Brandon Lawson: The Chilling 911 Call That Baffled Investigators
In August of 2013, Brandon Lawson made a concerning 911 call, and then was never heard from again. However, just a few weeks ago, there was a huge update in the case. Get the full story in this episode.
TW: mentions of suicide
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SOURCES
https://missingbrandonlawson.com/?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWNPUjeLQNQ&t=0s
https://www.newspapers.com/image/791802264/?match=1&terms=Jon%20Shadden%20%22coke%20county%22
https://charleyproject.org/case/jon-paul-shadden
https://www.reddit.com/r/meth/comments/1b4c0aw/what_does_a_meth_psychosis_feels_like/
https://www.drugrehab.com/addiction/drugs/crystal-meth/psychosis/
TRANSCRIPT
It was a hot night in west texas, when Deputy Neal drove down a desolate stretch of highway in the dark. He had gotten a relatively easy dispatch to go look at a truck someone said was parked strangely on the edge of Highway 277, a two lane road with miles of brush and fields on either side, stretching out into infinity. Why anyone would be parked on that road, well he had no idea
A few miles south of Bronte, Texas, Deputy Neal saw what the call was all about. There, parked over the white line on the side of the road so that it was in the way of traffic, was a truck. The driver was nowhere to be found.
So deputy neal pulled over to inspect the truck. It was an F-150 with no visible signs of damage. No flat tire, no cracked windshield. The driver side window was half down, and deputy Neal could see that the truck was out of gas. Bingo, the driver must have started walking to the nearest gas station, miles down the road.
But just then, Neal saw headlights, and another car pulled up next to the truck. A man and woman jump out with really worried expressions, in the back seat, there’s a young boy. Officer neal looked at his watch, it was 1:15 in the morning, what were they doing here?
The man and woman appeared to be around mid to late 20’s and they didn't say anything to Neal at first. The man had his phone to his ear, and he was looking out into the brush, spinning around like he was trying to find something. He nervously shot a glance over at the deputy, and then continued looking around, speaking too quietly for Neal to hear. The woman was rapidly texting on her phone as if trying to quickly shoot off a message in between staring at the abandoned truck.
Neal looked back at the vehicle. What was going on? And then, he approached the couple and asked them the question that would spawn a decade of search efforts. Where was the driver?
Welcome back heart starts pounding, I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore, and today I have a very strange story for you all, one that had a huge update just last month, so you’ll definitely want to stick around to the end to hear that.
If you’re new here, welcome to the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters
Back at the truck, officer Neal asked the man what he was doing at the scene. The man introduced himself as Kyle Lawson, he was the brother of the truck's owner, Brandon, a 26 year old father of 3. The woman with him was his girlfriend.
He explained that he had just been on the phone with his brother who had called him when he ran out of gas. Brandon had been driving from San Angelo to Fort Worth after he had an argument with his girlfriend. On the phone he said that he was walking down the side of the highway towards a gas station. Kyle was trying to stay on the phone, but his brother kept losing reception.
But then why, when Kyle arrived, had he been searching in the bushes around the vehicle, the deputy wondered. If he was walking down the road, why not go looking for him? Well, it turns out that the story Kyle relayed to neal was only partially true.
Yes, the truck belonged to his brother, Brandon Lawson, and yes he had run out of gas, but Brandon wasn’t walking down the side of the highway. Kyle actually didn’t know where his brother was, but on that last phone call he gave him a chilling message “I can see you, I’m right here”. Suggesting that he was somewhere in the dark brush. Kyle looked around the area for his brother, but couldn’t see him.
He watched as Deputy Neal climbed back into his car and drove off. He didn’t seem too concerned, he just figured some guy had ran out of gas and abandoned his car, no big deal. But Kyle didn’t want to leave without knowing where his brother was.
Deep down, he thought he knew why his brother hadn’t come out of the brush. He had been hiding from the deputy. See Brandon had just learned in the last few days that he had a felony warrant out for his arrest. He was probably just laying low until the officer left. But he didn’t want to just leave his brother stranded there with no gas, So Kyle and the woman got back in the car and went up the road a bit. they waited for around 30 minutes, but Brandon never appeared.
