Going West: True Crime - Thomas Brown // 35

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

In Fall 2016, a high school senior doesn't come home by curfew and his mom reports him missing. The small Texas town immediately starts looking for him, and within a few hours, they find his car abandoned on a dirt road. The contents of his car raise more questions than answers as people start to believe something really bad happened to him. This is the case of Thomas Brown. Do you have anxiety, stress, insomnia, or lack of energy? You need to try Lumi! Get 10% off your order at lumicbd.com using promo code goingwest. OR click this link! https://lumicbd.com/?afmc=3m&utm_campaign=3m&utm_source=leaddyno&utm_medium=affiliate Get 20% off your first Hunt a Killer subscription box using promo code going west at huntakiller.com **GOING WEST DOES NOT OWN THE MEDIA IN THIS EPISODE**  KAMR News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seXNn6B9Bww Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your other host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. We like to start by giving thanks to you guys for writing us awesome reviews and first and foremost thank you so much to Jose Kenya and Shelby from the Mendocino Farms in San Jose, California. Heath and I are seriously addicted to Mendo and I miss the smokehouse tempeh sandwich every single day and cannot wait to live near one again. Expective visit on our way down to LA this fall. Such awesome food. Thank you guys so much and we will definitely be seeing you guys soon. Next up we have Lauren from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Linda from Florida.

And a big thanks to Ed from Parish, Florida and Cece from South Carolina. Thank you so much to Karen from Chicago, Shelby from Montgomery, Alabama, and Cali from Waco, Texas. And we didn't even realize that we were getting reviews from different countries until someone brought it to our attention, and we actually found out where to find those reviews. So a big thanks to Emma from Melbourne, Australia, and Chelsea from Halifax, Canada. Thank you so much to Linda from Spain Spain and Hannah from Western Australia. And then we have Bella from Melbourne, Australia and Tess from Swanson, UK.

And thank you to Lisa from Derby Shire, UK. So that's just a handful of them. We don't have enough time to say all of them. So I'm so sorry guys, we'll get you in the next episode. And we also have to give a shout out to our newest patrons this week. Thank you so much to Lauren, Karen, Daniel, Katie, Sam, Emma, Adam, and of course, True Crime, Nana. It means a lot to us that you guys subscribe to our Patreon.

Like I said in the last episode, all of our normal episodes are free. So going over to our Patreon and just subscribing $5 a month really helps the show. And we give out bonus episodes. So it's kind of like a win win. And we also have a bonus episode coming for you guys very shortly. So stay tuned for that. Yeah, it's coming out this week. It's a crazy case and we really hope that you guys like it.

And we also donate 10% of the proceeds to the National Center for missing and exploited children. So not only are you helping the show, but you're helping an amazing cost. So if you guys want to join the gang go over to patreon.com slash going west podcast. All right gang this is episode 35 of going west so let's get into it. The small town of Canadian is pouring out their support to the family and friends of Thomas Brown. KMR Local Forest Maggi Glenn spent the day at Canadian High School where Thomas was a senior. The year he went missing. Well he would probably pass you with a smile. He would definitely say hello and

if I said anything to you it would be yes or no. You're the very, just a great guy. What was interesting about it is he had friends from all walks, you know, he's in a theater program, he's an athletic program. The 18 year old was last seen November 2016. As we first reported earlier this evening, investigators from multiple different law enforcement agencies confirm his remains have been found private investigators confirmed The remains were grounds through dental records his family was notified

He was last seen getting gas in Pampa, Texas to his parents Kelly and Penny Brown on September 13, 1998. He also had two older brothers Tucker and Toby. The family moved to Perieton, Texas, which is about 62 miles or 100 kilometers north until Tom was in second grade. Tom's parents split up when he was 8 years old and his father Kelly stayed in Peri-Tin while the rest of the family moved about 45 minutes south to Canadian Texas. And Canadian is a tiny town in Texas with a population of just about 2,500 people. So it's one of those towns where everybody knows everybody.

