October 26, 2023 • 38 mins
On July 12, 2017, somewhere in the tiny town of Oil Trough, Arkansas, a 37-year-old mother of three named Brooke Allensworth vanished.
Two weeks later, the police found Brooke’s car. The car was near a boat ramp and looked like it had been abandoned there for days or possibly weeks.
The tire was flat, the doors were locked, and the keys were missing. And so was Brooke. Her family, including her three children and a father and half sister, never saw her alive again and are still searching for answers.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. On July twelfth, twenty eighteen, somewhere around
the tiny town of Oltrough, Arkansas, a thirty seven year
old mother of three named Brook Allensworth disappeared. Oil Trough
is in eastern Arkansas, in the flats. As soon as
(00:28):
you drive out of the Ozark Mountains and cross over
the White River, you can see for miles nothing but flat,
delta and farmland. French hunters were in the area in
the early eighteen hundreds. They extracted oil from the Bears
who lived in limestone caves around there. So, according to
my dad and a local legend, the name of the
(00:50):
town Oltrough came from the wooden troughs that these hunters
would store their barre oil in. These days, it's a
quiet town, not the kind of place where a young
mother could vanish in the middle of the afternoon, But
that's exactly what happened to Brook Allensworth. Sheared without a trace,
and her family, including her three children and a father
(01:10):
and sister, who were still searching for answers, never saw
her alive again. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone
Murder line. Over the past five years of making my
true crime podcast, Helen Gone. I've learned that there is
no such thing as a small town where murdered never happens.
(01:33):
I have received hundreds of messages from people all around
the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's
affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
(01:56):
six one four or five. I first heard about Brook's
(02:46):
case back in twenty eighteen. Back then, she had only
been missing for a few months, but her family already
had questions about how the case was being handled and
why there was so little information made public about the
search for her. The last known sighting of Brooke Allensworth
was on July twelfth, twenty eighteen. Just over two weeks later,
(03:07):
on July twenty seventh, the police found Brook's car, a
black two thousand and seven Toyota Camry. The car had
been abandoned just off Arkansas Highway one twenty two at
the White River access point in Ultrough. The bottom of
the car was muddy, like Brook might have been driving
through some rough road which is not by the way,
uncommon for that area. The front right tire of the
(03:31):
car was completely flat. The car looked like it had
been left there for days or possibly weeks. It was
parked near a boat ramp. Brook's family said that Brooke
had been having multiple unexplained flat tires and the days
and weeks before she went missing. The doors of the
(03:51):
car were locked, the keys were missing. The sheriff at
the time, Sean Stevens, told reporters quote, someone called in
about a vehicle sitting under a bridge. It was like
it was just parked there and walked away from The
keys were not in the car. Have no information on
who put it there. Inside the car, police found Brook's
(04:11):
personal effects, her wallet with money still inside, her cell phone,
a can of fix a flat, and a pack of cigarettes,
but there was no sign of Brook now from what
they've said, although police haven't revealed much information, they seemed
to believe that Brooke was planning to meet someone at
that location and that after she got out of her car,
(04:33):
she took her keys, locked it and went with that person.
And again, although this is technically an open case, which
means that the information in the case file has not
been made public, so I have no access to it.
From what I know of Brooke, I find it very
hard to believe that she would have just locked up
and left all of her personal items behind. At the
(04:54):
time when she went missing, Brooke had a lot to
look forward to. In twenty twelve, she graduated from the
University of Arkansas Community College with an Associate of Applied
Science degree in nursing. She worked as an LPN or
a licensed practical nurse. Brooke was divorced from her ex husband, Dustin.
She had three children, two from her first marriage and
(05:17):
one with her current partner, Brad. At the time of
her disappearance, her two older children were in their teens.
She and Brad had a son who was four years old.
Brooke was living in Sarce and working as a nurse
at Newark Medical Clinic, so that route from Circe to Oltrough,
which Brooke drove right before she disappeared, was one that
(05:39):
she knew very well. I've been in contact with Brooke's sister,
Kelly Avensalindsworth for a couple of years now, and I
followed everything that Kelly has done. She has never stopped
fighting to get answers about what really happened to Brooke. Now,
some people have suggested that Brooke, like a lot of
(05:59):
people in the region, had used some drugs in the past,
including methamphetamines. But as I've sad said many times in
this podcast, drug use or actually anything in a person's
life does not define them and it should never affect
how diligently someone's case is pursued. Everyone deserves justice. In
my opinion, from what the police said when Brook first
(06:22):
went missing, it appeared that they did not treat this
incident as possibly involving foul play. Some of that is understandable.
Police pointed out there was no sign of foul play
in or around Brook's car, no sign of a struggle,
and it's not illegal for someone over eighteen to voluntarily
go missing. However, Brook's family was adamant she never would
(06:47):
have dropped out of sight and left her children for
this long. Leaving all of her personal belongings behind, including
her cell phone and her money, does not make sense.
Brook's family insists it was completely out of character for
her to go off somewhere without contacting her father or
staying in touch with her children. W Brook's father, Aubrey Allensworth,
(07:08):
said she always stayed in touch with him and with
her kids. He said, quote, She's a kind, gentle, wonderful,
loving person. She's the type of person who, if she
saw a straight dog running by the highway, would stop
and pick it up and take care of it. End quote.
Though Brooke had faced demons in the past, she adored
(07:29):
her children. At the time of Brook's disappearance, things were
complicated for her at home. Friends and family say she
was worried about arguments she had been having lately with
the father of her four year old son, Brad. Brooke
was worried about getting custody of her young son. Before
she disappeared, Brooke also had other suspicions. She believed that
(07:52):
she was being followed. Now, some people seemed to have
written this off as possibly being paranoid, but from what
I have learned about Brook's life from her family and
people who knew her, she had value reasons to be worried.
I've put together a timeline of Brook's last movements. There
(08:12):
are a lot of things I'm going to mention here
that you will not see on the news. I did
this with help from Brook's sister Kelly, who has never
given up on trying to get answers and justice for
her sister and to find out what really happened to Brook.
I keep looking back at Brook's Facebook page, the one
whose cover quote reads, speak the truth even if your
voice shakes, all of Brook's photos or Brooke smiling with
(08:36):
her children. I also notice we have two mutual friends,
which confirms my long held belief that in many ways,
the state of Arkansas is one big small town. As
you know, in this podcast, we try to focus on victimology,
what Brooke was doing, what her state of mind was
at the time of her disappearance, and what was going
(08:56):
on in her life. So let's go back to July tenth,
two days before Brook disappeared. That day, she sent her
sister Kelly a message saying, hey girl, what's up. Kelly
said it was a while before she responded because it
seemed like a completely normal message. When she did get
back to Brook, Brooke wrote back saying don't worry, I've
(09:17):
got it taken care of. Much later, when she reflected
back on that message, Kelly thought maybe her sister needed something,
maybe she was trying to tell her something. But again,
at the time, it didn't seem like a big deal.
On that day, on July tenth, Kelly said that Brooke
was with Brad, her partner and the father of her
four year old child. They were together at Brad's home
(09:38):
in Sarcy, Arkansas, which again is about forty four miles away.
