The mystery around the disappearance of Brandon Lawson

Krista Johnson | San Angelo

Every few months, Coke County’s six-person sheriff’s office receives a call from someone seeking information about Brandon Lawson. Every few months, they tell someone the case is dead.

“We don’t have any leads,” Chief Deputy Brandon Neal explains. “We have nothing, nothing.”

On Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013, Lawson, then 26, briefly returned to his San Angelo home after not coming home the previous night. Ladessa Lofton, Lawson’s girlfriend of 10 years, mother of their three children and step-mom to Lawson’s eldest daughter, was infuriated by his absence because of his recent drug relapse. The two fought and he left. Lawson never returned.

His last known location was along U.S. Highway 277, north of San Angelo and right before the West Texas town of Bronte, population not-quite 1,000. A desolate two-lane highway, Deputy Neal said a person could probably lie down in the middle of the road and not worry about being run over.

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A red-and-white metal cross, standing about 3 feet tall, marks the spot where Brandon’s pickup rolled to a stop that night. Even if you’re looking for it, you might miss it among the overgrown brush and cactus that line the terrain.

Some people think Lawson — because of an outstanding warrant or his rocky relationship with Lofton — purposely disappeared and is living a new life, undetected.

Some think Lawson — because of a 911 call he made that night and the fact neither his remains nor possessions have been found — was hurt by someone.

And some think Lawson — because of his drug use and the rough terrain in the area — died from the elements out there in the scrub, and search attempts just haven’t found him.

The night of Brandon Lawson's disappearance

According to a phone call he had with his father around 11:30 that night, Brandon was headed to his parents' house in Crowley, about three hours away. It was just past 12:30 a.m. when he called his brother, Kyle Lawson, who also lived in San Angelo, asking for help because he ran out of gas.

“'Three (expletives) are chasing me out of town,'” Brandon told his brother. When Brandon said it was “the Mexicans in the neighborhood,” Kyle asked if he was tripping, if it was drugs causing him to hallucinate — but Brandon denied it was all in his head.

Kyle went over to Brandon and Lofton’s house — less than a mile away — to get a gas can, then headed out of town with his wife-at-the-time and 4-year-old son. The brothers kept making calls to one another, but Kyle said Brandon wouldn’t have a full conversation with him, more or less saying a sentence or two before hanging up.

At one point Brandon said he was running through a field and was bleeding — which Kyle took as him tripping over some rocks or another minor accident of the sort.

At 12:50 a.m. Brandon called 911, which at the time rang at the local nursing home in Robert Lee. The call is hard to understand, but many have said Brandon sounded distressed.

Among a series of unclear statements, he told the dispatcher he ran out of gas, was in the middle of a field, that he needed help and asked, “please hurry.”

When the dispatcher asked if Brandon needed an ambulance, he said “No, I need the cops.”

Spotty cellphone service kept several calls to and from Brandon Lawson from connecting. Here's a look at those phone records:

12:51: Kyle called Brandon and left a voicemail.

12:51: Brandon called Lofton, but she didn’t answer. After their fight, and lacking a wall charger, Lofton had taken her phone to her car to charge.

12:52: Kyle’s wife called Brandon, then called again.

12:54: Kyle called Brandon.

12:57: Brandon called his neighbor.

12:58: Brandon called Kyle, and called again.

12:58: The neighbor called three times.

12:59: Kyle called Brandon.

1:04: The dispatcher at the nursing facility called Brandon back, trying to get more information about his location and what was wrong. She left a voicemail and called once more.

1:09: Brandon called Kyle three times.

1:12: Kyle called Brandon three times.

1:15: Brandon called Kyle twice, the last calls he made from his phone.

1:19: All calls made to his phone begin going straight to voicemail.

Deputy Neal arrived at Brandon’s pickup just after 1 a.m., after dispatch received a 911 call from a trucker along U.S. 277 that reported Brandon’s F-150 obstructing traffic by being over the white line.

The last gas station before Bronte is in San Angelo, a distance of about 30 miles between one another, so Neal had responded to plenty of calls of people running out of gas. When he arrived at Brandon’s pickup, Brandon wasn’t there, but Kyle was just pulling up.