Kyle's son, who was in the backseat, started crying about being hungry and tired, he needed to get him home, so they drove off back to San Angelo. Maybe he thought he’d hear from Brandon later that night. But he never did, and every call he made to his brother went straight to voicemail. So, He came back to where the truck was the next morning around 5am, and when he drove to the scene, his heart dropped.
Brandon’s truck was still there, and he was still nowhere to be found. In the predawn light there was still no evidence of Brandon. No keys, no wallet, nothing. Kyle stood by the truck and screamed out for his brother, no response. So he drove up and down highway 277 for a few hours, still no sight of Brandon. He was starting to get concerned. This area was full of rattlesnakes and wild hogs. It was pretty desolate too, if Brandon had wandered too far from the road, he may have gotten lost
By 8:30 am, the police had come back to tow the truck off the road. On August 13th, Brandon’s family filed a missing person’s report
Kyle went down to the police station to give them some more information on his brother. And that’s when he confessed that he had lied to Deputy Neal. Now that his brother was officially missing, he thought it was important that they know that Brandon wasn’t walking down the road when they were on the phone. He was somewhere near the car, where he could see the officer and Kyle but they couldn’t see him.
And he also admitted that in one of the calls that Brandon had made to him that night, he said he was bleeding, and he wanted Kyle to hurry up and get there with gas.
The officer asked Kyle if he had been worried about his brother, and he said that night, he wasn’t. He didn’t know what was going on with his brother, but he didn’t think he’d vanish.
So you’re brother was bleeding and hiding from police, but you weren’t worried? And officer asked. It turns out that talking to the police really backfired on Kyle, soon, all eyes were on him.
No knowing what else to do, Kyle offered to take a polygraph test so he could clear his name. He wouldn’t have done anything to his brother, he loved Brandon. Brandon was a hardworking father of three young children, he was his best friend.
Of course, the officers took him up on his offer, and Kyle passed the first test, but the results of the second are a little ambiguous. He was fidgeting around a lot during the test and coughing a ton which skewed the results. was he nervous? Was he fidgety because he was hiding something?
There was still a lot about the night that Brandon went missing that needed to be put together, but it’s not long before a huge piece of evidence was revealed. Ladessa was going through Brandon’s phone statement, when she saw a call that no one had been made aware of. Not Kyle, not the officers, not Deputy Neale. But that night, in between phone calls to his brother, Brandon had actually called 911 and had a very.. Concerning conversation with the dispatcher
I’m going to play you the contents of that call right now, first, at regular speed, and then slowed down. It’s hard to understand what Brandon is saying, so listen closely
Like I said it’s really difficult to understand what Brandon is saying, and a lot of what he says has not been confirmed, but I want to break it down based on our best guess of what he says
At first it sounds like he says “Yes, I’m in the middle of a field a staper just pushed some guys over” according to some people in the area, a Staper is slang for a state trooper.
Then he says something like, we’re out here going towards Abilene on both sides. Abilene is a small city in Texas that he was headed towards on the highway
This next part is a little harder to understand but it sounds like “my truck ran out of gas, there’s one car here, a guys chasing ___ into the woods. Please hurry.
The 911 dispatcher then asks him to run that by them again because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. And brandon interrupts by saying something that sounds like “____ not talking to em, ____something ran into em”. His words are slurred but the dispatcher confirms they understand by saying “ahhhh you ran into em”
This part is also up in the air as to what Brandon meant. Did he run into someone as in hit them with his vehicle? Or did he run across someone like you would in a store? I’ve seen a few people say that this is a regional thing, using “ran into” to mean came across. But the way that the dispatcher responds makes me think that they assumed Brandon had hit someone. Which is why they then asked if he needed an ambulance later.
And then Brandon says something about the first guy, some people think he says “shot” the first guy, and then when asked if he needs an ambulance, he says “no I need the cops” though some people think it sounds more like no I need the cops.
There’s also a lot of debate about what can be heard in the background of this call. Some people insist that they can hear gun shots, or another person, but like I said, none of that has been confirmed.
But obviously, this strange call changed a lot of peoples thoughts on what happened. Was Brandon being chased? Was he running from someone?
One thing a lot of people who have heard this phone call have brought up, is that Brandon may have said that he watched a State Trooper push someone over. Some suggest that he saw something he shouldn’t have.