It takes a little less than an hour to make
that trip by carr. Brooke and Brad went to Newport
for the day, then back to his place in Sarce
that night. Kelly said she believes on that day Brooke
and Brad did have some kind of argument. Now I
want to make absolutely clear here I am not in
(09:59):
any way suggesting that Brad or anyone else had any
part in Brook's disappearance. I don't know what happen, but
because there is no information out there and it's been
so many years, I want to go through all the
known facts and hopefully, working together, we can close any
of these gaps in time. I have reached out both
(10:20):
to Brad and to Dustin in the past, I have
not heard back. I would love to talk to both
of them. As we all know, the tiniest detail can
sometimes be the missing piece that helps break a case. Now,
apparently while Brad was in the shower, Brooke left the
residence with the couple's son. After Brooke made the decision
to leave home, she went to stay with a female friend,
(10:42):
a person who lived in Newport, and then she stayed
with that female friend overnight. Again. All of this information
is according to Brook's sister, Kelly. Just to clarify some
geography here, we talk about Newark, Newport, and Oltrough. Those
three towns are all very close together. Newark is right
across the bridge from Oltrough across the White River. Newport
(11:06):
is about ten miles from Oltrough up Arkansas Highway fourteen.
All of these places were locations where Brook frequented. So
now we go to the next day, July eleventh. Brooke
called her two older children, who I believe were in
their teens. At least one of them must have been
old enough to drive. She arranged for them to come
(11:27):
pick up her little son, her youngest son, in Oltrop.
She told her kids she had a hair appointment in Newport,
so they did. They took brook Son with them. She
went on to her hair appointment. Brooke went into the
Allure beauty salon. When she went in, she was a brunette.
She came out of Platinum Blonde on that same day.
I believe she also had her nails done at a different,
(11:50):
separate appointment. That night, Brook stayed with the same female
friend she'd stayed with the previous night, And this was
around the time when Brooke had been telling people she
was having these car issues. She said she had been
getting a lot of unexplained flat time. On the morning
of July twelfth, Brooke left her friend's residence pretty early
(12:10):
in the morning. Her sister, Kelly, said that Brook's plan
was to go back to Sircy and talk to Brad
to see if they could work things out. She told
friend she was going to face the music to work
out her issues with him. Kelly said Brooke did seem
to be worried about the arguing with Brad, but Brooke
appeared to have other things on her mind, things that
(12:32):
were bothering her even more. Kelly said, quote, she was scared.
She said that a brown truck was following her. End quote. Now,
at some point it seems like Brooke got another flat.
They're a report she was seen on the side of
the road and that she was using fix a flat,
which if any of you've never seen fix a flat.
(12:52):
It's basically compressed air in a can. She was using
it to put air into her tires. But fix a
flat is really just a quick fix. If you've got
a leak, you still have to go get it fixed somewhere,
which Brooke apparently just do. At eight thirty am, after
leaving her friend's house, Brook stopped in at Grady's Auto
Repair in Newport. The mechanic there, a local guy named
(13:15):
Grady Henson, put oil in her car. I'm not exactly
sure what else he did to her car. He may
or may not have done something about the flat tire.
It's unclear. In all the reports I've seen, it has
been reported police did ping Brook's cell phone. They figured
out that at some point during her drive to Circe,
she made a fateful decision. She chose to turn around
(13:37):
and drive back toward Olstrough. We do know once she
got there, she went to the residence of her first husband,
Dustin and his wife. Brook's family has said they don't
really know why Brooks stopped there. They have a theory
that Brooke may have gone there in order to get
Dustin and his wife to help her with a potential
(13:59):
custody issue with her four year old son, maybe even
to ask Dustin and his wife if they could take
cut of her son. Now, this is all pure speculation.
This is something that Brook's family, knowing the situation she
was in, believes might have happened, but we don't know
for sure. And again it's unclear exactly what the relationship
(14:19):
between Brook and Dustin was because it's all second and
third hand. Some people say there had been friction in
the past between Brooke and Dustin and that they had
argued over child support payments. Then again, for whatever reason,
on that day, she felt comfortable enough to stop at
his house. Dustin told police that Brooke did stop by,
they spoke for a while, and then she left his
(14:41):
house that morning. He said that after Brooke left the house,
he never saw her again. Brook's father said that apparently
Dustin had a step son who was in the house
who saw a digital clock right when Brooke left, and
apparently that clock read ten thirty eight am. It's my understanding,
(15:01):
from Brook's family and the limited information I've read so far,
that Dustin and the people in his home were the
last known people to have seen Brooke after Brook disappeared,
her family began to get seriously worried for her. At first,
they might have thought maybe she was just with a friend,
but as the days went on with zero contact, they
(15:24):
knew that something must be seriously wrong. On July twenty sixth,
her dad, Aubrey, filed a missing persons report in White
County because that was where Brook lived. They gave police
photos and went through her identifying characteristics. She was five
foot eight, weighing one hundred and eight pounds. She had
brown hair that had recently been dyed blonde, and Brook
(15:47):
also had a very distinctive tattoo on the left side
of her stomach. She has a tattoo that has GPS
coordinates for a specific location in Newport Now. Brook's father
apparently felt that the police were kind of giving him
the run around. At this point, White County put out
a bolo or be on the lookout, but then apparently
(16:07):
they told him he had to talk to police in
Independence County, where she was last seen, So there was
a little bit of a delay before the boo actually
went to Independence County. Then on July twenty seventh, the
day after Brook's dad reported her missing, police found her
car As we mentioned before, the black two thousand and
seven Toyota Camery was under that bridge in Altrop. Again,
(16:29):
the tire was flat, and actually looking at the pictures,
it looks like more than one of the tires was
pretty low. But it's very obvious that the front right
tire was completely flat. All the doors of the car
were locked, all of brooks stuff was inside it, but
there was no sign of brook So here's something else
about the car that is a little bit strange. Remember,
(16:51):
Dustin's young step son said the clock read ten thirty
eight am when Brooke left the house on July twelfth.
Now I have multiple media reports that say someone saw
brooks abandoned car that same day, around forty five minutes
later un to the bridge. Brooks's dad said there was
a guy on his lunch break who saw the car. Unfortunately,
(17:12):
though that person didn't immediately report it to police. Someone
described as a family friend of the Allensworth family told
the news channel Fox sixteen quote it sat out here
for about three weeks with a flat tire before it
was picked up. End quote. I got more details on
the timeline when the Independence County Sheriff Sheriff Stevens did
(17:33):
a Monday Night mystery program. Now this was in twenty
twenty one, but in an interview, he said one of
his deputies had noticed the car under the bridge and
logged it, but since there was no sign of foul play,
the deputy didn't connect that car to a missing person
because the missing person's report, remember, wasn't filed until the
twenty sixth, so for a couple of weeks. The sheriff
(17:56):
actually said roughly two weeks, they just kept an eye
on it. The exact timing here would seem to me
to be really crucial because if it's true that Brook's
car was definitely seen by someone on that same day
when she went missing on July twelfth, and it never
moved after that, that would mean the window of time
when Brooke could have disappeared would be considerably shorter. I
(18:20):
made a freedom of information request for any information pertaining
to Brooks car from both the Independence County Sheriff's Department
and the Arkansas State Police. The Independence County Sheriff's Department
did get back to me. Sheriff Sean Stevens was helpful
and released the information that they were allowed to release.
So I have the incident report pertaining to Brook's car.
(18:43):
There was some information there. Unfortunately, the report did not
confirm which day the car was first seen. It said
that on Friday, July twenty seventh, the Sheriff's office was
notified of a vehicle that had been sitting under the
bridge for a couple of weeks, But it wasn't any
more specific than that. It didn't say July twelfth, So
(19:05):
I'm still looking for a way to narrow down that
timeline to know for sure what happened to Brook on
July twelfth, what happened when she was finished at Duston's house.
