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The strange disappearance and deaths of the Jamison Family in the Sans Bois mountains
Bobby, Sherilynn, Madyson Jamison disappeared October 8, 2009, Red Oak, Sans Bois Mountains, Oklahoma. Remains discovered November 16, 2013
Revised August 2024
On the crisp autumn morning of October 8, 2009, Bobby Jamison, 44, his wife Sherilynn, 40, their 6-year-old daughter Madyson, and their loyal dog Maisy embarked on a journey into Oklahoma’s San Bois Mountains. But, the untamed wilderness swallowed them, and they were never seen alive again.
For four long years, the fate of the Jamison family remained shrouded in mystery until one fateful day in November 2013, when the skeletal remains of Bobby, Sherilynn, and little Madyson were discovered.
What was the cause of their fate? Was it a calculated murder? Did the family fall prey to the outdoors? Could it have been a desperate act of suicide, or were they the unfortunate targets of ruthless drug dealers lurking in the mountains?
The authorities, baffled and bewildered, confessed their inability to "eliminate anything." The medical examiner ruled their cause of death as inconclusive. The family’s demise continues to be one of America's most bizarre and chilling mysteries.
The Jamison Family
The Jamison home in Eufaula, Oklahoma
The Jamison family, from Eufaula, Oklahoma, travelled 30 miles to Red Oak in the Sans Bois mountain range because Bobby and Sherilynn were considering buying a 40-acre plot there. They planned to live in a storage shed that they already owned on the land.
Bobby and Sherilyn visited an associate of the landowner, and when the meeting was done, the family parked up and went for a short walk for around fifteen minutes, taking their GPS unit and found a quiet spot on a hillside. After they returned to their vehicle, they drove a little further and then, with the truck left locked in the middle of a dirt track, they vanished.
About the Sans Bois Mountains
Sans Bois is a French phrase meaning "without wood." The name was given to a creek in southeastern Oklahoma with few trees nearby and later to the nearby mountains from which it flowed. A frontal belt of the Ouachita Mountains, the Sans Bois lie across southern Haskell and northern Latimer counties in southeastern Oklahoma. The highest peaks are composed mainly of dark shales with linear sandstone ridges that trend northeast to southwest, and the slopes are mostly covered with oak-pine-hickory forest. San Bois Mountain is 1680 feet high, and Blue Mountain is 1831 feet high.
Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers and Foragers roamed and settled in eastern Oklahoma and the Sans Bois Mountains from about 8000 to 1000 B.C. Farming began replacing foraging about A.D. 1, with the establishment of small sites along mountain streams. Two Indigenous groups lived near the Sans Bois range: The Wichita, a collection of smaller tribes and the first documented to have inhabited the area who lived in larger villages in major stream valleys and the Choctaw Nation, who came to the area in significant numbers from 1831 and farmed.
By the turn of the century, few people had settled in the mountains, preferring to farm in the nearby lowlands. They used most of the timber on the mountain slopes for fuel, housing, mining timbers, and railroad ties. Coal mining and natural gas were significant activities in the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, creating a unique mining landscape in the Sans Bois Mountains.
Before the disappearance
The family suffered from some health issues. A car accident in 2003 involving Bobby left him with chronic back pain. Sherilynn suffered from bipolar disorder and had been prescribed medication to attempt to control her symptoms. Despite this, she experienced bouts of severe depression. The marriage was said to be in a bad state, and the family kept to themselves, preferring not to socialise with their neighbors.
In July 2009, Sherrilyn’s ex-husband from her first marriage took custody of their son, Colton, and in September, Sherrilyn was hospitalized following a failed suicide attempt. During the custody hearing, 12-year-old Colton said he would prefer to live with his Dad, and he gave a statement about his mother, claiming that she had seemed “Very depressed” and that she often “acted strangely”. Colton saw her two weeks before the family’s disappearance, and he said she made no mention of their plans to move to the San Bois area
Bobby and Sherilynn spoke to a local pastor about their belief that dark spirits invaded their home and that an exorcism might be needed. This was because Madyson had started talking to an imaginary friend named Emily, and Sherilynn believed Emily was an evil entity. At one point, Bobby asked the pastor if he knew of anywhere he could purchase “special bullets” to shoot a handful of spirits whom he said were living on the roof of the family’s home. Bobby was also planning on trying to exorcise the spirits in the house with the help of a copy of The Satanic Bible that he had purchased.
A friend of Sherilynn’s told the police that she sometimes conducted seances with Sherilynn, though Sherilynn took them much more seriously than she did. Sherilynn had also written graffiti on their storage container about her black cats being poisoned, as she believed that someone from the neighborhood had killed her cats, and “witches did not like it when their cats were killed.”
Both friends and family agreed with the Jamisons that their home was haunted, and a few have shared that they, too, experienced odd things inside the house. Niki Shenold, Sherilyn's best friend, said, “But in all seriousness, that house was haunted. I don’t want to sound crazy, but whenever I went there, I felt a horrible presence, I would leave feeling so down and depressed”.
