Daughter Disappears After Accusing Mom Of Murder - UNSOLVED MYSTERIES Lena Chapin & Gary McCullough

Imagine one day your brother disappears without answers without explanation and then one day his teenage step daughter comes to you and she tells you that he was murdered and she knows exactly who did it. But before she's able to say anything else, she also vanishes into thin air. Two members of the same family go missing just a few years apart and the one accused of knowing what happened to them was their own wife, their own mother. This is the disappearance of Lena Chapin and Gary McCullough and by the end of this week's investigation you might not be asking what happened because it's pretty obvious in my opinion but how it has stayed hidden for so long and my name is Brianna and I'm hot on the case. A couple things I want to go over before we just dive headfirst into this very convoluted case. I want to throw this out there that if you ever have a case suggestion please drop it for me in the comments whether that's on YouTube Spotify Apple Podcasts because I truly, truly read every single comment that comes in and I have already taken your case suggestions for episodes of hot in the case and this episode is no different. I actually wanted to take this opportunity to do like a little bit of a shout out having done this before but this episode case suggestion came from Kyla I really hope I'm pronouncing that right over on Spotify who suggested this case for this episode and today is actually her birthday so happy birthday Kyla thank you so much for all of the support and thank you so much for this case suggestion. Now this honestly was one of the most interesting cases I have researched in such a long time and I was extra fascinated by this case because I had actually never heard of it before diving into the research for this week's episode and there's actually a very good chance that a majority of you might have never heard of this case before either but I truly do think that all of you will be extremely interested in this one. It's very perplexing very like I said convoluted I think every single one of you will be extremely interested from start to finish in this case there's family drama unsolved mysteries some things that seem straight out of a TV show but it's even crazier because it's real life and real people. I think a lot of you will also be extremely frustrated with this week's episode this is one of those cases that is unsolved and I know a lot of people prefer solved cases but this is also an unsolved case that it seems very obvious what happened but there's not enough physical evidence to make an arrest and there has not been justice yet. If you have ever heard of this case it's likely because you saw it covered in an episode of unsolved mysteries on Netflix. I watched that episode in preparation for this week's episode but I also uncovered a lot of information that wasn't included in the episode so I am really really really excited to get into this one. For legal clarity this episode contains discussion of alleged events and is presented as commentary and opinion based on publicly available information haunt in the case is not affirming the truth of any claims discussed in this episode. At the core of this case is a family with a very layered complicated dynamic. There's a mother Sandra who goes by Sandy and her six daughters. Brandy, Lena, Robin, Genie, Rachel and Rosie. As a teenager Sandy was boy crazy and she quickly learned how to use her looks her body and charm to manipulate the opposite sex and these were skills that she would use for her entire life. Men always gravitated towards Sandy and in her life she would be married five times that we know of. During her six daughters childhoods it felt like there was always a revolving door of men coming in and out their lives. There was always a different boyfriend. There was always a different stepfather. Sandy would meet a guy. Sometimes she would already be married. Sometimes they would already be married but she would charm them and they would fall for her. But Sandy's relationships never lasted very long. Maybe around two years before she would get bored. Find a new guy. Start a new affair. Cheat, sneak around and make her daughters life for her. Sandy was a special kind of mom but even when her girls were really young they truly thought that they had a really good mom that was always on their side and truly wanted the best for them. They always struggled for money but their mom always made sure that the girls never went without clean clothes hot meals and warm beds. Sandy wasn't the kind of mom to use substances or drink or smoke in front of her children and every single night she would tuck them into bed and tell them "God bless you and love you." But still that constant revolving door of men coming in and out their lives was really hard on these young girls. Sandy was a male-centered mother. Every time she got into a new relationship she would pick up her six daughters and move wherever the