Michael & Pamela Mayfield

All witnesses, suspects, and purses of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty in a. Court of law. Warning, this episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we're going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and get into a little right now in true crime before we head into this week's episode. So first up is the investigation into the death of Celeste Revs Hernandez. She is the young girl who was found in the trunk of the singer David's vehicle. I've talked about her case here on the podcast before, but they have said that David Burke, who is the singer known as David, is the target for the investigation and he may be involved in committing these crimes against Celeste, who is the victim. She was only fourteen years old. It is said that it is alleged in this case that the target may be involved in the death of fourteen year old victim Celestrivas Hernandez, who may have been a victim of foul play. Her severely decomposed, dismembered body was found in the front trunk of the Targets David's Tesla on September eighth of twenty twenty five. On September eighth of twenty twenty five, at approximately ten thirty hours, Los Angeles Police Department detectives received a phone call from the manager of Hollywood Area Official Police Garage. The manager stated that a black Tesla Model X had been impounded as an abandoned vehicle by the Department of Transportation on September fifth. The manager told lest there was a strong smell of decay coming from inside the vehicle, which was attracting flies. LAPD detectives responded to the Hollywood towyard to investigate. Detectives approached the vehicle, which was parked. On the upper deck of the impound lot, and immediately noticed a smell of decaying biological material consistent with a decomposing corpse, coming from the front storage compartment of the vehicle. Detectives obtained a search warrant for the vehicle, and when the front storage compartment was opened, the detectives observed a black cadaver bag covered with insects and a strong odor of decay. Utilizing black lake tex gloves, detectives partially unzipped the bag and observed a decomposed head and torso. Investigators and a criminalists from the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner responded to the toeyard to process the decomposed body. Upon removing the cadaver bag from the front storage compartment, it was discovered the arms and legs had been severed from the body. A second black bag was discovered underneath the cadaver bag, and that is when they found more dismembered body parts. So, although he is being referred to as the target, he has still not been arrested. But that is the latest. There is probably a lot more that's going to be coming out on this in the coming week, so I will be sure to keep you guys updated. But I am just awaiting the day that they say that he's been arrested, because why is he still out? I have so many questions. But again, he has not been charged or convicted of any involvement at this point in time, So all of that is allegedly and in my opinion, Just to be clear, all right, we are now at a month since Nancy Guthrie updated from her home in Arizona. There is still little to no new information to go on. They did come back today Today's Wednesday, March fourth, and said that they had found a glove a couple miles from her home and they tested that for DNA and it did come up as a DNA match to an individual who works nearby at a restaurant, but that person is not involved in her disappearance or anything to do with her. It was just a random glove that was found and had no connection. Because they found a lot of gloves that match supposedly match the description of the gloves that the perpetrator was wearing in the surveillance video, but I think the type of gloves that he was wearing are very similar to other types of gloves that a lot of the workers were using at the crime scene, and so on and so forth. So I don't know. I feel like we have no new information. There hasn't really been much coming out coming forward. I know they did release the home back to the family, but that is kind of it. I don't really know what were to say because in the beginning, it seemed like things were moving in the right direction and we were hopefully going to be getting answers. But I feel like the longer this has. Gone on, the more things have just kind of slowed down, and there hasn't really been anything new going on. So I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. But with the fact that it's been already a month, I just don't think the possibility of her still being out there and alive somewhere being held is likely. Given the fact that she does have a lot of medical conditions, she takes medicines for heart issues, and you know, she's elderly, I just don't foresee that she is alive somewhere. And I really, for whatever reason, I did initially think that she was likely out there, maybe being held captive. There was all this talk. About ransom letters and TMZ being involved and Bigcoin and all of that, but all of that I haven't heard anything about it since I haven't heard anything more, nothing that ever proved that that was actually legit, that there was any proof of life shown. It's just not your normal kidnapping for ransom type of situation. It already would have been over by now if that was the case. So unfortunately, I do think we're looking at a recovery mission here. But the question is where is she and why? What is the motive? Because who is going to kidnap an eighty something year old woman and then play up this whole ransom. Type of situation just for the heck of it. Either they want attention or there is something else going on behind the scenes that we are not privy to. So it will be interesting to see what ends up happening. As always, I do hope that she is safe and that she has returned safely to her family, but it's just not looking promising after all of this time has passed. So we do have a break in a cold. Case from nineteen ninety six, the adduction and murder of seven year old Morgan Violi out of Bowling Green, Kentucky. They have filed federal charges against a