As you may remember from Ebbie Steppek's case, often when
there's an open case like this, the police will write
back and normally they'll say no information is available. But
(19:26):
sometimes in a case where something occurred, like an abandoned
car being logged before it officially became a missing person's case,
sometimes we can get more information, which is what I'm
trying to do. After the car was found and linked
to Brook, several police agencies got involved, including the Arkansas
(19:47):
State Police. According to Brooks family, the Arkansas State Police
investigators have conducted dozens of interviews and they have searched
a large area. They dragged the White River and did
a comprehensive search that covered eleven miles. Police did a
ground search, They had a dive team out there, they
used boat and they used cadaver dogs to search the
(20:07):
banks around the White River, but never found any sign
of Brook. Of course, police did consider the theory because
of where Brook's car was, that brooks remains could have
been in the White River, either because perhaps she was
in a depressed state of mind and decided to wander
in herself somehow, or because someone who she met at
(20:28):
that scene did something to her and then put her
in the water. I do want to back up and
say that there's absolutely no indication of Brook being suicidal
at all. In fact, she was making plans for the future,
So I think that theory should have been eliminated pretty
quickly if I were an investigator. However, they do have
to consider that possibility. According to Brooks family, Arkansas State
(20:51):
Police investigators explored the idea that maybe Brook left the
area with a friend, or that maybe her tire was
running flat so she drove down the ramp to that
access point and parked there and again over the years,
the police have shared very little information except what the
sheriff told reporters back in twenty eighteen, which again was
(21:12):
quote it looks like she broke down, had a flat
left the car, and someone came through and she left
end quote. Sheriff Smith did clarify on that Monday Night
Mystery program that the police have taken other steps. He
said they had swabbed the car for DNA and that
they had sent the evidence from the car to the
(21:32):
state crime lab. And this was pretty shocking to me. Actually,
I know the Arkansas State Crime Lab has some pretty
long delays, but in twenty twenty one, when this interview
was done, the samples that were taken from the car
still had not come back from the crime lab. And
I find that pretty shocking. Actually, Brook's family had hoped
(21:53):
that law enforcement would find answers and that they would
be able to bring her home, but it's been years
and there's still nothing. In twenty twenty, Brook's case did
make headlines again after another young woman was viciously murdered
in Arkansas. In August of twenty twenty, twenty five year
(22:14):
old Sidney Sutherland was out for a jog near her
home in Grubbs which is right outside of Newport l
Like Brook, she vanished without a trace. This was in
an area that Brooke regularly passed through. It was very
close to Brook's father's house. Like Brook, Sidney disappeared in
broad daylight. But unlike Brook, law enforcement found out what
happened to Sidney Sutherland very quickly. I'm sure that many
(22:37):
of you are familiar with this story because at the
time it was everywhere. It turned out that a twenty
nine year old named Quake Llewellyn, who worked on his
family's farm nearby and who actually was one of Sidney's
acquaintances from high school, saw Sidney while driving down the
road one afternoon, and, as he would later tell investigators,
he had what he called a sick urge, so he
(22:59):
turned around and hit Sidney with his truck. Then he
loaded her into the back, drove her to a secluded area,
and viciously sexually assaulted her. Then he dumped her body
in a shallow grave. Unlike in Brooks case, Sydney had
a more regular routine, so when she didn't get home
that afternoon from her run, her boyfriend reported her missing.
(23:23):
Police immediately went out and scoured the area for her.
And they did something here that has been a huge
help to law enforcement, but it's rarely discussed and it's
a really controversial subject. They used a technology called fog
Reveal to run Sydney's cell phone number. Fog Reveal was
created by a company called fog Data Science. What fog
(23:45):
Data Science and other companies like it do is aggregate
location data for mobile apps, the apps that so many
of us use every single day. You know that moment
when you're using an app, maybe you're waiting for a
ride share to show up. That moment when it says
on your phone, do you want to share location? And
you click yes. Well, programs like fog reveal aggregate that data.
(24:09):
They collect the location data and they give it to
law enforcement and sometimes sell it to other entities. Normally,
in a case, if law enforcement want to get access
to someone's cell phone, they have to file a search warrant.
Then they have to wait to get the court order,
and often there is a delay of at least a
(24:29):
couple of days, sometimes weeks before it's granted by Google
or Apple or whichever company they're asking from. The data
from This is different. This doesn't allow police to read
text messages or view phone records. What it does, though,
is each device has an ID number that is linked
to it. So what these services do is they can
(24:53):
track the movements of these specific devices. Law enforcement can
also draw an area on a map and they'll specify
a time range. The service shows a list of all
so phone location signals, including the device ID within that area,
so they don't provide the same thing as a search warrant.
You can't read someone's text or get names or phone records,
(25:16):
but you can follow people's movements, you can track their
patterns of life. These searches are legal for now because
police claim they don't actually track the person. Instead they
tracked the device. But as we all know, so many
of us are basically surgically attached to our cell phones,
so in a sense, following your smartphone is following you.
But this technology is actually how they caught Sydney's killer,
(25:40):
because after they issued search warrants, police knew they didn't
have any time to lose they used this technology and
when they did, when they were able to find Sydney's
cell phone and then to specify a list of other
phones that were in that area at the time, it
took them to Quake Llewellen. Meanwhile, Quake's family members were
getting suspicious because he had dents in his truck and
(26:02):
he was acting weird. So long story short, it was
not long before they pulled him in for questioning and
he confessed to raping and murdering Sidney. He was charged
with Sydney's rape and murder, in addition to kidnapping and
abuse of a corpse. In the end, before his trial
was due to start, his attorneys made a deal. The
death penalty was taken off the table and he was
(26:23):
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parroll.
After Quake's arrest, Brooks family started to wonder about the
things she said about being followed by someone in a truck.
Especially after some of Quake's acquaintances started to come forward
and talk about his creepy behavior. People started to wonder
(26:44):
if he could be a serial killer. Today in Fort
Smith also said they had reached out to someone who
said quote he meaning Quake used to follow my friend,
stalk her and try to get her to acknowledge him.
She was very uncomfortable around him. End quote. Today in
Fort Smith didn't name the person he made those allegations.
(27:04):
But it did make me wonder if Quake Llewellen could
have about anything to do with Brooks disappearance. During that time,
Quake became a member of a Facebook group dedicated to
finding Sidney. He inserted himself into the investigation several times.
He even helped the volunteer searchers. Quake showed up at
Sidney's funeral and he hugged her mother, Maggie Sutherland, which
(27:26):
I find horrifying. Maggie, who said she was her daughter,
Sidney's best friend and the last person to see her
daughter alive, confronted Quake at his sentencing hearing as she
made a victim impact statement for Sydney. Maggie said, quote,
the hands you hugged me with are the same hands
you killed her with. End quote. Since Brook's timeline is
(27:51):
still vague, it's hard to rule anyone out, and we
have no idea what Quake Lewellin was doing the day
that Brook went missing. It's been recorded that police did
question Quake about Brook's disappearance. They said they would continue
to question him until they were sure they could rule
them out. But again, since police understandably keep things close
to the vest, it's hard to see if and when
(28:14):
that happened, if they did ever completely rule Quake out
as Brooks killer, and if they did, how they did it.