“I can see you, I’m right here,” Kyle said Brandon told him, although he couldn’t see his brother anywhere.

With an active warrant out of Johnson County for possession with intent to deliver, Kyle assumed Brandon was hiding to avoid getting in trouble with the police.

At that time, neither Neal nor Kyle knew about the 911 call Brandon had made.

Kyle told Neal the pickup belonged to Brandon and that he was walking along the road, but his phone kept losing reception — purposely leaving out the fact Brandon said he was close by.

“At the time, I didn’t feel like he was in any danger,” Kyle said.

After Kyle and Neal finished talking, Kyle decided to drive away and park up the road a bit to see if his brother would come out once the deputy left.

“I sat there for a good 30 to 45 minutes,” Kyle said. He eventually left because his son was hungry and crying.

He wasn’t able to put gas in the can because his check hadn’t hit his bank account yet, so he left it in the bed of the pickup, thinking Brandon would be able to walk to the gas station.

“I go back to San Angelo, I get food for my kid and stuff. I figure OK, he’s just out there, he’s hiding because of the police, he’s going to be out there whenever I go back, when I take the gas, maybe the police officer will be gone by then,” Kyle said.

When he did get back to the pickup about 5 a.m., Brandon wasn't anywhere to be found.

“I hollered and screamed my brother’s name and he never came out.”

Is Brandon Lawson missing on purpose?

One working theory is Brandon Lawson's criminal past and rocky relationship pushed him to voluntarily disappear and start a new life.

Because the pickup was over the white line and Brandon was the only one with a key, Coke County had it towed a little after 8 a.m. Aug. 9, 2013.

The next day, according to a sheriff's office report, Deputy Neal checked the homes and properties of owners who were gone — because many people in the area use their land seasonally — looking to see if anything had been disturbed or for signs someone might have gotten water from them. He didn’t find anything.

Later that day, he checked the same area with a thermal imaging camera but didn’t register a human-sized heat signature.

On Aug. 11, Neal reported a small private search team gathered at 8 a.m. and ended their search about noon.

“The only sign of anyone being in that area was a spot under a tree where it appeared someone sat down close to the roadway within eyesight of where Lawson’s pickup broke down,” the report states.

Texas Ranger Lt. Dwayne Goll met with Neal and Coke County Sherriff Wayne McCutchen about the case on Aug. 12. Neal reported Goll came to the same conclusion as he and McCutchen, “that Lawson is possibly no longer in Coke County, but would see about making arrangements on the availability of a DPS helicopter.”

Lofton came to the sheriff’s office to officially file a missing person’s report Tuesday, Aug. 13. The same day, Texas Ranger Nick Hanna — who now leads the case — came to Coke County to take a helicopter ride over the area from the Colorado River south and along both sides of U.S. 277 near where Brandon’s pickup was.

“It was determined that Lawson was not on the ground due to the fact that there was a lot of exposed bare ground even under the short mesquite and cedar bushes,” Neal wrote.

His report is concluded with his opinion that “Brandon Lawson is not in Coke County, lost or hiding.”

The opinion is based on Kyle’s revelation that Brandon was hiding in the brush near his pickup to avoid being discovered by Neal, not seeing any indication of foul play in or around the pickup and the text messages between Brandon and Lofton detailing the severity of their fight that night.

His belief, he reported, is that after he and Kyle left the pickup, “Lawson walked back to the roadway and was able to get a ride from a passing motorist.”

Years later, Brandon’s continued absence has strengthened Neal’s views.

When he went missing, Coke County was in the middle of a bad drought, Neal said.

During a plane search, Neal said they were able to spot corn sacks from the air. “If you can see those from the plane, you can see someone laying down," he said.

“At that time, the drought was bad, leaves were drying up and everything,” he said, adding that the river at that time was low, the deepest point just reaching his knee.

“If someone wants to be gone, they can,” Neal said, adding Brandon had an active warrant, which “could be a contributing factor for why he is gone.”

In addition to the warrant, those who have followed the case also point to the fact Brandon cashed in his 401K with Renegade Oil Services just before he went missing.

