Jamison Family

Case background and investigation

On October 8, 2009, Bobby Dale Jamison, 44, his wife Sherilynn, 40, and their six-year-old daughter Madyson left their home near Eufaula, Oklahoma, to look at a roughly 40-acre plot of rural land they were considering buying near Red Oak, about 30 miles away in the Sans Bois Mountains of Latimer County. Security camera footage from their property that day showed Bobby and Sherilynn making repeated trips between the house and their pickup truck; investigators and media accounts have described their movements as unusual or 'trancelike,' though what, if anything, that signified has never been established. The family was never seen alive again.

About a week later, the Jamisons' locked pickup truck was found abandoned at a remote site on Panola Mountain, south of Kinta in Latimer County. Inside were the family's wallets and identification, their cell phones, a GPS unit, clothing, approximately $32,000 in cash reportedly found in a bank envelope under the driver's seat, and the family's dog, Maisie, severely malnourished but alive. A photograph of Madyson, apparently taken on the mountain the day the family disappeared, was recovered from a cell phone in the truck. Extensive searches of the rugged terrain in 2009, involving law enforcement, volunteers, and search dogs, found no trace of the family. According to media reports, a brown briefcase Bobby was said to carry and a handgun belonging to Sherilynn were not located.

The case drew national attention in part because of the unusual circumstances investigators described. Media accounts and people close to the family reported that the Jamisons had experienced financial and health problems, that Bobby was involved in a legal dispute with his father, and that family members had spoken of feeling spiritually troubled, including claims that their house was haunted. Investigators reportedly examined a range of theories over the years, including foul play, drug involvement, murder-suicide, exposure after becoming lost, and a voluntary disappearance. A friend of the family also told reporters that an anonymous caller claimed a white-supremacist group had discussed the family, a tip that was publicized but never substantiated. None of these theories has been confirmed, and no suspect has ever been publicly identified or charged.

On November 16, 2013, more than four years after the disappearance, two hunters found the skeletal remains of two adults and a child in the Smokestack Hollow area of Panola Mountain, less than three miles from where the truck had been abandoned. On July 3, 2014, the Oklahoma medical examiner's office confirmed through anthropological and forensic testing that the remains were those of Bobby, Sherilynn, and Madyson Jamison. Because the remains were incomplete, heavily decomposed, and damaged by animals, the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death for any of the three, and each was officially listed as unknown.

The deaths of the Jamison family remain unsolved. The Latimer County Sheriff's Office has said the case is open and active, and it has been featured on programs including Investigation Discovery's 'Disappeared,' but as of the most recent public reporting, how and why the family died has never been explained.