Could that have also have been part of the reason he was hiding from Deputy Neal when he arrived on the scene? Well, Kyle didn’t really think any of this made sense. Brandon had asked for the cops to come to the scene, but then was hiding from the deputy that arrived?
The truth of the matter, was that the entire night leading up to Brandon going missing had been strange…
On the night of August 8th, 2013, Brandon arrived at the home he shared with his long term partner, Ladessa, and their young children. He had not stayed in the house the previous night, and according to Ladessa, they had a fight while he was there.
Ladessa would later tell police that the couple fought about normal couple things. Brandon had been working 60+ hour weeks as an oil field worker, a physically demanding job that doesn’t typically pay the high salaries some oil industry jobs pay. On top of that, his children were still young.
But he had actually just taken a new job, one that paid better and had better benefits, and he was set to start monday. So maybe things were about to get better. Regardless, during the fight Brandon stormed out, got in his truck, and took off.
It’s believed that Brandon was driving to his parents home near Fort Worth, about 3 hours away. This is based on a call he had with his father at 11:30pm, though I’ve seen statements from the Lawson family that indicate they weren’t sure exactly where he was going. But he was heading northwest along highway 277 in that general direction.
Just after 12:30am, Brandon called Kyle and let him know that his truck had run out of gas and he needed help. On this call, he told Kyle that he believed three people were chasing him out of town because Ladessa told them to. The only description he gave of the people is that they were mexican, male, and from his neighborhood.
This concerned Kyle, he worried that his brother was maybe on something and hallucinating, so he asked him point blank, are you tripping? But Brandon insisted that no, he was not, this was not all in his head.
This was one of a series of calls that Brandon made that night, most of which were catalogued by the San Angelo Times. After that first call, Kyle started making arrangements to go bring his brother some gas, he was going to have to get a gas can from Ladessa, grab Brandon so they could use his credit card, and then bring the gas back to the truck. But meanwhile, Brandon’s phone record shows the following calls:
12:51: Kyle called Brandon and left a voicemail. Probably because that’s when Brandon tried to call Ladessa, but she didn’t answer.
12:54: Kyle called Brandon. 12:58: Brandon called Kyle, and called again.12:59: Kyle called Brandon.
1:04: The dispatcher he had spoken to called Brandon back to get more information about what was happening. She left a voicemail and called once more. It does not appear that call connected.
Between 1:09 and 1:19 kyle and brandon call each other multiple times, sometimes in quick succession. Kyle said during the calls on this call log, Brandon would say things really quickly, some of it nonsensical and then hang up. He also told him that he was bleeding and in a field.
Kyle arrived at the scene at 1:10, and that’s when his brother told him that he could see him, that he was right there. The last outgoing phone call from Brandon was at 1:15. After 1:19, all phone calls to him went to voicemail. He was never heard from again.
Did something happen in those four minutes? Did he fall, did someone hurt him? Did he just stop answering, and run away, was he in another location?
A small search group gathered to look for Brandon starting on August 11th. Coke county was in the middle of a serious drought, so most of the vegetation had thinned out, making it slightly easier to search the area than it would have been otherwise.
Deputy Neale said that the drought made it a lot easier to do overhead searches. He said that from up in a plane you could see cornsacks on the ground. If you can see those from a plane, he said in an interview, you could see a person.
And yet, no trace of Brandon was found. The area was even searched with a thermal camera, still nothing.
“The only sign of anyone being in that area, the police report read, 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,”
By August 12th, just one day after search efforts began, Deputy Neal met with Coke County Sheriff Wane McCutchen, and the two of them came to a conclusion. Brandon had made a great escape, and was no longer in Coke County.
They said they came to this realization after they learned that he had a big fight with Ladessa that evening and had been hiding from the officers. On top of that, they discovered that he had cashed out his 401k just a week before the disappearance. Which, mind you, is something that is less suspicious when you remember that he was in the middle of switching jobs.
Later on in October, cadaver dogs were called to the area. No hits. To the officers, it seemed like a classic case of a man who wanted to escape it all and start fresh. Even when it was revealed that Brandon’s phone may have pinged tower, just three miles from his truck
They pointed to another case from the area, the case of Jon Shadden, a 36 year old father of 4 that disappeared in 2007.
