Brandon Lawson

Hi, guys, Welcome to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie right now in True Crime. Let's dive right in because we have a little bit to talk about. So on the last episode, I talked about how they were able to potentially tie two more victims of the Long Island serial killer, two Rex heuremen. And the details now are out about why they are thinking that they're able to tie that to him. So there was a press conference and it's a lot I'm gonna kind of go through the transcript of what was said. So there is four different witnesses that have come forward that tie him to the other two victims. And during the press conference, they said he was a series user of sex workers and they would sometimes come to his house, sometimes two at a time. So the first witness made a claim that Rex belonged to a swingers club which was based in Midtown Manhattan, which was not far from where Rex worked as an architect. And this witness said that Rex had posted on a wall at this swingers club twenty seven years ago asking for a sexual encounter at his massive Equal Park home. And this witness said that her boyfriend in nineteen ninety six was a new York Police Department detective, and he is called RW in the sworn affidavit. So in February of nineteen ninety six, r W picked up a woman believed to be Karen Vgatta in New York City on the way to the Humerman's house. She was hungry and homeless. The witness said, her date and the woman called Karen entered the Heroman home and she met Huerman's wife. Karen went downstairs. I stayed upstairs. My partner, who I believe was bisexual, kept disappearing. I believed he was elsewhere in the house having sex with Rex. I believe I had sex with Rex as well. I never went downstairs. And then this witness said that she and the off duty detective then left Rex's home, and the woman, who she believed to be Karen, suddenly ran outside and naked and ran about by the garage. Our W had gone back to the ur W had gone to the back of the house to look for his belt. But when he was back in the car, our W told me not to worry about her, that she was okay. They were only playing a game. We left without her. I felt uneasy, and then we left without the woman now we are moving on to the second witness, which was a female taxi driver who believes that she had encountered Rex Huroman twice, and she also said she thinks that she encountered the Oak Beach victim Shannon Gilbert once in the fall of two thousand and nine. In one instance, the cab driver said that she was dispatched to pick up a woman at the Sayville Motor Lodge on Sunrise Highway, which was a notorious location for prostitution. She said, I saw a dark, apparently greenish gray suv on the side of the street close to the motel. The witness said, a very large man came out. He tried to block his face with his arms. Then a girl ran out. She was petite, she was crying and she was shaking. The taxi driver said that the scared woman got into her car and said she was glad to get away, claiming that the man filled up her envelope with cut paper instead of one thousand dollars that she was promised. I saw her on TV when she was identified as Shannon Gilbert. The second witness said, I am certain that Shannon was that that girl was Shannon Gilbert. The taxi driver said that she later encountered Rex a second time near exit on the Long Island Expressway when she responded to a call. When I arrived at the bar, I observed an extraordinary large man wearing army like fatigue jacket. The driver said the passenger wanted to go for a long drive into the woods with a woman. The driver said that the man got agitated when she refused, and he said he wanted to kill me if I would just give him a reason to do so. The taxi driver then said she heard a click of a gun before her dispatcher called the cops. There was a third witness who is currently living in Oklahoma City who contacted him and said she performed sexual services for Rex at Queen's Park and he had threatened to kill her at one point, and this woman did not sign a sworn statement. A fourth witness said she too had been hired four sex by Rex, but he was always nice to her. And one thing that isn't included in the beginning part of this is when Karen Vigatta was alleged brought to the house, Rex's wife was there as well and was aware of this going on and also potentially allegedly according to some of these sworn testimonies from the first person she was involved in it, as well as far as like the swinging stuff. How true that is, I really don't know, but that is what this gal who's the first witness came forward and has sworn to in her sworn affidavit. So it's going to get really really interesting to see this all unfold. And it's also extremely scary that so many people had experiences with Rex like this and nobody called the cops ever, Like nobody ever said, oh my god, this person is no good, Like you just don't become a serial killer overnight. I say it all the time. There's always signs, there's always things that happen as precursors to become this horrible, horrible monster. And the fact that, according to this witness, one of the people who was actually at the house who brought Karen Bergotta to the Humorman home was a police officer himself, Like, mind freaking blown that that's the case. And then they left her there. I'm confused as to that whole thing, And like, you got