guys wanted them to settle down. And the second the six girls would get used to their new home, their new town, their new school, their new friends, and the new man in their life. It would be time to move again without warning a lot of the time. Brandy was the eldest daughter but it was really the second daughter Lena that took on the role of a second mom. Lena Chepam was born on August 29th 1985 and as a second oldest Lena was definitely the bossy sister. She was the second in command behind her mother. Her sisters would look to Lena to guide them and if their mother wasn't around it would be Lena that they would have to listen to. The six sisters were extremely close. They absolutely adored each other and it was kind of an unspoken but understood thing that Lena was their mother's favorite child. Sandy's first husband was Lena's father Robert Chepam and after leaving Robert, Sandy married her second husband Albert McCullough on November 17th 1994. The six daughters remember Albert being a really good guy and honestly for a lot of them Albert was the closest thing to a father that any of them really ever had. Sandy was busy a lot during her marriage with Albert because she was studying to become a nurse so the girls were left alone a lot with Albert who pretty much single handedly raised them during these years and Albert was also very hands on he would take them to every single after school activity that they wanted to do every sport and club under the sun. Albert McCullough really loved his wife and he really loved her kids which made it all the more devastating when about less than three years into their marriage Albert found out that his wife Sandy was cheating on him with his own brother. I know the audacity of this lady Albert confronts his wife and he also confronts his brother Gary McCullough and this led to him and his brother Gary getting into like a really violent fist fight and by the end of the fight Albert tried to warn his brother Gary that they would both be better off staying away from Sandy but sadly Gary did not take his brother's advice. By the spring of 1996 Sandy and her six daughters said goodbye to Albert and they moved to Missouri where Gary lived and worked on his own farm and then on December 22nd 1996 Sandy and Gary got married making Gary her third husband and Gary also got a little bit of a promotion. He was promoted from step uncle to stepfather which I'm sure was extremely confusing for these six little girls but still overall the six girls really liked Gary. He had a bunch of animals on his farm that they got to help take care of. Gary had daughters of his own and he was really really sweet to the six girls like he would always take them out for ice cream after they helped him out with all of his farm work. Gary was an old fashioned country guy who believed in providing for his family. On top of working the farm he had a day job just to help make ends meet and when times got extra tough after working the nine to five and finishing the farm work Gary would go out hunting just to put food on the table. Gary was a very hardworking family man and he was more of like a home body type of guy. Life with Gary was happy and stable but it wasn't necessarily exciting. So like clockwork less than three years into their marriage Sandy began having an affair in March of 1999 with a man named Chris Clamp. Chris came from a wealthy family. He was younger than Gary some would say also more attractive than Gary and what Sandy really cares about is herself and what or who will best benefit her. She doesn't care if she hurts these men. She doesn't care if she hurts her own children or what's better for them emotionally or mentally. Sandy only cares about herself. Gary was a very hardworking man with little time for fun and even though he- was working all sorts of jobs, they were still always struggling financially. Chris was new, fun and exciting and he came with a lot of money. And you know, they say that you lose them how you get them, so just like his brother Albert found Gary with Sandy, Gary found Sandy with Chris. And at the same time that Gary found out that his wife was being unfaithful, he also found out that she was kind of stealing from him and rocking a debt in his name. His wife without telling him had stopped making payments on their house, so Gary was on the brink of foreclosure. She also wrote a bunch of bad checks in Gary's name, so Gary was arrested. So all at the same time this poor man realized that he was losing his wife. He was losing her six children that he really came to love a lot. His wife cheated, lied, stole and got him arrested. He was absolutely heartbroken, but Gary knew that they had to get a divorce. But he never actually had the chance to file for that divorce. About two months after Sandy began having an affair with Chris, her husband Gary disappeared. In May of 1999, Gary's co-workers and boss noticed that Gary missed several days of work without giving notice. This was extremely concerning for multiple reasons. Gary