February 27, 2025 • 39 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 (00:46):
School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold
case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite
witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially
be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights
from family and community members, their statements should not be
considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
(01:10):
inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has
presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply
that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime
is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
On July twelfth, twenty eighteen, somewhere around the tiny town
of Oltrough, Arkansas, a thirty seven year old mother of
three named Brooke Allensworth disappeared. Oltrough is in eastern Arkansas,
in the flat As soon as you drive out of
the Ozark Mountains and cross over the White River, you
can see for miles nothing but flat, delta and farmland.
(01:54):
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 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
(02:16):
the middle of the afternoon. But that's exactly what happened
to Brooke Allensworth. She disappeared without a trace, and her family,
including her three children and a father and sister, who
were still searching for answers, never saw her alive again.
I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helling Gone Murder Line. Over
(02:40):
the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helling,
I've learned that there is no such thing as a
small town where murder never happens. 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
(03:00):
me and my team to look into, you can reach
out to us at our Hell and 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
or five. I first heard about Brook's case back in
(04:03):
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, on July twenty seventh,
(04:25):
the police found Brooks 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.
(04:46):
The front right tire of the 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 in the days and weeks before she went missing.
(05:07):
The doors of the 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, and
we have no information on who put it there end quote.
Inside the car, police found Brook's personal effects, her wallet
(05:30):
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, she
took her keys, locked it and went with that person.
(05:53):
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
time when she went missing, Brooke had a lot to
look forward to. In twenty twelve, she graduated from the
(06:16):
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
one with her current partner, Brad. At the time of
(06:37):
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
she knew very well. I've been in contact with Brooke's sister,
(07:00):
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 Brook. Now.
Some people have suggested that Brooke, like a lot of
people in the region, had used some drugs in the past,
including methamphetamines. But as I've said many times in this podcast,
(07:23):
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 Brooke first went missing,
it appeared that they did not treat this incident as
possibly involving I'll play some of that is understandable. Police
(07:47):
pointed out there was no sign of foul play in
or around Brook's card, 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 have dropped out
of sight and left her children for this long. Leaving
all of her personal belongings behind, including her cell phone
(08:10):
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. A while back, Brook's father, Aubrey Allensworth,
said she always stayed in touch with him and with
her kids. He said, quote, She's a kind, gentle, wonderful,
(08:32):
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
her children. At the time of Brook's disappearance, things were
complicated for her at home. Friends and family say she
(08:54):
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
she was being followed. Now some people seem to have
written this off as possibly being paranoid, but from what
(09:16):
I have learned about Brook's life from her family and
people who knew her, she had valid reasons to be worried.
I've put together a timeline of Brook's last movements. There
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
(09:38):
her sister and to find out what really happened to Brook.
I keep looking back at Brook's face book page, the
one whose cover quote reads, speak the truth even if
your voice shakes, all of Brook's photos or Brooke smiling
with her children. I also notice we have two mutual friends,
which confirms my long held belief that in many ways,
(10:00):
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 on in her life. So let's go back to
July tenth, two days before Brooke disappeared. That day, she
sent her sister Kelly a message saying, hey girl, what's up.
(10:25):
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 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 time it didn't seem like a big deal.
(10:46):
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
in Sarcy, Arkansas, which again is about forty four miles away.
It takes a little less than an hour to make
that trip by car. Brooke and Brad went to Newport
for the day, then back to his place in Sarce
(11:06):
that night. Kelly said she believes on that day Brook
and Brad did have some kind of argument.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I want to make absolutely clear here I am not
in any way suggesting that Brad or anyone else had
any part in Brook's disappearance. I don't know what happened,
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
(11:36):
both 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 a couple's son. After Brooke made the decision to
(11:56):
leave home, she went to stay with a female friend,
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
(12:18):
across the bridge from Oltrough across the White River. Newport
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
(12:40):
old enough to drive. She arranged for them to come
pick up her little son, her youngest son, in Oiltrop.
She told her kids she had a hair appointment in Newport,
so they did. They took Brook's 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 a platinum blonde. On that same day,
(13:03):
I believe she also had her nails done at a different,
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 tires. On the morning
(13:23):
of July twelfth, Brooke left her friend's residence pretty early
in the morning. Her sister, Kelly, said that Brook's plan
was to go back to Sercy and talk to Brad
to see if they could work things out. She told
friend she was going to base the music to work
out her issues with him. Kelly said Brooke did seem
to be worried about the arguing with Brad, but Brooke
(13:46):
appeared to have other things on her mind, things that
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.