Tom's mother Penny met and married a man named Chris Meek in Canadian, which gave Tom a step brother named Jacob. Tom was known by his friends and family to be incredibly witty and funny, and he pretty much could make anyone laugh and was very friendly towards everyone that he met. And I believe that Penny was also from Canadian originally, she had grown up there. Yes, she did. In fall of 2016, Tom was an 18-year-old senior in high school and was really popular amongst

the campus because he was friends with so many different groups and was involved in a lot of different school activities. He often spent summers as a theater camp counselor and in school he got good grades. He was class president for two years, he was very active in theater and was a starter on the Canadian high school football team. Tom was an amazing public speaker too and was top 10 in his state, so between that and being the president of his high school, he definitely stood out as a leader. He and his family were practicing Christians and were very involved in their local Methodist Church. Tom was very passionate about sports and his dream after graduation was to go to

college to become a sports broadcaster. During his senior year, he left the football team because he spent a lot of time on the sidelines, and he felt like he was putting a lot of effort into this football team for no reason. He didn't want to make it a career since he wanted to be a broadcaster, and he was more interested in using his time at school for theater. He had a girlfriend named Sage for a little over a year, but the two had recently broke up, and the split was amicable, so there was no bad blood between the two of them. Tom was an all-around great kid. He never went through a super rebellious stage during his teen years because he was a fairly mellow kid,

so he and his friends just kind of like to hang out at each other's houses and play video games and stuff like that. Since Canadian is a super small town, there really isn't much to do, but drive around and just hang out, so he did that a lot. He did have one very odd and minor run-in with the law when he was 16 years old, though. One night, around 11 p.m., he and his friends were hanging out

at Tom's friend, Christian's house, and she wanted to go to bed, but the rest of the boys weren't ready to call it a night. So the boys went into town and just kind of walked down Main Street and around the town, not really doing anything, and they definitely weren't doing anything bad, they were just hanging out, and they stumbled into a laundromat for a minute, and then they left. And a police officer stopped them on the street once they left the laundry mat and asked them what they were doing. And the officer basically told them

that they were breaking and entering into a business and none of the boys understood what he was talking about because they weren't causing any kind of trouble. So the deputies started singling out Tom for whatever reason and telling him that he needed to get into his car for further questioning. Most everyone knew everyone in Canadian, but none of the guys recognized this deputies, so they were all a bit sketched out by it. Tom eventually got in his car and tried to explain that he wasn't doing anything wrong, while the deputies started accusing him of all this stuff, and then the deputies told Tom to

call his mom and tell her what he'd been doing. But Tom didn't do it because he didn't even know what to say to her because he was like, well, what am I doing? And then the deputy just kind of let it go and the boys went home. The day before Thanksgiving on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2016, Tom had plans to hang out with his friends that night. Just before 11.30pm, he dropped off his friend's Christian web, and Caleb King, after they spent some time hanging out and driving around town, listening to music and talking about

their future. Tom had a midnight curfew, which was approaching. His friends later reported that he seemed totally normal that night. He wasn't acting strange or different at all. He actually seemed to be in a good mood. They had all made plans to hang out the following evening. At 11.28 pm, after taking his friend's home, he stopped to get some gas at his local station, Frank Oil. He filled up the tank of his red Dodge Durango using his mom's debit card. He was wearing a black Oklahoma State University pullover with jeans, and a witness who knew

Tom had actually driven by the gas station and seen him pumping gas, and he appeared to be alone. Unfortunately, the gas station did have security footage, but for whatever reason that evening, the cameras were not working. And this station was a self-service station and no staff was on duty at the time. After filling up his car, Tom drove out of the gas station and took a turn towards Canadian high school. I wish we knew where his house was in proximity to the high school, because at this point it was only about 10 to 15 minutes till his curfew, so it would be nice

to know if he was driving towards or away from his house, but his address obviously isn't online so we couldn't look it up. That would definitely answer some questions for us, but all we know is that he lived pretty close by. Tom never stayed out past curfew. He was very respectful of his mom's rules and always made sure to be home on time. And if he wasn't going to be home in time, he'd at least call to let his family know. So at 12 o'3 a.m., when he still wasn't home, Tom's brother Tucker texted him and asked where he was. And Tucker was

home visiting from college at Oklahoma State University. Before Tom had gone out that night, Tucker asked him if he wanted to watch a movie and hang out together once he got done with his friends that night, and Tom agreed. So minutes went by, and the text still wasn't read. This was discovered later, but seven minutes after Tucker sent that text at 12-10am, Tom's phone pinged for the last time near the parking lot of the football stadium at his high school. Tom's mother Penny was really starting to get worried at this point, so at 12.23am, she texted him too.

Investigators say that the message was also never read. A few minutes later, she decided to call him, but every call that she placed went to voicemail. Meaning, his phone was probably off. Penny was really starting to get freaked out at this point because Tom always kept in touch and like we said, he never stayed out past his curfew, especially without letting her know.

