DEADline: Oklahoma Mother Found In Shallow Grave

It was in a remote area of Lake Thunderbird State Park near 120th & Alameda in Norman, Okla. August 31, 2008, where a group of fishermen ventured into the woods searching for shoreline in hopes they’d lure something to the surface. Instead, they found themselves caught up in something else completely – a terrible secret that someone had tried to bury months earlier, not in Thunderbird’s murky water, but in a shallow grave.

“The men were wrapping up a fishing trip when one of them stopped along the way, off the beaten path,” explained Special Agent Andi Hamilton of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The fisherman discovered what was left of a woman’s body, partially buried, and notified a park ranger who called the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to the scene. 

“It was somewhere that someone would’ve had time and privacy to hide this woman’s body,” said Hamilton.

From the looks of it, investigators believe she’d been there a while. Three months, if not more. 

“Most of her body was just reduced to skeletal remains,” Hamilton explained. They initially had only a tattoo found on the small of her back to help identify her. The portion of skin was preserved because of how the killer positioned the body in the grave.

The coroner believed the victim was Native American, about 5’5, in her 30s or 40s, and a mother.

Investigators hoped that her child or a relative would recognize the tattoo. 

Investigators described it as a large sunburst tattoo, including a sun and had some additional detailing. A picture of the tattoo was shared on a local and national level, but no one came forward. 

The OSBI pored over reports of missing women, a forensic artist used an x-ray of her skull to try and recreate the victim’s face and sent it around to the media – and still nothing. 

They even added her to the deck of Cold Case playing cards they distribute to prisoners in Oklahoma, but to no avail.

Investigators were frustrated.

“It is difficult to do justice for a victim when we can’t identify the person. It’s difficult to speculate on the mechanics of what happened,” Hamilton explained how the months turned into years, and more than a decade passed with the woman remaining nameless. 

In 2021, Hamilton picked up the trail again and, utilizing advancements in forensic technology, provided the media with a sketch of the woman and the promise of genetic genealogy testing.

A year later, a break in the case. The OSBI announced its investigation had determined the identity of the victim as Angela Mason, 25, of Moore, OK. The OSBI hasn’t said much since, only citing state law that prohibits them from sharing details in an ongoing investigation.

They’d given a vague timeline of Angela Mason’s disappearance – last seen in Moore, Oklahoma in Spring 2008. 

Investigative reporter Lisa Monahan: “We’d have to try and fill in the blanks on our own but at least with a name, we could start to tell her story. We found out she went by Angela Richards as a student at Putnam City West High School.”

Classmates described her as friendly, but quiet. 

By age 17, in 2000, she was pregnant, expecting what would be the first of four children.

Several months into motherhood, Angela, still a child herself, made the decision to give the baby up for adoption. 

“She was a beautiful mom, I actually got to see pictures of her while she was pregnant with me,” Regan Colley, Angela’s firstborn said when investigative reporter Lisa Monahan tracked Colley down in 2022, “I’d always had a desire to find her,” she said.

Colley tried to – with no luck. Most of what she knew about her biological mother came from notes found in a baby book. 

“Her keeping a baby book showed she did care for me and she did enjoy the process of having me but she had to make the difficult decision to give me up,” said Colley.

Angela had kept visitation rights and remained a part of Regan’s life, until someone took hers.

But Regan wouldn’t learn her mother was killed for nearly 15 years, instead, she anguished over unsettling questions raised by her family, including whether Angela had simply abandoned her.

“So, I kind of wanted to find her to answer those questions,” said Colley. She also wanted answers to the bigger questions: Who? Why?

“I want to be able to look at the person who did it and try to figure out why. Why did you feel the need to do this,” she said. 

In search of a possible motive, we spoke with family and friends, looked into any past mistakes, or scorned lovers. 

Angela had two children with Michael Gainor. Gainor was the biological father of Colley and her sister.

The romance didn’t last. By all accounts, they remained friends but it’s not clear how the friendship stood at the time of summer.

Whatever Angela’s relationship to Gainor was, records show she married Adam Mason in Arizona in 2005. 

They settled down in Moore, Oklahoma, and had two children of their own. 

The marriage didn’t last long, Mason filed for divorce April 25, 2008.