There 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,
(14:08):
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 decided to do. At eight thirty am,
after leaving her friend's house, Brooke stopped in at Grady's
Auto Repair in Newport. The mechanic there, a local guy
(14:31):
named 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
(14:53):
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
(15:15):
custody issue with her four year old son, maybe even
to ask Dustin and his wife if they could take
custody 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
(15:36):
between Brook and Dustin was because it's all second and
third hand. Some people say there had been friction in
the past between Brook 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
(15:57):
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 from Brook's family and the limited information I've read
(16:21):
so far, that Dustin and the people in his home
were the last known people to have seen Brooke. After
Brooke 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 knew that something must be seriously wrong.
(16:44):
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 also had a very distinctive tattoo on the
(17:06):
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 they told him he had to talk to
police in Independence County, where she was last seen, So
(17:28):
there was a little bit of a delay before the
bolo 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 Camry was under that bridge in Altrop. Again,
the tire was flat, and actually looking at the pictures,
(17:48):
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,
Dustin's young step son said the clock read ten thirty
(18:10):
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
under the bridge. Brook's dad said there was a guy
on his lunch break who saw the car. Unfortunately, though
that person didn't immediately report it to police. Someone described
(18:33):
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 Stevens did a Monday
night mystery program. Now this was in twenty twenty one,
(18:54):
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 actually said
roughly two weeks they just kept an eye on it.
(19:17):
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 made a freedom
of information request for any information pertaining to Brook's car
(19:41):
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 release the
information that they were allowed to release. So I have
the incident report pertaining to Brook's car. There was some
information there. Unfortunately, the report did not confirm which day
(20:05):
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 I'm still looking for
a way to narrow down that timeline to know for
(20:26):
sure what happened to Brook on July twelfth. What happened
when she was finished at Dusson'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 sometimes in a
case where something occurred, like an abandoned car being logged
(20:48):
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 State Police. According
to Brooks family, the Arkansas State Police investigators have conducted
(21:09):
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 boats, and
they used cadaver dogs to search the banks around the
White River, but never found any sign of brook. Of course,
police did consider the theory because of where Brooks car was,
(21:32):
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 she met at 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
(21:55):
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 Brook's family,
Arkansas State Police investigators explored the idea that maybe Brooke
left the area with a friend, or that maybe her
tire was running flat so she drove down the ramp
(22:17):
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 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
(22:38):
Monday Night Mystery program that the police have taken other steps.
He said they swab the car for DNA and that
they had sent the evidence from the car to the
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
(23:00):
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
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
(23:20):
make headlines again after another young woman was viciously murdered
in Arkansas. In August of twenty twenty, twenty five year
old Sidney Sutherland was out for a jog near her
home in Grubs, which is right outside of Newport Lake Brook.
She vanished without a trace. This was in an area
that Brook regularly passed through. It was very close to
(23:43):
Brooks'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 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
(24:04):
who actually was one of Sidney's acquaintances from high school
saw Sydney while driving down the road one afternoon, and,
as he would later tell investigators, he had what he
called a sick urge, so he turned around and hit
Sydney with his truck. Then he loaded her into the back,
drove her to a secluded area, and viciously sexually assaulted her.
(24:26):
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. 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
(24:48):
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 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.
(25:11):
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. 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
(25:35):
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 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
(25:58):
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 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
(26:19):
service shows a list of all cell 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, but
you can follow people's movements. You can track their patterns
of life. These searches are legal for now because police
(26:40):
claim they don't actually track the person, instead they track
the advice. 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 because
after they issued search warrants, police knew they didn't have
any time to lose they used this technology, and when
(27:04):
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 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
(27:27):
Sydney's rape and murder, in addition to kidnapping and abusive
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 sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of parroll. After Quake's arrest,
Brook's family started to wonder about the things she said
(27:49):
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 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
(28:12):
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 who made those allegations, but it
did make me wonder if Quake Llewellyn could about anything
to do with Brook's disappearance. During that time, Quake became
a member of a Facebook group dedicated to finding Sydney.
He inserted himself into the investigation several times. He even
(28:36):
helped the volunteer searchers. Quake showed up at Sidney's funeral
and he hugged her mother, Maggie Sutherland, which 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 Sidney. Maggie said, quote, the hands you hugged
(28:58):
me with are the same hands you killed her with.
End quote. Since Brook's timeline is still vague, it's hard
to rule anyone out, and we have no idea what
Quake Lewelle was doing the day that Brook went missing.