Now I should say that this FOG revealed technology is
not a magic bullet. I talked to a representative from
the company Fog Data Science. They said that this technology
is not perfect. And I know from hard personal experience
(28:37):
if there is an area of the country that's going
to be prone to patche cell service and to technology
not working, it is rural Arkansas. But I have asked
myself many times if this same technology that helped find
answers in Sydney Sutherland's case could have been used in
Brooks case. A while back, I asked one of my colleagues, Mike,
who I've worked with on former cases, and you may
(28:59):
remember from season four of Hell Gone when we went
to Little Rock to work on Ebbie Steppeck's case, is
an expert in cell phone data and he's trained in
this type of technology. What he told me was that,
unfortunately Brooks data was too far in the past to track.
And when I talked to the representative from the company,
(29:19):
they confirmed that. They said, now, because there is so
much data out there, they used to have information that
was a few years old, but now it basically stops
at three years. But Mike was able to run a
search on Quake Llewellen's phone from the time before he
was arrested, and he found some interesting data there. He
found that Quake llewellens regular route took him near the
(29:42):
neighborhood where Brook's father lived at the time. Does this
mean anything? Could it be a coincidence? Possibly? It's a
small town. But I keep coming back to that because
Brooks's sister claimed that she was being followed and Quake
did drive a truck, though not a brown truck. I'm
still looking for more information on Quake Llewellen's activities during
(30:02):
the weeks and months before Brook's disappearance. There is a
listener out there who has any of that information. Even
if you think it's something totally insignificant, Please reach out
back to Brooks case. In December twenty twenty one, there
was a new controversy involving a YouTube channel called Adventures
with Purpose or AWP. AWP is run by a dive team.
(30:27):
It's a really long story and I feel that it's
kind of a distraction from the investigation at this point,
but I'm just going to give a brief synopsis. The
guys from AWP came down and offered to search the
area for free to dive into the White River and
some other bodies of water. According to Kelly, there had
been some rumors that Brook's body had been dumped into
(30:48):
a barrel and left in what's called Before Ponds area.
Now I don't know where this rumor started. I've tried
to verify it and I cannot figure it out. But
since it's not totally implausible that Brook's body might be
in a body of water, I can see why her
family would want to investigate every possibility. Again, I think
the idea that she would have wandered in the river
(31:09):
herself is ridiculous. This was a woman who was making
plans to get custody of her son. She had just
seen her children, she was talking about the future, and
had literally just gotten her hair and nails done. A
family friend of Brooks said that while the Arkansas A
Police had searched the White River, they weren't sure if
any other bodies of water had been searched. So the
(31:32):
divers from AWP came down. They dove the four ponds area,
and also another nearby lake called Bergen Lake. They made
a video and released it in late twenty twenty one.
At the time, the dive team said they had not
found anything of significance during their dive, but some people
who saw the video and saw the sonar review that
(31:53):
they had taken apparently saw what they believed to be
a barrel with a skeleton in it. Now, there's some
other controversy here. One of the divers, Jared, made a
video a follow up video where and this is just
from what people have told me, because I've not seen
this video. In the end, it seems like Kelly and
some other members of Brook's family felt that the whole
(32:15):
incident really just distracted from the investigation and started up
a lot of rumors but ultimately gave them no answers
in terms of what actually happened to Brook. I felt
bad for the family because it just seemed like something
else that got their hopes up and in the end
turned out to provide no answers. Now, I do want
(32:38):
to make it clear that Adventures with Purpose has helped
on other cases. In fact, in twenty twenty two, the
team went down to Marianna, Arkansas to look for Annie Hampton,
a sixty six year old woman who'd been missing since
twenty nineteen, and they did find her car in Bear
Creek Reservoir, and there were human remains inside the car
(33:00):
that turned out to be hers. So it does appear
that adventures with purpose has helped in the past, unfortunately
just not in Brooks case. I have no idea if
what we're doing here will help or provide answers, But
I believe that we need to shut out all the
rumors and we need to go again back to basics
(33:22):
who had contact with Brooke last. We need to talk
to them again and we need to find out what
happened to her and to people out there. He would say,
just let the police do their job. I understand that,
and I will be passing everything that I find onto
law enforcement if we get tips. But I just want
to point out that in twenty twenty one, when journalist
(33:44):
Mitch McCoy did the Monday Night Mysteries program and talked
to Sheriff Sean Stevens, the sheriff talked about brook cell phone.
He talked about what steps law enforcement had taken. He
said that the department did not have the technology to
dump cell phones, but he said they'd gotten search warrants.
He said they were in the process of executing those.
(34:04):
Why did they take three years? If I understood the
sheriff's statement correctly, that means in twenty twenty one, Brook's
cell phone had still not been processed. And there was
also no mention of things like fog data services, which
we know were around in twenty eighteen, even in twenty twenty,
after Sidney Sutherland's case. Because the technology goes back three years,
(34:29):
the Independence County Sheriff's office probably could have asked for
it at that time. So if that didn't happen, If
I were Brook's family, I would be asking why that
didn't happen. Why that same technology that was used to
find Sidney Sutherland was not used to find Brook. I
also want to know what happened to those DNA swabs
in twenty twenty one, they were still being processed, were
(34:49):
they ever processed? Where they ever tested? Was it Brooks DNA?
Was there foreign DNA? There's so many unanswered questions about
this case, including did Brook drive her car to that
location herself or was someone else driving it? Could the
fresh mud on the car indicate that she had been
driving through a different area. And again I keep mentioning
(35:13):
if Brooke was meeting someone there, like the police seemed
to believe, why would she get out of her car
and leave her money, her wallet, all of her credit cards,
and her cell phone inside. Kelly has always said this
does not make sense to her. She said, quote, I
never thought she was in the area, meaning the area
(35:33):
where the car was abandoned. Either she was meeting someone
there or her car was put there end quote. Brook's
family and friends continue to search for answers. They've held
candlelight vigils on that same boat ramp several times since
she disappeared. Whatever happens, they just want to know what
happened to Brook, and they want to be able to
bring her home. They posted a statement that was published
(35:57):
on White River Now. It reads, in part quote, we
continue to search for Brook and search for answers. There
are no words that can expel us the sorrow and
chaos that clouds our hearts and minds. The day to
day routine of our lives will never be the same
from this day forward. We are committed to finding this beautiful, vivacious,
compassionate mother. We are committed to never allowing Brook's voice
(36:20):
and contagious spirit to be lost beneath the weight of
time or hidden from view as old news. We ask
that you will continue to help us search, continue to
help us cling to hope, continue to help us love
our daughter, mother's sister, and friend. Above all, our prayer
is that wherever Brook finds herself, that she's overwhelmed by
the assurance that she is so loved, so completely and
(36:42):
deeply loved by so many. If you're out there and
you had any contact with Brooke Allensworth, if you have
any piece of information, no matter how insignificant, please please
reach out. Police have asked anyone with information about Brooks
whereabouts to contact the Arkansas State Police at eight seven
(37:03):
zero nine three five seven three o two, and you
can also contact us anytime at the Helen Gone Murder Line.
I know when we hear about these cases in the news,
it can be easy to depersonalize them, to think of
it as just another mystery. But this is someone's mother, sister, daughter, friend.
(37:27):
She was just gone and they have no idea what
happened to her. Just imagine if someone in your family disappeared.
