He Walked Into The Night and Vanished: The Disappearance of Ellis Faison Sr.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
People in the midst of a mental health crisis are
at a much higher risk of going missing. In the
late summer of nineteen eighty nine, a sixty four year
old man from North Carolina became part of that troubling reality.
That evening, police had been called to his home multiple
times in response to what seemed like episodes of paranoia,

(00:31):
but later that night, he stepped outside into the dark
and was never seen again. It was easy for some
to assume that he'd suffered a mental break and tragically
wandered off, possibly succumbing to the elements, but his son
couldn't shake the feeling that something didn't add up, so
he launched his own investigation. What happens when someone is

(00:52):
confirmed to be experiencing paranoia, but other clues suggest they
may have met with danger outside of that as well.
Whether this was a case of foul play or a
heartbreaking accident, His family has now spent thirty six years
searching for the truth. I'm your host, Megan, and each
week on a Simpler Time True Crime, I cover older

(01:15):
unsolved cases and challenge the idea that a simpler time
means a safer time. This week, I'm bringing to you
the unsolved disappearance of Ellis Faison. I wanted to first

(01:48):
thank listener Christina s for requesting this case. She sent
this to me to look into, and I'm so glad
I did because it explores the important intersection of mental health,
substance use, and going missing. In the true crime space,
sometimes consumers get caught up and looking for what is
considered to be the quote unquote perfect victim, someone who

(02:10):
is straight laced, innocent, and leads a low risk lifestyle.
Having this bias in these thoughts don't make you a
bad person, but it is important to examine why we
gravitate towards this line of thinking, especially when as humans
we are messy and complex and a million puzzle pieces
of everything that has ever happened to us. And even

(02:31):
if a person is struggling with things like mental health
or substance abuse or engaging in a high risk lifestyle,
they still matter just as much and deserve to be
looked for and found. There aren't a lot of good
studies out of the United States, but one UK study
suggested that up to eight out of ten people who
go missing suffer from some form of mental illness. Very

(02:54):
often these people do resurface. They may live somewhat of
a transient lifestyle and struggle to mean employment and pay
for housing, and there isn't always a ton of mystery
in their disappearance in and of itself. Other than the
disappearance and where they currently are, there are very often
not signs of foul play. But it should also be
noted that people with mental illness, particularly those who are

(03:17):
on house, are at a significantly higher risk for harm
by another human than the rest of the general population.
In the case I'm covering today, it's a bit of
a combination of both. Ellis was acting in a way
that suggested he was having mental health struggles, but not
everything in his case adds up to that being a
standalone factor. So let's get into it, and I'm sure

(03:39):
you'll form your own opinion as we go. Ellis Faison
Senior was born in July twelfth, nineteen twenty five. Not
too much is publicly known about his life. Ellis served
in the Navy and was a veteran of World War Two.
He was thin and wiry, with an unassuming presence, standing
at just five feet through inches tall in one hundred

(04:01):
and fifteen pounds. He was known for being relatively soft
spoken and calm natured. Ellis married his wife, Dorothy, and
had two sons, and settled in the town of Keenansville,
North Carolina. Located in eastern North Carolina. Keenansville Center is
Liberty Hall, the stately home of Revolutionary War General James

(04:23):
Keenan now preserved as a museum, and surrounding it are
quiet streets, old churches and homes that have stood for
over a century. The population in nineteen eighty nine was
eight hundred and sixty four and it still hovers around
that statistic today. Ellis spent his post military career serving

(04:44):
as a handyman for the county school district, working for
thirty five years before he retired. By the summer of
nineteen eighty nine, Ellis was sixty four years old and
facing his share of struggles. His physical health was deteriorating,
and this wasn't made any better by his addiction to alcohol.
Their sons were grown, with their oldest son, Willie, serving

(05:06):
in the Army overseas and their younger son, Ellis Junior,
living in a town nearby. Ellis's wife, Dorothy wanted to
get him some support and have him get into some
sort of detox facility or rehab. Like many people addicted
to substances, Ellis did not align with her thinking, and
his addiction was so bad that he was hiding alcohol

(05:27):
in and around his house. Because of his worsening health conditions,
he was also taking prescription medications to manage them. His
family was not sure if his subsequent behavior was because
of him mixing prescription medications with alcohol, or if he
was beginning to have signs of early onset Alzheimer's or dementia,

(05:47):
or possibly even a combination of everything. Nevertheless, in the
weeks leading up to his disappearance, Ellis began acting strangely.
He seemed to be hallucinating and was talking to dead relatives.
This came to a head on the evening of August ninth,
nineteen eighty nine. The day had been rough all day
for Ellis. He believed at times that he was being

(06:10):
chased by phantoms and continued conversation with dead relatives, at
one point even asking his wife, Dorothy, to pour them
some water and pointed to some empty seats. By late afternoon,
Ellis became fixated and obsessed with the idea that a
group of white teenagers were messing with his car, an
old beat up Bonneville that he kept near the house.