Messages written by Sherilynn Jamison on the family’s storage container
The search for the Jamisons
During their initial absence, none of their friends and family felt any cause for concern. Bobby and Sherrilyn were known to occasionally disappear off the radar, and Madyson had already been pulled out of school.
On Saturday, October 17, 2009, hunters on dirt bikes ran across the Jamisons’ abandoned truck in Latimer County, northwest of Red Oak, and called the police to report the vehicle. Initially, the police assumed it had been stolen as the report suggested the truck had only been on the roadside for a few hours, though later that day, the same hunter called back to confirm to the police that it had been abandoned for several days.
It was about an hour’s drive from the Jamison home in Eufaula, and despite an extensive search of the area around the truck, the family was nowhere to be seen.
Latimer County Sheriff Israel Beauchamp initially thought the truck had been stolen but soon realized something more serious had occurred. He launched a massive search operation and combed the area with over 400 volunteers, horses, mules, ATVs, sixteen teams of cadaver dogs, and an unmanned drone. They found nothing.
During the searches, the cadaver dog teams repeatedly found scent near a nearby water tower, which was promptly drained, though no evidence concerning the missing family could be found.
Police searched the truck and found Bobby and Sherilynn’s cellphones, $32,000 in cash, maps, a GPS, Sherilynn’s purse, and wallets. In addition, they found the family’s thirsty and malnourished dog called Maisy. The vehicle was in working order, had fuel, and hadn’t been in an accident.
The $32,000 in cash stuffed under the driver’s seat was puzzling as the family was on disability benefit at the time. Was it to buy the land or something more sinister like drug dealing?
Investigators found an 11-page “hate” letter from Sherilynn to Bobby in the truck. In it, she said Bobby didn’t care about his daughter. She listed all the things she hated about Bobby, including that he was a loner and hermit, and she wrote that she wanted a divorce.
During their initial investigations, the police found no signs of a struggle either in the vehicle or on the soft ground around the truck. There was no blood or broken glass, although rubbish was strewn around the truck.
The Jamison Truck
Discovery of remains
On November 16, 2013, just 2.7 miles from where the truck was located, deer hunters discovered the skeletal remains of two adults and one child. They were in the Smokestack Hollow area of Panola Mountain. The location was extremely remote, and the three bodies were severely decomposed. The remains consisted of three skulls, several bones and bone fragments, the victim’s shoes and some scraps of clothing.
Forensic testing confirmed eight months later that the remains were Bobby, Sherilynn, and Madyson Jamison. It had been four years since the Jamison’s had vanished from the truck.
When questioned why the initial searches had found nothing, despite their size, an Assistant special agent of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation told reporters that “Falling leaves potentially obscured the bodies”.
Due to the extensive decomposition that had occurred in the four years since their disappearance, it was deemed impossible to determine a cause of death. However, one of the skulls had a small hole that was initially suspected of being caused by a gunshot. Later, the police dropped this line of inquiry, but the hunters who found the bodies disagreed.
Investigations
The local Sheriff’s department and FBI agents spent months chasing down leads and questioning potential suspects, but all potential leads came to a dead end.
After the disappearance, Sheriff Beauchamp summarized the situation by saying, "A lot of investigators would love to have as many leads as we do. The problem is they point in so many different directions.”
The police found surveillance video footage from outside the Jamison’s home. The video shows Bobby and Sherilynn walking back and forth around 20 times from their house to their truck, loading items in a zombie-like trance. Sometimes, they weren’t even carrying anything at all. At times, they stopped and stood with vacant looks on their faces.
The odd behavior in the CCTV video suggests that drugs may have been involved. But with severe depression and paranoia looming large over the family, it’s not hard to imagine that the house had a “heavy” feel to it.
When police checked the phone records of the mobile phone in the truck, they found it had made an outgoing call to voicemail on November 12th, though it would have been locked inside the abandoned truck.
Autopsy of the Jamison family
The bodies discovered were so badly decomposed, with no soft tissue present, with significant animal predation that a cause of death could not be determined.
What happened to the Jamisons?
Initially, Sheriff Beauchamp had thought that foul play was involved, but he left the service, and the incoming Sheriff Jesse James told the press, when asked about the line of enquiry the case was following, “It’s a very strange deal, you know, the way this case has unfolded. We’re looking at a lot of things. A lot of things have crossed my mind.”
Later, after leaving the police force, Beauchamp said, “Normally, you can go through an investigation and, one by one, start to eliminate certain scenarios. We haven’t been able to do that in this case. With this family, everything seems possible.”
Lost in the woods: Perhaps the Jamison family decided to go for a quick hike in the woods and lost their way and died from hypothermia. The trouble with this theory is that the bodies were found lined up, side by side, with their faces down. It looked like they had been execution-style. They were also found 3 miles from their truck, and given Bobby’s back problems, it was unlikely he would have wanted to go walking in the hills.
Also, Jamison’s truck was parked in such a way that it appeared that they were leaving and were stopped by somebody.
Murder-Suicide: Sherilynn was known to own a .22 caliber pistol that she carried with her in the truck. The coroner found a small hole in Bobby’s skull that might have been from a bullet, but neither Sherilynn nor Madyson had any gunshot evidence. The gun has never been found. And if Sherilynn had used it to kill her family and then shoot herself, why hadn’t the weapon been located? Perhaps it was removed by someone else who came across it?
