MISSING: Christopher “Cole” Thomas

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And you guys, sometimes the hardest cases to crack aren't always the ones with nothing to go on. They're often the ones where everybody seems to know something, but they're too scared to talk. Because today's story isn't about someone disappearing into the dark alone. It's about a young man who vanished in front of, quote-unquote, friends from work. Their first version, he panicked, pulled the car over, hopped out, and booked it. But the only people who say they saw what happened next are the same ones who can't keep their stories straight. And when the truth keeps bending like that, it's not confusion. It's not bad memory. Usually, it's a bold-faced lie. This is the story of Christopher Cole Thomas. The story of Christopher Cole Thomas. It's just after 3 a.m. on Black Friday in 2016. But in the small town of Benson, North Carolina, no one's lining up to snag a deal on the latest iPhone or the biggest TV. It's quiet. Most people are asleep. And the streets are practically empty. Which is giving time for a couple of officers to finish up some paperwork in the police department parking lot. And it's in that quiet moment when. When two men walk up. Their names are Julian Valles Jr. and Jeremy Carpenter. Now, they're not panicked or screaming or anything like that. They just need a little bit of help. They're passing through after visiting Julian's family for Thanksgiving. They were on their way back to Minnesota, where they both work. But now, they don't have keys to their car. And the story of how that happened is weird. They say that they were traveling with a third buddy, Christopher Thomas, who goes by Cole. And he's the one who was driving. But out of nowhere, he started acting paranoid. And before they knew it, he pulled over, took the keys, jumped out, and then, like, ran until he dropped out of sight. They don't know why or where he went. I mean, Cole couldn't have even known where he was because he's not from around there. He's from Florida. The only half explanation that Julian offers up is that he had heard rumors that Cole might have, quote, mental problems. But he wasn't even really sure. They said they tried looking for him themselves, but they can't find him. And now, they're just stuck. Now, the story is a bit odd, sure, but not enough to, like, set off alarm bells for these officers. Because even though it's an ungodly hour, these guys don't appear to be under the influence or anything like that. So, the officers do what they can. The guys point them in the direction of North Johnson Street, where they say Cole ran off. They check the few places. It might still be open for gas or coffee, but there's just no sign of him. No one who saw or heard anything either. So, within hours, that's pretty much it. Because as far as police are concerned, this sounds like a grown man who just chose to leave. That is not a crime. Yeah, but he didn't know anyone else in the area, did he? No, and honestly, Cole didn't even really know these guys all that well. They had just met while working a contract construction gig up in Minnesota. It sounds like Cole basically didn't have plans to go home to Florida. So, he kind of just, like, tagged along with them for something to do. And was it just for, like, the long weekend? Yeah, like, they all had to be back at work on Monday, which I think is part of the reason that Julian and Jeremy are stressed about getting stranded without the keys. Yeah. Now, they eventually call up a locksmith, but strangely, when he gets there, he ends up finding the keys right underneath the car. So, the guys head back. Like, they just leave Cole? Yeah. I mean, like, he ran off on his own. They have to get back for work. I mean, they filed. They filed a missing persons report with the officers that they talked to, so they go home. Jeez, what friends. I know. And the thing is, though, like, you don't know the half of it. Because, Brett, even though they told police what they say happened, neither of them actually bothered trying to reach Cole's family down in Florida. Like, you report him missing, but you don't call anyone. So, his parents are completely unaware that their son is missing until Sunday when they get an out-of-the-blue call from police in North Carolina. To say they were shocked is a gross understatement. Because they didn't even know Cole was going to North Carolina. Not that he has to, like, tell them he's 22. But it's kind of weird that he didn't even mention it. Because he'd exchanged texts with his dad on Thanksgiving. Just like a simple, hey, love ya, enjoy the turkey. But there was zero mention of this cross-country road trip. Which seems like it's something that would at least come up in conversation. You'd think. So, the family gets word of this. They get this phone call. And the only explanation that they're getting is that their son just, like, ran off into the pitch black in a place that he had probably never been to or even heard of before. And they had never heard the names Julian or Jeremy. Since Cole had only been on that Minnesota job site for, like, less than a month. But get this. Cole's dad, his name's Chris, he told our reporter, Madison, that even though, like, his mind was, like, racing in that moment, he actually did know someone that he could call. The guy that called. The guy that Cole had been working under as an electrical