It's been recorded that police did question Quake about Brook's disappearance.
(29:19):
They said they would continue to question him until they
were sure they could rule him out. But again, since
police understandably keep things close to the vest, it's hard
to see if and when 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
(29:39):
that this FOG revealed technology is not a magic bullet.
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, 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.
(30:01):
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 remember from season four
of Hell Gone when we went to Little Rock to
work on Ebbie Steppeck's case. Mike is an expert in
(30:23):
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, 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 stopped a three years. But Mike
(30:46):
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 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
(31:07):
coming back to that because Brook'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 the weeks and months before
brooks disappearance. So if 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.
(31:32):
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. 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
(31:54):
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 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
(32:15):
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 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
(32:38):
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 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,
(33:01):
the dive teams said they had not found anything of
significance during their dive, but some people who saw the
video and saw the sonar review that 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
(33:23):
have told me because I have not seen this video.
In the end, it seems like Kelly and some other
members of Brook's family felt that the whole incident really
just distracted from the investigation and stirred up a lot
of rumors, but ultimately gave them no answers in terms
of what actually happened to Brook. I felt for the
(33:44):
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 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
(34:06):
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 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
(34:28):
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 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
(34:50):
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 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
(35:11):
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.
Why did that 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
(35:32):
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 she goes
back three years. 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
(35:53):
asking why that didn't happen. Why that same technology that
was used to find Sydney Southernland 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 they ever process 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
(36:16):
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 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,
(36:38):
all of her credit cards, and her cell phone inside.
Kelly has always said this is not make sense to her.
She said, quote, I never thought she was in the area,
meaning the area 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.
(37:00):
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 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 express the sorrow and
(37:23):
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
and contagious spirit to be lost beneath the weight of
time or hidden from view as old news. We ask
(37:43):
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
deeply loved by so many. If you're out there and
you had any contact with Brooke Allensworth. If you have
(38:07):
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
zero nine three five seven three o two, and you
can also contact us anytime at the Hell and Gone
Murder Line. I know when we hear about these cases
(38:31):
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. 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
(38:54):
any information to reach out. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is
Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a
(39:16):
production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written
and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
Music was by Ben Sale and this episode was scored
and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have a case
you'd like me and my team to look into. You
(39:37):
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 six
one four five.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
School of Humans
School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold
case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite
witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially
be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights
from family and community members, their statements should not be
considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
(01:10):
inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has
presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply
that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime
is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
On July twelfth, twenty eighteen, somewhere around the tiny town
of Oltrough, Arkansas, a thirty seven year old mother of
three named Brooke Allensworth disappeared. Oltrough is in eastern Arkansas,
in the flat As soon as you drive out of
the Ozark Mountains and cross over the White River, you
can see for miles nothing but flat, delta and farmland.
(01:54):
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 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
(02:16):
the middle of the afternoon. But that's exactly what happened
to Brooke Allensworth. She disappeared without a trace, and her family,
including her three children and a father and sister, who
were still searching for answers, never saw her alive again.
I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helling Gone Murder Line. Over
(02:40):
the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helling,
I've learned that there is no such thing as a
small town where murder never happens. 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
(03:00):
me and my team to look into, you can reach
out to us at our Hell and 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
or five. I first heard about Brook's case back in
(04:03):
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, on July twenty seventh,
(04:25):
the police found Brooks 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.
(04:46):
The front right tire of the 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 in the days and weeks before she went missing.
(05:07):
The doors of the 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, and
we have no information on who put it there end quote.
Inside the car, police found Brook's personal effects, her wallet
(05:30):
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, she
took her keys, locked it and went with that person.
(05:53):
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
time when she went missing, Brooke had a lot to
look forward to. In twenty twelve, she graduated from the
(06:16):
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
one with her current partner, Brad. At the time of
(06:37):
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
she knew very well. I've been in contact with Brooke's sister,
(07:00):
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 Brook. Now.
Some people have suggested that Brooke, like a lot of
people in the region, had used some drugs in the past,
including methamphetamines. But as I've said many times in this podcast,
(07:23):
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 Brooke first went missing,
it appeared that they did not treat this incident as
possibly involving I'll play some of that is understandable. Police
(07:47):
pointed out there was no sign of foul play in
or around Brook's card, 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 have dropped out
of sight and left her children for this long. Leaving
all of her personal belongings behind, including her cell phone
(08:10):
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. A while back, Brook's father, Aubrey Allensworth,
said she always stayed in touch with him and with
her kids. He said, quote, She's a kind, gentle, wonderful,
(08:32):
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
her children. At the time of Brook's disappearance, things were
complicated for her at home. Friends and family say she
(08:54):
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
she was being followed. Now some people seem to have
written this off as possibly being paranoid, but from what
(09:16):
I have learned about Brook's life from her family and
people who knew her, she had valid reasons to be worried.