Jon was reported missing on June 12th, 2007, after he failed to return to work. He was last seen at his vacation trailer home three days prior to that, and then never again.
Though his profile on the Charley Project website says Endangered Missing, officers believed that he simply left his life to start anew.
But there were problems with that theory. Jon had apparently mentioned weeks before his disappearance that he had considered taking his own life. And there were rumors of a burned note inside of his trailer home that may have been a suicide note. So he wasn’t really an example of a man who had abandoned his life for greener pastures, yet, Coke County officers were using him as one.
It didn’t matter though. On October 31st, 2013, The Observer/ Enterprise, a weekly newspaper in Coke County posted an article to facebook about the search that opened with “Law enforcement concludes man not in Coke County”
What was that based on, though? On the fact that they didn’t find any trace of him in the area that was searched? Brandon’s family and a lot of the community felt it was pretty audacious to Conclude, firmly, that he was no longer in the county
And so, online forums were created to share information pertaining to Brandon. One of those was a facebook page, Find Brandon Lawson, that was updated by Ladessa and others close to the missing man.
The page quickly grew to thousands of people who were invested in Brandon’s whereabouts.
But soon, some strange posts started popping up on some of these forums. One wrote
“My question is, after the deputy left and in the hours before the truck was towed, why didn’t he go back to his truck and drive off? Could it be he thought he would be stopped while driving? His actions prove he didn’t want to be seen by law enforcement. Could it be he still doesnt want to be found especially after all the publicity?”
Now, taken on it’s face, that statement doesn’t seem all that strange. It reads like an internet sleuth coming up with theories as to why Brandon would still be hiding from police. But what is strange about it, is that the poster is Melinda McCutchen, wife of Coke County Sheriff, Wayne McCutchens, who concluded that Brandon was no longer in Coke County. Oh, she’s also the owner of the Observer/Enterprise, the local news paper that reported Brandon was no longer in coke county.
Why would someone who is supposed to be unbiased in all of this as a journalist comment on facebook and websleth forums her theories? That was one of many posts where Melinda theorized publicly that Brandon had run away, but also gave up sensitive information to the case.
She used the Observer/Enterprise facebook account to write “The Reports on the Help Find Brandon Lawson page are inaccurate.”
She claimed that Ladessa was lying when she said she saw the 911 call on Brandon’s phone records.
She also said that she was given an exact quote that Brandon probably couldn’t not have gone more than 100 yards in his condition. She doesn’t explain what that condition was, though she insinuates he was on a substance. She also says that she will private message people the exact quote if they ask, because she didn’t want Ladessa to see the exact quote on a public forum.
That contradicts that Brandon was not in Coke County though.
I bring all of this up to say that this investigation was kind of a mess from the start. You have the Sheriff who is claiming Brandon left Coke County, even though none of his credit cards, bank accounts, nor his cell phone had been used. You have his wife acting like a reddit sleuther all over the internet, sharing private information with strangers. Its no wonder that Brandon’s family eventually hired a private investigator, Paula Boudreaux to help lead a search around highway 277.
But that search doesn’t turn up anything. Not a single trace of Brandon. And eventually, months without Brandon turn into years. There’s no word from him. Ladessa said her children asked her if dad was coming home for their birthdays each year. How do you explain that to a child?
In 2019 though, in an effort to get more information out about the case, Brandon’s brother Kyle went on an episode of the Crawlspace podcast called Missing Brandon Lawson. And on this episode of the podcast, Kyle gave some information to the public about that night that wasn’t previously known.
First, and this detail shocked many, he disclosed what Ladessa and Brandon really fought about on the last night anyone saw him. It wasn’t “normal couple things” like Ladessa had said. It was drugs.
See, earlier that night, Brandon had called Kyle and asked him to get him Meth. Kyle told his brother he thought that was a bad idea. Brandon had been clean for a while now, why go and mess all that up. He did not go and get his brother drugs, but he knows that Brandon did find some that day.