apprentice. This is someone who he knew was working with this same crew up in Minnesota. So, he at least has a name, Steven, right? So, Chris didn't have his number. But, like, lightning, he looks through Cole's Facebook friends, finds Steven, says, like, call me, ASAP. And within minutes, Steven is hitting him up. And he spits out something like, oh, Mr. Chris, I've been trying to get a hold of you. Which, right away, Chris is thinking, like, no, you most definitely have not. Like, I'm not a hard guy to find. I mean, he could have done exactly what dad did and found him on Facebook. On Facebook, yes. And Chris is listed as Cole's father on his Facebook page. Oh, so he's, like, right there. Easy. But anyways, he doesn't harp on this. He is just listening. And what Steven says next is far from reassuring. He wasn't on this getaway with these guys. But he sure seems to know a thing or two about it. Because he starts rambling on something about a strip search, about Cole freaking out. And then he says, He says something that stops Chris Cole. I think they killed him. They who? That is exactly what Chris is trying to figure out. He is asking all of the questions. Like, a strip search for what? Why was he freaking out? Who are you talking about? And that's when Steven starts filling in some of the blanks. He tells him that the guys Cole was traveling with, Julian and Jeremy, they weren't just passing through North Carolina for Thanksgiving. They had driven there all the way from Minnesota to buy, And he says, And this is like the foundation shaking for Cole's parents. Like, this is never the kind of story they would ever expect to be hearing involving their son. I mean, obviously, you never really know who might be struggling with substance use or fall into a lifestyle of dealing, whatever. But Cole, like, this was never something they ever had to worry about with him before. Like, he grew up in a state of shock. He grew up in a small town, graduated as salutatorian of his high school, earned some scholarship money to attend the University of Florida, and had plans to go into medicine, inspired by his younger brother who has autism. He was smart. He was driven. But like a lot of people in their early 20s, he was still figuring things out. So after a few years of college, he was, like, feeling kind of burnout. He decided he just wanted to take a break from school. He was motivated to, like, make some money, get real-world experience, learning a new trade. It meant traveling. It meant working locally. It meant spending long hours with his hands and being introduced to new people from widely different backgrounds. But to his family, it sounded just like this temporary detour, a way to save up some cash. And look, his mom, Kathy, even told us that Cole was seemingly so open with her. He even admitted that he tried some party drugs here and there when he was in college. So, no, this situation that he's in, not impossible, but traveling across state lines for a drug deal, like, that's the part that, like, it just didn't sound. sound like the Cole she knew. And for him to change that much in just one month, right? It's like he's been gone for a long time. Like, it makes zero sense. Of course, Cole's dad doesn't want to believe what he's hearing, but that's not a risk that he's willing to take. So within hours of that call with Stephen, he and Cole's mom, Kathy, throw their things in the truck and they start driving from Florida to North Carolina. Because if there is even a small chance that their son is still out there, hurt or scared, hiding or otherwise, they are going to find him themselves. Now, the drive from Florida to North Carolina should take less than eight hours. But that weekend, with holiday traffic, it takes a heck of a lot longer. And the whole time, it is just, like, absolutely brutal being in that car. The drive is a blur for both of them as they try to wrap their heads around what they've just been told. So when they finally do get to Benson, North Carolina, it is the middle of the night, and they don't waste a second. They go straight to the police station and tell officers the bits and pieces that they heard from Stephen. Stephen, even though it's not much to go on. It's like, you know, more than they had gotten from Julian and Jeremy, more than they told police when they were in town. So the cops, when they hear this, they call Jeremy and Julian back up and like try to get to the bottom of what's really going on. Now, when they reach them, the men are supposedly still traveling back to Minnesota. And at first, Julian and Jeremy stick to the same story. But officers don't just ask once and accept their answer. I don't know if they eventually rat out Stephen as their source or what, but at some point these two end up admitting it. Or like some of it. It's true. They didn't go all that way for mom's mashed potatoes. It was to buy meth. Not like a ton, I don't think, but like enough for them, enough to maybe sell to some of the guys at their job site back in Minnesota. And Julian is from North Carolina, so he is the one who had this hookup down there. They all drove down there. They went to the town over from Benson. It's called Mount Olive. And that's where they met up at a house of this guy who Julian knows. His name was Rudolfo De Leon Jr., a.k.a. Rudy. And they also met with apparently Rudy's buddy, Anthony James Jr., who goes by TJ. So Rudy and TJ. Now, Julian