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September 21, 2025 30 mins
Most disappearances leave echoes—missing persons flyers, TV reports, police pleas for tips. But when James Robert “Jimmy” Farenthold vanished in the spring of 1989, there was only silence. No bulletin. No headlines. No public outcry. Just absence.

Jimmy wasn’t just anyone. He was the youngest son of one of Texas’s most prominent dynasties, a family bound by oil, politics, and power. But behind the legacy was a private story of grief and dysfunction. Jimmy had been born a twin—and when his brother Vincent died suddenly, Jimmy became the “one who lived,” carrying scars that shaped the rest of his life.

Charming yet reckless, Jimmy drifted through addiction, rehab programs, and cities across the South. In April 1989, he promised a fresh start. Bags packed, ticket in hand, he was set to enter a Florida treatment program. Instead, he disappeared. His car, his passport, even his clothes—left behind.

What followed was not the frantic search you’d expect for the son of a famous family. Instead, his disappearance became another fracture inside an already divided household. A father chasing rumors. A mother haunted by silence. A family dynasty unraveling.

Part 3 of 3 of our series follows Jimmy’s apparent final days, the dead ends that followed, and the generational weight of a name built on both power and tragedy.

If you have information about the disappearance of James Robert “Jimmy” Farenthold, please contact the San Antonio Police Department at 210-207-8939. 

Sources: The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, The Port Aransas South Jetty, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, texashistory.unt.edu, The Los Angeles Times, The University of Texas School of Law – Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Archives Project

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. Most disappearances come with noise, police reports, searches,
and families begging for answers in front of cameras. But
when Jimmy Farenthald vanished in the spring of nineteen eighty nine,

(00:22):
there was none of that. No bulletin, no headlines, just silence.
Jimmy was the youngest son of one of Texas's most
powerful families, a dynasty built on oil, money and politics.
From the outside, the Farenthald name meant privilege and influence,

(00:42):
but for Jimmy, it meant living in the shadow of grief.
He was a twin, and his brother Vincent's sudden death
due to the combination of the family's inherited blood disorder
and a late night fall, marked him forever. Jimmy carried
that absence like a scar, telling friends half in jest

(01:03):
that in his family's eyes, the good one died. As
an adult, he tried to outrun that pain. He was charming,
but reckless, sensitive and self destructive. He fought addiction and
drifted from one city to another, always chasing change but
never catching it, And then in April nineteen eighty nine.

(01:27):
He promised a new beginning, a Florida rehab program was
going to be a fresh start. His ticket was booked
and his bags packed, but Jimmy never got on the plane.
In fact, he was gone, his car, his passport, his
clothes all abandoned. What followed wasn't the frantic search you'd

(01:50):
expect for the son of a famous family. Instead, his
disappearance was met with hesitation, division, and decades of unanswered questions.
Jimmy Farenthald didn't just vanish from Texas. He vanished from
history itself. James Robert Doherty Farenthald, or Jimmy, was born

(02:36):
on February eighth, nineteen fifty six, the youngest son in
a family already split between two powerful legacies. To his father, George,
he was often seen as the prodigal son, the one
who wandered but might someday return with purpose. But he
had another side. As a child, Jimmy was quiet and watchful,

(02:59):
his world shaped by contrasts privilege paired with absence. The
weight of a famous name balanced against the silence inside
his home. His mother, Sissy, was rising into political activism,
moving from the courtroom to the Texas House of Representatives,
and eventually onto the national stage. His father was immersed

(03:23):
in oil and gas ventures, with business stretching from Houston
to overseas. The household was ambitious, high achieving, and often
emotionally cold. Cissy's role as the only female member of
the Texas House forced her into a stark choice. If
she prioritized her children, her male colleagues mocked her for weakness.

(03:48):
If she committed fully to her work, the children paid
the price, and her colleagues would spin it the other way.
During her run for governor in nineteen seventy two, she
brought along Dudley, George Junior, and Emily, all college aged
and all willing to cut their long hair and drop
out of school to bolster her campaign. Jimmy, just sixteen,

(04:12):
was different Labeled a troublemaker by Saint Stephen's Episcopal School
in Austin. He was prohibited from living on campus and
sent instead to stay with family friends during the campaign.
By then, the farentheld household was unraveling. The parents lived
apart more often than they were together, the children feuded

(04:35):
with their father, and education was sacrificed for politics. Even
Cissy admitted privately that she feared the family was slipping
away for Jimmy, though the deeper wound had come years earlier,
the death of his twin brother Vincent. From the moment
Vincent died after the combination of a bathroom fall and

(04:57):
an inherited bleeding disorder, Jimmy was changed. He wasn't just
the youngest son anymore. He was the surviving twin. Cissy,
haunted by memories of her own brother's funeral, decided Jimmy
should not attend Vincent's. She thought she was shielding him,
but Jimmy later spoke with regret about being denied the