Imagine how much that would torture you. Please, we are
asking anyone with any information to reach out. I'm Catherine Townsend.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
(38:00):
is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend, produced by
Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Sale and this episode
was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Els Crowley. If you have
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
(38:21):
you can reach out to us at our Hell Gone
Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
six one four five. School of Humans
School of Humans. On July twelfth, twenty eighteen, somewhere around
the tiny town of Oltrough, Arkansas, a thirty seven year
old mother of three named Brook Allensworth disappeared. Oil Trough
is in eastern Arkansas, in the flats. As soon as
(00:28):
you drive out of the Ozark Mountains and cross over
the White River, you can see for miles nothing but flat,
delta and farmland. French hunters were in the area in
the early eighteen hundreds. They extracted oil from the Bears
who lived in limestone caves around there. So, according to
my dad and a local legend, the name of the
(00:50):
town Oltrough came from the wooden troughs that these hunters
would store their barre oil in. These days, it's a
quiet town, not the kind of place where a young
mother could vanish in the middle of the afternoon, But
that's exactly what happened to Brook Allensworth. Sheared without a trace,
and her family, including her three children and a father
(01:10):
and sister, who were still searching for answers, never saw
her alive again. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone
Murder line. Over the past five years of making my
true crime podcast, Helen Gone. I've learned that there is
no such thing as a small town where murdered never happens.
(01:33):
I have received hundreds of messages from people all around
the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's
affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
(01:56):
six one four or five. I first heard about Brook's
(02:46):
case back in twenty eighteen. Back then, she had only
been missing for a few months, but her family already
had questions about how the case was being handled and
why there was so little information made public about the
search for her. The last known sighting of Brooke Allensworth
was on July twelfth, twenty eighteen. Just over two weeks later,
(03:07):
on July twenty seventh, the police found Brook's car, a
black two thousand and seven Toyota Camry. The car had
been abandoned just off Arkansas Highway one twenty two at
the White River access point in Ultrough. The bottom of
the car was muddy, like Brook might have been driving
through some rough road which is not by the way,
uncommon for that area. The front right tire of the
(03:31):
car was completely flat. The car looked like it had
been left there for days or possibly weeks. It was
parked near a boat ramp. Brook's family said that Brooke
had been having multiple unexplained flat tires and the days
and weeks before she went missing. The doors of the
(03:51):
car were locked, the keys were missing. The sheriff at
the time, Sean Stevens, told reporters quote, someone called in
about a vehicle sitting under a bridge. It was like
it was just parked there and walked away from The
keys were not in the car. Have no information on
who put it there. Inside the car, police found Brook's
(04:11):
personal effects, her wallet with money still inside, her cell phone,
a can of fix a flat, and a pack of cigarettes,
but there was no sign of Brook now from what
they've said, although police haven't revealed much information, they seemed
to believe that Brooke was planning to meet someone at
that location and that after she got out of her car,
(04:33):
she took her keys, locked it and went with that person.
And again, although this is technically an open case, which
means that the information in the case file has not
been made public, so I have no access to it.
From what I know of Brooke, I find it very
hard to believe that she would have just locked up
and left all of her personal items behind. At the
(04:54):
time when she went missing, Brooke had a lot to
look forward to. In twenty twelve, she graduated from the
University of Arkansas Community College with an Associate of Applied
Science degree in nursing. She worked as an LPN or
a licensed practical nurse. Brooke was divorced from her ex husband, Dustin.
She had three children, two from her first marriage and
(05:17):
one with her current partner, Brad. At the time of
her disappearance, her two older children were in their teens.
She and Brad had a son who was four years old.
Brooke was living in Sarce and working as a nurse
at Newark Medical Clinic, so that route from Circe to Oltrough,
which Brooke drove right before she disappeared, was one that
(05:39):
she knew very well. I've been in contact with Brooke's sister,
Kelly Avensalindsworth for a couple of years now, and I
followed everything that Kelly has done. She has never stopped
fighting to get answers about what really happened to Brooke. Now,
some people have suggested that Brooke, like a lot of
(05:59):
people in the region, had used some drugs in the past,
including methamphetamines. But as I've sad said many times in
this podcast, drug use or actually anything in a person's
life does not define them and it should never affect
how diligently someone's case is pursued. Everyone deserves justice. In
my opinion, from what the police said when Brook first
(06:22):
went missing, it appeared that they did not treat this
incident as possibly involving foul play. Some of that is understandable.
Police pointed out there was no sign of foul play
in or around Brook's car, no sign of a struggle,
and it's not illegal for someone over eighteen to voluntarily
go missing. However, Brook's family was adamant she never would
(06:47):
have dropped out of sight and left her children for
this long. Leaving all of her personal belongings behind, including
her cell phone and her money, does not make sense.
Brook's family insists it was completely out of character for
her to go off somewhere without contacting her father or
staying in touch with her children. W Brook's father, Aubrey Allensworth,
(07:08):
said she always stayed in touch with him and with
her kids. He said, quote, She's a kind, gentle, wonderful,
loving person. She's the type of person who, if she
saw a straight dog running by the highway, would stop
and pick it up and take care of it. End quote.
Though Brooke had faced demons in the past, she adored
(07:29):
her children. At the time of Brook's disappearance, things were
complicated for her at home. Friends and family say she
was worried about arguments she had been having lately with
the father of her four year old son, Brad. Brooke
was worried about getting custody of her young son. Before
she disappeared, Brooke also had other suspicions. She believed that
(07:52):
she was being followed. Now, some people seemed to have
written this off as possibly being paranoid, but from what
I have learned about Brook's life from her family and
people who knew her, she had value reasons to be worried.
I've put together a timeline of Brook's last movements. There
(08:12):
are a lot of things I'm going to mention here
that you will not see on the news. I did
this with help from Brook's sister Kelly, who has never
given up on trying to get answers and justice for
her sister and to find out what really happened to Brook.
I keep looking back at Brook's Facebook page, the one
whose cover quote reads, speak the truth even if your
voice shakes, all of Brook's photos or Brooke smiling with
(08:36):
her children. I also notice we have two mutual friends,
which confirms my long held belief that in many ways,
the state of Arkansas is one big small town. As
you know, in this podcast, we try to focus on victimology,
what Brooke was doing, what her state of mind was
at the time of her disappearance, and what was going
(08:56):
on in her life. So let's go back to July tenth,
two days before Brook disappeared. That day, she sent her
sister Kelly a message saying, hey girl, what's up. Kelly
said it was a while before she responded because it
seemed like a completely normal message. When she did get
back to Brook, Brooke wrote back saying don't worry, I've
(09:17):
got it taken care of. Much later, when she reflected
back on that message, Kelly thought maybe her sister needed something,
maybe she was trying to tell her something. But again,
at the time, it didn't seem like a big deal.
On that day, on July tenth, Kelly said that Brooke
was with Brad, her partner and the father of her
four year old child. They were together at Brad's home
(09:38):
in Sarcy, Arkansas, which again is about forty four miles away.
