Chapter 131: In the Shadow of the Sun-The Disappearance of Myron Traylor

0:01 Every story has a beginning, but not everyone has an ending. In the shadows of headlines and buried police reports lay the voices of the missing, the murdered, and the forgotten, waiting to be heard and have their stories told. This is The Book of the Dead, a true crime podcast where we remember forgotten victims of heinous crimes, reopen cold cases, re visit haunting disappearances, and uncover the truths buried beneath the years of silence. I'm your host, Courtney Liso, and every week we turn to another chapter, one victim, one mystery, one step closer to justice. Brought to you by Darkast Network in Deep Podcasts with the Twist. Hello, Hello, Welcome to the next chapter in the Book of the Dead.

1:16 When a thirteen year old boy disappears on a sweltering evening in Arizona in July of nineteen eighty eight, theories circulate through the community as to what happened to him. Was it drug or gang related? Was he abducted by a predator, or did he simply run away. His family is terrified for his safety, and the authorities spend countless hours searching for him and sifting through tips trying to determine what is credible and what isn't. As the years have passed, though, the one person that might know what happened to this boy was not only a witness, but have been the one responsible, and they have refused to say a word on the subject for nearly forty years.

2:09 This is the disappearance of Myron Trailer. Myron Taimel Trailer was born on October first, nineteen seventy four, in Phoenix, Arizona, to Debbie Trailer and Leroy Williams. He had a younger half brother named Charles, and growing up, Myron was by all accounts, a sweet and loving boy. According to an article for the Phoenix New Times, Myron was a quiet child who loved to read and draw, proudly bringing home artwork that he made in school home to his grandmother, and he was never one to get into trouble. He always informed someone if he was going to play with friends, and he was very close with his family, spending many days at his Grandma Ruthie's home with his twenty plus cousins.

2:59 As Myron grew into a young teenager, he never lost his sweet personality. He was still quiet, never so much as uttering a curse word and was very active in his church, Southminster Presbyterian. By the summer of nineteen eighty eight, when this case begins, thirteen year old Myron had many things to look forward to, having shot up to five foot five and with the love of football, Ruthie signed him up to play on an organized team, with practice to start that August. To prepare, Myron started lifting weights at his closest friend, Nikosy Burton's home, who lived across the street from his grandparents. He had also been going to vacation Bible school classes with Nikosi, and on days they went to service, the two boys would often stay after eating dinner with their pastor, Reverend George Brooks, who would often speak positively of Myron's future. Reverend Brooks told the Phoenix New Times quote he was a kid that was going to make it, and if he didn't, it was because somebody interfered with him. That summer, Myron had also started a paper route with the goal of raising money to go on a trip to Disneyland with his church's youth group. He was also looking forward to spending a lot of time with his mom and cousins as during the school year. According to uncovered. He and his brother stayed with his aunt Sondra in Scottsdale, attending Sierra Vista Elementary School, where he would soon start seventh grade,

4:30 as the school systems there provided him a better education, and he would go back home to Debbi when school finished. According to an interview Sondra gave to the Arizona Republic in twenty sixteen, her nephew staying with her for part of the year was more due to her sister's struggles than anything else. Myron rarely saw his father, as he was regularly in and out of prison. By this point, Leroy had been incarcerated again and Debbie struggled with substance use. Sondra kept her nephew's for the school year, offering them stability when their home life with Debbie became chaotic. The day of July twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight, was a hot one in Phoenix. As the sun climbed higher, the temperature rose to one hundred and two degrees, and Myron had spent much of the morning out in that heat delivering newspapers. Sometime around two forty five, Myron finished his route and headed home after close to around six pm, Myron grabbed a small bag of dirty laundry and headed out with his mother to go to Ruthie's to wash his clothes, as Debbie's washer had recently broken. He was also excited to call his brother, who was spending the summer with an uncle in California, and he was looking forward to catching up with Charles and trading summer stories.

5:48 As the two walked the half mile to Ruthie's house in South Phoenix, Myron grew thirsty and he asked Debbie if he could stop to get something to drink. According to the Arizona Republic, Debbie told her son to go ahead and to catch up with her when he was done, and she headed across the vacant field just east of her parents' home while Myron walked towards an ok fish and chip shop on sixteen Street, north of Southern Avenue. Myron walked into the shop and asked the woman at the counter, Lena Watt, for a wild cherry soda, which he quickly gool down. Lena told the Phoenix New Times that she remembered commenting that he must be very thirsty as he asked for a refill to take with him.