and Jeremy don't really say what else happened or who else might have been there, just that they did this deal and then they left. And sometime later in the car, the story that they first told kind of picks back up. Cole becomes frantic. But this go around, they're not saying anything about mental health struggles anymore. They're a little bit more honest. They say that he was maybe paranoid about the drug deal and thought that they were being followed by the cops. So that's why he ran. Now, investigators are sensing that like something is up, that maybe they still don't have the full story. So together from like what we got from Steven, this theory starts to emerge that something with the drug deal went wrong. And so they're like, well, we're going to have to find out what's going on. with the drug deal went wrong. Or Cole, who may have just been the driver because Julian and Jeremy, they didn't have their licenses. Maybe he realized that he was in way over his head and like freaked out. If that part about him taking off is even true, though. I mean, the truth is at this point, police don't even have proof that Cole was ever in Benson at all. Like all they have is that report from them, right? For all they know, the entire story about Cole pulling over there, running away could have been made up to cover. for whatever really happened to him to keep police from knowing Cole's real last whereabouts. Though that whole part about them being like 40 minutes away over in the town of Mount Olive when they met up at Rudy's with whoever else, that might actually be legit because police tracked down video from a handi-marked convenience store there from earlier in the night. This would have been Thanksgiving Day. The department wouldn't share that video with us, but we spoke to Benson Police Chief Greg Persons. And he said that Cole, Julian, and Jeremy can all be seen on this video between like 11.37 p.m. and 11.50 p.m. This is just about three hours before Julian and Jeremy would eventually report Cole missing to the cops. But at this time, Chief Percy says that everything seems completely normal. Cole goes in, grabs a drink. Apparently he doesn't look paranoid at all. In fact, nothing about his behavior stands out as far as Chief Percy can tell. So knowing that their son was somewhere around this area in North Carolina, right? Like we know we can put him there. Cole's parents, Chris and Kathy, know that this is going to have to become home base for them for a while. So they go back to Florida. They pack up what they can. And then they turn right back around and head to North Carolina, this time with an entire travel trailer. And they set up at a campground nearby. Every day they're out putting up signs. They're working on billboards. They're driving roads, checking ditches, using search dogs, combing through areas that even have already been cleared just in case something was missed. All while police are collecting surveillance footage from Mount Olive, from Benson and parts in between. And back then, Chief Percy wasn't chief. He was captain. And it was his job to go through all of the footage that they were collecting. Hours of it. And it takes him weeks. Completely consumes him. I mean, talk about bringing your work home with you. Percy cannot just leave this at the office. He is literally reviewing footage at home in the night, like at all hours. And it's actually in one of those late nights at his kitchen table in December when he finally catches something. Now, the footage he is looking at is from a camera at the Walgreens in Benson. And it's pointed at the parking lot. But you can also kind of see like across North Johnson Street where you get like the slightest view of a bank in its parking lot. And it's pretty good as like video like footage goes or like it would be if you were in the Walgreens parking lot, like close to the camera. But that's not where he spots movement. At 1.10 a.m., he sees something moving through the frame in the distance. So he like spots it. He rewinds. He zooms in. Hits play again. When he realizes what he's looking at, he gets this rush of adrenaline. He actually wakes up his wife to show her, too, because for the first time, he can prove it. Cole was actually in Benson, like a five-minute walk from where the car was left, just like Julian and Jeremy said. Except he didn't run off alone. In the footage, Cole is just walking. And there's someone following on foot right behind him. At exactly 1.10 a.m., in the top middle of the screen, you can see two figures. And like only the bottom halves of their bodies are visible. And at first, it looks like they're walking like right across frame. But when they disappear behind something dark and then they don't reappear, you realize that like the depth perception is a little weird without context. And the two people are actually walking right to left on screen. But I think they're walking behind the bank. And so it takes 20 seconds. But then you see them reappear on the other side of the building. Police determine this is Cole. And walking slowly behind him, maybe kind of even to the side, is one of his fellow travel companions, who they determine to be Jeremy Carpenter. Now, it's not like he's sneaking up on him or anything. Cole most certainly knows that Jeremy was there. I mean, to me, it even looks like Cole is like gesturing, like maybe they're talking as they walk off camera. Now, of