It takes a little less than an hour to make
that trip by carr. Brooke and Brad went to Newport
for the day, then back to his place in Sarce
that night. Kelly said she believes on that day Brooke
and Brad did have some kind of argument. Now I
want to make absolutely clear here I am not in
(09:59):
any way suggesting that Brad or anyone else had any
part in Brook's disappearance. I don't know what happen, but
because there is no information out there and it's been
so many years, I want to go through all the
known facts and hopefully, working together, we can close any
of these gaps in time. I have reached out both
(10:20):
to Brad and to Dustin in the past, I have
not heard back. I would love to talk to both
of them. As we all know, the tiniest detail can
sometimes be the missing piece that helps break a case. Now,
apparently while Brad was in the shower, Brooke left the
residence with the couple's son. After Brooke made the decision
to leave home, she went to stay with a female friend,
(10:42):
a person who lived in Newport, and then she stayed
with that female friend overnight. Again. All of this information
is according to Brook's sister, Kelly. Just to clarify some
geography here, we talk about Newark, Newport, and Oltrough. Those
three towns are all very close together. Newark is right
across the bridge from Oltrough across the White River. Newport
(11:06):
is about ten miles from Oltrough up Arkansas Highway fourteen.
All of these places were locations where Brook frequented. So
now we go to the next day, July eleventh. Brooke
called her two older children, who I believe were in
their teens. At least one of them must have been
old enough to drive. She arranged for them to come
(11:27):
pick up her little son, her youngest son, in Oltrop.
She told her kids she had a hair appointment in Newport,
so they did. They took brook Son with them. She
went on to her hair appointment. Brooke went into the
Allure beauty salon. When she went in, she was a brunette.
She came out of Platinum Blonde on that same day.
I believe she also had her nails done at a different,
(11:50):
separate appointment. That night, Brook stayed with the same female
friend she'd stayed with the previous night, And this was
around the time when Brooke had been telling people she
was having these car issues. She said she had been
getting a lot of unexplained flat time. On the morning
of July twelfth, Brooke left her friend's residence pretty early
(12:10):
in the morning. Her sister, Kelly, said that Brook's plan
was to go back to Sircy and talk to Brad
to see if they could work things out. She told
friend she was going to face the music to work
out her issues with him. Kelly said Brooke did seem
to be worried about the arguing with Brad, but Brooke
appeared to have other things on her mind, things that
(12:32):
were bothering her even more. Kelly said, quote, she was scared.
She said that a brown truck was following her. End quote. Now,
at some point it seems like Brooke got another flat.
They're a report she was seen on the side of
the road and that she was using fix a flat,
which if any of you've never seen fix a flat.
(12:52):
It's basically compressed air in a can. She was using
it to put air into her tires. But fix a
flat is really just a quick fix. If you've got
a leak, you still have to go get it fixed somewhere,
which Brooke apparently just do. At eight thirty am, after
leaving her friend's house, Brook stopped in at Grady's Auto
Repair in Newport. The mechanic there, a local guy named
(13:15):
Grady Henson, put oil in her car. I'm not exactly
sure what else he did to her car. He may
or may not have done something about the flat tire.
It's unclear. In all the reports I've seen, it has
been reported police did ping Brook's cell phone. They figured
out that at some point during her drive to Circe,
she made a fateful decision. She chose to turn around
(13:37):
and drive back toward Olstrough. We do know once she
got there, she went to the residence of her first husband,
Dustin and his wife. Brook's family has said they don't
really know why Brooks stopped there. They have a theory
that Brooke may have gone there in order to get
Dustin and his wife to help her with a potential
(13:59):
custody issue with her four year old son, maybe even
to ask Dustin and his wife if they could take
cut of her son. Now, this is all pure speculation.
This is something that Brook's family, knowing the situation she
was in, believes might have happened, but we don't know
for sure. And again it's unclear exactly what the relationship
(14:19):
between Brook and Dustin was because it's all second and
third hand. Some people say there had been friction in
the past between Brooke and Dustin and that they had
argued over child support payments. Then again, for whatever reason,
on that day, she felt comfortable enough to stop at
his house. Dustin told police that Brooke did stop by,
they spoke for a while, and then she left his
(14:41):
house that morning. He said that after Brooke left the house,
he never saw her again. Brook's father said that apparently
Dustin had a step son who was in the house
who saw a digital clock right when Brooke left, and
apparently that clock read ten thirty eight am. It's my understanding,
(15:01):
from Brook's family and the limited information I've read so far,
that Dustin and the people in his home were the
last known people to have seen Brooke after Brook disappeared,
her family began to get seriously worried for her. At first,
they might have thought maybe she was just with a friend,
but as the days went on with zero contact, they
(15:24):
knew that something must be seriously wrong. On July twenty sixth,
her dad, Aubrey, filed a missing persons report in White
County because that was where Brook lived. They gave police
photos and went through her identifying characteristics. She was five
foot eight, weighing one hundred and eight pounds. She had
brown hair that had recently been dyed blonde, and Brook
(15:47):
also had a very distinctive tattoo on the left side
of her stomach. She has a tattoo that has GPS
coordinates for a specific location in Newport Now. Brook's father
apparently felt that the police were kind of giving him
the run around. At this point, White County put out
a bolo or be on the lookout, but then apparently
(16:07):
they told him he had to talk to police in
Independence County, where she was last seen, So there was
a little bit of a delay before the boo actually
went to Independence County. Then on July twenty seventh, the
day after Brook's dad reported her missing, police found her
car As we mentioned before, the black two thousand and
seven Toyota Camery was under that bridge in Altrop. Again,
(16:29):
the tire was flat, and actually looking at the pictures,
it looks like more than one of the tires was
pretty low. But it's very obvious that the front right
tire was completely flat. All the doors of the car
were locked, all of brooks stuff was inside it, but
there was no sign of brook So here's something else
about the car that is a little bit strange. Remember,
(16:51):
Dustin's young step son said the clock read ten thirty
eight am when Brooke left the house on July twelfth.
Now I have multiple media reports that say someone saw
brooks abandoned car that same day, around forty five minutes
later un to the bridge. Brooks's dad said there was
a guy on his lunch break who saw the car. Unfortunately,
(17:12):
though that person didn't immediately report it to police. Someone
described as a family friend of the Allensworth family told
the news channel Fox sixteen quote it sat out here
for about three weeks with a flat tire before it
was picked up. End quote. I got more details on
the timeline when the Independence County Sheriff Sheriff Stevens did
(17:33):
a Monday Night mystery program. Now this was in twenty
twenty one, but in an interview, he said one of
his deputies had noticed the car under the bridge and
logged it, but since there was no sign of foul play,
the deputy didn't connect that car to a missing person
because the missing person's report, remember, wasn't filed until the
twenty sixth, so for a couple of weeks. The sheriff
(17:56):
actually said roughly two weeks, they just kept an eye
on it. The exact timing here would seem to me
to be really crucial because if it's true that Brook's
car was definitely seen by someone on that same day
when she went missing on July twelfth, and it never
moved after that, that would mean the window of time
when Brooke could have disappeared would be considerably shorter. I
(18:20):
made a freedom of information request for any information pertaining
to Brooks car from both the Independence County Sheriff's Department
and the Arkansas State Police. The Independence County Sheriff's Department
did get back to me. Sheriff Sean Stevens was helpful
and released the information that they were allowed to release.
So I have the incident report pertaining to Brook's car.
(18:43):
There was some information there. Unfortunately, the report did not
confirm which day the car was first seen. It said
that on Friday, July twenty seventh, the Sheriff's office was
notified of a vehicle that had been sitting under the
bridge for a couple of weeks, But it wasn't any
more specific than that. It didn't say July twelfth, So
(19:05):
I'm still looking for a way to narrow down that
timeline to know for sure what happened to Brook on
July twelfth, what happened when she was finished at Duston's house.
