Deadline: Missing Case

 A cross-country road trip came to a tragic end on a dirt-lined road in Choctaw County, leaving a family searching for answers and raising questions about law enforcement's response.

Caitlyn Case's parents spent more than a year trying to uncover what happened to their daughter while, they say, law enforcement did very little to investigate her mysterious disappearance. Case vanished on August 5, 2022, on the rural backroads of Texas.

She made a call to her father from a solar farm near Cunningham, Texas. The call abruptly dropped and was never reconnected. No one ever heard from her again.

Gordon Case, Caitlyn's father, expressed frustration and distrust of local law enforcement.

"The problem is that these areas are so rural that law enforcement in those areas think they can absolutely do whatever they want because nobody is watching them," he said.

On the night Caitlyn disappeared, a 911 call reported a suspicious vehicle in a cow pasture on 4340 Road and Highway 109, near the Red River. The caller described the vehicle as a small SUV driving erratically. Despite the report, no officers were dispatched to investigate.

Within an hour of the 911 call, the SUV crashed into trees overhanging the Kiamichi Riverbank a few miles from the eyewitness account.

A week later, Gordon Case, using the "Find My Phone" app, located Caitlyn's abandoned SUV on a private ranch near the Kiamichi River. Her belongings, including her phone and wallet, were still inside, but Caitlyn was nowhere to be found. Gordon says, even the clothes and shoes she’d been wearing were left behind.

He believed the circumstance pointed to foul play and criticized the initial investigation for not treating the scene as a potential crime scene. Hugo Police, Choctaw County Sheriff, and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation worked the scene of the crash.

“They never roped it off, taped it off […]anyone could go back there and stomp all over the crime scene,” Gordon said any potential evidence was likely destroyed in the process. 

Hugo Detective Billy Jenkins, the only officer willing to discuss the investigation, admitted no one conducted a proper search for Caitlyn Case when her SUV was discovered Aug.

"By the time we got the vehicle out, it was dark," Jenkins said. "It wouldn't have been feasible to find anybody or anything, I don't think."

Jenkins said there was a search the next morning, but it wasn’t law enforcement. Gordon brought in a team of dogs the next day, but he said the search was cut short by the landowners.

The following week, Jenkins said law enforcement searched the crash site, the land, and the river below the car.

Local authorities eventually involved the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI), which under state law sealed several records related to the case, drawing further criticism from the Case family.

In October 2023, more than a year after Caitlyn disappeared, a skull was discovered across the river from where her car was found. The skull was not properly documented at the discovery site, but it is an area the Case family was told was initially searched by drones. Partial skeletal remains were photographed by the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office. Dental records confirmed the remains were Caitlyn Case. The medical examiner was unable to determine how she died. 

The timing of the discovery further raised Gordon’s suspicion about the thoroughness of the investigation. It also bolstered his concerns about potential corruption as it came one day after local authorities were forced to turn over case records to News 9 following months of legal battles.

Gordon Case remains determined to find out what happened to his daughter. "There's something that's not right here," he said. "Somehow, some way law enforcement is involved in this and I'm going to get to the bottom of it."

The Case family's ordeal highlights potential oversights and a lack of transparency in the investigation. News 9 continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding Caitlyn Case's disappearance and death.

For more on this story, including interviews with potentially overlooked witnesses and evidence, watch the one-hour investigative report "Missing Case" streaming now on all News 9 platforms.

‘Missing Case’ will also air on News9’s sister station KSBI, Channel 52 on Sunday, July 21st at 5 p.m.