was not the type of guy to not show up for work. He was a very responsible, hardworking guy who would have definitely given notice, but also his co-workers knew that Gary literally could not afford to miss work. So on May 13th, Gary's cousin Robert called the Berry County Sheriff's Office and told them that no one had seen his cousin in the last handful of days, and asked if they would be able to go over to his place to perform a wellness check. And that same day, a detective and an officer drove over to Gary's farm, and at the same time that they were pulling in, so did his wife Sandy. I'm assuming that they thought it was pretty odd that it had to be Gary's co-workers and cousin to first signal that no one had seen him and not his own wife. Because instead of coming out and saying, "Hey, is your husband missing?" and explaining why they're there, they just asked Sandy. Is there anything that you want to talk to us about? And Sandy goes, "Oh, yeah, I've been meaning to call you." She explained that her husband, Gary, left their home at around 6.30 p.m. on May 11th, so about two days prior, and he drove his truck over to Diamond, Missouri, to go by some fighting roosters, and he just never came home. And Diamond was only like less than an hour drive away, so it's not like it was like a really far drive, and Gary would have to, you know, spend the night somewhere halfway through, so at this point, 34-year-old Gary McCullough was officially reported missing. The following day on May 14th, Gary's truck was found, but it brought just more questions than answers. It seemed like Gary's truck never actually made it to Diamond. It was found still in Berry County, abandoned on a dead-end road. This was the first major sign that Gary might have met foul play, but the investigators were still investigating every possibility. When they asked his wife Sandy to search their home in property to see if there was any clues where he might have gone, she flat out refused to let them in. So a week later, they came back with a search warrant, which did not make Sandy very happy. They searched the property for hours, and found no signs of Gary. And honestly, that was the problem. This man has been missing for less than two weeks, and none of his clothes or belongings were found inside the home. It was like he never even lived there. And worse, Sandy's new boyfriend, Chris, had moved in to the home. Definitely an odd move considering that this was Gary's home first, and he's been missing less than two weeks. It was like Sandy and Chris knew that Gary would never be coming back. Sandy was also asked to take a polygraph test, and she refused. She actually said to the officers, "You find a body, and I'll take a polygraph. It's very heartless, it's very cold, but it's also very confident like Sandy knows that they're not going to find a body." Sandy's six daughters were children when Gary vanished. Lena was only 13 years old, so the six girls listened to their mother. They listened to Lena, and they also did not talk to the police. The police said that it was very obvious that Lena was her mother's second in command, and the other five girls would just listen to whatever Lena said. All six girls were trained very well. Sandy would always tell Lena what to do, and Lena assured that her five sisters would never talk about Gary ever again. The girls, old stepfather and Gary's brother Albert, knew that the second that his brother was reported missing, that he was already gone, and that his ex Sandy did something to him. Gary's best friend, Jeff Allen, also knew that Gary would never be coming home. Turns out, after Gary was arrested for the bad checks that Sandy wrote in his name and after finding out about Sandy's affair of Chris, things at home, as you can imagine, got really, really bad. And one day, about two weeks before Gary disappeared, he visited his best friend, Jeff Allen, and he brought over his gun. Gary asked his best friend to hold on to his gun for a while, and Gary explained that this was because him and his wife got into a really, really big fight. And Sandy actually pulled the gun on Gary. She pointed it right against his stomach, and then she pulled the trigger. Gary told his best friend that he was a responsible gun owner, and luckily he never kept his gun loaded unless he was using it. So he's still standing, but Jeff actually opened up the gun, I don't really know guns, or the terminology, but he opened up the gun and he discovered that there was a single shell in the gun, like Sandy had loaded it with one kill shot, but the bullet jammed, and that's why he didn't go off. And it spared Gary's life. It was a terrifying discovery. Sandy really was capable of murder, it seemed. And Gary was now terrified for his life. That was the last time that Jeff ever saw his best friend, Gary. The police were more than a little suspicious of Gary's wife, Sandy, but there was just no physical evidence against her, or any physical evidence that Gary was even dead. And then in a very