(06:32):
His brother in law was over visiting, and suddenly Ellis said,
they're in there right now. So his brother in law
went to check in the vehicle and he didn't see anything.
This seemed to temporarily ease Ellis's mind, but not for long. Eventually,
his wife, Dorothy grew tired and had to lay down.
She worked as a housekeeper for a local business and

(06:53):
she was exhausted. After Dorothy was in their bedroom, Ellis
crept out into the carport where he had hidden a
bot of Traveler's Club whiskey. He poured himself a cup
into a coffee mug when suddenly he saw them again,
the white teens in his vehicle. This was around nine PM,
and at this time Ellis placed his first nine one

(07:14):
one call. Keenansville had a police force of three, a
chief named Glenn Braswell and two officers. One of the
officers responded to the call. He walked through the mist
and rain that had begun coming down and approached Ellis
Faison Senior. This officer was a man named Rick Wayley.

(07:35):
According to officer Wayley, Ellis was extremely agitated and was
worried that the teens were going to attack him. The
officer walked over to the vehicle and noticed no signs
of a disturbance, no footprints besides those of Ellis, and
the car was locked. The officer let Elis know this
and told him not to worry. He'd drive by and
continued to keep an eye on the property that night.

(07:59):
And with that the officer officer drove off, But about
a half an hour later, Ellis phoned nine one one
again and he was very upset that the teens had returned.
Once again. Officer Wayley returned and searched the vehicle, finding
it in the exact same condition. According to Officer Whayley,
he searched the property as well, but he could find

(08:20):
no signs of a disturbance or anybody else around. Officer
Wayley decided to take a different approach this time. He
told Ellis that he would park his police car behind
some trees and keep an eye out to see if
the teens returned. This lasted for just over ten minutes
when Ellis came running up to the officer's vehicle, his

(08:40):
yellow shirt in his cap soaked from the rein saying
that once again they were in his car. So Officer Wayley,
to his credit, ran quickly over to the car to
find it once again unoccupied and locked. At a loss
for what to do, the officer told Ellis to go
inside for the night and lock the door to stay safe.

(09:00):
He watched as Ellis went inside and turned the porch
light off. With that, the officer got back into his
cruiser and into the night he went. Now, part of
what I like to discuss on this podcast is how

(09:22):
the situation might have been handled differently if the same
thing happened today. There are a lot of factors at
play here and on the surface, if this is exactly
how it played out, I'll be honest, this officer didn't
do a terrible job, in my opinion. I'm sure he
recognized that something was off about Ellis and how he
was acting, and he didn't just tell the man, hey,

(09:43):
you're being delusional, which is more than I could say
for some officers even today. He even tried to somewhat
acquiesce to Ellis's reality and offer him comfort and reassurance
in the way that he knew. How ideally he would
have tried to connect Ellis with some mental health services,
maybe even knocking to wake up Ellis's wife or asking
Elis what relatives he could reach out to so that

(10:05):
he could have someone come stay with him. But this
is a small town. Thirty six years ago, there likely
wasn't even a nearby psychiatric facility, and we don't know
that Ellis would have agreed to do it. Moore is
known about psychiatric supports, and first responders receive way more
training now than they did years ago, but we also

(10:25):
still have a long way to go, and the response
you receive is still largely based on the training of
that police force who shows up that day, and what
resources any given area has. That's just the reality. So
what we know next, at least on the surface, and
an initial reporting, is that Ellis walks out of his
front door sometime later that night and is never seen again.

(10:48):
At around midnight, Dorothy Faisan realized that Ellis was not
in the house when she didn't see him in the
immediate yard. She called and woke up her son, Elis Junior,
and told him that she couldn't find a father. He
came right over and the two drove around looking for him,
but were unable to locate him. They drove around most
of the overnight, and as daylight broke, they drove down

(11:10):
to the police station to report Ellis missing. Shortly thereafter,
as Keenansville devoted their limited resources to searching for Ellis Senior.
His oldest son, Willie, was contacted in Germany, where he
was stationed in the army, and he was only told
that his father was ill. He hopped on a plane
home and learned of the full picture. News spread quickly

(11:34):
in the small town. Some theorized that Ellis may have
been the victim of a hate crime. In nineteen eighty nine,
this area was known to have ku Klux Klan activity.
Just a few houses down, an older black man had
recently moved in with a white woman, which had caused
at best small town gossip and at worse, some hate.