I've put together a timeline of Brook's last movements. There
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
(09:38):
her sister and to find out what really happened to Brook.
I keep looking back at Brook's face book page, the
one whose cover quote reads, speak the truth even if
your voice shakes, all of Brook's photos or Brooke smiling
with her children. I also notice we have two mutual friends,
which confirms my long held belief that in many ways,
(10:00):
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 on in her life. So let's go back to
July tenth, two days before Brooke disappeared. That day, she
sent her sister Kelly a message saying, hey girl, what's up.
(10:25):
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 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 time it didn't seem like a big deal.
(10:46):
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
in Sarcy, Arkansas, which again is about forty four miles away.
It takes a little less than an hour to make
that trip by car. Brooke and Brad went to Newport
for the day, then back to his place in Sarce
(11:06):
that night. Kelly said she believes on that day Brook
and Brad did have some kind of argument.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I want to make absolutely clear here I am not
in any way suggesting that Brad or anyone else had
any part in Brook's disappearance. I don't know what happened,
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
(11:36):
both 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 a couple's son. After Brooke made the decision to
(11:56):
leave home, she went to stay with a female friend,
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
(12:18):
across the bridge from Oltrough across the White River. Newport
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
(12:40):
old enough to drive. She arranged for them to come
pick up her little son, her youngest son, in Oiltrop.
She told her kids she had a hair appointment in Newport,
so they did. They took Brook's 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 a platinum blonde. On that same day,
(13:03):
I believe she also had her nails done at a different,
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 tires. On the morning
(13:23):
of July twelfth, Brooke left her friend's residence pretty early
in the morning. Her sister, Kelly, said that Brook's plan
was to go back to Sercy and talk to Brad
to see if they could work things out. She told
friend she was going to base the music to work
out her issues with him. Kelly said Brooke did seem
to be worried about the arguing with Brad, but Brooke
(13:46):
appeared to have other things on her mind, things that
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.
There 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,
(14:08):
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 decided to do. At eight thirty am,
after leaving her friend's house, Brooke stopped in at Grady's
Auto Repair in Newport. The mechanic there, a local guy
(14:31):
named 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
(14:53):
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
(15:15):
custody issue with her four year old son, maybe even
to ask Dustin and his wife if they could take
custody 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
(15:36):
between Brook and Dustin was because it's all second and
third hand. Some people say there had been friction in
the past between Brook 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
(15:57):
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 from Brook's family and the limited information I've read
(16:21):
so far, that Dustin and the people in his home
were the last known people to have seen Brooke. After
Brooke 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 knew that something must be seriously wrong.
(16:44):
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 also had a very distinctive tattoo on the
(17:06):
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 they told him he had to talk to
police in Independence County, where she was last seen, So
(17:28):
there was a little bit of a delay before the
bolo 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 Camry was under that bridge in Altrop. Again,
the tire was flat, and actually looking at the pictures,
(17:48):
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,
Dustin's young step son said the clock read ten thirty
(18:10):
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
under the bridge. Brook's dad said there was a guy
on his lunch break who saw the car. Unfortunately, though
that person didn't immediately report it to police. Someone described
(18:33):
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 Stevens did a Monday
night mystery program. Now this was in twenty twenty one,
(18:54):
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 actually said
roughly two weeks they just kept an eye on it.
(19:17):
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 made a freedom
of information request for any information pertaining to Brook's car
(19:41):
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 release the
information that they were allowed to release. So I have
the incident report pertaining to Brook's car. There was some
information there. Unfortunately, the report did not confirm which day
(20:05):
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 I'm still looking for
a way to narrow down that timeline to know for
(20:26):
sure what happened to Brook on July twelfth. What happened
when she was finished at Dusson'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 sometimes in a
case where something occurred, like an abandoned car being logged
(20:48):
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 State Police. According
to Brooks family, the Arkansas State Police investigators have conducted
(21:09):
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 boats, and
they used cadaver dogs to search the banks around the
White River, but never found any sign of brook. Of course,
police did consider the theory because of where Brooks car was,
(21:32):
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 she met at 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
(21:55):
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 Brook's family,
Arkansas State Police investigators explored the idea that maybe Brooke
left the area with a friend, or that maybe her
tire was running flat so she drove down the ramp
(22:17):
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 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
(22:38):
Monday Night Mystery program that the police have taken other steps.