the three hours of footage from that Walgreens camera that we got from Cole's family, that's it. Just like 30 seconds that eagle-eyes Percy caught. But it was enough to prove that the guys were still lying to them. Yes, he was in Benson, but he did not walk off alone. So when they go back to Jeremy and confront him with this, the story evolves again. Not a completely different version or anything. It's like Jeremy just drops another breadcrumb. Something like, oh, yeah, okay, so after Cole got out and walked off, I went after him so that I could calm him down or whatever. And then I then at some point, he says that they end up outside a nearby church. And supposedly, one that's like a pretty short walk from the bank. So it wouldn't have been like long after we saw them on that camera. And suddenly, it sounds like Jeremy, too, is convinced that they're being followed because he's now saying that he's just as freaked out as Cole. Wait, where's Julian in all of this? I don't know. I think he's actually staying behind with the car. Like he's not seen on any of the footage. And it's not part of his story that Julian's like with them. Okay. But anyways, Jeremy and Cole are supposedly at this church. And according to Jeremy, Cole says that he has to pee. So he walks off to go take care of that. And that's when Jeremy tells police that he like gets down on his knees and starts praying. For what? Maybe that like if somebody's really after them, they don't find them or maybe that they come out of whatever this is. Okay. I don't know. But like, per Jeremy, by the time he says amen, Cole's just gone. Except later, another breadcrumb drops and he admits, well, okay, actually, while I was out there, I did hear a car door. But then that car door sound eventually turns into, I think I may have heard gunshots. So he's saying someone picked up Cole or now maybe shot Cole while he himself was praying, I guess. But he says that essentially, like when he opens his eyes, and he sees that Cole is gone, that like he actually does say he like tries to go look for him. But after he looks and looks and he can't find Cole anywhere, at some point, he realizes he needs some water. According to him, he's diabetic. So he actually like really needs it. And lo and behold, one of the only places still open in a small town at this hour, he spots those like bright golden arches. Mickey D's. Yes. Now police are actually able to verify that he went to the McDonald's that night because in more surveillance footage that police got, that again, Cole's family shared with us. There goes Jeremy. Jeremy by himself walking into the parking lot. It looks like he's like speaking to someone who works there, maybe like seeing if he needs to go in or maybe he could just go through the drive-thru. He ends up walking through the drive-thru and he gets his cup of water just after 2.20 in the morning. No Cole in sight. And no Julian either. No Julian either. But he has to meet back up with Julian at some point somehow because we know that they're together like 40 minutes after this talking to cops and reporting that Cole ran off. That was at like 3 a.m. But here's the super interesting part. Julian and Jeremy aren't just alone the rest of the night. Obviously, they're not alone. They're not alone. Obviously, the police and later a P.I. brought on by Cole's family get phone data for all the men that night. And based on location data, it seems like Jeremy and Julian are still with and around Rudy and TJ sometime after Cole goes missing. And where was Cole's phone? Well, I think everyone originally made the assumption that he walked off with it. That's what you would think, right? Turns out that was a wrong assumption. Because when they finally got Jeremy and Julian to come back to North Carolina to be questioned in person, they were like, oh, yeah, by the way, here you go. Wait, they had Cole's phone? This whole time. Why didn't they tell police that? I don't have an answer for that. Like, it might be as simple as nobody asked, but, like, they're asking for it now. Yeah. And they get it. Not only do they have the breadcrumbs that Jeremy and Julian. have been dropping, now they actually have a digital trail that shows Cole's movements the whole night. And lined up with the other phones, it tells an interesting story. One that the family's private investigator, David Marshburn, really helps put together by dumping all of the data points into an app called CellHawk. If law enforcement agencies aren't using things like this, this is my PSA. I mentioned a similar application, Badge app, in the. CS case recently. These programs are for law enforcement, and they take basically huge data dumps, put them into a map that you can actually, like, see and make sense of. Like, processes the data. Something that tells a story. Right. Now, just like the surveillance footage showed, the phone puts Cole at the Handymark convenience store in Mount Olive at 11.38 p.m. on November 24th. They now know that this is after the drug deal took place. From there, Cole's phone starts moving. Based on what points they hit when, it is clear that these guys are in the car, but their driving doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, getting back to Minnesota should be a straight shot on the highway. And it seems like they're making their way there for a while. But then, at some point, they start, like, cutting through random side roads, and