interesting turn of events, investigators believed that they found evidence that Sandy's new boyfriend, Chris, tried to hire a man named Steve Turner to kill Gary just a few days before he disappeared. So about a month later in June of 929, Chris clamped was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, but about a month later, those charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence. Afterwards, Sandy, Chris and the six girls moved to St. Louis to escape all the publicity and all the gossip about their family, maybe also to escape the investigation. They lived there for about a year, and while in St. Louis, Sandy was granted a dissolution of marriage because in the eyes of the law, Gary had abandoned her. And then nearly to the year after Gary disappeared, Sandy and Chris got married. And then they settled into a little town about 200 miles away from where Gary disappeared. He really did seem like they were trying to put as much distance between them and the investigators that were really interested in talking to them. The case sadly went cold. But as the next few years went by, whatever happened back in Barry County clearly was taking a toll on Sandy's favorite daughter, Lena. As Lena entered her teenage years, her sister's noticed that she was distancing herself from them. They were always as extremely close, bonded group of siblings, but Lena just started pulling away more and more. Lena was barely eating, she was barely sleeping, she was crying all of the time. Her sisters were cat churches staring out into space with this terrified look on her face. Lena was never a big partier, and then I have nowhere she was partying all the time. She was drinking, she was using substances, she was getting in trouble with the law. By the time that she was 17 years old, she dropped out of high school and she became pregnant. It was very clear that there was something going on with Lena, and she was using a lot of this destructive behavior to mask some kind of pain. And her sisters were so worried about her, but Lena was not talking to them. But something was clearly weighing heavy on Lena. She was haunted, and eventually she just couldn't live with it anymore. And Lena told her boyfriend what happened to her stepfather Gary four years earlier. After hearing the confession, her boyfriend urged her to give Gary's family closure. Go to the police, tell his daughters what happened. But Lena was petrified. She only trusted her oldest stepfather Albert, Gary's brother. So on June 26, 2003, Lena met Albert at his home, and Albert secretly recorded the conversation. I really want to play the recording to you, but I do believe that it's copyrighted to the Unsolved Mysteries episode. I did like a quick look in my research. And that was the only publicly available source I found of the recording. But if I can find it somewhere else and I can work around it, I will play it for you. But if not, I will certainly explain to you what happened in the recording. according and what Lena said to Albert. But as I do, please remember that this is a 17 year old girl, explaining what allegedly happened to her and what she allegedly saw when she was only 13 years old. Okay, this was a child. Lena told Albert that Gary was dead, that he was murdered, and that her mom was the one that killed him. On May 11th, 1999, while Lena and her sisters were at school, Gary was sitting on the couch in the living room eating scrambled eggs. It was supposed to be just a nice, quiet, peaceful morning in Missouri, and then I'm nowhere. Gary's wife, Sandy, walked into the living room, holding a gun. This time it was loaded. She pointed it right at Gary, and then she shot him about two or three times in the head. Sandy then wrapped Gary's body up in plastic. She tied it off with hay strings, and then she dragged his body into their master bedroom and closed the door. When Lena and her sisters came home from school, their mother rushed out onto the front porch to meet them and told them that a farm cat had some kittens out in the field earlier that day, and they should go out and try to find the kittens. But don't come inside. Don't come inside until she says that they can. And of course, these are little girls. So they all started running out into the field after the kittens, except for the eldest sister, Brandy. Brandy had the after-school chore of milking the cows, and she took this extremely seriously, but all of her supplies were inside the house. When she walked inside, she saw her mother on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor, and the entire house wreaked of bleach. Later that night, Sandy sat all of her girls down and she told them that their stepfather, Gary, had left to go by some fighting roosters, and he never came back, and that's all that they knew. If they sucked to a story, then everything would be okay. Better that night, all the girls were sent to bed, and Sandy tasked her second and command, Lina, with making sure that none of her sisters left their bedroom. And if