blood on your hands, bro, if you left her there, you have blood on your hands. I don't know it. It's going to be interesting to see this all unfold. But I don't see things going very well for Rex. I really don't. I feel like the evidence is just stacking up against him. They already have the DNA evidence, but all this other evidence is piling up, and if he was having these same sex relationships as well. There is a man who was found on Gilgo Beach who was murdered. Could this also be somebody that is going to be tied to Rex. It's going to be really interesting to see it all play out, see it all come out. But yeah, Rex is a creep. He targeted sex workers and god knows how long this has been going on, probably since the nineties. I think we're going to have a heck of a lot more people coming out coming forward saying that they had these experiences with Rex. And it's going to be really interesting to see it all unfold and play out. So I will definitely keep you guys updated on that. Also, something that people probably don't care about, but I care about it because I am a weirdo. Is the Mozelle property that Maggie and Paul were killed at that the murder's own is back up for sale. It had been purchased and then it I guess it either fell through or something happened, and now it's back up for sale and the way. But I've been wanting to see the inside of Mozelle for the longest time, and there was no pictures of it. Well there's finally some pictures of the inside, and I am a sucker for like a rusticky cabin vibe, and that's the vibe that I get from Mozelle. It's like all wood inside. They actually have it decorated really really nice. Elick whatever had terrible taste and had all of his ugly, clunky shit in the house, So it obviously looks a lot better now than it did when he was living there. Because as much as we want to think that Maggie is the one that decorated it was one hundred percent Elk because he's a control freak allegedly in my opinion, and you know, he ruled the roost with his ugly, clunky turtle lamps and ugly furniture. But the house itself, like inside, it's gorgeous, it's really pretty. In my opinion. I like it. But if you're a weird and you like to see stuff like that. I have some pictures of the inside. I will send them to you. I yeah, I don't know. I'm like a visual person so much that I like to look up homes and just see what they look like. I don't know, I'm weird, but I have them saved on my phone because I know I'm never gonna be able to find them again when I go to look for them. All right. Other big news that happened Richard Allen, the suspect in the Delphi case, in the murders of Liberty German and Abigail Williams. His defense team quit. Literally, they just quit. There's a lot going on right now with this case, a lot of it that I am really not privy to even share about. But basically what happened, I'm just gonna sum it up as quickly as i can, and there's a lot of information out there. Basically, there was a crime scene photo leak that occurred. And this crime scene photo leak originated by somebody who at one point in time worked for the Defense Law Office and was not working for them anymore, but still I guess had access enough to be able to get these photos and they leaked them to a couple of different sources, and it's just been like this whole ongoing saga. There is more information on all of this on the Murder Sheet podcast Murder sh E E T Murder Sheet, and they have like three episodes talking about it. But that's basically what's going on. And then the defense quits. So and Richard Allen was arrested almost a year ago. These are the defense attorneys that have been with him for the last year and now they've quit, and I'm sure it has something to do with this whole leak that happened. So it's gonna be really interesting to see how this one plays out, because I feel like, if anything else, there has been talk about him not having the right type of prison conditions and he's been mistreated and stuff like that, and then stuff like this is screaming for there to be like issues with this case, Like it's just not shaping up to be a case where it's not going to be like complete grounds for appeal already because there's already so much stuff going on. And I know that Richard Allen's wife is sticking by him and has stuck by him since the beginning. She's been at all of his court hearings. She's been involved with everything, so it's gonna be really interesting to see, like what all goes down with the I will definitely keep you guys updated. There is a lot of information floating around out there, and it's I feel like it's just one of those cases that is going to be ever evolving and it's definitely messy, and it's gone on for a long This case has gone on for a long time for the even had a suspect, and that they have a suspect, it is getting crazy and crazier by the day. So I will definitely keep you guys updated on the happenings and what's going on with that, because that was a big thing that happened this past week. Okay, so that is it for now for right now in True Crime, we are going to go ahead and lead into today's episode and I hope you guys enjoy it. All Right, guys, jumping into day to another case that has always been a case that I have held near and dear to my heart, and I've always very much wanted to see resolution in it, and I feel like we're close to resolution, but we're