He just wasn't like this, and he would usually come home well before his curfew and just have his friends over to play video games. Penny and Tucker thought maybe Tom had gotten into a car accident, so they drove around town looking for any sign of him while Tom's stepfather Chris stayed at the house in case Tom came home. They drove around in separate cars for almost an hour and neither of them found him, so Penny called the Sheriff's Office. Penny's husband was a volunteer fireman, so he had connections throughout town, including having the Sheriff's

direct number. Even though Tom was 18, this was a really small town, and the circumstances seemed a bit strange. Sheriff Lewis took about 45 minutes to respond, but after he did, police began looking for Tom and they also informed the friends he was with that night that he hadn't come home. But neither of them knew where he was, because as far as they were concerned, Tom was going straight home after they all hung out. Police started looking at surveillance tapes across town and captured two red dodged SUVs traveling through Canadian early that morning.

But because the camera angles, they couldn't confirm or deny that either of them were Tom's. At 6.50am, a Red Dodge SUV was seen on video driving near a sewer plant road and parking in a remote area down a hill. By now, it's early Thanksgiving morning, and they had driven virtually every road in Canadian looking for Tom. One of Tom's best friends was a girl named Christian Webb, and she was one of the friends Tom had been hanging out with that night.

Christian's dad owned a helicopter company, so she and her dad hopped into one and started flying above town to see if they could spot his red car from the air. While her dad piloted the helicopter, she scoured the town of Canadian for her best friend. After flying around for a bit, Christian saw a red dodge SUV parked under some trees. Her dad contacted police and they all went down to the spot. Christian's dad had her look away

in case Tom was dead in the vehicle, but he wasn't anywhere in sight. Police surrounded the car and positively identified that it was Tom's SUV. It was located on a dirt road near a water treatment facility through a baseball complex. And all the car doors were unlocked

with one of the windows down. When Tom's older brother Tucker had driven through there with the deputy that morning, he remembered something. Two years prior, Tucker worked for the city of Canadian, and he remembered the area where Tom's car was found used to be closed off by a gate. But when they drove in there, there was no gate. And we're not sure what this means in regards to this case, but he felt really weird when he noticed it. Police didn't automatically suspect that foul play was involved because the town of Canadian had no murder rate at all. Especially since Tom was a very well-liked high school student,

they couldn't fathom him being a victim of homicide. This town was so low- low crime that there hadn't even been a violent crime in Canadian for 15 years. A few minutes after his car was found, Penny's husband Chris received a call from the sheriff saying that they had found Tom's car and that despite the fact that they hadn't found him, they believed that he committed suicide. But to this day, Sheriff Lewis states that he never stated that it was a suicide. If he did say this, that's a really extreme thing to tell the parents who are looking for their child,

especially because he hadn't even been found, so I don't know why he would say that. Yeah, it kind of seems like it maybe would have been a little bit too soon to just rule it as a suicide without knowing all of the details or facts. Which makes him look sketchy and we'll get into that, but the fact that he just automatically is like, oh, it was a suicide. Like, that's suspicious. Yeah, a little bit suspicious. The parents didn't believe this for a second anyway because they knew their son wasn't suicidal to the slightest.

He was so excited about his future and works so hard at everything he loved, so they knew that something else was going on. They just didn't know what. Police decided to drain the water treatment plant, but he wasn't there. Nearby is a 63-acre lake called Lake Marvin, and they searched this area using sonar detection since it was too large to drain. The Canadian river led up into Oklahoma and even that whole river was searched. But none of these searches came up with anything leading to Tom. First and foremost, Tom's family and friends were really confused by the placement of Tom's car.

Because they didn't think he even knew that area at all. Because a lot of his friends even came forward and said that they didn't even know even knew that area at all because a lot of his friends even came forward and said that they didn't even know that part of town really existed like they just didn't go over there. Police searched Tom's car and didn't notice any signs of struggle, but there was blood found. On the driver's side door there was a small smear of blood, but police concluded that the blood was not fresh and that it likely would have come from a cut on his finger. So I don't know if by not fresh they meant it was multiple hours old or even older than

that. I couldn't find any further details on that. But the blood was positively identified as tom's. There was also a shell casing from a 25 caliber pistol in his car. Tom didn't have any guns, and in fact he hated them, but some of his friends had guns. After some investigating, it was determined that the shell casing didn't match any of the guns that his friends had. So this definitely started raising some red flags. Then they noticed that someone had urinated behind Tom's car.

And for those of you who are wondering if they could test that urine on the ground behind Tom's car, I'm actually looked it up and it's actually determined that it's not a very great source of DNA because it's considered a low concentration of nucleated cells. It's kind of hard for them to actually pull any relevant DNA from that. Also, find a way was written on Tom's driver side window, and we couldn't find much information on this, but apparently it had been on the window before he went missing. So if you see photos of his car with this riding, this had already been on his car prior to his disappearance. According to his mom Penny, during football season, cheerleaders would write on the football player's cars, so that's how that writing got there. But we don't know exactly what it means.