Several months after Brandon’s disappearance, Kyle Lawson was asked to meet Ranger Hanna, Sheriff McCutchen and an investigator from Johnson County — where Brandon’s warrant was issued — to answer questions.

They asked Kyle whether he had hurt his brother or given him a ride somewhere. Kyle eventually requested a polygraph test.

“They said I passed the one on harming and tried to say the first one was faulty because I had coughed a few times during the test,” Kyle said.

Another man, Jon Shadden, disappeared from Coke County in 2007 and has never been seen again. Neal said his disappearance was intentional, too — a sentiment shared by some of Shadden's acquaintances — but a sentiment Lawson’s family staunchly denies as a possibility for Brandon.

Was Brandon Lawson harmed?

During calls before he went missing, Brandon said he was being chased and requested police during his 911 call. Some believe that is evidence someone killed Brandon after he left his pickup.

Brandon’s father, Brad Lawson, goes back and forth on what he thinks happened to his son. Sometimes, he tries to be realistic, saying he accepts the chances of Brandon being alive are slim. Other times, he admits to nightmares — like seeing Brandon being forced into slave labor for a cartel — one of the few situations he can think of that would mean Brandon is alive.

If Brandon were intentionally harmed by someone, there are endless ways it could have occurred. The Lawson family has wondered whether someone was actually following him that night, whether he stumbled on someone’s land and never left, whether his death was a crime of opportunity for someone passing.

“I’m so scared we’re never going to find him,” Lofton said. “My kids are going to be having their own kids or getting married and still not know what happened to their dad or where he’s at.”

The couple met in high school during her sophomore year, his junior.

When he approached her in the hallway, asking if she knew who he was, she proudly responded, “No, am I supposed to?” even though she had seen him around.

He asked her to write her phone number down on a piece of paper.

“I swear there was already a number on there,” she chuckled, but decided to give it to him anyway.

His laugh, his personality and his pretty blue eyes caught — and kept — her attention for the next 10 years.

Being with family was important to them, and they enjoyed doing things together like watching movies, going camping and fishing, “living life to the fullest,” Lofton said.

“We weren’t the perfect couple — we grew up together; we were babies. But we were happy,” she said. “We loved each other.”

Their fight that night, she said, was the result of several factors.

“We were stressed out,” she said, explaining he was working over 60 hours a week and they had three kids in the house, their youngest son only a few months old at the time.

“For a long time, I blamed myself,” she said. She also regrets the words spoken during their fight. “I will never get those words back.”

For her, and their children, the 911 call contains the last words they have from Brandon. The two older girls listen to it on YouTube, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“It just hurts me that I can’t find him for them,” she said. “As a mother, you don’t ever want your children to go through pain.”

Brad doesn’t believe his son desserted his family.

“Something happened that night, and it wasn’t him meeting a girl and driving off somewhere,” Brad said.

In his opinion, the warrant definitely wouldn’t have been enough motivation.

“Brandon had already done some state jail time, and Brandon wasn’t afraid to take the punishment that was dealt to him,” he said. “... No, I don’t believe that, not for a minute. It took a lot more than that to scare Brandon.”

Additionally, Brandon was actively making future career plans, Brad said.

“Brandon had a whole new job he was going to start that Monday, with more money and more benefits,” Brad said.

Lofton said she knows Brandon initiated the process of cashing in his 401(k), but she doesn’t know if he ever got the money. His last check was direct-deposited into his account that Friday and was never withdrawn, eventually going to the state to cover child support for his eldest daughter, Lofton said.

“Brandon went up missing in the dead of night — how far could he have actually gone in that terrain?” Brad asked. “How far could a man have gone in a pair of shorts, without any water or anything to drink?

Beyond not being able to find Brandon’s body, Kyle doesn’t understand how all traces of his brother vanished.

“For a person to have a wallet, keys and full key chain, socks, shoes, shirt, a wallet full of cards and money and an ID, and his cellphone, a cellphone case — all of that stuff and not one single thing has been found out there — I just don’t understand that,” he said.

