# The Jamison family did not simply die of exposure: their 2009 disappearance and 2013 discovery hide a murder or something stranger that has been covered up

**No verdict.** Bobby, Sherilynn, and six-year-old Madyson Jamison of Eufaula, Oklahoma vanished on or after 8 October 2009. Their truck was found abandoned days later with the family dog, their phones and identification, and about $32,000 in cash inside. Skeletal remains found by hunters in November 2013, less than three miles away, were identified as the family in July 2014. The medical examiner could not determine a cause of death because of the condition of the remains. What is on the record is a genuine, still-open death investigation with no arrest and no confirmed cause. The claim we rate is the further one: that the deaths were a homicide or something stranger that authorities have identified and concealed. The case is genuinely unsolved, which is not the same as a proven cover-up.

Category: Unsolved Crimes & Disappearances · Era: 2000s · First circulated: Speculation began during the four-year search after the family vanished in October 2009, and intensified after the remains were found in November 2013 and identified in July 2014; the eerie home surveillance video, released publicly, drove much of the later theorizing online · Believed by: A broad true-crime audience, sustained by podcasts, documentaries, and forums; interest is driven by the strangeness of the facts rather than by any single organized movement
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/jamison-family

## Summary
In October 2009 Bobby Jamison, 44, his wife Sherilynn, 40, and their six-year-old daughter Madyson drove from Eufaula, Oklahoma toward a remote plot of land they were reportedly considering buying near Red Oak, in the Sans Bois Mountains. They were never seen alive again. Days later their pickup truck was found abandoned on a mountain road with the family's starving dog still inside, along with phones, wallets, a GPS unit, and roughly $32,000 in cash. Four years later, in November 2013, hunters found skeletal remains a short distance away; in July 2014 the Oklahoma medical examiner confirmed they were the Jamisons but could not determine how they died. This case file keeps two things apart: a real and unresolved death investigation; and the claim it rates, that the deaths were a concealed homicide or something more sinister that officials have secretly solved. The strangeness of the evidence is real. Proof of a cover-up is not.

## The claim
That the Jamison family did not die by ordinary misadventure such as exposure, but were the victims of a homicide or some stranger scheme, and that investigators either know more than they have said or are actively concealing what happened.

## Origin and timeline
- 2009-10-08: Bobby, Sherilynn, and Madyson Jamison leave their home in Eufaula, Oklahoma, reportedly to look at a 40-acre plot of land near Red Oak, in Latimer County. Home surveillance recorded that day shows the couple making many slow, near-silent trips loading their truck. It is the last confirmed sighting of the family.
- 2009-10: Days later, the family's pickup truck is found abandoned on a remote road in the Sans Bois Mountains south of Kinta. Inside are the Jamisons' malnourished dog, their phones, wallets and identification, a GPS unit, and about $32,000 in cash. The family is gone.
- 2009-10: Investigators note items that deepen the mystery: an eleven-page letter, reportedly in Sherilynn's hand, expressing marital anger, and a brown briefcase seen being loaded into the truck in the surveillance video that is never located. The untouched cash argues against a simple robbery.
- 2009-2013: A large-scale search follows, including horseback teams, aircraft, and cadaver dogs across rugged terrain. Multiple theories circulate: that the family stumbled onto a drug operation, that a killing occurred, or that they wandered off and died of exposure. None is confirmed. The search eventually goes cold.
- 2013-11: Two hunters find skeletal remains of two adults and a child in a remote area of Latimer County, less than three miles from where the truck had been abandoned four years earlier. Authorities recover the remains and begin the identification process.
- 2014-07-03: The Oklahoma medical examiner confirms the remains are Bobby, Sherilynn, and Madyson Jamison. Because the remains are skeletal and incomplete, with damage attributed to weather and animals, a cause of death cannot be determined.
- 2014: With identification complete but no cause of death and no suspect charged, the case remains officially open and unsolved. Investigators publicly acknowledge that the central questions, how the family died and why, may never be answered.
- 2010s-2020s: The case becomes a fixture of true-crime coverage. The trancelike home video, the abandoned cash, the divorce letter, and the missing briefcase are revisited endlessly, generating competing theories that range from foul play to a shared psychological crisis, none of them established.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The $32,000 in cash left behind proves this was not a robbery and points to something being covered up.
  Evidence: The untouched cash is a genuine anomaly, and it does argue against an ordinary robbery. But it does not point to any particular alternative. It is equally consistent with a hurried departure, a struggle interrupted, or a family in crisis acting outside normal logic. An unexplained detail narrows nothing on its own; treating it as evidence of concealment assumes the conclusion it is meant to support.
- Claim: The eerie surveillance video, showing the couple moving in a trancelike way, indicates they were drugged, coerced, or under some hidden influence.
  Evidence: The footage is unsettling, and its strangeness is real. But video of slow, silent, repetitive movement supports many readings: exhaustion, illness, stress, medication, or simply the flat affect of people preoccupied and unaware they are being recorded. It documents behavior, not cause. No toxicology or witness account has ever established drugging or coercion, so the sinister reading remains interpretation, not evidence.
- Claim: That no cause of death could be determined shows officials are hiding what really happened.
  Evidence: An undetermined cause of death is exactly what forensic science expects from skeletal remains exposed to weather and animals for four years. Soft tissue, which carries most evidence of poisoning, asphyxiation, or many wounds, was gone. An honest “we cannot tell” from a medical examiner is the opposite of a cover-up; a fabricated certainty would be far easier to hide behind.
- Claim: The remains were found close to the truck, so searchers must have missed them, or been steered away, which suggests concealment.
  Evidence: The remains lay in dense, rugged mountain terrain where skeletal material is extremely hard to spot and can be scattered or buried by animals and weather. Ground and cadaver-dog searches routinely fail to locate remains that are later found by chance. Proximity to the truck fits a family that traveled a short distance on foot far better than it fits a plot to hide them from professional searchers.
- Claim: The missing brown briefcase, seen in the video but never recovered, is the key to a hidden crime.
  Evidence: The unrecovered briefcase is a real loose end and a fair thing to ask about. But an unaccounted-for object is not evidence of its contents or of a crime. It could have been discarded, taken, or simply never found in the same terrain that hid the remains for four years. A gap in the inventory is a question, not an answer.