it looks like they, like, are, like, looping back. Their phones show continuous movement from Mount Olive all the way to Benson from 11.52 p.m. to 1.07 a.m. And 1.07 a.m. is when their phones finally come to rest near where Cole pulled the car over. And here's what's strange. We know that Cole and Jeremy get out of the car and walk away, but it doesn't look like their phones move. From 1.07 on November 25th to a little after 3.45 a.m., their phones just stay put. Presumably left behind in the car when they took off. Which, like, I don't know why you would leave your phone behind. Right. And when confronted with this data, Jeremy and Julian eventually say as much, that Cole left his phone behind in the car and ran off. But after they report Cole missing to police, the phones start moving again, including Cole's. The guys say that what they did is they called Rudy to come pick them up so that they had somewhere to stay while they waited for the locksmith instead of just, like, waiting with the car. But this is odd, right? Like, the fact that Cole's phone isn't moving. Two, not just, like, in the car. Yes. He's missing at this point. And instead of leaving his phone in the car in case he comes back, they take it with them as they all leave Benson completely, traveling back towards Mount Olive. And just after 4 a.m., Cole's phone goes dark. Investigators suspect that everyone in that group wised up and eventually turned off anything tracking their location at that point. It's not good. No, especially when you hear what comes next. Cole's phone does eventually come back on hours later. But it's not in Benson, where he supposedly walked off. It is still over in Wayne County. Is that where, like, Mount Olive is, where Rudy is? Mount Olive is in Wayne County, yeah. But, like, Wayne County encompasses more than just Mount Olive. And all police would tell us was that Cole's phone was. was somewhere in Wayne County. Which means whatever happened to Cole, it sounds like it didn't end in Benson. Now, at some point when Cole's phone is turned back on, for some odd reason, Jeremy and Julian just start repeatedly calling it. I mean, to make it, like, look like they were looking for him, maybe? Or investigators think it might be that they were trying to get into the phone, possibly to get rid of stuff. Like, maybe they thought. Somehow, like, if it was locked, right, if you answer it while it's a call, could they break into it? I don't know. Like, it's password protected. That's not how it works. Yeah, that's. It doesn't make sense to me. I know. And I don't think they were actually able to access anything. That's just the theory that police have. So now investigators are looking at a group of people who had Cole's phone, maybe tried to access it, and didn't turn it over right away. That sounds a lot like interfering with an investigation, my friends. Mm-hmm. So fast forward to. To mid-2017. Grand jury indictments lead to the arrest of the four guys that they know about so far, who they believe are connected to Cole's case. Julian Valles Jr., Jeremy Carpenter, Rudolfo Deleon Jr., a.k.a. Rudy, and Anthony James Jr., known as TJ. They are all charged with concealing Cole's death, and all but Rudy also get hit with obstruction of justice charges. All of them are charged with concealing Cole's death. All of the suspects plead not guilty to all the charges. And this was more than just, like, a small win to, like, get on the board. This was a strategic move on behalf of law enforcement. Police were hoping that, separated, and maybe under pressure, maybe, just maybe, the weakest link might finally break. But even with all four of these guys in custody, the case doesn't just magically fall into place. It takes some serious legwork. And a dedicated P.I. to come to the realization that these four guys are actually just a piece of the puzzle, not the whole thing. And to even get there, it was dangerous. The P.I. David had to basically infiltrate this network of people, and his presence didn't go unnoticed. I mean, once he started learning more and asking more questions, he says that he started receiving threats, including this voicemail that he shared with us. Look, I'm calling you because I know you're an investigator for this case. Somebody's supposed to be calling you today. If they don't call you today, I will find out. I want you to answer this phone at 9 o'clock tonight. If you don't answer this phone, it's going to be personal stuff between me and you. David believes that whoever that was who called him is part of something bigger. And that this was more than just a one-off drug deal gone wrong. Through all of the conversations that he has had and the phone data that he's mapped out, David starts to piece together what he now believes may have been the plan all along. He thinks it's possible that Julian may have been double-crossing everyone. What? So, based on everything he's hearing, Cole, and honestly, maybe even Jeremy, probably thought that the plan was simple. They were going to go there, pay for drugs, bring them back to Minnesota, maybe even sell them to, like, the guys at the job site. But, like, that's what they thought. Yeah. But David believes that maybe Julian was working with the guys that they met up with. And the plan was actually for them to sell the guys this, like, meth, and then somehow, some way that night, steal the drugs back. So, they get paid for the drugs they