(11:55):
Some suspected that maybe when Ellis was out that night,
he was mistaken for this other black man, or possibly
was just targeted by the KKK or someone hateful just
out because he was alone out as a black man
that night. Others in the town suspected that Ellis had
run away because of his wife's desire for him to
go to rehab police discredited these theories and shared that

(12:19):
they believed Ellis had suffered a mental health break, as
evidenced by how he was acting when they encountered him
the evening prior, and that he had unfortunately wandered off.
Despite the searches for him, law enforcement couldn't locate him.
In fact, they only found three total signs of Ellis.
Number one, his cap was found in the neighbor's yard,

(12:43):
Number two, his coffee mug full of whiskey was still
in the carport. And number three, strangest of all, his
shoes were neatly placed near the steps, so as he
ran away, he would have been running away barefoot. His
family found this extra ordinarly odd because Ellis always had
his shoes on. He was deathly afraid of snakes, so

(13:06):
much so that he wore shoes in his own home
in case of the off chance that he encountered a
snake inside. Ellis's son Willy, couldn't help but feel that
not enough was done to help look for his dad.
While I wasn't there at the time, I couldn't find
anything in the source material that indicated a large scale search,
the kind you'd find if a young child went missing,

(13:27):
and those types of disparities in response still exists today.
But he also felt that everything was just not adding up.
So Willy began conducting his own investigation, and when doing so,
he stumbled into a troubling fact. You see, Ellis's cousin, Dorothy,
who I'm going to call cousin Dorothy so as not
to confuse her with Ellis's wife, lived across the street.

(13:52):
In talking with cousin Dorothy, Willie found out that she
was stirred awake by commotion at around eleven forty five pm,
so she pulled back her curtain and looked out the window.
She reportedly saw her cousin Ellis in her front yard
looking panicked. According to reporting in the News and Observer,
cousin Dorothy shared that she thought he might be yelling

(14:12):
for help. She then watched him move quickly across her
lawn and into the next block. He then stopped suddenly,
as if confronted by something. He backed up a few steps,
turned sharply, and disappeared behind a tall fence, losing sight
of him. She shared that she opened up her blinds
in another room to try to view from another angle,

(14:35):
and it was then that she saw a second person,
a stranger who she didn't recognize, walking casually down the
same street. According to the paper, he wandered into a
neighbor's yard and stood for a moment on the porch.
With the help of the outside lights, she could see
clearly the man's long, dark hair and dark overalls, and

(14:56):
she was fearful that he escaped from a local jail.
Getting a bad feeling about it, she called nine to
one one to report a prowler. Officer Wayley and another
sheriff's deputy responded to the call and searched around, but
found no sign of the man. According to police records,
cousin Dorothy's call came in just before midnight, which aligns

(15:17):
with her story. Something that struck me as odd was
that cousin Dorothy shared this whole story to the officers,
but it doesn't sound like they checked in on the
Fazon household. What's also odd is that Ellis Senior's wife, Dorothy,
had begun her search for Ellis around this time, so
it's surprising that they didn't all just run into one another.

(15:40):
It didn't sit well with Willy Faison that the cops
never disclosed this call or mentioned the man with the ponytail.
Cousin Dorothy gave a detailed description of the man to
the officers, including the fact that he had this long ponytail,
was white, was stocky, and that he had a limp.
The only other witnesses that night there were a couple

(16:00):
of people who drove through the area and confirmed they
saw police in the neighborhood between nine forty five pm
and twelve midnight. They said, as they were driving by
the Faison residence, an officer was parked across the street
and flashed their lights as they passed, as if to
announce their presence. This is interesting because Officer Wayley stated
that he left at nine forty five and doesn't remember

(16:22):
coming back to the Fazon property that night. Law enforcement
brushed this discrepancy aside, stating that while good intentioned people
aren't always very good at remembering times, and they likely
just mixed up the time the officer had camped out
looking for the teens to return. I just want to

(16:48):
take a brief moment to thank you for your continued
support of the podcast. Thanks to you all as loyal listeners,
I've been able to expand this podcast and hit so
many goals I've had for the year. I can't wait
to keep them coming. And I'll be sharing some exciting
news with you in the coming week, So stay tuned.
And now back to the show. Willie Faison struggled with