not quite there. And this is a story that has been told a lot, but I still feel like a lot of people don't really know it. So today we're going to talk about the disappearance of a man named Brandon Lawson out of Texas, and as always, we're going to talk about who Brandon was, what he was doing leading up to his disappearance. So Brandon Mason Lawson was born November eighteenth of nineteen eighty six to parents Bradley and Kimberly Lawston in Fort Worth, Texas. He had a brother named Kyle, a sister named Brittany, and then he had a half brother named Billy Brown. Brandon was just a couple months short of turning twenty seven when he disappeared. He was in a long term relationship with a woman named Lodessa and together they had four children. They lived in San Angelo, Texas, and he was working as an oil field worker. Brandon had struggled off and on with some substance abuse issues, but at the time of his disappearance, he had been about six months clean and sober from the different substances that he had taken in the past. So it's August eighth of twenty thirteen and Brandon had come home to the house that he shared with Ladessa in San Angelo, and at some point during that night something went down with them, and between ten forty five pm and eleven PM, Brandon and Ledessa got into an argument. And the reason that I got into an argument is because Brandon did not come home the night before. Ledessa was obviously upset and she realized that something was going on with him and thought that he had started using again because he was not acting like himself. It was not like him to do these things unless he was under the influence of some sort of substance, so they thought. Brandon got upset and he left the house, and around eleven thirty that night, he called his father, who was living in Crowley, Texas, which is about a three hour drive from San Angelo where Brandon and Ledessa lived, and he told his dad that he was going to be coming to his house. So at eleven fifty four pm, Brandon left his house to go to his father's house. He was driving his silver Ford F one point fifty. So we are now into the early morning hours of August ninth. Around twelve thirty am, Brandon called his brother Kyle and had told Kyle that he had run out of gas. And that he was pulled over en route to seventy seven, which is between San Angelo and Bronte, Texas. And Kyle had said that during the call, Brandon had told him that three and Its explotives are chasing me out of town, and it was later clarified that it was the some of the Mexican population that was in the neighborhood was chasing him out of town. Again, you're at the back row small Texas little towns. There is going to be some division amongst races in those smaller, tiny, tiny towns. It's just the way it is. So at this point Kyle thinks that Brandon is like having some hallucinations, really unsure of what's going on, and Brandon said, no, I'm not hallucinating. So at this point Kyle goes and goes to Ladessa and Brandon's home to retrieve a fuel container to go fill it up to drive to go find Brandon and give him the gas. And Kyle said that they hadn't been making calls to each other, but that Brandon wouldn't hold a conversation with him at all and would pretty much just end the call after a few sentences. So at twelve fifty in the morning, Brandon Lawson called nine to one one, which rang at a local nursing home in Robert Lee, Texas, and at that point he told the responder that he had run of gas and that he needed the police. So this police call. I have listened to it way more times than I care to admit. I've listened to it slow down. I've listened to it in so many different ways. There's so many YouTube videos out there where people have slowed it down to try to understand what he's saying. I'm going to play it and then we're going to talk about it, because there is some parts of it that are inaudible, but other people have kind of filled in some gaps as far as what he's saying in the nimal one call. So we're going to play the naim on one call because it is probably one of the most important pieces of information in this case. And then we're going to talk about the nim on one call, and then we're going to go from there, coming to if they want to go, got here about that? Okay, now run oh you were an end film? Okay the heart No, I need to called, okay and anybody hurt? Hello, Hello, Hello, Okay, So that is the nine one one audio. There is not really a lot there, but there is so much there because it's all just very jarbled and there's just a lot going on. It's kind of hard to understand there. Obviously to me, in my opinion, is someone else in the back of that Niemalman call. I do not believe that Brandon was out there by himself. And there's a lot of like mixed opinions and different people think different things. My personal opinion is I think there was someone else there, and I do think that he called nine one one because he felt like he was being threatened. So we're going to talk a little bit about what he said in the nine to one one call, because I do think it's a little hard to understand unless you have the words going over the audio. So we're going to talk about that now. So he said, yes, I'm in the middle of a field. We just pushed some guys over. We're out here going towards Abilene on both sides. My truck ran out of gas. There's one car here, a guy's chasing