“My brother might have been a felon and might have messed with drugs and he might have relapsed,” Kyle said, but “my brother ... worked for what he had. ... He loved his children, he took care of his children, he was a good person. He wasn’t some dope fiend living on the streets, robbing people or trying to get over on someone to get high again.”

Lofton believes someone knows something about what happened to Brandon, and “if they would just come forward they could make my life, my kids' life, so much better.”

She hasn’t been able to find out the identity of the dispatcher he spoke to that night, or who the trucker that called about the pickup was — people she’d like to talk to about what they think happened to Brandon.

“I tell myself it was an accident, even though when you listen to the 911 call and you know it’s not,” she said. “When it’s your person in your life that you spend every day with, you don’t want to think anyone would want to hurt him.”

“I loved Brandon so much. He was the true love of my life. You know when you feel like you can’t live without somebody, that was it.”

Did Brandon Lawson succumb to the West Texas elements?

U.S. 277 cuts through desolate, drought-prone terrain spotted green with thorny mesquite, huisache and cactus. It's an environment largely inhabited by rattlesnakes and feral hogs.

Texas Ranger Nick Hanna could not discuss Brandon’s case because it is an active investigation, but Lofton said Hanna told her he thinks Brandon’s body is somewhere out there in that land.

In an email, Hanna did provide information on the efforts to locate Brandon in Bronte, with physical searches conducted on four occasions in August, one in September, one in October, another in January 2014, February 2014 and the last in July 2014.

“These searches included two DPS helicopters, ATVs, TEXSAR, six cadaver dogs and four different agencies at one time of another,” Hanna wrote.

Since Brandon went missing, Hanna has received leads of possible sightings, “all of which have been determined not to be Mr. Lawson,” he wrote.

Private investigator Paula Boudreaux understands the family's frustration.

“It’s a tough case — people always want to blame it on law enforcement, that they didn’t do a good job,” said Boudreaux, the second private investigator Lofton has hired. But, she said, “They only have so many resources, just like me.”

Coming onto the case with “fresh eyes,” Lofton said Boudreaux is tracking down leads when they come up, usually from the Help Find Brandon Lawson Facebook page, which has nearly 15,000 likes.

“You never know, a little something might become something,” Lofton said about the tips.

When it comes to searching the area, some landowners wouldn’t allow Boudreaux or Brandon’s family on their property — but Boudreaux said she has been told the rangers and sheriff have cleared that land.

In four separate searches using search dogs, she was able to clear land west of U.S. 277 — south of Highway 158 to Humble Road, as well as the land east of U.S. 277 — south of Main Street to just west of Highway 285.

For the private land within those quadrants where owners wouldn't allow her onto the property, her response was, "I’ll just fly over your land and I’ll have binoculars," she said, taking helicopter trips over the area on two occasions.

But Boudreaux said she hasn’t been back to Bronte to clear more land for almost two years.

“You do all that you can with what you know,” she said. Then "at some point, you just gotta sit back and wait."

Lofton is waiting to hear back from Texas Equusearch, a nonprofit search and recovery team that uses horses to cover large areas. She plans to use drones to fly over the area as well.

Finding Brandon, whatever the outcome, the Lawson family said, would help.

“It don’t get any easier,” Brad said about not knowing what happened to his son. “Each day, you wonder if you’re going to get that call — it’s not every once in a while.”

“All along I’ve stated the fact that I would like to find Brandon and bring him home where he belongs,” he continued. “The chances of us finding Brandon alive are almost none, and I understand that and I realize that. But he’s not here. ... (He deserves) to be brought home to his family.”

For now, the red-and-white cross bearing Brandon’s name that his grandfather made gives his family a place to visit every few months.

“I just want to find him — to have closure on where he’s at. Then we’ll get to the point of what happened,” Lofton said. “Finding him — no matter what — we would have somewhere to visit, not just that cross.”

Anyone with information about Brandon Lawson's disappearance can call the Coke County Sheriff's Office at 325-453-2717 or the family's private investigator Paula Bourdreaux at 214-926-0048.

(Mobile Users: Click below for timeline of missing people in West Texas.)