, they stumble upon something they never expected, an eleven-page letter written from Sherilyn to her husband, brimming with hostility.
NS: She was lashing out big-time in this letter to Bobby.
SIB: It was just the hate and discontent, the years of fighting. She felt that he wanted to be a loner and didn't really need a family. And, other than that, I mean, there was just a lot of hate.
NAR: Investigators learned that in recent months there were serious stresses in the Jamisons' marriage.
SIB: We learned from their family members that they were having problems. We had learned from the letter that they were talking about getting a divorce.
HH: They had been looking at selling their house and kind of moving away to get away from that to make things better.
NAR: Much of the strain dates back to 2003, when Bobby was involved in a serious auto accident.
SJ: Bobby was driving his truck in 2003 and he had a wreck. He was coming around a curve, which is a blind curve in the road, and this lady hit him from one side and another lady hit him from the other side.
NAR: Since the accident, Bobby suffered from chronic pain and was unable to work.
SJ: It was very hard for him to get up out of bed even. Medicine wasn't really helping relieve the pain.
HH: It made it hard for him to do things around the home, and I think that the pain every day, the chronic pain, really put a toll on his spirits and I think he became depressed and it made things more difficult in the marriage.
NAR: The letter forces investigators to consider a violent scenario in the Jamisons' disappearance. Their concerns heighten when family members tell them that a pistol belonging to Sherilyn Jamison cannot be found.
SIB: We didn't know about the .22 pistol until that moment so we said no, no, we haven't found the pistol. And they told us, okay, well, usually she carries this pistol in the vehicle.
NAR: Investigators search the Jamisons' truck and house thoroughly. When they find no pistol, they begin to fear the worst.
SIB: We've got a pistol missing. We have got a hate letter here. We're starting to point toward maybe murder-suicide.We thought to ourselves that maybe it was her that killed them.
NAR: Coming up, leads in the Jamisons' disappearance go from confusing to downright bizarre.
SIB: Bobby had asked him, okay, is there a special bullet I can buy to kill these spirits?
NAR: Bobby and Sherilyn Jamison and their six-year-old daughter, Madyson, have been missing for nearly two days. The possibility of foul play comes to the forefront of the investigation as police learn more about a troubled marriage and Sherilyn's missing pistol.
SIB: A pistol being missing is important. We were told by family menders that she carried the pistol everywhere. Maybe this was a murder-suicide.
NAR: If a murder-suicide had occurred, the Jamisons' bodies would still be somewhere on Panola Mountain. On October 17, less than 24 hours after their truck was found, law enforcement begins a massive search.
SIB: The emergency management in Latimer County got ahold of all the fire departments in this area, EMS, forestry. Local people started showing up with horses, four-wheelers.
SJ: They didn't know where to go, where to start looking, you know, so they just took teams and went up there.
NAR: All of the resources of Latimer County are brought to bear. Helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, tracking dogs, teams of horses and mules, and hundreds of personel all assist in the search effort. The rough terrain makes everything twice as hard.
SIB: There's a triple canopy, lot of woods, lot of rocks, almost all of it straight uphill, and very, very tough conditions to try to do a search in.
SJ: It was also hazardous and dangerous because a lot of the people didn't know the woods and they could get lost.
SIB: Walking up those mountains and trying to keep a straight line and everybody intact is very, very hard to do in that type of terrain.
NAR: Tracking dogs are also brought up to Panola Mountain to aid in the search effort.
HH: There were dogs that we brought up to the scene, both cadaver dogs and air-scent dogs, trying to locate the Jamison family.
SIB: We used some articles from the vehicle to let the dogs take a sniff of it, try to get familiar with their scent.
NAR: The dogs start at the truck and fan outward through the surrounding terrain.
HH: They were very interested at the top of the mountain as well as around the truck. They didn't really want to leave that area.
NAR: Although acres of woods surround the open area at the top of Panola Mountain, the dogs don't venture off the plateau. They alert on a nearby water tank, signaling investigators to the possible presence of human remains.
SIB: The tank was full of water and the dogs seemed to have hit on it quite a bit. Obviously, we were thinking to ourselves, okay, there might be dead bodies in this tank.
NAR: The tank is drained and examined, but nothing is found inside. Search teams scour the mountainside, but find no bodies.