## Why people believe it
- The facts are genuinely strange. A vanished family, a starving dog, tens of thousands of dollars left in an abandoned truck, an angry letter, and a missing briefcase form a cluster of anomalies that resists any tidy explanation, which naturally invites the search for a hidden one.
- The home surveillance video is emotionally powerful. Watching the family move slowly and silently, apparently unaware of the camera, feels like a clue to a secret, and that feeling is hard to set aside even though the footage explains nothing on its own.
- The absence of a cause of death leaves a vacuum. When science returns “undetermined,” the mind fills the gap with a story, and a dramatic story of foul play or conspiracy is more satisfying than the possibility that the truth is simply unrecoverable.
- The location carried a reputation. The remote Sans Bois Mountains were associated in local lore with drug activity and lawlessness, giving speculation a ready-made villain and a plausible-sounding motive even without evidence tying either to this family.
- The case is a true-crime staple. Repeated documentary and podcast treatments keep the anomalies in circulation and reward the most dramatic framings, so the sense that a solvable secret is being withheld is continually renewed.

## Open questions
- How the family actually died remains unknown. The undetermined finding is scientifically expected given the condition of the remains, but it means the core question of the case is genuinely unanswered rather than resolved.
- The source of the roughly $32,000 in cash, and why it was left behind, has never been publicly explained, and no account has fully reconciled the money with any single theory.
- The brown briefcase loaded into the truck in the surveillance video was never recovered, and what it held, if anything relevant, is still open.
- Whether the deaths involved another person or resulted from misadventure such as exposure is undetermined on the public record; the case is open, and an honest account cannot foreclose either possibility.

## Sources
- Jamison family deaths, Wikipedia (2024): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamison_family_deaths
- Skeletal remains found by hunters in Okla. could be missing Jamison family, CBS News (2013): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/skeletal-remains-found-by-hunters-in-okla-could-belong-to-jamison-family-missing-since-2009/
- Remains Identified as Missing Eufaula Family, Public Radio Tulsa (2014): https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/local-regional/2014-07-04/remains-identified-as-missing-eufaula-family
- Missing Family Mystery Expands Thanks to Video and Anonymous Tipster, KOKH Fox 25 Oklahoma City (2013): https://okcfox.com/archive/missing-family-mystery-expands-thanks-to-video-and-anonymous-tipster
- Sherilynn Leighann Jamison, The Charley Project (2014): https://charleyproject.org/case/sherilynn-leighann-jamison
- Cold Case Files: Discovery of bodies near Kinta in 2009 leaves more questions than answers, Today in Fort Smith (2023): https://www.todayinfortsmith.com/post/cold-case-files-discovery-of-bodies-near-kinta-in-2009-leaves-more-quetions-than-answers-in-tragic
- Bobby Jamison, Oklahoma Cold Cases (2014): https://oklahomacoldcases.org/bobby-jamison/
- The Chilling Story Of The Jamison Family, From Their Unexplained Disappearance To The Discovery Of Their Bodies Four Years Later, All That's Interesting (2023): https://allthatsinteresting.com/jamison-family

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