Lisa Monahan asked him why, but he didn’t immediately reply to the text messages.

So, she pulled the file and quickly discovered something very suspicious – Adam took steps to expedite the couple’s divorce in June 2008, after she’d gone missing.

What’s more, Angela’s signature was on the divorce decree dated September 18, 2008, the month after her badly decomposed body was found. Could she possibly have signed it before she was killed? 

Her signature on the next page, the child support agreement, raised even more questions about a potential forgery.

So, Lisa Monahan found a handwriting expert to provide analysis. 

David Parrett is a forensic document examiner, with a long history of working with law enforcement. He compared what is believed to be Angela's genuine signature with the one on the child support document.  

“It is quite a remarkable difference,” Parrett said he analyzed how each letter connects with the next, the curvature or angle of the characters, even if the signature seemed smooth or unsteady. 

“Every signature in natural handwriting is going to vary somewhat, it’s when you start seeing entire departure that you start looking at the possibility that its not genuine signature,” explained Parrett. 

Parrett noted several discrepancies. He pointed out a handful, including unusual spacing or connections in letters in her name (G-E & O-N), the more angular M that didn’t extend below the baseline, and evidence the questionable signature was done slowly, if not drawn.

“The person that drew [the questioned signature] is not using their own natural handwriting,” Parrett said, “they are trying the best they can to make the letters just as Angela makes her letters.”

Parrett had a limited sample of Angela’s signature, but he is confident the signature on the child support document is a forgery. He’s not surprised, the other signer, Adam Mason had a criminal record including burglary, obstructing an officer, eluding police, and forgery. 

“If someone has a record of forgery it is not surprising they, to use a legal term, forge something else,” Parrett said. “You do it once you might entertain the idea of doing it again.”

Mason’s behavior was also suspicious, according to Angela’s family following her disappearance.

“He was ripping up the carpet right after she took off, said he was done with it and was going to sell the house,” an unidentified relative stated. 

A check of local property records revealed that he apparently made good on it in 2011, selling the house for $50,000 less than they paid for it.

Records show Mason has been living out of state since then. We tracked him down to Florida, in a small town just outside of Panama City. He didn’t answer the door.

We checked court records in Florida and found three protective orders in Oklahoma accusing him of threatening to harm, if not kill, women in Oklahoma. He was also recommended for anger management while in an Oklahoma prison.

In Florida, he had filed for $30,000 in back child support from Angela in 2018, 10 years after she died.

We wanted to get some clarity, but he had not replied to our requests prior to this report.

Instead, we’d have to settle for the unexpected return call from a man claiming to be his brother John:

John: I’m calling you on his behalf… He doesn’t want to talk with you. He said anything that you have to say, you can speak with me.

Lisa: Nobody reported Angela Mason missing. Why? That would be my first question for him. When did he last see her alive?

John: He would tell you they got into an argument, it went south and she left.

Lisa: Was that before or after he filed for divorce?

John: I don’t remember. 

Lisa: That’s why I want to speak with him.

John was little help in clarifying the timing of Angela’s disappearance, but he insisted his brother thought Angela just ran out on him.

“The only thing he said is that she was talking to the father of her daughter,” John was referring to Michael Gainor, who committed suicide a year after Angela’s disappearance. That’s also what Adam Mason told the OSBI, as well as claiming he’d been traumatized by the recent developments in the case. 

But none of that explains how the signature of a dead woman ended up on his divorce papers. 

Lisa: It’s not adding up, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

John: It was a long time ago but I do think there was a moment where they did meet one more time and she signed the papers after. I think that happened, but I don’t know if I’m 100 percent correct or not.

He is, however, 100 percent certain Adam Mason has no interest in answering a reporter’s questions

John: We’d rather not dwell on it, I think that’s what it comes down to for him.

What that means for Angela’s oldest daughter, Regan, is she may never know the truth of why she lost the opportunity to develop a relationship with her biological mother.

“She is probably the hardest person that I have ever had to mourn because I was robbed of getting to know her,” Regan said. “I would like to know why, it won’t bring her back, but it could help give some resolution.”

If you have any information to help, contact the OSBI at tips@osbi.ok.gov.