they did, not to let them go inside of her and Gary's bedroom, but curiosity got the best of Lina. She ended up opening her parents' bedroom, and that's when she saw her stepfather, Gary, dead on the floor, wrapped up in plastic. The other older girls were also at the age when they knew that something was going on, and the third eldest daughter, Robin, was just up thinking about it, and she couldn't sleep, and that's when she heard noises coming from outside. Robin snuck up to her bedroom window, and she peered out the window, and that's when she saw her mother, Sandy, and her mother's new boyfriend, Chris, carrying something out of the house, and it was extremely heavy, and whatever it was, it was wrapped in plastic. It looked like a body, and sticking out of the end of the plastic, were Gary's boots. Robin knew right then there, Gary was dead. That she was never going to see him again. The next morning, Lina sat down all of her sisters and told them, "If anyone ever thinks that their mother did something to Gary, then people would come and take them all away." Lina and her sisters would all be sent to different foster homes. They would be separated and never see each other again. So Robin kept the secret of what she saw that night for a very long time. And when the police wanted to question the six girls, they refused to say a single thing. Lina, through trembling speech, told Albert that Gary's body was burned on his farm. It took nearly three days of constant bonfire to cremate him. Two days after Gary was killed, Lina's mother Sandy came and picked her up early from school. It was only her, not her sisters. And Sandy forced Lina to pick through a burning ash to find whatever bone fragments were left behind of her stepfather. And remember, she's only 13 years old when she claims that this happened. Lina said that she burnt her fingerprints on the hot ash and coals, as she was looking for pieces of Gary's bones. Then her and her mother spread the tiny bone fragments all over and they would never be found. They'd dug up the burn pile, bleach the floors, rubbed up the carpets throughout the rugs and everything that belonged to Gary, till there were no traces of his murder, till it was like he never even existed. As Lina was explaining this to Albert, he could tell how guilty she felt. What kind of toll this took on this child? And Albert did not blame her. She was just a child, doing what her mother told her to do. She was terrified if she didn't listen to her mom, that her family would be ripped apart. (chattering) (chattering) (chattering) (chattering) (chattering) (chattering) But still, Albert had to think about his own family, about his brother, his brother's children, and he felt that this recording was the proof that they finally needed to get some justice. So he took the recording over to the sheriff's office. Somehow Sandy found out about this confession. So she hired a lawyer for herself. She also hired a second lawyer for her daughter, Lina. And now, after speaking with her mother, Lina was refusing to talk, and she completely walked back her confession. Without Lina's cooperation, there was no investigation. The recording was pretty much useless. It's always so hard when you know what happened, but you just can't prove it. Investigators knew in their minds that Sandy killed Gary. It was too suspicious that her boyfriend moved in, within days of Gary going messing. You wouldn't move your boyfriend into your husband's house, unless you knew that your husband was not coming home. The police also heard some interesting news from Sandy's boyfriend, Chris's ex-wife. Chris's ex-wife told the investigators that the night that Gary disappeared, she dropped him over at Sandy's place. She then picked him up at 6 a.m., and it was like Chris was a completely different person. He looked absolutely terrified. And that might possibly be because he just helped move Gary's body and helped burn Gary's body. Shortly before this, Chris's ex-wife also said that they got into a really big fight, and at one point, Chris said, "I can't be bothered to think about this anymore. I gotta think about killing a man." Even though Lena was refusing to speak with the police again, what she knew and what she saw was eating her up inside. And one day, she confessed everything to her older sister, Brandi. Lena told Brandi absolutely everything, even that week before killing Gary, their mother Sandy actually tried to poison him with Draino. And Brandi, who's listening to this story, at this point, truly did not believe that her mom would be capable of doing something like this, capable of hurting anyone, capable of murder. But even more than that, Brandi trusted her sister. So she believed everything Lena was telling her. Lena made Brandi promise not to tell anyone about what she said, but especially don't tell their mom that Lena told her. Brandi agreed, but the next day she broke that promise. The next day, she just couldn't live with it. And she confronted her mom. And she said that she