me through the woods. Please hurry, And the nine one one dispatcher says, run that by me one more time, and he says there'll be no talking to him. I accidentally ran into him and he said. The emergency dispatcher says, oh, you ran into them, okay, And then you can hear someone say something in the background, and Brandon says something that's inaudible, and then the first guy and then there's a loud noise in the background, background noise, and then nine one one emergency says do you need an am mulence And then again you hear someone else talking in the background, and Brandon says, no, I need the cops, and then the dispatcher says, okay, is anybody hurt? Hello? Hello, Hello. There's no response from Brandon, and the background noise does get a little bit louder and louder, as if it's getting closer and closer to the phone. So there's a lot there. Like I said, you can go down a YouTube rabbit hole and listen to this video in fifty five different ways. You can hear it slowed down, you can hear it sped up, you can hear it like where they zero in on the background sounds and everything. People have dissected this line on one call so many different times and I've listened to probably each and every one of them. I think, like I said, my personal opinion, that there's someone else there, and it could have been a situation where he was in a town where he came across people that were after him for some reason or another, and that's what went down. Very potentially could be that. But the NI woman call is just so weird and such a mystery to me that it really it very very much bothers me that I feel like this nimal one call is our missing peace and it's right in front of us. So shortly after the nine one one call ended at twelve fifty six am, there was a trucker who called nine one one to report a truck on the road that ended up being Brandon's truck, the F one fifty, and they reported it as being parked in a hazardous manner on the road, so it was obviously dangerous, so that's why the trucker called nine one one. So between twelve fifty am and one fifteen am, Brandon received and made calls to his brother, his girlfriend, his neighbor, and the nine on one dispatcher, but pretty much all the calls that he received due to him being out in the middle of nowhere. A lot of them went to voicemail because of the poor cell reception, and after one nineteen am, all calls that went to Brandon's phone went straight to voicemail. At around one eighteen am, Kyle called Brandon, who said that Brandon sounded like he was out of breath, and he also claimed that he was bleeding. And then shortly after one am, a sheriff's deputy arrived at Brandon's truck and could not find Brandon. He was nowhere to be found. Kyle arrived at the truck around one ten am, and at the time Kyle was on the phone with Brandon, who told Kyle, I can see you. I'm right here, but neither the sheriff's deputy or Kyle could see him. And I will say at the time of Brandon's disappearance, he did have an active arrest warrant on him, and Kyle thought, well, maybe he's hiding because he sees the deputy and he doesn't want to go to jail. Kyle talked with the officer for a little bit and then drove a short distance up the road and parched his car to wait for Brandon to come out, figuring once the CoP's gone, Brandon's going to come out. And after about thirty to forty five minutes, Kyle couldn't find Brandon. He didn't see Brandon, and he left. He left the gas can in the back of Brandon's truck and went home and returned to that scene of the truck around five am. And when he got there at five am, he realized that Brandon had not come back to the truck, and that's when everyone officially realized that something was definitely wrong. And around eight am that morning, they ended up towing the truck. And this story just blew up into what it has become. So there's a lot of rationalization that you can do for Kyle going there with the gas can, Brandon saying, hey, I can see you. There's a sheriff's deputy there. He has a warrant. He doesn't want to get arrested, so he's hiding out. Kyle waits he doesn't show up, and then he's like, well, I'm just going to leave the gas can and then I'm going to peace out and he'll be back and I'll get in touch with him in the morning. You never think that a bad thing is going to happen to your family member. You never think that they're going to disappear and that you're never going to see them again. You never have that in your mind until after the fact that it happens, and then you think of all the things that you should have done, or you could have done, or that you would have done differently. Hindsight is twenty twenty, especially in these type of situations. There is a way to rationalize everything that happened that night in Kyle's head, and a million percent it makes sense to me. You're in the middle of nowhere, Texas, and you run out of gas. You call your brother and he brings you gas, and then he goes home and that's that. But Brandon never came out of wherever he was hiding that night, and to this day, he remains missing. We're going to talk about all of that and the aftermath and the search and all of the different things, but that is, unfortunately, what happened that night. Brandon was on the phone with his brother, his brother got there, and he basically vanished into thin air after that, And it's really scary that something