As you may remember from Ebbie Steppek's case, often when
there's an open case like this, the police will write
back and normally they'll say no information is available. But
(19:26):
sometimes in a case where something occurred, like an abandoned
car being logged before it officially became a missing person's case,
sometimes we can get more information, which is what I'm
trying to do. After the car was found and linked
to Brook, several police agencies got involved, including the Arkansas
(19:47):
State Police. According to Brooks family, the Arkansas State Police
investigators have conducted dozens of interviews and they have searched
a large area. They dragged the White River and did
a comprehensive search that covered eleven miles. Police did a
ground search, They had a dive team out there, they
used boat and they used cadaver dogs to search the
(20:07):
banks around the White River, but never found any sign
of Brook. Of course, police did consider the theory because
of where Brook's car was, that brooks remains could have
been in the White River, either because perhaps she was
in a depressed state of mind and decided to wander
in herself somehow, or because someone who she met at
(20:28):
that scene did something to her and then put her
in the water. I do want to back up and
say that there's absolutely no indication of Brook being suicidal
at all. In fact, she was making plans for the future,
So I think that theory should have been eliminated pretty
quickly if I were an investigator. However, they do have
to consider that possibility. According to Brooks family, Arkansas State
(20:51):
Police investigators explored the idea that maybe Brook left the
area with a friend, or that maybe her tire was
running flat so she drove down the ramp to that
access point and parked there and again over the years,
the police have shared very little information except what the
sheriff told reporters back in twenty eighteen, which again was
(21:12):
quote it looks like she broke down, had a flat
left the car, and someone came through and she left
end quote. Sheriff Smith did clarify on that Monday Night
Mystery program that the police have taken other steps. He
said they had swabbed the car for DNA and that
they had sent the evidence from the car to the
(21:32):
state crime lab. And this was pretty shocking to me. Actually,
I know the Arkansas State Crime Lab has some pretty
long delays, but in twenty twenty one, when this interview
was done, the samples that were taken from the car
still had not come back from the crime lab. And
I find that pretty shocking. Actually, Brook's family had hoped
(21:53):
that law enforcement would find answers and that they would
be able to bring her home, but it's been years
and there's still nothing. In twenty twenty, Brook's case did
make headlines again after another young woman was viciously murdered
in Arkansas. In August of twenty twenty, twenty five year
(22:14):
old Sidney Sutherland was out for a jog near her
home in Grubbs which is right outside of Newport l
Like Brook, she vanished without a trace. This was in
an area that Brooke regularly passed through. It was very
close to Brook's father's house. Like Brook, Sidney disappeared in
broad daylight. But unlike Brook, law enforcement found out what
happened to Sidney Sutherland very quickly. I'm sure that many
(22:37):
of you are familiar with this story because at the
time it was everywhere. It turned out that a twenty
nine year old named Quake Llewellyn, who worked on his
family's farm nearby and who actually was one of Sidney's
acquaintances from high school, saw Sidney while driving down the
road one afternoon, and, as he would later tell investigators,
he had what he called a sick urge, so he
(22:59):
turned around and hit Sidney with his truck. Then he
loaded her into the back, drove her to a secluded area,
and viciously sexually assaulted her. Then he dumped her body
in a shallow grave. Unlike in Brooks case, Sydney had
a more regular routine, so when she didn't get home
that afternoon from her run, her boyfriend reported her missing.
(23:23):
Police immediately went out and scoured the area for her.
And they did something here that has been a huge
help to law enforcement, but it's rarely discussed and it's
a really controversial subject. They used a technology called fog
Reveal to run Sydney's cell phone number. Fog Reveal was
created by a company called fog Data Science. What fog
(23:45):
Data Science and other companies like it do is aggregate
location data for mobile apps, the apps that so many
of us use every single day. You know that moment
when you're using an app, maybe you're waiting for a
ride share to show up. That moment when it says
on your phone, do you want to share location? And
you click yes. Well, programs like fog reveal aggregate that data.
(24:09):
They collect the location data and they give it to
law enforcement and sometimes sell it to other entities. Normally,
in a case, if law enforcement want to get access
to someone's cell phone, they have to file a search warrant.
Then they have to wait to get the court order,
and often there is a delay of at least a
(24:29):
couple of days, sometimes weeks before it's granted by Google
or Apple or whichever company they're asking from. The data
from This is different. This doesn't allow police to read
text messages or view phone records. What it does, though,
is each device has an ID number that is linked
to it. So what these services do is they can
(24:53):
track the movements of these specific devices. Law enforcement can
also draw an area on a map and they'll specify
a time range. The service shows a list of all
so phone location signals, including the device ID within that area,
so they don't provide the same thing as a search warrant.
You can't read someone's text or get names or phone records,
(25:16):
but you can follow people's movements, you can track their
patterns of life. These searches are legal for now because
police claim they don't actually track the person. Instead they
tracked the device. But as we all know, so many
of us are basically surgically attached to our cell phones,
so in a sense, following your smartphone is following you.
But this technology is actually how they caught Sydney's killer,
(25:40):
because after they issued search warrants, police knew they didn't
have any time to lose they used this technology and
when they did, when they were able to find Sydney's
cell phone and then to specify a list of other
phones that were in that area at the time, it
took them to Quake Llewellen. Meanwhile, Quake's family members were
getting suspicious because he had dents in his truck and
(26:02):
he was acting weird. So long story short, it was
not long before they pulled him in for questioning and
he confessed to raping and murdering Sidney. He was charged
with Sydney's rape and murder, in addition to kidnapping and
abuse of a corpse. In the end, before his trial
was due to start, his attorneys made a deal. The
death penalty was taken off the table and he was
(26:23):
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parroll.
After Quake's arrest, Brooks family started to wonder about the
things she said about being followed by someone in a truck.
Especially after some of Quake's acquaintances started to come forward
and talk about his creepy behavior. People started to wonder
(26:44):
if he could be a serial killer. Today in Fort
Smith also said they had reached out to someone who
said quote he meaning Quake used to follow my friend,
stalk her and try to get her to acknowledge him.
She was very uncomfortable around him. End quote. Today in
Fort Smith didn't name the person he made those allegations.
(27:04):
But it did make me wonder if Quake Llewellen could
have about anything to do with Brooks disappearance. During that time,
Quake became a member of a Facebook group dedicated to
finding Sidney. He inserted himself into the investigation several times.
He even helped the volunteer searchers. Quake showed up at
Sidney's funeral and he hugged her mother, Maggie Sutherland, which
(27:26):
I find horrifying. Maggie, who said she was her daughter,
Sidney's best friend and the last person to see her
daughter alive, confronted Quake at his sentencing hearing as she
made a victim impact statement for Sydney. Maggie said, quote,
the hands you hugged me with are the same hands
you killed her with. End quote. Since Brook's timeline is
(27:51):
still vague, it's hard to rule anyone out, and we
have no idea what Quake Lewellin was doing the day
that Brook went missing. It's been recorded that police did
question Quake about Brook's disappearance. They said they would continue
to question him until they were sure they could rule
them out. But again, since police understandably keep things close
to the vest, it's hard to see if and when
(28:14):
that happened, if they did ever completely rule Quake out
as Brooks killer, and if they did, how they did it.