6:29 Ryron thanked Lena and he waved, swinging his bag at his side as he left the shop, and Lena returned to work as he disappeared from view pretty quickly. After arriving at her parents' house on Pecan Road, Debbie was worried Myron had yet to arrive, and that wasn't like him. Plus, the likelihood of him taking a wrong turn and getting lost was slim to none. Myron and Debbie walked the same route nearly every night, and the two of them could likely take the walk with their eyes closed. Ruthie and her husband Claude had lived in the same house for decades and it was the meeting point for every member of the very large Trailer family, the go to place for family gatherings and playdates. Myron would have had no trouble at all getting there. Debbie tried to be rational about her concern. While it wasn't like her son not to inform her of where he was going, the vacation Bible school was to start soon, and it was possible that he had gone across the street to get into Kosi so both of them could get on the bus to attend. Maybe he had decided to head there first, then he would be back with her when Bible school had finished. However, according to Uncovered As, Debbie watched for her son to walk across the nearby field. When Myron failed to return later that evening, at around nine point thirty, Debbie called the police to try and report him missing, but the police weren't too worried. It hadn't been that long since Debbie had last seen her son, and they

8:02 told her that Myron was probably with some friends and would be back soon. Debbie tried to tell the police that Myron didn't just go off with friends. He was a responsible boy and always made sure to tell someone where he was going, but they weren't convinced. After hanging up with them, Debbie sets out to retrace her steps back to the ok Fish and chip shop, looking for any sign of her son, but nothing was found. With no sign of Myron anywhere, the trailer family set out to look for him, and Debbie's boyfriend, Gettis Mince, arrived just in time. His arm was in a sling, and when asked what happened, he claimed that he had been bitten by a dog. While we'll come back to who Gettis is soon, he joined the search for Myron, and at two am, after continuous calls to the police to let them know that he still hadn't turned up, the police finally responded to the call after family members provided more information about his character and how Myron not returning home was absolutely not something he would do. Myron had zero association with anyone known to be in a bad crowd, and he didn't use drugs. He was a little leaguer, incredibly polite, and he did very well in school, which all pointed to a young boy who wouldn't just run off.

9:20 The next day, after being alerted that Myron was still missing after failing to turn up at Bible School, Reverend Brooks gathered a group of parishioners to canvass the area where Myron was last seen to look for him. They also printed flyers to hand out asking anyone in the area if they had seen him. As part of their investigation, detectives interviewed family members and Debbie was even given a polygraph, which she passed with no issue. As abduction cases involving children are more likely to be perpetrated by non custolidial parents, police also looked into Myron's father, but as he was currently serving a prison sentence, he was of course to Benny involvement. Leroy, upon his release from prison, did what he could to help search for his son, though by that point the trail had long gone cold. Though some of Myron's friends would later tell police that he had spoken about running away in the past, and another friend claimed to have seen him two days after he disappeared, police quickly pivoted away from the idea that Myron had made the decision to leave on his own. Investigators also went to Okay Fish and Chips and spoke to Lena, who told police that when Myron had stopped by, she was the only one in the shop. She told him about his purchase and how he was exceptionally polite, and that he had left without incident after buying his soda.

10:42 Two other witnesses came forward, saying that they saw Myron walking down the street but hadn't noticed anything suspicious, and coincidentally enough, Debbie's boyfriend Gettis, was also a witness. Reportedly, Gettis had been across the street in another building at the same time time Myron had stopped for a drink, and he told police that he saw Myron leave holding a plastic bag in his hand. Gettis, though, upon further digging by investigators, was not the most upstanding member of society, and he was quickly shrouded in suspicion. While it's unknown how long Gettis and Debbie had been dating, he had a very long rap sheet and had been in and out of prison for various charges, including aggravated assault for which he was incarcerated in nineteen eighty one, and he had been released just a month before Myron had disappeared.

11:38 Gettis was also a known drug dealer, specifically cocaine, which was the drug that Debbie was known to use. The month after Myron disappeared, Gettis was arrested again for attempted armed robbery, and he spent close to another ten years in prison. As the weeks passed, investigators were very active in their for Myron as well as his family, and Reverend Brooks, who had spearheaded various searches looking for him as well as the trailers, were vocal in their appreciation for the dedication to finding Myron. However, the police were frustrated with not being able to make much progress. Lieutenant Wayne Polk, who was in charge of the Missing Person's Unit told the Arizona Republic quote, the frustrating part in dealing with Myron is we've really come up short. We should be further along, but we just don't have a strong indication of what happened to him. Quickly, Myron's photo appeared on flyers, in newspapers and on milk cartons which were distributed nationally, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimated that over forty million homes had received a newsletter asking for tips and information. Classified as one of three high priority cases, a five thousand dollars reward was offered for information that could lead to Myron's whereabouts.