knew that she killed Gary, and she threatened to go to the police. Lena was absolutely furious with Brandi, that she broke her promise, and she actually kind of pushed her, And she pushed her into a mirror, the mirror broke, and some of the broken glass ended up slashing open Brandi's finger. Sandy and Chris were here for this entire thing, and Sandy was oddly calm throughout all the chaos and commotion, and after her daughter threatened to go to the police and say that she knew that she murdered her stepfather. And Brandi is bleeding from the cut on her finger, so at one point her mom tells Brandi to go get in the back of the truck. Brandi gets into the back and then Sandy and Chris get into the front and Brandi thinks that they're driving her to the hospital. But instead, about two miles away from home, they pull off onto a dark dead end road in the middle of nowhere. They park on this dark dead end road, Chris gets out, he walks over to Brandi, he takes out a gun, and he points it at Brandi. In that moment, Brandi truly believed that she was about to die. Chris looked like he was going to pull the trigger. Brandi is absolutely terrified, she's screaming, she's crying, she's begging for her life, and the entire time her mother, Sandy was just sitting in the front of the car, looking straight ahead, watching no motion, completely silent. Brandi knew that she wasn't stronger or faster than this man pointing a gun at her head. She knew that she couldn't run, she knew that she couldn't fight back. The only thing that Brandi could think to do to save her life was to jump into the front seat of her car, and just wrap her arms around her mom and she was crying, please don't let him hurt me. Brandi said that her mom barely reacted, and it was a while before Sandy said, "Don't hurt my baby." Chris put the gun away, you got back in the car, and they drove home. Even to this day, Brandi is at 100% sure if they just did this to scare her into silence or if she was really about to be killed. Parts of her really do believe that Sandy and Chris were going to kill her that day. The next day, Brandi packed up her belongings, she left, and she never returned to her mother's home. Four months after Albert secretly recorded Lena's confession, the her mother murdered Gary McCullough. Lena gave birth to a baby boy named Coulter on November 3rd, 2003, and this changed Lena's life. She turned her life around, she wanted to do everything for her son, she loved her son, she loved being a mom, and she intended to give him a better and more stable childhood than she got. Lena got engaged to a man named Jason Bryant, and her little family were living in an apartment together in Steeleville, Missouri. And at this time Lena was so happy and she really thought that she had a chance to just move past all of this. But life still came with difficulties, Lena was working multiple jobs just to make ends meet, and while she was working, her mother Sandy would help watch over her son Coulter. Lena's mother Sandy always wanted a son, but she ended up with six daughters. And apparently the second that Sandy found out that Lena was going to be having a baby boy, she became a very obsessive and possessive, it was very creepy. While Sandy was babysitting Coulter, she would take him around, introducing him as her baby, and when Coulter began to talk, she would force Coulter to call her mom. Sandy was also allegedly trying to convince Selena that Coulter would be better off with her, and trying to convince her daughter to sign over legal custody of Coulter to her. And Lena told Sandy that Sandy could have Coulter over her dead body. Lena and her fiance were planning a big move, and Sandy felt like Lena was taking her baby away from her, and Sandy did not want that. And Sandy always got what she wanted. In 2005, Gary McCullough was officially declared dead, despite ever finding a body. And there were talks that his family were going to try and hold Sandy and Chris civilly liable for Gary's death. And whispers of this got back to Sandy. And in June of 2006, Gary's daughter, April and Joy, officially filed a civil lawsuit against Sandy and Chris for the wrongful death of their father, Gary. They also had Lena listed as an accessory after the fact. Their hope was because Lena was a child at the time that this happened. That she would agree to help them, and then would be granted immunity for her testimony. And Lena was listed amongst the names, Sapinad, to testify against her own mother. But Lena, Chapin, was missing. No one had seen or heard from her in months. After many failed at desperate attempts to get in contact with her sister, Robin went over to the apartment that Lena shared with her fiance. And no one was there. Lena's fiance Jason told Robin that he hadn't seen Lena in months, that she left him. She ran off the Florida. The bill was some guy. When Robin asked Jason if Lena told him this, he said, no, your mother did. He explained that he left work on Valentine's Day of 2006. He left work that day. He