man who is incarcerated elsewhere for unrelated charges. He is sixty one year old Robert Scott Froberg, and he is currently in the Alabama Department of Corrections and he's sixty one and he has officially been charged with kidnapping resulting in the death of Morgan. Now, like I said, this happened in nineteen ninety six, and she was abducted while she was playing with her siblings and friends at an apartment complex in Bowling Green, Kentucky. So how did they officially connect this individual to Morgan's disappearance and death. So, the FBI forensic lab confirmed that there was a fiber that was initially located in the remains of Morgan's hair was consistent with some seat cushion fiber that was in the stolen van that a witness saw at the scene. The witness saw this van and that was the van that Morgan was placed into when she was abducted. They recently asked for some additional lab work and the additional testing that was completed was basically for the hairs that were found in vacuum sweepings from the van's front and black four boards, and the FBI was able to extract a DNA profile from one of the hairs found in the van, and they searched the DNA profile through CODIS and COTIS was able to provide a DNA. Association with the suspect. So the FBI and the Bowling Green Police Department started looking into the suspect, and they found out that he had an association with a now just de East Alabama Department of Corrections nurse while he was serving time for an armed robbery, and that connection led law enforcement to further discoveries about him and his actions. So it was discovered that he escaped from the North Cumberland County Jail in Pennsylvania in July of nineteen ninety six. He then traveled to Ohio. He stole a maroon Chevy van near where his parents lived, and then he traveled south and he stopped in Bowling Green. He saw Morgan and he abducted her. He then drove into Tennessee and her body would later be found on October twentieth of nineteen ninety six in White House, Tennessee. So, in an affidavit, he admitted that he took Morgan. He told her that he was taking her to her dad in order to calm her down, and then he said that he placed his hand over her mouth, and he also covered her mouth with a handkerchief, and basically he would pull on the handkerchief with both hands until he basically strangled Morgan and that is what led to her death. He also admitted to stripping her clothes off, throwing them in a dumpster, and then discarding her. Body in the woods. A true piece of crap. And then he abandoned the stolen vehicle and went to a hideout in Pennsylvania with this nurse that worked at this prison. So he was on the run. They basically were searching for him, and then they found him and arrested him on August twenty first of nineteen ninety six, all of this time not knowing that he was the one responsible for Morgan's abduction and murder. So another one solved in the books. If he is convicted, he faces life in prison as he should, or the death penalty. And I do believe that the forensics are there on this one again, DNA evidence. It's evolving, technology is evolving. Time is running out. If you are a predator on the run, you did bad things in your past, your time is running out. And that is how we are going to end this right now. In true crime, cold cases are being solved on the daily. Victims are being identified after being John and Jane Doe's for decades, Murderers are being caught after literal decades. Families are getting a little bit of resolution in their loved ones cases, and time is truly running out for these perpetrators and predators and murderers. So we are going to go ahead and get into this week's episode. Alrighty guys, we are jumping into a brand new unsolved case. In today's episode, I'm going to be telling you about the unsolved disappearances of two lings, Michael and Pamela Mayfield, out of Houston, Texas. In nineteen eighty five. Michael and Pamela were last seen getting into a car and were never seen again. Let's go ahead and get into their shorey now and where everything stands now forty one years later. Michael Ray Mayfield was born on June sixth of nineteen seventy eight to his parents, Cynthia and Michael Gant, in Harris County, Texas. A year later, on July tenth of nineteen seventy nine, Pamela Mayfield was born to Cynthia and Michael, also in Harris County, Texas. Michael and Pamela were both given the last name Mayfield, which was Cynthia's maiden name. Now, I have seen conflicting reports on this. I'm not exactly sure the reasoning behind it. There was one report that said that they were given that name because Cynthia and Michael were not married when the kids were born, But then there are other reports that said that they were married and they shortly after Pamela was born filed for divorce. So I don't know the. Reasoning behind them not having the same last name, but I don't think it's all that important given what we're talking about to missing children here. I just wanted to put that out there because there are conflicting reports. So shortly after Pamela was born, Michael and Cynthia did separate and decide to end their relationship, and for reasons we don't know. Although the children's parents were very much involved in their lives, they were being raised by Lily Mayfield, who is Cynthia's mom and the children's grandmother. Now, like I said, Pamela and Michael still had a relationship with their parents. They would often go and visit Cynthia, their mother and her new boyfriend, and they would go visit Michael and his new girlfriend, and they seem to be involved in their children's lives. Despite them not living with their parents. Michael and Pamela were very well loved and well cared for by their family, their entire family. Both Michael and Pamela lived with Lily in the thirty five hundred block of Desham Street in Houston. They attended Betsy Ross Elementary School. In nineteen eighty five and Michael was six years old and Pamela was five. Pamela was in kindergarten at Betsy Ross Elementary School, and although Michael was a year older, he was repeating his kindergarten year after it was suggested that he was possibly too young the