The Jamisons Were Members of a Satanic Cult: Sherilyn’s mother, Connie Kokotan, claims her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter were on an Oklahoma cult “hit list.” “That part of Oklahoma is known for that…cults and stuff like that…from what I’ve been told and from what I’ve read. I was told (around the time of Sherilynn’s disappearance)…that she was on a cult’s hit list.” Connie didn’t provide the name of the alleged cult, nor have police found any links to one.
Drug Deal went wrong: The area of Oklahoma where the Jamison family lived, as well as the area they were hoping to move to in the San Bois mountains, is well-known for its drug activity, namely meth labs involving the drug methamphetamine. Bobby had recently reported someone in the local area for running one.
In the surveillance video where Bobby and Sherilynn were seen packing their truck in a trance-like state, the two also look thin, gaunt and unwell. Drugs would also explain the large sum of money found in the Jamisons’ truck.
Drug abuse could also explain the couple’s erratic behavior. One theory is that the Jamisons came upon illegal drug activity, saw more than they were supposed to, and were killed to keep them quiet. But why didn’t the dealers search the truck and take the valuables?
But after a search of the house, police found no evidence they were taking meth or any other illegal substances. There was no drug-related paraphernalia.
Bobby’s Dad Killed the Family: The family had filed a protective order against Bobby’s dad, Bob Dean Jamison, claiming that he had threatened to kill them over some business dealings. In the protective order filed in April 2009, Bobby alleged that his father had intentionally hit him with his car on November 1, 2008 and that he was a “very dangerous man who thinks he is above the law”, and that he was involved in “prostitutes, gangs, and meth.”
Before his death, Bob Dean had a long-running feud with his son. It came to legal action when Bobby accused his father of reneging on an agreement to give him half the proceeds from selling a gas station he owned. Bob used to get Bobby to work at the gas station. Bob threatened the family, and there were also rumors he had connections to the Mexican Mafia.
Bobby’s father died two months after the family went missing in December 2009 at the age of 64, and Bobby’s uncle, Jack Jamison, said Bobby’s dad was “either in a hospital or rest home” at the time of the disappearance, and that he was a disturbed individual but not capable of murder. Even if he didn’t commit the murders himself, did he pay someone to do the crime? Investigators said Bobby Dean had a solid alibi and dismissed him as a person of interest.
White supremacist: Before the Jamisons’ disappearance, a handyman and family friend called Kenneth Bellows stayed with the family. In August 2009, upon finding out that Sherrilyn had Native American heritage, Bellow’s white supremacist leanings were uncovered. Arguments between the two broke out that resulted in Sherrilyn firing a .22 caliber pistol into the ground by his feet. Sherilynn pointed the gun at him and forced him to leave the house.
The man had a solid alibi, so police dismissed him as a suspect, but it’s at least possible he had true connections to white supremacists and that Sherilynn’s name wound up on a hit list.
Family kidnapped by pedophiles: Perhaps the family was kidnapped so that the kidnapper or kidnappers could get to Madyson?
When police examined Bobby’s phone from the truck, they found a final picture of Madyson on the mountain. Friends and family believe Madyson's parents did not take it. '“In the picture, Madyson is looking away from the camera; she looks unhappy, and she has her arms crossed... if that had been Bobby or Sherilyn behind the camera, she would not have looked like that”. It is debatable whether she really looked unhappy enough to determine whether the photo proves anything.
Madyson’s last picture
Witchcraft and possession: The family’s pastor, Gary Brandon, told police during the initial investigation that the family had been involved in 'spiritual warfare’ and that both Bobby and Sherilyn had told him they had seen spirits at their home. Sherilyn said the spirits of a long-dead family lived with them.
At one point, Bobby asked Gary whether he could obtain 'special bullets' to shoot the spirits. He later said he had consulted the 'satanic Bible' to rid the property of the evil presence. After their disappearance, a 'witch’s bible' was found in the house. Then strange messages were found written on the side of the container the family had planned to move into, sitting outside their house. One read: '3 cats killed to date by people in this area … Witches don’t like there (sic) black cat killed'. Sherilyn’s neighbors had been poisoning their cats, so she wrote on the container to scare them off.
An abandoned wreck of a vehicle was found near where the family truck was found. It was used for shooting practice by locals, and written on it were satanic messages.
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Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans_Bois_Mountains
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=SA015
https://medium.com/the-true-crime-times/who-killed-the-jamison-family-956dbd685e2d
https://oklahoman.com/article/5004762/autopsy-reports-of-jamison-family-inconclusive#:~:text=The%20state%20Medical%20Examiner's%20Office,to%20reports%20released%20on%20Tuesday.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/2bmg5c/what_happened_to_the_jamison_family/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2700722/Witchcraft-white-supremacists-meth-labs-family-grudge-Inside-Americas-bizarre-unsolved-murder-mystery-five-years-husband-wife-daughter-six-vanished-remote-mountains.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
https://www.darkhistories.com/the-mysterious-deaths-of-the-jamison-family/
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