kissed Lena goodbye. And when he got home, Lena was gone. But their mother Sandy and two men were in his apartment. And Sandy told Jason that Lena left him to go be with that guy in Florida. And after that, Jason never saw or heard from Lena ever again. And that Lena left her three-year-old son, Colter, with her mother Sandy. Lena left behind all of her clothing, her belongings, her photo albums, which meant the world to her, believing her son behind, especially with Sandy, Lena would have never done that. Sandy told her daughters, brandy and Robin, the exact same story that she told Jason, that Lena ran off, abandoned them all, stop asking about her. But brandy and Robin did not believe this story. They were so close, if Lena was planning to run away, she would have told them. They had this terrible feeling that whatever happened to Gary had now happened to their sister. Robin made missing-person posters of her sister, Lena, and spread them all around town. And then, allegedly, Sandy paid her three youngest daughters, Jeannie, Rachel, and Rosie, five dollars each to go around town and rip all the missing posters down. And why would a mother do that? After Chris put a gun to Brandy's head and she escaped her mother's home, Brandy did her best to warn her sister, Lena. Since Lena was the one that knew the most, she could be in serious danger. But despite knowing what her mother did to Gary, Lena did not believe that her mother would ever hurt her. A week before Lena disappeared, her and her mom Sandy went out shopping. And while out on that trip, Lena got really sick out of nowhere. She suddenly got really, really dizzy. And then she started to go, like, blurry vision. Her vision got so blurry. She couldn't even see her hands in front of her face. Lena saw her sister Brandy the next day and she still had this, like, mind-splitting headache and had no idea what happened. After Lena disappeared, Brandy thought that maybe their mother Sandy tried to poison Lena on that shopping trip. And she felt so guilty for not putting two and two together right then and there. Lena was last seen on February 14th, 2006. But she wasn't officially reported missing until November of 2008, because Dent County, where she lived, refused to start an investigation. For the record, Dent County actually didn't start investigating Lena's disappearance until 2012, six years after she disappeared. And what they found in their investigation was that it was very unlikely that Lena just ran off to be with some guy, or that she was out there anywhere. There were no signs of her. There was no activity on her social security number for nearly three years, since the day that she disappeared. After years of keeping the secret, of seeing her mother and Chris carrying out Gary's body the day he went missing, Robin finally got the courage that held the police what she saw. And she wasn't alone. Brandy also finally confessed everything that she knew. And what happened to her? Brandy and Robin believed that their mother Sandy either killed their sister Lena or had her killed, and that their mother Sandy had two motives for wanting Lena dead. And then was the obvious to keep her quiet from ever confessing again. And then there was the other motive, because Sandy wanted custody of Lena's son, Colter. After Lena disappeared, her mother filed abandonment charges against Lena. And when Lena failed to show up for court, Sandy was granted full custody of Colter. Gary's wrongful death lawsuit against Sandy and Chris finally began in July of 2013. Lena's recorded confession could not be played for the jury, but the jury still heard from Sandy's two other children, Robin and Brandy. And they spilled everything. Gary's truck stayed parked outside their home even after he supposedly went missing after allegedly driving his truck to diamond to go by roosters. That Robin saw Sandy and Chris who dragging out Gary's body in the middle of the night. And Brandy said in detail about the night that her mother and her mother's boyfriend Chris drove her out to the middle of nowhere and stuck a gun against her head. Brandy told that story in detail and it was heartbreaking. Apparently, members of the jury were crying as she spoke about how she thought that she was going to die, how her mother just had no emotion as she begged for her life. It took the jury less than one hour to come back with their verdict, which is extremely rare. Even without finding Gary's body, they found Sandy and Chris civilly liable for Gary's death. Unfortunately, this was a civil case, not a criminal one. So Sandy and Chris would not be going to be receiving jail time. They were ordered to pay Gary's daughters, like $8 million, but his daughters never saw that money. In 2014, Sandy divorced Chris and four years after that, she married a man named Joe Wink. Sandy has pretty much stayed out of the public eye, but as far as I can tell, she is still married to Joe, making her legal name as of right now Sandy Wink. Now, of course, I could be wrong. Like I