13:03 A reenactment was even done the year following his disappearance to keep his case in the public eye. And while tips flooded in, especially in the initial stages of the investigation, many of them were outlandish and send police on wild goose chases as they spent valuable time trying to corroborate them. Some of these tips, which fueled the rumors that Myron was alive, came in the form of phone calls that the police as well as the Trailer family had received over the first three years of the investigation. The first call came to the house on pe Con Road, and Ruthie answered the phone, believing the caller to be her granddaughter, who was living in Texas. When Ruthy started asking questions about the caller's mother, the person on the line hung up, and she believed it was possible that the caller was Myron.

13:55 The next call came some time after and was answered by Myron's grandfather Cloak. This time the person on the other end asked for Myron, and when Claude told him that he was missing, this caller hung up as well. Finally, Nikosi Burton received a phone call from a male asking about Ruthie and how she was doing. When Nicosi said she had been ill and was in the hospital, this caller hung up too. None of the callers were able to be traced, and to this day, no one knows who made them. Besides these calls, though, police were contending with strange ones of their own, particularly a persistent caller who insisted they knew what happened to Myron. According to Detective Ron Jones, in nineteen ninety, a tipster made frequent calls to the police saying that a quote well known crack dealer in South Phoenix had drunkenly bragged about molesting and murdering a child on the day that Myron had disappeared.

14:55 This person claimed, according to the Arizona Republic, that the dealer had gotten to a fight with his wife, went to a bar next to the Fish and Chip's shop to drink, and had spotted Myron walking by. The caller alleged that the dealer, after molesting him, had beaten Myron with the rock, burying him in the backyard of a known drug den near Ruthy's home. Of course, this call was incredibly alarming, not to mention extremely detailed, and the police worked to track down the caller to bring them in for questioning. When this person placed a second call to police, they were able to track him to a specific telephone booth and bring him in for questioning. While this caller insisted he had no additional information, the police worked to verify the claims after a thorough investigation, though they deemed the tip as bogus, and Sergeant John McCarney, after the caller continuously claimed that what he was alleging was true, came forward and said quote there was no chance he was right. According to Sergeant McCarney, the tipster had made up the story to get revenge on his wife, who had left him to be with the same drug dealer he had accused of murder. This wasn't the only time Myron's case was rumored to be drug or gang related, though rumors persisted over the years, with claims that Myron had been caught in the crosshairs of two rival gangs.

16:17 Some alleged that Myron had run away to become a drug dealer himself, and others alleged that Debbie had sold him because she owed money to gettis for the drugs he had supplied her with. Nakosi himself gave an interview in nineteen ninety saying that he believed that his friend's mom was responsible and that she owed money to somebody he just did a note to whom. The police did look into this, but detected. Jones stated that nothing was found to support the allegations against Debbie Trailer. However, there were those in her family that believed it was possible she knew more and that she had possibly been able to scothe the results of the polygraph she had taken Sondras in twenty sixteen. Quote. We all thought she might have been on something, but we were just worried about finding him. My sister, she was on drugs. She knew something.

17:10 As the years passed by, the Trailer family continued to hold on to hope that Myron would be found, though police were worried that he likely would not be found alive. When Claude and Ruthie passed away, Sondra moved into the Bocan Road home, and soon after letters began to arrive, following one received by investigators claiming that Myron had been buried on private property near twenty fourth Street in Jones Avenue, which proved to be false. According to the Arizona Republic. One of the letters had been addressed to Ruthie, which referred to Myron as Byron and said quote, Hello, I am not going to leave my name due to the fear of what may happen to my mother, who still lives in Phoenix. Is what I have to say is the truth about some very bad Solis bastards. The writer claimed that Myron had been taken by two men known to be associated with the Mexican mafia named Kiko and Uncle Tony, who lived in the neighborhood. These men were allegedly involved in the murder of a family, including two children.

18:14 Another letter, this time addressed to Soandra after she moved in, claimed that whoever was responsible for killing Myron had taken him to where chicken fights were known to occur and his body was fed to hogs, the remains being put in the trash. They claimed Thatikiko was a police informant and criticized the police for allegedly protecting him. Quote, don't you care what happened to Myron? But police don't care about a black kid. That Mexican is more important to them. This letter was signed a friend. The letters disturbed the family as a change in who the letter was addressed to suggested that the house was being watched. The police were also disturbed by the allegations in the letters, but these claims were also unable to be some stantiated. By two thousand and two, fourteen years after Myron vanished, Debbie, who had slowly faded into the background during the investigation and whose family frequently didn't even know where she was after losing her home and quitting her job, died in two thousand and two after a battle with cancer, never knowing the fate of her son. At this point, investigators were still actively following up on tips, but had resigned themselves to the fact that they were looking for a body detected. Bob Brnansky, who was still looking into Myron's disappearance, told the Arizona Republic, quote, I believe he's dead. I think he's dead, and I think he's buried somewhere not too far from where he lived. While the hope of