This is pretty much the only searching of the car that police did. In fact, police gave Tom's family his car back the day that it was discovered, so they didn't even want to keep it to process it any further. Even weirder, they didn't try to lift fingerprints at all. A few days later, they looked at it again to try and process it, but this of course is after the family and other people had been in the car, so any evidence could have been unintentionally tampered with. Another piece of evidence they did find in the car when they initially searched it was

Tom's receipt for gas that evening. They determined that he did indeed fill up his tank, but the strange thing is that his car had one fourth of the tank used, meaning his car was about 75% full when they found it. But the spot where his car was found was only 5 minutes away from where the gas station was. Meaning the car had traveled nearly 100 miles since it had been filled up that night. Do you suffer from anxiety, stress, lack of energy, insomnia, pain? You need to try loomie. They have a variety of products from tinctures to my personal favorite, CBD and aromatherapy pens.

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harmful to your body at all. Get 10% off your order using promo code GoingWest on their website, loomecbd.com. That's L-U-M-I-C-B-D. dot com using promo code GoingWest. What's up gang, Heath here. Are you an armchair detective just like me? Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to solve a murder case? Then you need to try the revolutionary game Hunt a Killer. It's a monthly subscription box that allows you to sift through documents, maps, audio

files, and more while eliminating suspects until you finally catch the killer. It's an awesome game you can play with your family and friends, play it on date night, or crack the case by yourself. Daphne and I love this game, and we know that you will too. Hunt a killer also donates part of their proceeds to the cold case foundation, which we think is really cool. Right now you can use promo code going west that check out to receive 20% off your first box. That's promo code going west for 20% off your first box. Happy hunting guys! So Tom's car had traveled nearly 100 miles since he filled it up, which again is incredibly strange considering his car was found only 5 minutes away from front gas station.

Again, his phone last panged at 12-10am near the football field at school, which was only a mile away from the gas station. We touched on this a bit earlier, but according to surveillance footage around town, a red Dodge SUV had been seen driving around 1.30am, which was when Penny and Tucker were driving around looking for Tom. Just minutes later, Tucker's car is seen driving in the same direction as the red Dodge, but Tucker never finds Tom's car and of course hadn't known that Tom's car had been potentially right there.

Due to the quality of the cameras and the angles they were placed at, you couldn't see who was driving the red Dodge, so we were unable to confirm that this is Tom's car. There was one sighting on surveillance video that Penny knows was Tom's car because of the words find a way written on the driver window, and this writing was visible from the surveillance camera outside a grocery store in Canadian and it captured Tom's car driving past it at 5.24am. And this grocery store was only six blocks away from Tom's house and a half mile away from the high school. The weird thing about this is police were out looking for Tom at this time and this 5 524am video footage was just a couple hours before his car was found.

Tom's family hired a private investigator named Philip Klein, and he believed that the blood in the car could have come from a struggle of sorts. A big reason why Penny hired him was because Sheriff Lewis was a newly elected sheriff, so she didn't feel like he had much experience. Especially since police had told her that they believed it could be a suicide, she didn't think they were treating it as though it was a crime scene when she strongly felt that it was. The PI definitely believed that foul play was involved, and he also believed that Tom was already dead. So throughout the search, private investigator Philip Klein had a feeling that Tom was dead,

but police started changing their minds about the probability of suicide and felt as though Tom was still alive, mostly because there wasn't enough evidence proving that he was in fact dead. At this point in the investigation, Tom's parents had not been allowed to see any of the evidence. In December, the Texas State Attorney General ruled that Sheriff Lewis had to turn over the evidence that the family was requesting. But instead of doing so, Sheriff Lewis filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General.

The Brown family thoroughly believed that releasing the surveillance footage could jog someone's memory and someone could come forward with the information. But the sheriff would not hand anything over. The family did see one tape and it was the video from the Abraham Trading Company, which was actually given to Penny by the owner of the business. And she was eventually given more videos, but never by police. Sheriff Lewis has remained adamant about not releasing information to the public to keep the case secure. Sheriff Lewis came forward with a statement saying that he believed Tom had

run away because he didn't want to be in Canadian anymore. He said that he had information that led him to believe Tom wanted to get out of town, but he wasn't specific about any of it. But what doesn't make sense with this theory is that Tom's cell phone hadn't been used, his mom's debit card had not been used, and his car had been abandoned on a dirt road. So how would Tom have even left town, and where would he go? And no one in the town of Canadian agreed with this or understood how that would even make sense, so it seems like the sheriff has all these like wild theories, but has nothing to actually back it up with.