like that can happen, and it can literally happen right under your nose. And I do want to say that Brandon was not the type of guy who would have disappeared on his own accord, gone off, started another life. He had a longtime girlfriend, just about common law wife, Ldessa. They had four children. He would not have left his kids. He would not have left his kids willingly. He would not have left his family. It is not the kind of person that I have become to know Brandon ass It is not the kind of person he was. So whatever happened to him that night happened to him out of his control. So in the aftermath of his disappearance, there was a local deputy that had organized a search party and they spent several hours investigating the area that was near Brandon's truck. Now, the area where Brandon went missing from is very vast, It's like a field. There's not really a whole lot out there. The family immediately set up a Facebook page called help Friend Brandon Lawson. I will link it in the show notes because it is still active. It's still there. Ladessa pretty much knew from the beginning of this that Brandon was no longer alive, and she even quoted and said he's not alive wherever he is, He's not alive. He's dead somewhere. I know it, and said Brandon would never do this to his family. Others would, but not him. So deep down inside she knew that he would never take off and leave his family and put them through the pain and torture of this whole ordeal, and knew that he was probably more likely to cease than not. I will say there wasn't any damage to Brandon's truck upon inspection. There had been some speculation that maybe he got into an accident and that's what happened, and that's why the people were after him, is because he accidentally hit them. But there was no evidence found as far as any kind of structural damage to Brandon's truck. Ladessa has always stuck by that she thought that Brandon was somewhere out in the field. And when I say, it's a large, large, large area. There were four different aerial searches that happened since the disappearance of Brandon, and they have done grid searches on foot, but none of the searches have really turned up anything. There was a lot of different people looking for Brandon over the course of the last many many years, it's been over ten years since this happened. These searches covered about three thousand acres, and you know, they said it's really hard because they only know where he was at one point and there's no way to physically search all of the county, which is called Coke County, and they don't know if he went north, south, east, or west. They don't know if he maybe got picked up by somebody. They really don't know. There have been about three or four anonymous phone calls proclaiming to know the whereabouts of Brandon, and all of these vary from San Angelo to Fort Worth and in between. And you know, they keep him at the forefront and they try to just keep a lookout and see if anything comes to them one day while they're out working doing their job. Now, I will say, in twenty twenty two, they did make a discovery in the case of Brandon, and this was reported via the help Find Brandon Lost in Facebook page. They stated on there that a search party had located clothing that was identified as Brandon's near his last known location, and that the Texas Rangers had conducted a search of that same area and they did find some human remains. Now we're in September. We're not in September. We're in October of twenty twenty three, and as of right now, the DNA test results are not complete to confirm if those remains do belong to Brandon, although they do think that they are the remains of Brandon Lawson. The question is, how have how has the clothes and the remains been out there for so long with all these different searches that have happened, and nobody came upon it. Now, Like I said, the area is very, very widespread, so it's understandable if they could have potentially missed something. But there was also I believe, and this is not stated as fact because I do not know the one hundred percent fact truth on this, but I did hear rumblings of obviously the land that Brandon went missing by it was owned by a certain person or a group of people or group or whatever it was, and I guess initially there was maybe some issues with searching that area, and then it got under new ownership and they were able to search that area, so that very well could have been it where they weren't able to go into, like a particular area of the property because it was owned by a particular person that was not going to give them access to it, which is okay, I guess that's fine. But they did find clothes that were identified as him, and they do expect that the remains belonged to him. But it's you know, mid October of twenty twenty three, it's been over a year since the remains were found, and they still haven't been identified as Brandon, and that's just got to be so frustrating for the family to know that it more than likely not as him. And they still haven't really found that final resolution to what happened to Brandon, and I don't even know if they ever will find out what happened to Brandon. For one reason or another, cops do not think that it was a foul play type of situation, and it is now reported via Kyle, Brandon's brother, that Brandon had taken some of them fetamines shortly before