(17:16):
the investigation, and he confronted the officers, saying he knew
of someone who fit the description of the man with
the slicked back hair, even down to the limb. According
to the News and Observer, Willie identified this man as
a Keenansville youth who liked to hang out with the
two patrol officers. Mind you, these patrol officers, including Officer Wailey,

(17:37):
were barely into adulthood themselves. Wailey was around twenty one
years old. Willie Faison shared his concerns with the Keenansville
Police Chief, Glenn Braswell, who was not interested in Willy's
theories or his armchair detective work. But Willy wouldn't be deterred.
He began to accuse the Keenansville cops of a cover up,

(17:58):
and the relationship grew through Rocky and that's probably the
understatement of the year. Willy Faison said that the police
had altered their timeline of events, which they denied Willy
reported that he was denied access to the nine to
one one call transcripts, whereas the county reported that they
were accidentally erased. Willy told the paper, quote, I think

(18:20):
if I had shuffled my feet and said yes, sir boss,
they would have let me find my father's body. But
as it was, I wasn't even able to get reports
or anything in writing end quote. After voicing these accusations,
the Keenansville Police Department pulled in the State Bureau of
Investigation out of Greenville to do an independent investigation into

(18:41):
Ellis's case and their handling of it. This began in
October of nineteen eighty nine. Two SBI agents were assigned
and they interviewed about sixty people. Their findings were pretty
much the same as what was originally reported. Ellis's behavior
leading up to the events and on a day with
the hallucinations and paranoia, his subsequent nine to one one calls,

(19:05):
and Officer Wayley's handling of them, cousin Dorothy's nine to
one one call and the report of the prowler and
Dorothy the wife, and Alice Junior search for Elis Senior
and then reporting him missing. From there, it's a mystery.
Willie Faison stated in a nineteen ninety five article that
he believes that vigilantes heard the news reports over the

(19:27):
police scanner and decided to come and look for the
prowler themselves, maybe mistaking Ellis for the prowler, and he
was so scared that his heart gave out or they
hurt him and covered it up. Officer Wayley admitted that
this isn't outside of the realm of possibility, and that
everyone in town did have a police scanner they followed.

(19:48):
The SBI rejected this theory, but also didn't have one
of their own. Detective Jim Wilson of the SBI said, quote,
I can't explain to you or anyone what became of him,
and the explanation is that this stuff just happened. Sometimes
mister Faison just went missing. End quote. Willie Faison was angered.

(20:10):
He wrote to US Senator Jesse Helms, quote, my father
gave thirty five years of faithful service to the County
of Duplin before retiring. He is a veteran of World
War Two. I served two tours in Vietnam and was
wounded twice. Is this the type of treatment patriotic hard
working citizens can expect end quote. And he didn't stop there.

(20:32):
He wrote to everyone, the American Civil Liberties Union, the FBI,
the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, just anyone he could
try to press for answers. While he was on extended
leave from the military, he stayed in Keenansville and would
occasionally encounter local law enforcement, typically always engaging in some

(20:53):
sort of verbal exchange with them, but this boiled over
one day just before Christmas in eighty nine. The story
goes that Willy was at a convenience store. He came
up a few pennies short for a food purchase. He
got into a verbal altercation with the store clerk, who
then called the police. When the police showed up, Willy

(21:15):
said that the officers brushed forcibly against him. The police
report indicates that actually Willy then swung at them. A
continued altercation happened, where several food stands were knocked over
and wrecked, and in the end Willi Faison was arrested
for assaulting a police officer. In the end, he pretty
much got a slap on the wrist, he got a fine,

(21:37):
and things kind of mellowed out over that. He realized
he needed to take it down a notch. He resumed
his work in the military, and his visits to his
hometown were fewer and farther between. He continued his advocacy
work in letter writing campaigns, but he realized that he
might have to come to terms with the fact that
he won't find out what happened to his father, and

(22:00):
as someone super close with his father, this was just
devastating to him. Ellis Junior, the more quiet and contemplative
of the two brothers, stayed local and kept an eye
on his mother, Dorothy. Ellis Senior's disappearance took its toll
on her, and she died just a few years later
in nineteen ninety four, and since then there have been

(22:21):
no new leads. If Ellis were still alive today, he
would have just celebrated his one hundredth birthday, something statistically
unlikely given the health challenges he was already facing in
his sixties. But his family was haunted with the fact
that they couldn't give him a proper burial or know
what fate he encountered that night. I mean, there are