On January 27th, 2017, so roughly two months after Tom disappeared, an oil worker spotted a backpack and reported it. And it turns out it was Tom's backpack. And it was just four miles away from where his car had been found. It was on the other side of a barbed wire fence on the road that led to Lake Marvin, which is the lake that they used sonar to search two months prior. Police were really confused by this because they say they searched that whole area multiple times, so they believed that backpack was placed there after their search.

But they knew it hadn't been placed there recently because underneath the backpack was an indentation in the ground that the backpack made over time, and the entire backpack was soaking wet, likely from the winter weather, those last couple months. So this kind of leads us to believe that maybe police really didn't search as well as they think they did. Or as well as they said they did, maybe they just said that they searched all these areas and they really didn't do it. I mean, they clearly botched searching his car, so what else did they botch? Tom's school-issued laptop was inside the backpack along with moldy schoolwork.

Unfortunately, they couldn't find any clues in the backpack because of the condition that it was in, and his cell phone was still missing at this point. Now police were starting to think that something had happened to Tom, and it wasn't a suicide. Penny believed that something had happened at the gas station

while the police agree that someone in Canadian knows something and isn't coming forward. It's interesting that Tom's mom thinks that something happened at the gas station. And as far as we know, his purchase was not caught on camera, but there was surveillance videos of his car. The video surveillance came from a neighboring business, which was the Abraham trading company at the corner of Second Street and

Maine. This business is about a half a mile away from where Thomas filled up, so it doesn't seem like he could even be seen from that distance. So it seems like what likely happened is that he got gas and they knew when that was because the charge came up on his mom's debit card account and the Abraham trading company caught him driving towards the school so they put two and two together. So there's not footage of him actually physically getting gas. All that we have saying that he got gas by himself there is that witness that drove by. Also, the timeline is a little confusing because we know that he swiped her card at 11.28am. But there's something that says that on the surveillance footage, the timestamp is 11.51pm

from when he's leaving the gas station and driving down towards the high school. So what's weird about this is that's 20 minutes later, and for anyone who has ever gotten gas, if it's an empty gas station, it probably takes you like less than five minutes to fill up. Especially if you're in a self-service, like here in Oregon, we have somebody that waits on us and we, so we have to wait for somebody to fill our gas tank. But if you're at a self-service station, you know, almost in the middle of the night, it would be a very, very quick transaction. Exactly. So if it did take 20 minutes, this leads me to believe that whatever happened to him

did happen at the gas station. Because what took 20 minutes, you know, like if there was some kind of situation where he got involved with somebody or whatever happened, that would make sense why it took him 20 minutes to leave. But again, this timeline isn't 100% accurate, I guess. Yeah, and I really wish that the cameras were working that night at the gas station because we know that there were no attendance on duty. So it's very possible that he ran into somebody

at the gas station that he knew and they said, hey, let's go somewhere to hang out or whatever. You never know. I mean, it's just, there's endless possibilities because we don't have that definitive camera footage that would tell us exactly what went down there. Philip Klein was really the only person looking at this case with open eyes. The police department were very narrow-sighted and didn't seem to be doing anything to actually help find

Tom, whereas Philip Klein was looking at all possible angles. Police hadn't even properly questioned Christian and Caleb when Tom first went missing, and remember, Christian and Caleb were the last two people to see Tom before he went missing. In April, they finally brought them in for questioning, but police were very aggressive with the process. They questioned Christian for four hours, and she was being incredibly cooperative. She even gave police her phone and agreed to take a polygraph test, because she just wanted them to find her best friend.

They decided against the polygraph test and let Christian go. She wasn't able to really provide them with any valuable information. Then police brought Caleb in for questioning and also looked through his phone and they found something that interested them. Apparently, around the time Tom disappeared, Caleb had asked some of Tom's other friends if they knew the security password on Tom's cell phone, but no one knew it. The police didn't understand why Caleb would need this considering Tom's phone was still missing, but Caleb told them that Penny had wanted to know what it was, and Penny did confirm this that she did want to know his password.