first go around in kinder and I do feel like that happens a lot with especially boys, because they are a little less. Mature than girls. Sometimes they go to kindergarten and they aren't really quite grasping all the things that they need to grasp, or maybe they just need another year to catch up on the maturity scale. So he was repeating his kindergarten year. But in general they were normal, average everyday kids. They spent a lot of time playing outside, which I truly think is such a sign of the times, because I don't feel like kids play outside anymore. Technology has taken over, online gaming has taken over, and kids just aren't outside playing anymore like they were back in the day. Betsy Ross Elementary School was located in the twenty eight hundred block of Bay Street that intersected with the East Text Freeway in northeast Houston. Although it very easily could be accessed from Bay Street, it is also off a highway feeder. Now, the area has grown a lot over the years. I am going to be posting pictures of how the school looks currently over on my Instagram and Facebook pages, along with other photos that pertain to this episode. I am sure that it did look a little bit different back in nineteen eighty five because that area has rapidly grown over the last forty years. One hundred percent for sure. So January tenth of nineteen eighty five was a normal school day for Michael and Pamela. It was a Thursday. Pamela and Michael had asked to walk home from school that day, which I would say was a pretty typical occurrence for this time. As kids see their friends walking home from school, they of course want to do this and have a little bit of independence. It's very understandable that they would have asked to walk home from school. It was a four minute drive from the school to the Mayfield home and about a thirteen minute walk which is about a little over half a mile from the school to their home, And this was the first time that Michael and Pamela had walked home. Also, it was a different time of life. People didn't really fear for their kids going off on their own, walking home from school or playing outside unsupervised. It was a simpler time. But as my friend Megan from a Simpler Time True Crime podcast says, a simpler time doesn't mean a safer time. That is just a. Small plug for my friend Megan and her podcast, A Simpler Time True Crime. She does older unsolved cases, and she does such an amazing job. And I thought that that little. Plug was very pertinent to this episode because nineteen eighty five was a simpler time, and you could argue it was also safer, But we're having this conversation about these missing kids, so was it really safer. So on their way home from school that day, they were walking in the direction of their home, Michael and Pamela were abducted by an individual in a green colored car. Witnesses report seeing both children get into this car willingly. Like I said, it was green and driven by an unidentified individual. Witnesses said they saw the kids. Playing at a park around two thirty pm, not far from the Mayfield home. Then they saw a man approach in the green car and the kids willingly got in the car and went with him. Now, despite there being eyewitness accounts to this, there is no description of the man. There's also no description of the car other than it was green. We don't know if it was a compact car, a van, a truck. We do not have anything. The children never returned home that day, and Lily called to report the missing pretty much right away because she knew something was wrong there disappear and says tore the family apart. Lily had a heart attack just days after the children were taken. Now, it was first believed that the children likely were taken by a family member because they willingly got. Into the car with whoever this person was. And Pamela and Michael were smart kids and they were taught not to talk to strangers, much less get into a car with the strangers. So law enforcement and the family very much believed that whoever had taken them was somebody that was familiar to them, because they knew not to talk to strangers. But it was very quickly ruled out that. Anyone in the family had anything to do with it, and it was officially reclassified as a non family abduction. However, it is believed that whoever did take them was familiar to them, possibly having been introduced to them through a family member. And I really think this is where the stranger danger piece has evolved into what I call very much a situational awareness type of situation. Because as a kid, I know I. Was always taught stranger danger, don't talk to strangers, don't interact with strangers. But if somebody approaches you and says, oh. Your mom and dad wanted me to come pick you up, or something bad has happened and I have to take you to your parents, or I need to take you to your family, kids don't really know any better than to just blindly trust things. So I think what we were taught as kids in the stranger danger aspect has very much shifted to teaching them situational awareness, giving specific scenarios like the ones I just listed. Having a family codeword I think is so important because a situation could arise where you have to send somebody to go get your child, but if that person does and have the code word, then the child does not go with them. And it's important to have these conversations with your kids to be sure that a situation like this doesn't happen in the future. But unfortunately, in nineteen eighty five, this type of awareness just did not exist, and you also didn't really think that anything bad was going to happen. You didn't think that your kids were going to be walking home from school on an ordinary day in broad daylight and be abducted by some random man in a green car. It's just not something you ever thought was going to happen. Michael and Pamela's case was also very tough because they didn't have any super recent photos of the kids. Again, times were so different. You actually had to own a camera, which many lower income homes did not have. The disposable camera didn't come out until the next year. The most recent pictures they had were one when