(22:42):
so many unanswered questions. Who was this prowler that cousin
Dorothy saw following Ellis that night. Is it possible that
his paranoias are what caused him to flee the house
that night, but that then he did encounter someone else
who harmed him after he left, and then even were
his paranoias rooted in some reality? I had the thought

(23:04):
that maybe some local teens were messing with him leading
up to this. Maybe not that night, as both his
brother in law and the responding officer reported being with
him when he claimed the teens were in his car,
and they could confirm with certainty that they weren't. But
it's not unheard of for board teens to go pick
on the mentally ill neighbor and mess with him. Was

(23:24):
this a racially motivated crime? Is there any chance that
this was a case of mistaken identity like some have suspected.
Why was Ellis uncharacteristically barefoot when he was so afraid
of snakes? What does this clue tell us? Did he
really just run off in the midst of experiencing a
different reality and somehow succumb to the elements. What is

(23:48):
difficult about this is he's never been found, and given
how he was in pretty poor health, it's hard to
imagine he could have gotten too far. I tried to
look up swamps, ponds and waterways in the area, but
I'm unsure of his exact last location, and without that
it's hard to tell. But if he did drown, his
body's never surfaced. It's hard to imagine that someone can

(24:10):
just wander off in a delusional state, disappear, and their
body not be found, but it actually happens more often
than you think. For example, in April of two thousand
and four, twenty eight year old Jeremy Alex vanished in Northport, Maine,
under mysterious and troubling circumstances. Witnesses reported that Jeremy seemed
paranoid and disoriented the day he disappeared, claiming quote unquote

(24:33):
bad guys were after him, before fleeing into the woods.
His van was later found abandoned with his personal belongings inside,
and a few weeks later his idea and cash were
discovered washed ashore nearby. Despite extensive searches and years of speculation,
no confirmed trace of Jeremy has ever been found, and
his disappearance still remains unsolved. In July of two thousand

(24:57):
and six, thirty three year old cold Duyne Jackson disappeared
under similar circumstances near Timson, Texas. On the thirteenth, he
left home to visit a friend, and later he drove
off with urgency, reportedly telling a local landowner that he
needed to flee because quote bad people were after him.
His silver two thousand three Dotch pickup was found abandoned

(25:19):
in Shelby County two days later, with his asthma inhalers inside,
suggesting he left without them and was in distress. A
subsequent search by family uncovered his shoes, and inside one
of his shoes was his wedding ring deep in the woods.
Due to his medical condition, recent mental agitation and odd behavior,
authorities flagged his case as an endangered missing person investigation,

(25:43):
but no trace of him has ever surfaced. Some states
have implemented new measures to help identify at risk missing
persons who may have some additional vulnerabilities, including mental health concerns.
Purple alerts, similar to Amber alerts, but for at risk
missing persons with say a medical, developmental or mental health

(26:04):
concern are becoming increasingly popular. They started in Florida in
twenty twenty one and are now in Mississippi, Maryland, Connecticut,
and West Virginia. It should be noted that these purple
alerts often exclude Alzheimer's and dementia patients from the alert requirements,
and I believe that is because of the frequency and
concern of overuse. It's this balance between wanting to do

(26:28):
these alerts but having enough criteria in place so that
people don't become desensitized to them. It's a tricky balance
that I feel like needs work on the ambler alert
side as well, But I do recognize the challenges with
all the time that has passed. This is one of
those cases I have a hard time seeing solved given
its unique set of circumstances unless skeletal remains pop up.

(26:51):
But I still found Ellis's case important to talk about because,
no matter his struggles, he deserved a softer ending to
his life than the fear he was experiencing that night,
something all of us need to have empathy for and
work to build a society that is better for people
who are struggling. If you do have any information on

(27:12):
the disappearance of Elis Faison Senior, please contact the Keenansville
Police Department at nine one zero two nine six nine
one one. This has been another episode of a Simpler
Time True Crime. If you appreciate the work I'm doing,
please leave a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts.

(27:35):
Word of mouth helps me grow and I can't thank
you all enough for all you've done to share the
podcast and these cold cases. As you can see by
this episode, I do take listener requests, so please send
them to Simpler timecrimepod at gmail dot com. I also
partner with families to share their loved ones cases, So
if you know somebody who is looking to give visibility

(27:56):
to their loved one's case and the case is twenty
years or older, please have them reach out. As always,
thank you so much for listening, and I'll be back
with another case next Monday.

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