But it still didn't make sense why Penny would want it, but she later stated that the Sheriff's Department asked her to get it, so it's weird that the police had made this big deal out of it considering they were the ones who asked for it. Around this time, private investigator Philip Klein gathered up some cadaver dogs and searched different areas of Canadian, but nothing came up. After doing some more searching, Philip Klein made a statement that he believed Tom was dead and that they were either dealing with an accidental death or a homicide. He also mentioned that he believed that Lake Marvin

held the key to Tom's disappearance. And this was a spot that was checked by police and ruled out as a possibility for them, which they said before, Tom's backpack had been found in that area because they supposedly searched the whole area. And the sheriff had cleared this area almost immediately without even having divers checked the lake. He said that they had done such a thorough job searching the perimeter that he didn't think it was necessary for divers to even check the lake itself. So that kind of shows you how unwilling this sheriff really is. On October 14, 2017, so almost a year after Tom went missing,

PI Philip Klein conducted yet another search at Lake Marvin, and this time he was accompanied by 135 volunteers. Within five minutes of the search, they found an iPhone 6s by Lake Marvin, which was the exact phone that Tom had. The phone was in very good condition, which was strange considering Tom's backpack had been found in terrible condition after just 2 months. So now it's almost a year, and this phone wasn't nearly as damaged as a backpack, since it only had a little mud on it and didn't appear to have any water damage. So right off the bat, they weren't too sure

that it was even Tom's. Regardless, it was shipped off for analysis. And apparently, it came up as Tom's cell phone. So Penny wasn't too convinced that this phone was her sons because Tom had a gold iPhone 6S. And the volunteer who found the phone had told people that it was Rose Gold. The Rose Gold iPhone is basically pink.

It really doesn't even look gold so it's pretty much just a shiny pink phone, whereas the gold iPhone looks gold. So it's hard to get these two mixed up. Penny was never given or shown Tom's phone since police kept it as evidence, so we're not able to confirm what color the phone actually was. But it's definitely possible that the volunteer was mistaken or that there was a miscommunication along the way. But it still doesn't make sense why this phone wouldn't have been found before and why

it was in such great condition. So some people are speculating that the phone was planted there. But why? So, it's pretty clear to us that the sheriff has been acting incredibly strange throughout this whole case and hasn't seemed to be very caring towards Tom's disappearance. He's been dismissing things left and right and hasn't been cooperative with Tom's family. So remember earlier when we mentioned that a deputy had given Tom and his friend's trouble just a little over a year before Tom disappeared?

That deputy was Nathan Lewis, also known as the new sheriff. At the time that he pulled over Tom and his friends that night, he was a deputy of a neighboring county. And to be specific, he was the deputy in the town of Periton, which is where Tom and his family lived briefly and where his dad still resided. And Periton is about 45 minutes away. So the fact that Nathan Lewis was even in Canadian is strange, and then even stranger, he was pulling over innocent kids out of his jurisdiction. So, I do know that Nathan Lewis was from Canadian, but it's weird that he seemed to be

patrolling the area that late at night, especially because it was out of his jurisdiction. And to top it all off, Nathan Lewis actually knew Tom's father Kelly, and the two were partners on a fantasy football league at that time. So I don't know what this means or if it means anything, but the connections are definitely interesting. Nathan Lewis won the election for Sheriff by just 25 votes, and afterwards almost every single person in the police department left. A lot of this could have to do with loyalty towards the Sheriff who was there before, but a lot of people came forward and said that they didn't want to work with Lewis because of his

reputation in neighboring towns. Apparently he had been known for harassing kids, just like he had done with Tom and his friends. There have not been any charges against him or any reports of harassment since, but it's definitely interesting to know. People also point to the fact that Nathan Lewis had picked on Tom that night in 2015, around 11.30pm, which is coincidentally around the same time that Tom had disappeared. So, some think that maybe Sheriff Nathan Lewis liked patrolling around that time. But this is just theory. I kind of agree with Penny that something probably happened at the gas station because I really believe that he had planned to get gas and then drive home.

And I know some people will speculate that it's weird that he was getting gas if he only lived a few minutes away, but sometimes your tank is just low and you're near a gas station and so you just get gas. I don't think that this necessarily means that he was planning on going somewhere else. It's really frustrating to me that the cameras happen to not be working at the gas station that night, which is also really suspicious, because this could have given us a lot of information. Something we didn't mention earlier is that Tom's ex-girlfriend Sage had texted him at 11.30pm that night, and he responded right away. And remember, he swiped his mom's card at 11.30pm that night, and he responded right away. And remember, he swiped his mom's card at 11.28pm, so he was probably waiting on his

gas when he texted her back. Then she texted him right back, and he never responded. So if something didn't happen at the gas station, then where did it? The only other thing I can think of is for whatever reason, Tom planned to meet someone somewhere, but Tom wasn't known to do drugs of any kind, so it doesn't make sense why he would be meeting someone so late the night before Thanksgiving so close to his curfew. To make things even more confusing regarding Sheriff Lewis, is that apparently 10 days after Tom went missing, Sheriffif Lewis showed Penny Brown

a photo of her son pumping gas. He said it had been obtained by surveillance footage at a store next to Frank's oil, which was a dollar general. But the photo was taken at ground level, whereas security footage is almost always mounted to the top of the building. The photo showed Tom from behind standing outside his car pumping gas, so this photo was most definitely either taken on a phone or maybe even from a dashboard camera, which are often on police vehicles. Unfortunately the photo has not been released so we can't say for sure what the photo looks like.

