TX TX - Martha Wes Dunn, 15, Daingerfield, 5 Sept 1990

Published on 14 Dec 2012

I just hope your out there this video is for my sister she went missing in 1990 never to be seen again.We have been to oklahoma and other places she might would be was told she was ok and to just leave it alone. But we can't just back down and forget about her we just want to see her again. The police put her down as a run away couse of her age. Eric Owens come to our house and took her they were into drugs pretty bad and our only conclusion is that she can't get back to us couse she couldn't find us so I done this video for her. If your watching siss we love you and just want you back. We have tried everything to find you we had hired a guy that solves unsolved cold cases Tim Braun he found no trace of you using you SSN or BC we will keep looking.

Click to expand...

FOR THE RECORD: The book, “Just Pure White Trash” is fiction, a novel. It is not the actual account of the disappearance of Martha Dunn and Eric Owens…it is dedicated to their memory because they have no grave if they were murdered. It is in their honor if they are still alive.

Have You Seen Me? Martha Wes Dunn

- Martha was 15 years old when she disappeared from her modest home in Jenkins, Texas. The title “Just Plain White Trash” is not intended to label Martha nor her family as such, but it is to bring awareness that when you are poor and illiterate, the urgency to give priority to criminal activity in your family is sometimes diluted.
It is believed that Martha was pregnant at the time of her disappearance.

Eric Owens – Does No One Care?

Eric Owens was a 17-year old young man from Haywood, Oklahoma. His parents, divorced at the time of this incident, are Robert and Brenda Owens. Robert lives in Haywood and Brenda lived in Kansas when the teens disappeared. Brenda has since moved. Eric’s older brother, Kenneth, was shot and killed a year before Eric disappeared.

I have spoken to Eric’s aunt who lives in Houston and she told me that Eric was a very slow child – a kind and innocent boy. She had called Morris County Sheriff’s office numerous times and the answer was always, “We have nothing.”

As a result of my research, I find no missing person’s record on Eric Owens, although he has not been seen nor has anyone heard from him since this night.

Help me find them and find out really what happened. Post your comments or share what you know

Click to expand...

I spoke about Dunn’s case with Morris County Sheriff’s Department’s Chief Deputy Robbie Gray, who has been on it since 1999. Dunn had been in Oklahoma with some relatives. Her parents had brought her home to Texas to start the school year on September 4. She’d been unhappy about it and they’d argued. The last time they saw her was at home on September 5 around 2:20 p.m. It’s known that that night, around 10, Dunn spoke with her boyfriend, 17-year-old Eric Owens, by phone. The next day she and Owens were gone.

One theory held that they had run away together to live in Hayworth, Oklahoma, where Owens’ aunt lived. The couple was reportedly seen there “several times.” (The aunt denied this.) Another theory: They’d hitchhiked to Kansas, where Owens’ mother lived. Wichita, perhaps. Neither story panned out, said Gray.

Click to expand...

There was another, considerably darker possibility, suggested by Dunn’s father: that Owens, who had been involved with drugs in Oklahoma, was targeted by a dealer who kidnapped them both. But there was no ransom demand. Indeed, said Gray, “There was no signs of anything like that happening.”

Neither Dunn nor Owens has been seen again.

Is there any reason, I asked Gray, to believe they were anything but runaways? “No, not really,” he said. “The reason why is, if you knew her parents, they were kind of strange. They were different, I’ll put it that way. When this happened, you would have actually thought, Okay, yeah, she’s trying to get out from underneath them.”

By the time “Runaway Train” aired, said Gray, “things went cold.” Even the popularity of the video couldn’t move the needle much. There was a tip that Dunn was working as a waitress near New Boston. (“Of course, I called over there and that wasn’t true.”) About a year ago, Gray heard about a woman in Mississippi who reportedly resembled Dunn’s age progression photo. That, too, came to nothing. And that, he said, was the last time anyone has called about Martha Wes Dunn.

“I don’t know if I would go so far as saying that she’s alive,” said Gray. But there’s no evidence to the contrary. That makes Dunn one of only two long-term missing persons cases in Morris County in the last 25 years. (As of 2013, Daingerfield had a population of only 2,526.)

Click to expand...

dribwolley said:

I would say that Daingerfield is probably at least a two or two and a half hour drive away from Irving... I wouldn't really consider it to be close, in my opinion, I think that most people would consider that quite a drive, it is almost into Arkansas, whereas Irving is between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Click to expand...

JusticeWillBeServed said:

Lengthy article that focuses on a few of the children featured in the Runaway Train music video. Martha's disappearance is mentioned and by extension, Eric as well. Sadly, the detective notes that he hasn't received any tips in over a year.

https://melmagazine.com/the-children-of-runaway-train-19ee8f6aabf8#.y370pg6cp

Click to expand...

alb1on said:

Bump.

As others have said, it is difficult to get a handle on this case. One way in would be to have more information on Eric Owens. Having looked for matches to him I wonder if he is Eric K Owens, born 6 April 1972 (which would mean he was 18, not 17) and shown in Ancestry with an address in Norman and another in McAlester prior to 1993. Both these places are very near Haywood in Oklahoma. My reason for thinking this may be our boy is that Ancestry also has a record for the same Eric K Owens (match on precise birth date) living in Irving Texas (not too far from Daingerfield) prior to 1993. There is also a marriage record for an Eric K Owens, born about 1972, in Dallas in 2006 but I would be less confident this is the same man as there was an Eric K Owens born in Texas in 1975 and birth dates on marriage records are notoriously approximate. However, if I was family or LE it is certainly a link I would check.

Click to expand...