his disappearance. Now, of course different drugs, mixing it with different meds, prescription meds that Brandon might have been on, could have definitely caused him to have some hallucinations and some paranoid thoughts. And I really don't know what could have happened to Brandon. Like I said, I personally think that there was someone else there. Just from the sounds of the nyil Wana call. It just doesn't seem to really add up that he was out there by himself and he said that I ran into them and they're after me and I need the cops. Like I guess, you can have really powerful hallucinations on different drugs, Like I realized that, and I understand that, But I just feel like there might be more to it. But maybe there's not. Maybe there isn't more to it, But regardless, I feel like we need the DNA test to come back sooner rather than later so Brandon's family can get justice and have a little peace if he was taken and killed by some unknown people. Getting the story out there and talking about it and spreading the message is just going to help bring those people to justice. If there are other people involved, Like I said, everything is really kind of up in the air because we don't really know. We're not really going to ever know unless somebody comes forward and said that they had something to do with it. I think it's just going to be ruled as an accidental death, and that's just going to be that, but his family still fights for justice. His family fights to find out what happened, and they fight for closure and for resolution. And I can't imagine. Brandon's kids are all now a little bit older, ten years have passed since this happened, and they've had to grow up without their father in their formative years. It's got to be so sad and so tragic and Lydessa to having to take over as the sole parent to her children, her and Brandon's children, and be that anchor for her family. That it's probably been so hard for her to do that given everything that has happened in her life, and a lot of suspicion surrounded her too when all of this first happened, because they had an argument and then he left and then he went missing. You know that that's got to upset her more than anything. I did see an article where she talked about how it really bothers her that the last conversation they had was an argument. And now she's really really careful about how she leaves things with people, and she always makes sure that the last thing she said to her says to her kids is I love you. So you just never know when the last time you're going to see somebodys and unfortunately, you know, a normal relationship kind of fight like that. You never think that that person is going to go missing in your ever going to see them again. That's not something that you ever think is going to happen to you until it does. So. Ladessa has definitely been a big proponent of keeping Brandon's story out there, keeping his name out there, keeping his face out there, telling their story, telling what happened to her and her family, and just trying to get justice for Brandon. There is the mega of mega iss Reddit threads on this case. I could spend all day on there going through everything because there's so much. Like I said, there's a lot about the nimal one call and the different types of audio that they kind of tweak a little bit to make it a little more audible, and they enhance the background noise, they enhance the actual nimal one call itself. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of podcasts out there as well on Brandon's case telling the whole story and everything that has happened since the family does do a really good job at updating the Facebook page that I shared about earlier. I'm going to link it in the show notes, and I'm just anxiously awaiting the day that we get positive identification on Brandon on that being Brandon's remains, And unfortunately, I do believe that Brandon is no longer with us, and I think it's sad that so many questions surround his disappearance and his potential death. But I do have hope that one day we will hopefully learn the truth and they can finally lay Brandon to rest and we can remember Brandon for who he was, a hard worker, a really good dad, loved his kids, and unfortunately had some drug issues in the past and it might have caught back up with him allegedly. Maybe I don't think that Brandon was a bad guy. I don't think that he did anything to cause his own death. I think that something more happened, and I feel like we need to talk about that. I feel like there's more involved here. So that is it for the Brandon episode. I will continue to keep you guys updated on this one, and I'm interested to see what you guys think about it. If you have heard of this case, If you haven't heard of this case and this is the first time you're hearing about it. Look at some more things on just go to Google, look up some more YouTube videos, listen to other podcasts. I really want to get your opinion on this one. I follow this one pretty much from the start, and I'm hoping that twenty twenty three is the year that I can say that they finally have identified the remains as Brandon and we may get an answer as to what happened. So we'll definitely keep you guys updated, and as always, I appreciate you all so so much, and I hope you guys have a great week ahead and I will see you guys on Friday for a new episode. Bye.