Michael was four and Pamela was three. Obviously they were a little older when they were taken, so they looked probably a little bit different. The children's kindergarten teacher did come forward and say that she had a class photo that included Michael and Pamela, and those pictures were turned over and they were supposed to replace the pictures that were originally released by law enforcement, but that never happened and those pictures still to this day, have never been seen. Despite this, the investigation ensued and the missing children were featured on Milk Cartons as part of their Missing Children Milk Carton program, and a bunch of tips did come in, but none of which ended up being credible. But there was one that came in. On May twelfth of nineteen eighty five. An individual had called the Harris County Police Department and said that the children were alive and well and living with their paternal grandmother in Los Angeles, California. When the dispatcher from Harris County asked him how he knew, he just said I know and hung up now. According to the dispatcher, it was reported that the caller sounded like an older African American man. Investigators took this tip. And followed through and they went and investigated the paternal grandmother's home with nothing turning up. They also searched other family members in the Los Angeles Areas homes as well, again with nothing turning up. The children were also featured at the end of a sequel to the movie Adam, which is a film that focused on the disappearance of Adam Walsh out of Hollywood, Florida. The original film had a segment at the end where they would scroll missing children's flyers and the second installment was no different. And that is where Pamela and Michael were featured in nineteen eighty six. And that is just another testament to what a amazing human John Walsh is and what he has done to help missing children. Even at the very beginning stages of Adam's investigation and everything, he and his wife Arevey were doing everything they could to try and navigate their own turmoil and Adam being missing, and then they turned it in to this amazing foundation and they were constantly trying to help other victims and missing children, and still to this day they do that amazing work with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So I have to give them. A shout out because this case got a lot of attention because of the things that they did to try and help, and that is what it's all about at the end of the day. So there was a man named Joseph Moses Cochrane who basically inserted himself into this investigation. So at the time the children disappeared, and for decades later, there was a news reporter named Melanie Lawson who worked for Channel thirteen News and she had very much been an advocate for reporting on Michael and Pamela and trying to keep the word out that they were missing. Now, Michael and Pamela were African American, and in nineteen eighty five, as I'm sure still today, sometimes when African American kids go missing or an adult goes missing, it doesn't get as much national attention as it should. I think every single missing child, every single missing person, should get the same amount of attention, But unfortunately that doesn't happen, and I'm sure nineteen eighty five it was probably way worse. So Melanie Lawson was doing everything she could to try and keep Michael and Pamela's faces out there. And a man had called her and he identified himself as somebody named Stacy and said he knew where the kids were because he and several other individuals had kidnapped the children. She of course turned this information over to authorities, but he continued to call her and talk about the children, so she took it upon herself to suggest that they meet up. Now, Melanie did go to the meeting place with this man, and she wore a wireless mic and she had police backing her up as well. But the Stacy individual who incessantly called her never showed up at the meeting place. So they filed a charge of filing a false police report against the man, and he was identified as Joseph Cochrane. Now he ended up being sentenced on this charge of making this false police report. At the time of all this, Joseph was twenty eight years old, and once he was in Carson, he began to obsessively phone Melanie from the jail, and he even at one point in time when he was out, went to the new station looking for her, all while continuing to keep up the Stacy charade. When it was very easy to figure out that Stacy and Joseph were the exact same person. He was continuing to try and contact her under the Stacy name and contact hers Joseph, and he continued to stalk her and write letters, and she very much feared for her life. Now I'm going to go ahead and below link the casemind website with all the info on all of this, because it is truly insane that she went through this all because she was trying to get these two kids' names out there and their faces out there. She unfortunately became a target for her own type of crew be stalker, and this very much distracted from the case, unfortunately, because she was trying to help, but she was also having to deal with this other whole situation and deal with this guy who was basically threatening her life. He targeted her, he took advantage. All she was doing was trying to help these kids, and it really makes me so mad that there are people out there who try and profit off of other people's grief. I just can't imagine ever being in a headspace where you think that that's okay. And I live in Houston and Melanie Lawton, to me, is like one of the most beloved newscasters of all time. I had no idea that this happened to her. I learned all of this through researching this case. I had no idea that there was ever this type of connection. And I grew up with Melanie Lawson, and this makes me respect her even more but he did end up eventually going to prison for stalking Melony. Lawson had a long running career with Channel thirteen and recently retired. A five hundred dollars reward was offered up by the Top Ladies of Distinction Incorporated, and they were willing to give this five hundred dollars to anyone that would