Now I should say that this FOG revealed technology is
not a magic bullet. I talked to a representative from
the company Fog Data Science. They said that this technology
is not perfect. And I know from hard personal experience
(28:37):
if there is an area of the country that's going
to be prone to patche cell service and to technology
not working, it is rural Arkansas. But I have asked
myself many times if this same technology that helped find
answers in Sydney Sutherland's case could have been used in
Brooks case. A while back, I asked one of my colleagues, Mike,
who I've worked with on former cases, and you may
(28:59):
remember from season four of Hell Gone when we went
to Little Rock to work on Ebbie Steppeck's case, is
an expert in cell phone data and he's trained in
this type of technology. What he told me was that,
unfortunately Brooks data was too far in the past to track.
And when I talked to the representative from the company,
(29:19):
they confirmed that. They said, now, because there is so
much data out there, they used to have information that
was a few years old, but now it basically stops
at three years. But Mike was able to run a
search on Quake Llewellen's phone from the time before he
was arrested, and he found some interesting data there. He
found that Quake llewellens regular route took him near the
(29:42):
neighborhood where Brook's father lived at the time. Does this
mean anything? Could it be a coincidence? Possibly? It's a
small town. But I keep coming back to that because
Brooks's sister claimed that she was being followed and Quake
did drive a truck, though not a brown truck. I'm
still looking for more information on Quake Llewellen's activities during
(30:02):
the weeks and months before Brook's disappearance. There is a
listener out there who has any of that information. Even
if you think it's something totally insignificant, Please reach out
back to Brooks case. In December twenty twenty one, there
was a new controversy involving a YouTube channel called Adventures
with Purpose or AWP. AWP is run by a dive team.
(30:27):
It's a really long story and I feel that it's
kind of a distraction from the investigation at this point,
but I'm just going to give a brief synopsis. The
guys from AWP came down and offered to search the
area for free to dive into the White River and
some other bodies of water. According to Kelly, there had
been some rumors that Brook's body had been dumped into
(30:48):
a barrel and left in what's called Before Ponds area.
Now I don't know where this rumor started. I've tried
to verify it and I cannot figure it out. But
since it's not totally implausible that Brook's body might be
in a body of water, I can see why her
family would want to investigate every possibility. Again, I think
the idea that she would have wandered in the river
(31:09):
herself is ridiculous. This was a woman who was making
plans to get custody of her son. She had just
seen her children, she was talking about the future, and
had literally just gotten her hair and nails done. A
family friend of Brooks said that while the Arkansas A
Police had searched the White River, they weren't sure if
any other bodies of water had been searched. So the
(31:32):
divers from AWP came down. They dove the four ponds area,
and also another nearby lake called Bergen Lake. They made
a video and released it in late twenty twenty one.
At the time, the dive team said they had not
found anything of significance during their dive, but some people
who saw the video and saw the sonar review that
(31:53):
they had taken apparently saw what they believed to be
a barrel with a skeleton in it. Now, there's some
other controversy here. One of the divers, Jared, made a
video a follow up video where and this is just
from what people have told me, because I've not seen
this video. In the end, it seems like Kelly and
some other members of Brook's family felt that the whole
(32:15):
incident really just distracted from the investigation and started up
a lot of rumors but ultimately gave them no answers
in terms of what actually happened to Brook. I felt
bad for the family because it just seemed like something
else that got their hopes up and in the end
turned out to provide no answers. Now, I do want
(32:38):
to make it clear that Adventures with Purpose has helped
on other cases. In fact, in twenty twenty two, the
team went down to Marianna, Arkansas to look for Annie Hampton,
a sixty six year old woman who'd been missing since
twenty nineteen, and they did find her car in Bear
Creek Reservoir, and there were human remains inside the car
(33:00):
that turned out to be hers. So it does appear
that adventures with purpose has helped in the past, unfortunately
just not in Brooks case. I have no idea if
what we're doing here will help or provide answers, But
I believe that we need to shut out all the
rumors and we need to go again back to basics
(33:22):
who had contact with Brooke last. We need to talk
to them again and we need to find out what
happened to her and to people out there. He would say,
just let the police do their job. I understand that,
and I will be passing everything that I find onto
law enforcement if we get tips. But I just want
to point out that in twenty twenty one, when journalist
(33:44):
Mitch McCoy did the Monday Night Mysteries program and talked
to Sheriff Sean Stevens, the sheriff talked about brook cell phone.
He talked about what steps law enforcement had taken. He
said that the department did not have the technology to
dump cell phones, but he said they'd gotten search warrants.
He said they were in the process of executing those.
(34:04):
Why did they take three years? If I understood the
sheriff's statement correctly, that means in twenty twenty one, Brook's
cell phone had still not been processed. And there was
also no mention of things like fog data services, which
we know were around in twenty eighteen, even in twenty twenty,
after Sidney Sutherland's case. Because the technology goes back three years,
(34:29):
the Independence County Sheriff's office probably could have asked for
it at that time. So if that didn't happen, If
I were Brook's family, I would be asking why that
didn't happen. Why that same technology that was used to
find Sidney Sutherland was not used to find Brook. I
also want to know what happened to those DNA swabs
in twenty twenty one, they were still being processed, were
(34:49):
they ever processed? Where they ever tested? Was it Brooks DNA?
Was there foreign DNA? There's so many unanswered questions about
this case, including did Brook drive her car to that
location herself or was someone else driving it? Could the
fresh mud on the car indicate that she had been
driving through a different area. And again I keep mentioning
(35:13):
if Brooke was meeting someone there, like the police seemed
to believe, why would she get out of her car
and leave her money, her wallet, all of her credit cards,
and her cell phone inside. Kelly has always said this
does not make sense to her. She said, quote, I
never thought she was in the area, meaning the area
(35:33):
where the car was abandoned. Either she was meeting someone
there or her car was put there end quote. Brook's
family and friends continue to search for answers. They've held
candlelight vigils on that same boat ramp several times since
she disappeared. Whatever happens, they just want to know what
happened to Brook, and they want to be able to
bring her home. They posted a statement that was published
(35:57):
on White River Now. It reads, in part quote, we
continue to search for Brook and search for answers. There
are no words that can expel us the sorrow and
chaos that clouds our hearts and minds. The day to
day routine of our lives will never be the same
from this day forward. We are committed to finding this beautiful, vivacious,
compassionate mother. We are committed to never allowing Brook's voice
(36:20):
and contagious spirit to be lost beneath the weight of
time or hidden from view as old news. We ask
that you will continue to help us search, continue to
help us cling to hope, continue to help us love
our daughter, mother's sister, and friend. Above all, our prayer
is that wherever Brook finds herself, that she's overwhelmed by
the assurance that she is so loved, so completely and
(36:42):
deeply loved by so many. If you're out there and
you had any contact with Brooke Allensworth, if you have
any piece of information, no matter how insignificant, please please
reach out. Police have asked anyone with information about Brooks
whereabouts to contact the Arkansas State Police at eight seven
(37:03):
zero nine three five seven three o two, and you
can also contact us anytime at the Helen Gone Murder Line.
I know when we hear about these cases in the news,
it can be easy to depersonalize them, to think of
it as just another mystery. But this is someone's mother, sister, daughter, friend.
(37:27):
She was just gone and they have no idea what
happened to her. Just imagine if someone in your family disappeared.
Imagine how much that would torture you. Please, we are
asking anyone with any information to reach out. I'm Catherine Townsend.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
(38:00):
is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend, produced by
Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Sale and this episode
was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Els Crowley. If you have
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
(38:21):
you can reach out to us at our Hell Gone
Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
six one four five. School of Humans
Hell and Gone News
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