Trigger warning: This is all true. This is my real family and life. I hope you never need to utilize any of the tips I’m going to give you in this series.
2023, for me, was merely 2020 Part 3–the worst sequel of all time. On Nov. 18, 2023, I logged on to my firm Facebook page and saw a post from my aunt, Karen Chovanec, saying that my grandfather (her father), Robert L. Isaacks, was missing and to contact her if anyone had any information about him or his whereabouts.
My aunt’s post included what appeared to be a screen capture of a Ring video. The screen capture was of a woman who looked wonky, almost like bad AI.
Confused, I texted my aunt and asked her if she had been hacked. She said no, my grandfather was missing for real, and the reason the photo looked weird was that it was “cleaned up” by a professional photographer. She told me it would be easier to tell me with a phone call.
On Nov. 15, 2023, the Ring doorbell camera captured footage of my grandfather and an unknown woman entering his home at 10:20 a.m. Two hours later, the woman comes out of the house removing gloves–which she was not wearing when she entered. The sound of them being removed is a sound that will disgust me to the end of my days.
My grandfather did not live alone. My grandmother passed away in March 2023, and my aunt moved in with him to take care of him, at least emotionally. Because even though my grandfather was almost 90, he was still very active and self-reliant. He regularly visited his ranch in Del Rio to hunt, and the weekend before the Ring video was captured, he’d gone to a Texas A&M football game with my mother, his daughter.
However, at 10:20 in the morning, my aunt was working the third shift at her hospital, where she works as a registered nurse.
My aunt told me everything she knew: The local police and the Texas Rangers were investigating. They had declared my grandfather’s home a crime scene based on what they believed to be blood on the garage floor. An industrial-sized trashcan was missing. And my grandfather’s Jeep had been seen in the Hill Country area of Bandera, Tex., being driven by the unknown woman with no one else in the car.
After speaking to my aunt, I immediately went to my Facebook account and created a post and included the pictures and footage. I asked anyone who might have information on the whereabouts of the Jeep or the woman to contact the police.
I began receiving messages encouraging me put out a Silver Alert. When I called, I was informed that a Silver Alert is only issued if the person is 65 years old or older and has a diagnosis of dementia or Alzheimer’s.
That did not apply to my grandfather.
I was told to get a CLEAR alert. But CLEARs (Coordinated Law Enforcement Adult Rescue) are only issued if the person missing is between the ages of 19 and 64.
This is how I came to find out that there are zero alerts available for 65-or-older individuals with no mental impairment who vanish under suspicious circumstances and have been missing for more than 72 hours.
I called the sheriff’s office and asked them to issue a missing person alert. That request was ignored, most likely because they’d already found my grandfather.
On Nov. 17, 2023, a body was found wrapped in a tarp and bound with duct tape, off I-10, just past the Ozona service road. If you don’t know, the distance between Bandera and Ozona is about 170 miles. And if you’re paying attention to the dates, you’ll notice this happened a day before I became aware that my grandfather was missing at all. We were told nothing.
The only communication we’d had from the Bandera County Sheriff’s Department was a vague comment that they recognized the woman in the Ring camera footage.
I continued to research, collect pictures, and post everything I could about my grandfather and the missing woman. Bandera County sheriffs were radio silent, but I kept pestering them for information.
Finally, eight days after my grandfather went missing, the sheriff’s office issued a press release naming Freda Thomas as the woman he was with. This was the first time a name was provided.
But there was a problem: The sheriff’s office didn’t distribute any pictures of Freda Thomas. How were people who saw her supposed to know who she was?
Fed up with the wild ineptitude of the sheriff’s office, I reached out to the press.