He described his brothers drug use as somewhat under control. He would use occasionally but could put the drug down for a long time. He had been to jail previously for drug related charges. Actually, in this interview Kyle explained that the warrant for Brandon’s arrest was drug related, but it was an incident that had occurred before the last time Brandon had gone to jail, hence why he was unaware of it. He didn’t learn about the warrant until he went to the DMV after being released from prison recently.
Ladessa had called Kyle after their fight, devastated that Brandon had been using. She said he head wasn’t right and asked Kyle to come help, but by the time Kyle had gotten to their house, his brother was gone.
He didn’t think that Brandon had done any other substances that night, and didn’t do anymore meth after he left Ladessa’s, but knowing there were drugs in his system did effect how people viewed this case. Maybe Brandon didn’t run into a state trooper that night who was chasing him, or whatever the cryptic 911 call revealed. Maybe he was suffering from what’s known as meth psychosis.
Meth Psychosis can affect up to 40% of users, and symptoms include hallucinations and paranoia. Kyle insisted that his brother had never acted this way before while on the drug, he didn’t seem to believe that this was psychosis, but that something had happened to Brandon.
But was this really just a textbook case of Drug induced paranoia. Was Brandon hallucinating people chasing him? Did he hallucinate seeing a state trooper do something?
Maybe, but what does that mean for where he was? If he had run away in fear, would he have come down from his high and returned home? Or did he get hurt while he was out there? But the surrounding area had been searched, so it didn’t seem like he had gotten hurt anywhere near his vehicle.
As I was listening to this interview, I was certain that drugs had something to do with the outcome of that night, I just didn’t know exactly what. But then Kyle actually brought up something interesting that I actually hadn’t seen or heard anywhere else.
He mentioned how after Brandon went missing, he got a phone call. A woman in town had bought a used laptop and found something concerning on it. Something that she thought the Lawson family needed to see.
On the laptop, there was a document detailing someone coming across Brandon that night and killing him. Now, Kyle doesn’t give a ton of info on this in the podcast, so it’s unclear if this was like, a short story someone wrote or a diary entry.
But it detailed how this person was apparently walking down highway 277 that night, saw Brandon, and proceeded to kill him.
The woman apparently didn’t know who the previous owner was so the laptop was turned over to the police, but as of the time the interview was recorded, nothing had happened with it.
One thing that really stood out to Kyle about this story, though, was that the writer never explained what they did with Brandon’s body, leading him to believe that he left it at the scene. Which meant that it must be near his vehicle. But the police said Brandon wasn’t in Coke County. And searches of the immediate area all came up empty.
That is, until years later. In February of 2022. When Kyle gets a call that human remains were found. Not far from where Brandon’s truck was discovered.
In January of 2022, a small search group of 9 people lead by an advocate named Jason Watts was combing the area near where Brandon’s truck was left on the side of highway 277. They were searching a field on private property, When all of a sudden, someone found an article of clothing that matched what Brandon was last seen in. Just a mile from where Brandon’s truck had run out of gas. In an area that had been previously searched by law enforcement via air search.
Authorities were called, and police collected a few items around the scene and sent them to a lab for testing. Within a few weeks, they confirmed that human remains were found with the articles of clothing.
While it was not yet confirmed to be Brandon, Ladessa took to the find brandon Lawson facebook page to write “In our hearts, we know that it is Brandon.” His family and other advocates like Jason Watts thanked everyone who aided in the search over the last few years, including people who spread word about it on social media.
And then, on Christmas of 2024, it was officially confirmed that the remains were Brandon. The search was officially over.
The Find Brandon Lawson facebook page updated the group, adding that the date the remains were confirmed were symbolic because it was christmas. In a way, closure is a gift. Its heart breaking, but they knew for a fact now that Brandon was with them.
While the question of Brandon’s disappearance has been answered, some people still believe there are many questions about how and why this happened? Were any of the theories true, did Brandon get killed by a sheriff? Was he attacked by a passerby on the highway? We still don’t know how he died.
But, at least from what I can gather from some of those closest to Brandon and the case, they don’t necessarily believe that there was any foul play, and having him home is enough closure for now
So that’s all I have for you this week. If you’re interested, I’ll be sharing more from my casefile on this story over on Footnotes, available to the high council tier on patreon (which you can sign up for 7 days free). And until next time, stay curious