The reason we know about all of this is because Penny described the information in an interview. She said it was taken about 50 feet away and that you could see the side of Tom's face. Texas Rangers had also been working on this case, and about 9 months after Tom went missing, Tom's stepfather approached the major who had been overseeing the Texas Rangers, and he asked him about the photo that the sheriff showed Penny. He hadn't seen the photo himself and he wanted to bring it up because it's potential evidence. It's the only known image of Tom pumping gas.

The major was incredibly confused by this information because he had never heard of such a photo. So he decided to go straight to Sheriff Nathan Lewis about it. And the sheriff basically said he had no idea what he was talking about and that no such photo existed. But if this photo didn't exist, why would Penny make this up? She wouldn't. She just wouldn't. Exactly. She's looking for her son. She's going to do everything that she can. Why would

she lie about something that's so important in her son's disappearance case? Well, this goes along with when the sheriff told her initially that he thought it was a suicide, and then he went and denied that he ever said that. So, this is the second time that he's denying something. On Wednesday, January 9, 2019, so over two years after Tom went missing, his remains were discovered in Hempehl County, Texas. A man had been walking down a path near Lake Marvin Road. This was the area that the sheriff said was searched immensely and happened upon something strange, so he called police.

The sheriff said that the particular area for whatever reason was not searched But had supposedly been looked at by helicopters. The remains were positively identified as those of Thomas Brown via dental records. The area where his body was discovered was about 20 minutes outside of Canadian and where his car was located Which really makes people think this was a homicide. To this day, the cause of death has either not been determined or just not been released, but law enforcement is confident that it was not a suicide considering there was no weapons near his remains and considering his car was so far away from the location of his body. Before Tom's body was found, the sheriff, Texas Ranger, and major brought Penny, Kelly, and

Tom's stepfather Chris into a room together and basically told them that they believed Tom had run off with an older man that he met online and that they believed he was gay. The reason they believe this is based on text messages that Tom sent to one of his female friends. We're not sure what the texts were, but we do know that they were sexual. And Penny read these, but she doesn't think that the text lead to Tom being gay whatsoever. It also doesn't make sense why they believed he ran off with an older man, because there was zero evidence of this. Tom's friends say that to their knowledge, Tom wasn't gay. And this doesn't mean that he wasn't,

considering he was very religious, and maybe he didn't feel comfortable talking to anyone about it. But we know that this theory isn't true, because Tom didn't run away, he was killed. We also are unaware of his day and time of death, but it's heavily suspected that he passed on the night that he went on the night that he went missing.

A theory that kind of goes along with this is that Tom was murdered by his teacher, Jeff Castletein. Jeff Castletein was a 54-year-old theater teacher. We're unsure if he was ever Tom's teacher, but Tom was involved in theater, so it's definitely possible that they knew each other. On January 21st, 2019, just less than three weeks after Tom's remains were discovered, Jeff Castletein committed suicide via a 25 caliber gun, and this is the same caliber gun as the shell casing that was found in Tom's car. Something we didn't mention earlier is that police also found something else in Tom's

car when it was discovered back in November 2016. It was the debit card of Jeff Castletein's son, Michael, who was the same age as Tom. Some speculate that if Tom was indeed gay, he was potentially either involved with Mr. Castletein or with his son. This could potentially explain why Jeff took his own life after Tom's remains were found, as well as why Michael's debit card was found in Tom's car. But obviously we don't know if Tom was even gay. It just seems like an interesting theory that could make a lot of sense here. There's also mention of the fact that Jeff had battled depression throughout his whole life, and that he also had a severe respiratory condition that was slowly killing him. So he could have taken his own life because of these things.