said, there's not that much public information about Sandy after the trial ended. She could have divorced Joe by now. She could be living under a different name. If you have any additional information, please let me know in the comments I am interested. Brandy and Robin don't have a relationship with their mother. For a long time, they did not have a relationship with their sister's son, Colter, either. Sandy told her youngest daughters that they were not allowed to mention Brandy, Robin, or Lena in front of Colter, which is just so sad. Sandy raised Lena's son, Colter, and she completely erased Lena from his life. For a majority of his childhood, Colter actually believed that Sandy was his biological mom. When he did find out the truth about Lena, Sandy told him that her mother was a drug addict and she abandoned him. This case really got a lot of eyes on it because it was featured in the sixth episode of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries that episode was called Missing Witness and It Erred in 2020. Albert was involved in it. Sandy and Robin were also interviewed for it. The investigators said that after the episode aired, they got a bunch of tips, but they actually got 20 really credible tips, but unfortunately as far as I can tell, it's been six years since that episode aired and there hasn't been any other major updates. Then the episode Brandy and Robin said that one day when Lana's son, Colter, was older, they were going to tell him the truth, everything. The truth about Gary, the truth about his mother, and what they believed Sandy did to both of them. The episode aired in 2020 when Colter would have been about 17 years old today in 2026. He would be about 23 years old. Mina's sister Brandy is allegedly very active on Reddit and she's very active on Reddit, discussing and clarifying different parts of her sister's disappearance. And according to comments in our Reddit thread I found that was from about a year ago, Brandy posted an update where she said that Colter now knows the truth about Sandy and his mother, and he no longer has contact with Sandy and he now lives with his aunts, so his mother's sister's. Unfortunately, the link to this update that Brandy posted on Reddit is broken, so you have to take this with a grain of salt. The only information that I could even find about this update were from people that saw the original update before the link broke and are commenting about it on this different thread. But personally, I will be choosing to believe this update until proven otherwise because it's a really happy thought that he knows the truth and that he's safe. If you believe you have any information on the disappearances of Lena Chapin and Gary McCullough, please reach out to the Barry County Sheriff's office at 417-847-6556. Even if it's the smallest detail, we've seen really small details really break a case wide open and even if you're wrong, you're wrong, but imagine if you're right. It's always, always worth to just call and leave the tip and you can do it anonymously. And that is really all they have on the disappearances of Lena and Gary. I know this is an extremely frustrating case. It is always so frustrating when it really does feel like we know what happened. We know what happened, but we just can't prove it and there's no justice. Sandy is out there, Chris is out there and I'm not saying that they did it allegedly, people alleged what they did, but it just really sucks when you feel like you know what happened and you just can't prove it and you don't have those answers. But that's also why I think it's so important to cover, less or known cases like this that have kind of gotten lost at time. Not a lot of people have talked about this case since it first aired in the Unsolved Mysteries episode. The more coverage, the more eyes that we get on disappearances, lesser known unsolved cases, the more of a chance that that case could get solved. That being said, I'm so interested to hear all your thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments. While you're there, please let me know what case suggestions that you have and also please make sure that you're subscribed on YouTube and that you're following the show on Spotify or Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Please make sure to also like the video on YouTube and rate and review the show on Apple and Spotify. It's really, really easy. It takes two seconds, but all of that is what really, really helps push out these episodes and these people's stories and their cases to even more people get in front of more eyes and do every single person that's already subscribed and following and do all the things. You mean the absolute world to me. Thank you so much for all the support. I wish I had more answers, but hopefully one day we do get answers. I really do believe that this is a case that could be solved. And that's all I have for this week's episode of Hot in the Case and I will see you guys all next week when we are hot in the case once again.