be willing to come forward with information on the location and whereabouts of Michael and Pamela Mayfield, but the money went unclaimed. Michael and Pamela remain missing. To this day. If they are still alive, they would be forty seven and forty six years old. It is entirely possible that Michael and Pamela were taken by somebody else and raised as their own. They could be out there not even knowing that they were abducted as children. They could be living under different names. They could even live in a whole new place with little to. No memory of their childhood. It really does bother me that there is no description of the car or the man that was driving the car. We don't even have his race, what his hair looks like, maybe what he was wearing. We don't have a description of what type of car and all of that really bothers me because I'm sure that there are people out there who saw something that day and maybe they just didn't realize what they saw and it could be helpful in this investigation. In a KHOU eleven news interview, Cynthia Michael and Pamela's mom is quoted as saying, I cry at night sometimes thinking about them. They wanted to walk home from school and I told them, okay, they can walk. I feel hurt. I've seen a lot of kids come up missing. I always said, I hope I will never have to go through that. Then I did have to go through it. I still see them as those two little kids, my two little kids. They like to talk, have fun and play. I just want to see my kids before I die. And that completely, absolutely breaks my heart because I can't even imagine she lost her kids and lost them in such a way that leaves so many questions unanswered. She doesn't know if her two babies are still out there, and so many years have passed by now. It truly absolutely just devastates me, and I'm sure she lives with that every single day. I do want to be very clear that all members of the family were cleared of any involvement with Michael and Pamela's disappearance. They all took and passed lie detector tests and from everything the investigators have released, the children were very well loved and very well cared for in the environment that they lived in and with their family. I think, unfortunately, there are evil people out there and they pray upon children because children are susceptible. So here is my call to action for this episode. I think this is a super important one to really get out there to the masses, especially if you lived in Houston in nineteen eighty five. So if you did live in this area in nineteen eighty five and you saw anything that day, even if you don't think it's significant, if you saw something, you were asked to reach out to the Houston Police Department at seven one three two two two three one three one. A simple tip to what this man looks like, his race, his hair color, what he was wearing, what type of vehicle he was driving, the area, the direction that he went. All of this could help lead to the identity of this man, and it's crucial in finding these children. I know many years have passed. This happened in nineteen eighty. Five, but it is important that we keep this story out there again. The abduction happened on January tenth of nineteen eighty five, and it was a Thursday afternoon, around two thirty pm. In broad daylight. Michael was around three foot tall, seventy five pounds African American. He was a male with black hair and brown eyes. Michael stuttered at the time of his disappearance. He has a burn scar on his right wrist. He may use the last name Gant, which is his father's surname, and Mayfield, that is his mother's maiden name. He was six years old and last seen wearing a blue and red jacket, red and gray shirt, red pants, and blue sneakers. Pamela was two foot nine inches tall. She weighed fifty five pounds. She was an African American female with black hair and brown eyes and pierced ears. She was five years old and at the time of her disappearance, she was wearing a yellow jacket with red and blue stripes, a light blue shirt, blue jeans, black shoes, and had white baretts in her hair. I truly do hope that this case is solved one day. There is age progress photos of both Michael and Pamela that I'm going to be posting on my Instagram and Facebook pages, so be sure to check both of them out. Michael's photo was age progressed to age forty and Pamela was age progressed to age thirty nine. That is via the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the pictures were progressed in twenty eighteen. So if Michael and Pamela are still out there, there is a chance that they could look similar, but there's also a chance that they could look slightly different as well, given the fact that we are now eight years after the fact in twenty twenty six, I really want you guys to share this episode, especially if you are a local to Houston listener. You never know if somebody has something hiding in the back of their brain that they didn't even know existed, something that they. Saw that day. Because there were obvious witnesses to Michael and Pamela getting into the car, to them playing at the park. Who knows what somebody saw, what somebody heard. If you. Encountered somebody, a random man that had two children all of a sudden, that never had those children before, those are the kind of people that law enforcement wants to talk to because that might be a clue into identifying who this person is and where Michael and Pamela could be. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. It's a very important one, and I'm going to be sharing all the age progressed photos as well as anything else pertinent to this episode on my Instagram and Facebook pages, so please follow me over there. Please share this episode with anybody you think might be interested. It's important to keep their names out there. Or they could be in an entirely different state. They could be way far away from Houston, and like I said, they could be well established adults living in a world not even knowing that they were abducted as kids. I thank you guys so much as always for taking the time to listen this week, and I hope you have a great weekend. Stay safe, and I'll see you next week. Bye.