19:45 finding Myron alive and well had long since been given up by investigators, detected, Brnansky was adamant that the family needed answers. Quote, we're not giving up on this. The family needs closure and they need to know exactly what happened. Sondra, for her part, held on to the idea that her nephew would be found, keeping his faded missing poster taped to her storm door for passers by de seat. She said, quote, we still have hope that one day he'll come home. We're still hoping that he is alive. In two thousand and nine, Gettis Mince was arrested again, this time for murder, after killing his girlfriend and stabbing her mother in their home in Peoria. Arizona. He was convicted of second degree murder and aggravated assaults, and he was sentenced to forty two years in prison. Though police tried once again after his arrest to speak to him about Myron, Gettis refused to be interviewed and has consistently declined any opportunity to speak to police about what could have happened on the day Myron disappeared. Though lacking evidence, Gettis has remained the only possible suspect in Myron's case, and the theory police are working with is that Myron and geddis ross paths outside the fish and chip shop, and Myrene confronted his mother's boyfriend about his drug use, likely due to debbie struggle with addiction. It's theorized that Ghettis grew angry and lord Myron away before killing him, and he was injured in a struggle, which would have explained the bitemark Getis

21:18 claim to have sustained by a dog. That evening in twenty sixteen, almost thirty years after Myron disappeared, three unknown men showed up at the home on Pecan Road. They knocked on the door, and Sondra, who was alone, called through the door, asking who was there. According to the Arizona Republic, one of the men said, quote, my last name is Trailer, and I'm here from Texas. My mama told me I have a bunch of kinfolk out here. Are you family. Because Sondra was not wearing her glasses, she was unable to see who the men were, and she didn't feel safe enough to open the door for them. She asked them to come back when someone else was home, and the men left, driving off in a van that might have had a sticker spelling out Trailer on it.

22:06 Because Sondra was unable to see, she couldn't be sure if that's what the sticker really said. But the man never returned. Though there are those that believe one of the men could have been Myron, as a long running rumor was that he had run off to California, where his brother's uncle lived, though that was believed to be untrue. However, I don't believe that this was Myron. Rather, I think it's possible that one of these men was the author of the letters that Sondra had received, as they were poststamped as being sent from South Texas. But admittedly there is no proof that the two incidents are related. As of today, Myron's case is still unsolved, and while tips trickle in, police have not found anything substantial to point them in the right direction. While police do believe that foul play was likely involved, his cases remain categorized as non family abduction. At the time of his disappearance, Myron Trailer was thirteen years old and he is described as a black male with black hair and brown eyes. He was five foot five at the time and weighed between one hundred and six and one hundred and sixteen pounds.

23:16 He has a half inched scar on the right side of his face from a bicycle accident, and he was last seen wearing a red and white striped shirt, white shorts with blueprint, and white sneakers. He was carrying a small bag of laundry with him, and while he needed glasses to read, he was not wearing them that evening. Anyone with information is urged to call the Phoenix Police Department at six year o two four nine five five three nine four, or you can call their Missing an Unidentified Person's Unit at six zero two five three four two one two one. As always, those numbers will be listed down below. This is not the first time that I have covered a case involving someone who disappeared in broad days light. In fact, many of the cases involving missing children that I've done all involved that specific detail.

24:08 Nicholas Barclay, Dewan Simms, wesley Dale Morgan, Alexis Patterson, and Myron Trailer all vanished in places where someone should have seen something. A busy mall, a busy street, their front yard. And yet all of these cases are unsolved, And while some cases may have witnesses, no one had anything helpful to say, which leads me to believe that someone else out there has more information that they just aren't willing to divulge. In Myron's case, I think there's something to be said about his mother's boyfriend being involved. Gettis has prute he's a violent man and was arrested for murder, and it's more than likely that that was not his first time doing it. But without him talking, and without the evidence to compel him to, it's not likely he'll give up what he knows. If Debbie was aware of something, she's no longer here to talk about it, though Sondra and Nikosi do believe she also knew more than what she was willing to share after almost forty years, the Trailer family deserved to know what happened to Myron, and Sondra at this point doesn't even want to know the name of who was potentially involved. She just wants to bring her nephew home, and I truly hope that one day she is able to. As always, I thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a wonderful week and I will see you in the next

25:42 chapter of the Book of the Dead. Bye, guys, Another page closed. But the story isn't over for the families left behind. The pain doesn't end when the headline's fade. And for the victims, we owe them more than silence. Yes for our on solved cases. If you have any information, please reach out to local authorities or visit our show notes for links and resources. Someone out there knows something, Maybe it's you. Thank you for listening to the Book of the Dead. If this story moved or spoke to you in some way, talk about it, share it, Keep their names alive. Until next time. I'm Courtney Liso. Stay safe, stay curious, and stay vigilant, and remember the dead may be gone, but their stories will not be forgotten,