sold, but they get to keep their supply. Precisely. And according to David, there are a couple of things that could have thrown off this whole plan. First of which is Cole himself. Everyone we spoke to still believes that when Cole agreed to drive his co-workers down to North Carolina, he probably had no idea the level of danger that he was actually getting himself into. But, according to David, it seems like Cole may have slowly and surely been figuring it out. Like, on the fly. You see, Julian didn't know something about Cole. He'd only known him for a month and might have made some assumptions about him. Like, for instance, that this pre-med white kid from rural Florida only spoke English. But that wasn't the case. And it's very possible that Cole picked up on the fact that he was in danger, that night, before he was supposed to ever even know. From what we heard, Cole actually knew a good bit of Spanish. Enough that if Julian, Rudy, or their guys started talking about the real plan around him, Cole might have been able to pick up on it. Which could have been why he was panicked on that drive back. Like, it could have been warranted. Right. David believes that could explain why Cole was so freaked out. maybe why they were cutting through Benson to begin with, with, why he didn't just think that they were being followed, he may have known that they were being followed. And it wasn't the cops he was afraid of. It was the drug dealers following them. Potentially. And there's a possibility that they didn't even have all of the drugs to give back to them if the dealers caught up with them. Because you see, depending on who you talk to, at some point during that drive, apparently some of the drugs got thrown out of the car, probably by Cole, possibly by Jeremy. Trying to get rid of them? Or just like, I don't know, they're scared. I don't know if that's giving them back, trying to get them off their hands, something. And David believes that some of the drugs may have even been hidden by Julian without everyone knowing. So like, say they catch up with them, they realize everything's not actually there. They wouldn't know who had it. But who's the easiest to blame? The person who probably tossed the drugs out. The same person who doesn't really belong there. Cole. And are police bought in with David's theory? So our reporter, Madison, asked Chief Percy about this. And while he says it's definitely possible, he thinks it's also possible that whatever went down could have been even way less complicated than double-crossing. But he does think that whatever happened involved missing drugs. He said that there's a world where maybe Julian's boys had fronted them money for drugs, and then said drugs were thrown out the window. Well, now someone's got to pay up. It's also possible that harming Cole wasn't part of the original plan. Chief Percy says that he got intel that Cole may have fought back when confronted about the missing meth, and maybe things just escalated from there. But even if there are multiple possibilities about what led up to Cole walking away from the car after one o'clock in the morning, everyone seems to agree on one point after the fact. That there was likely someone else there. Someone who encountered Cole after Jeremy lost sight of him. According to what David uncovers, there is another guy who keeps popping up. A guy everyone calls Gordo. And he is one of the guys that Julian and Rudy may have been coordinating with throughout the night once things took a turn. So it sounds like Cole really did take off of his own free will. But then he and Jeremy supposedly get separated. And then Jeremy thinks he hears a car door sound, maybe a gun, right? Somewhere like in the distance. Well, based on phone records that police have, when Cole had first taken off, it sounds like Julian may have contacted Rudy, who then gets in touch with some of his guys, to include Gordo. And they set out to try and track Cole down, who is now on foot, possibly to try to figure out what happened to their missing drugs, see if they can find out where they were tossed, if that is what happened. The thinking is, maybe that car door that Jeremy heard was real. Maybe they got Cole into another car, and maybe it was Gordo's car. David's able to track Gordo down and gets him to work with the police, maybe in exchange for some kind of deal. He talks, he never ends up with any charges related to Cole's case. That simple. Because no one else will say a word, and investigators need someone on the inside. So eventually he says, yes, he was. He's there that night. And he, along with some other guys, were instructed to find Cole. Which they did. And per his story, Cole just gets into the car willingly. I doubt that. Yeah. P.I. David knows an already paranoid Cole ain't gonna be getting in the car with strangers. Yeah. So like, he keeps pressing him when they're having this conversation. And the story evolves. Like, these stories, in this case, keep doing. At one point, he says they threaten him with a gun. Then in another version, they catch up. They catch up to him, disorient him by hitting him with a baseball bat, and they take Cole into the car with them. Okay, but take him where, though? That's the million-dollar question. According to Gordo, they are instructed to take Cole and hold him until the rest of the guys get back to do whatever they're gonna do with him, I guess. But he claims that