And this is obviously a very specific theory, but I do think it's an interesting one, but we also should mention that before Tom hung out with Christian and Caleb the night that he disappeared, he hung out with someone named Michael. So it's kind of obviously Michael is a common name, but it's easy for us to assume that potentially he had been hanging out with this Michael and maybe Michael accidentally dropped his debit card into Tom's car and Michael has absolutely nothing to do with Tom's disappearance and neither does his dad Jeff and maybe Jeff just happened to take his life right after that anyway. Yeah, that's definitely a possibility, and we don't really know the details if this was Michael Castletein, or if it was a different Michael, and we also don't know the relationship between this Michael and Tom.

It's also possible that for whatever reason, Tom and Michael met up afterwards. I mean, there's so many possibilities. And then of course, there's the possibility that law enforcement or more specifically, Sheriff Nathan Lewis was involved in Tom's death. This case was botched so badly by them that it's easy for us to assume that they were potentially involved in some way. I think the Sheriff's actions were also incredibly

strange throughout this investigation, but I can't say exactly why the sheriff would have any particular ill will towards Tom. I think the biggest theory in this case is that the sheriff was involved somehow, and it's known that Penny had gone to the sheriff in 2015 to report that Tom had been wrongfully harassed by Nathan Lewis, who again was the deputy at that time. So it's possible that after that, Nathan Lewis had some kind of personal vendetta towards Tom, but I mean, enough to murder him, I don't know.

But something I also think is interesting is, we've brought up a couple times that the cameras at the gas station happened to not be working that night. And I do think that if the sheriff was involved, and he did take this photo of Tom pumping gas, that he was present at the gas station, and maybe he went into the gas station that morning and kind of said, hey, there's a disappearance, I need all your surveillance footage for the past 24 hours or whatever. And then he just said, oh, the cameras are broken. And those are the sheriff's words. I mean, police have so much power. And I think that this situation could have been easily manipulated by the sheriff. So I don't know. I wouldn't put it past him. And I really hate to point the finger at police like this because there are a lot of

situations in a lot of cases where police do incredible jobs and they do everything they're supposed to do, but I just think in this certain circumstance, I mean it seems like there's a lot of weird things that are conspiring right here. The only thing that steers me away from the sheriff and law enforcement being involved is the fact that Tom's car had been caught on surveillance footage right before 5.30am. And at that time, the sheriff was supposedly out looking for Tom. So it did take him 45 minutes to finally take Penny's call regarding Tom missing curfew, which is something to note, but it's also possible that he was just sleeping or something, and I just wish we knew for a fact where the sheriff was at 5.30 that morning, because it doesn't seem like he'd be dumb enough to be driving Tom's car through town

while everyone is looking for Tom. Also, one more thing I wanted to mention is how weird it is that Tom's car had been found. Not super far away. I mean, it was only what, five minutes away from the gas station, but that's a five minute drive, so maybe a 20-minute walk. So if you think about somebody planting Tom's car there, would that mean that two people would have to be involved? So someone dropping Tom's car off and then somebody picking up the person who dropped off the car, so that they don't just have to walk through town in the middle of the night.

And I definitely considered this theory, but at the same time time I also thought, well, this is a small town. It would be easy for someone to drop that car and walk a couple miles across town, you know? I mean, in a town where there's 2,500 people, it would be pretty easy to do a drop. That's definitely true, but at the same time, you know, this is in the late morning, at this point, or well, early morning now, you know, it was like, what, after 5.30 then, that the car would have been dropped off. So how suspicious would it look for this person to just be walking through town that early? I mean, I guess it wasn't in the middle of the night, but the person who ever did this probably knew that people would be out looking for Tom, and then you just happened to be on the street, like that doesn't look good for your alibi if you get caught.

So I feel like it's definitely possible that two people were involved and that somebody picked the other person up. And I don't know who I mean, it's just mindboggling. Absolutely. And we definitely can't rule out that there could have been two people involved in this. The one thing that really frustrates me in this case is that everybody explains that Canadian Texas is very close knit, everybody knows each other, but yet there was a murder that happened in this town and almost nobody knows anything. Somebody definitely knows something, and at this time there are no outstanding theories or any

strong evidence pointing to any particular conclusion. But we really hope that one day, Tom's family can get the answers they deserve. So what do you guys think happened to Tom Brown? Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everyone and next week, like I always say, we'll have an all-new case for you guys to check out. We really enjoy sharing missing persons cases that are unsolved because we want to shed light on these cases and hopefully even one day be able to solve them if possible.

So if anyone knows anything, please contact the Canadian Police Department and let us know what your theories are if you guys are thinking any particular theory. And you can also go check out some photos of this case. We'll have them up on our Instagram at GoingWestPodcast and you can also go over to Twitter and check that stuff out too at GoingWestPod. We also have a Facebook page and if you just go to Facebook and you search Going West True Crime, go give us a like. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

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