He said they swab the car for DNA and that
they had sent the evidence from the car to the
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
(23:00):
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
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
(23:20):
make headlines again after another young woman was viciously murdered
in Arkansas. In August of twenty twenty, twenty five year
old Sidney Sutherland was out for a jog near her
home in Grubs, which is right outside of Newport Lake Brook.
She vanished without a trace. This was in an area
that Brook regularly passed through. It was very close to
(23:43):
Brooks'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 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
(24:04):
who actually was one of Sidney's acquaintances from high school
saw Sydney while driving down the road one afternoon, and,
as he would later tell investigators, he had what he
called a sick urge, so he turned around and hit
Sydney with his truck. Then he loaded her into the back,
drove her to a secluded area, and viciously sexually assaulted her.
(24:26):
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. 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
(24:48):
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 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.
(25:11):
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. 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
(25:35):
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 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
(25:58):
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 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
(26:19):
service shows a list of all cell 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, but
you can follow people's movements. You can track their patterns
of life. These searches are legal for now because police
(26:40):
claim they don't actually track the person, instead they track
the advice. 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 because
after they issued search warrants, police knew they didn't have
any time to lose they used this technology, and when
(27:04):
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 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
(27:27):
Sydney's rape and murder, in addition to kidnapping and abusive
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 sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of parroll. After Quake's arrest,
Brook's family started to wonder about the things she said
(27:49):
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 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
(28:12):
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 who made those allegations, but it
did make me wonder if Quake Llewellyn could about anything
to do with Brook's disappearance. During that time, Quake became
a member of a Facebook group dedicated to finding Sydney.
He inserted himself into the investigation several times. He even
(28:36):
helped the volunteer searchers. Quake showed up at Sidney's funeral
and he hugged her mother, Maggie Sutherland, which 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 Sidney. Maggie said, quote, the hands you hugged
(28:58):
me with are the same hands you killed her with.
End quote. Since Brook's timeline is still vague, it's hard
to rule anyone out, and we have no idea what
Quake Lewelle was doing the day that Brook went missing.
It's been recorded that police did question Quake about Brook's disappearance.
(29:19):
They said they would continue to question him until they
were sure they could rule him out. But again, since
police understandably keep things close to the vest, it's hard
to see if and when 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
(29:39):
that this FOG revealed technology is not a magic bullet.
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, 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.
(30:01):
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 remember from season four
of Hell Gone when we went to Little Rock to
work on Ebbie Steppeck's case. Mike is an expert in
(30:23):
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, 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 stopped a three years. But Mike
(30:46):
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 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
(31:07):
coming back to that because Brook'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 the weeks and months before
brooks disappearance. So if 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.
(31:32):
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. 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
(31:54):
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 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
(32:15):
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 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
(32:38):
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 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,
(33:01):
the dive teams said they had not found anything of
significance during their dive, but some people who saw the
video and saw the sonar review that 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
(33:23):
have told me because I have not seen this video.
In the end, it seems like Kelly and some other
members of Brook's family felt that the whole incident really
just distracted from the investigation and stirred up a lot
of rumors, but ultimately gave them no answers in terms
of what actually happened to Brook. I felt for the
(33:44):
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 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
(34:06):
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 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
(34:28):
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 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
(34:50):
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 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
(35:11):
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.
Why did that 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
(35:32):
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 she goes
back three years. 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
(35:53):
asking why that didn't happen. Why that same technology that
was used to find Sydney Southernland 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 they ever process 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
(36:16):
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 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,
(36:38):
all of her credit cards, and her cell phone inside.
Kelly has always said this is not make sense to her.
She said, quote, I never thought she was in the area,
meaning the area 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.
(37:00):
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 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 express the sorrow and
(37:23):
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
and contagious spirit to be lost beneath the weight of
time or hidden from view as old news. We ask
(37:43):
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
deeply loved by so many. If you're out there and
you had any contact with Brooke Allensworth. If you have
(38:07):
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
zero nine three five seven three o two, and you
can also contact us anytime at the Hell and Gone
Murder Line. I know when we hear about these cases
(38:31):
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. 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
(38:54):
any information to reach out. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is
Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a
(39:16):
production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written
and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
Music was by Ben Sale and this episode was scored
and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have a case
you'd like me and my team to look into. You
(39:37):
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 six
one four five.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
School of Humans
Hell and Gone News
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