he doesn't know what happened after that. Whatever it was can't be good, though. But does he say where he took Cole to? This is the thing. It's not clear. Like, just some guy's house in Wayne County. Which is the area where the phone was. Right. Now, here's where things get tricky, though. Investigators get a warrant for the car in question that he was supposedly, like, transported in. They search it. They're looking for blood, DNA, anything that could confirm this story that Gordo is telling. But they don't end up finding anything definitive. So they're still. Seemingly not telling the whole truth. Cole's dad Chris and the P.I. David feel so close, yet so far. And they know what they really need is one of those, like, core four to flip. They believe that they know what happened. So they start thinking outside of the box. Like, how do we get someone to finally give it up? And what they come up with is out of the box and has to be. So painful for Cole's dad. They decide to hone in on T.J. because compared to the others, he doesn't seem as deeply tied into this drug scene. Not necessarily totally innocent, but maybe less culpable. So Chris makes a decision. David is a P.I. and a bondsman. And Chris puts up the money, essentially taking on the risk of bonding out someone who may have been involved in whatever happened to his own son to get him out of prison. To get him away from the other three guys who are tied up in this. The thinking being that maybe if you can separate him, he could think for himself. Save himself if he was given the chance. So they free T.J. And for a little while, it actually seems like it might work. Because once he's away from the others, he is willing to do a long sit-down with them. David recorded this conversation. Legally, I might add. North Carolina's a war zone. But he's willing to do a long sit-down with them. And Cole's family shared that audio with us. So here's T.J. Only thing I know exactly. He went when the drugs got missing. He got missing. I don't know where he's at. I really don't know. I don't know what they did with him. He's sort of hinting something went wrong. But they already knew that. He just won't say what. But minute by minute, you can tell that something's slowly shifting though. And at a certain point, they decide to bring in someone else. Kathy, Cole's mom. Thinking that maybe she can appeal more to his emotions. Convince him to tell the whole truth. And when she sits down with him, she doesn't come in all aggressive or angry. She just talks to him. As a mom. Asking about her son. Asking what happened. Trying to get him to understand what this has done to their family. And according to what they describe, this is when they sense that T.J. is starting to break. Now he doesn't tell them everything. But he does say something. Something that sticks. What did they do to him, T.J.? Tell me. He's gone, y'all. This makes it feel all the more real. Now they know what everyone already suspected. But they won't get to know any more. Because T.J. won't go much further. They get fragments, but nothing that could actually hold up in court. And that continues to be the pattern with just about everyone connected to this case. People talk, but only to a point. And so far, no one is willing to give this family what they really need. Proof. Or even a body to bury. All four men served some time. But eventually, the concealment and obstruction charges against T.J., Anthony James Jr., and Rudy, Rudolfo De Leon Jr., Julian Valles Jr., and Jeremy Carpenter, they all end up getting dropped. According to Chief Percy, this was done, at least in part, to avoid compromise. Any potential future homicide prosecutions. Now, we tried reaching out to everyone named in this episode, every which way we could think of. But as of this recording, we haven't heard back. Julian Valles Jr. is currently behind bars on drug charges unrelated to Cole's case. Still, we sent him a message. So far, no response. And unfortunately, we will never be able to talk to Jeremy Carpenter. Per an online obituary, he passed away in 2024. Now, some people believe that Jeremy may have been in the same boat as Cole, that he was just as surprised by the turn that things took. And that everything he did that night, his silence and the evolving stories that followed were out of both fear and survival. But it means that we will never be able to ask him the one question we have for everyone in this case. Where's Cole? Because when it comes to that detail, the part that matters most is that he's not the most. Everyone conveniently claims they just don't know. That whatever happened next happened in secret. But with this many people possibly involved, with some of their phones moving together, that's hard for me to believe. Because somebody knows where Cole is, and it's time that they say it out loud, before the data does the talking for them. Because no one is done with this case. Not Cole's parents, not Benson PD. They are on a mission, and they might be closer than ever to answers. So if there ever was a deal to be made, I think someone's running out of time to make it. So if anyone out there knows what happened to Christopher Cole Thomas, you can contact the Benson Police Department at 919-894-2091. Or you can email info at bensonpd.org. You can also contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation at 919-894-2091. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.