(05:19):
chance to say goodbye. Outwardly, Jimmy seemed fine. He was sweet, generous,
and loved animals and plants, but he was also heedless,
prone to risk, and often wondered into danger. He was
a daredevil, diving into pools before he could swim, speeding

(05:42):
on motorcycles, and taking reckless chances. Despite the family's hereditary
bleeding disease, Willibrand's cissy tried to protect him, but Jimmy
tested limits. The loss of a twin left scars. Science
now recognizes show that surviving twins face a sharply elevated

(06:03):
risk of psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, and long term struggles
with identity. The risk of psychiatric illness spikes sevenfold in
the month after a co twin's death and lingers for decades.
Jimmy fit the pattern. He grew up, carrying both Vincent's

(06:23):
absence and the disorder that had killed him. He struggled
with dyslexia, drifted from school, and grew quieter than his siblings.
As he entered adulthood, addiction took hold. Jimmy cycled through
treatment centers and carried the stigma of being the one
who lived. He struggled with jobs, bouncing between temporary work

(06:49):
from a stint as a Georgia insurance salesman to laboring
in one of his father's businesses. Friends and family grew
used to him vanishing for weeks or months. He floated
between relatives, friends, and surrogate families, leaving wardrobes scattered across Texas,
and Jimmy's recklessness continually deepened. He survived a motorcycle crash,

(07:14):
was stabbed in a bar fight, and was once beaten
and dumped in a dumpster outside a topless bar He
took drugs, heavily favoring cocaine, and slipped in and out
of rehabilitation programs. Sometimes he agreed to go only to
appease his mother. Other times he escaped. Once, after being

(07:36):
dropped off at a halfway house, he fled the same
night and caught a plane to Houston. Despite everything, Jimmy
could be magnetic. He was charming and funny. He often
called himself the family's black sheep, joking darkly that the
Farenthals preferred him hidden away. He spoke bitterly of being

(07:58):
barred from Vincent's funeral, and at times confided to others that,
in his family's eyes, the good one died for Jimmy
Farenthald survival was not freedom. He had lived while his
twin had not. In many ways, he never escaped the
moment Vincent died. The fate of the Farenthald children was

(08:20):
not to uphold the family's legacy of wealth and achievement,
but to grapple with its curses. Each child bore scars
from that burden. Some would eventually push through. Jimmy would not.
In the Farenthald household, the children inherited not only privilege,
but also dysfunction. Their father, George, drank heavily after a

(08:46):
few two many he often turned his anger toward his children,
especially the boys. He ridiculed their long hair, their liberal ideals,
their refusal to become the kind of disciplined aristocrat airs
he expected. They disappointed him, and he made sure they
knew it. Drugs became another battleground. The boys experimented, and

(09:12):
George flushed their stashes down the toilet when he found them,
which was fine, but after proceeded to rail that they
were failures. Jimmy, the youngest, absorbed these conflicts most deeply.
To his father. He was both the prodigal son and
the greatest frustration. Jimmy never wrestled the family's infirmities into submission.

(09:36):
He embraced them. Addiction took root, feeding on his lifelong
grief from losing Vincent, and the relentless judgment at home.
While his siblings stumbled but recovered, his life became the
newest reflection of the family's unhealed pain. Through the nineteen
seventies and into the nineteen eighties, drugs remained the family curse.

(10:00):
Alcoholism and addiction ran through the Farenthalt bluntser Dougherty bloodline,
claiming family members and even a cousin who died of
a heroine related illness. For Sissy, this reality was devastating.
She admitted her family had been ravaged by drugs. Some
of her children emerged scarred but intact, not Jimmy. By

(10:35):
nineteen eighty five, George and Cissy Farenthald's marriage collapsed entirely.
They divorced that summer. Jimmy meanwhile slipped further into instability.
He continued to seek his parents' approval, but carried both
the burden of Vincent's death and the weight of his
own failures. Addiction shadowed him, pulling him deeper onto the

(11:00):
edge he seemed to crave. By the late eighties, Jimmy
was running out of road. Addiction had consumed his days.
His family ties were frayed, and he drifted between treatment centers,
borrowed couches, and late nights at bars across Texas. He
lived like a man circling the end, leaning closer each time.

(11:25):
Then one day he simply stepped off the edge. Jimmy
slipped away, without fanfare, without a trace. There would be
no police report, no explanation, only silence, and the kind
of silence that gnaws at everyone left behind. By April

(11:45):
of nineteen eighty nine, Jimmy Farenthald was twenty three years
removed from his twins' death and more than a decade
into his own battles with drugs and instability. That spring,
he resurfaced in Houston to spend time with his mother.
For a couple of weeks, he seemed to be trying.

(12:05):
He went to alcoholics anonymous meetings, sometimes several in a
single day, and spoke about wanting to change the trajectory
of his life. His drug use, particularly crack cocaine, had
taken him to dangerous places, and at least once he
had been found unconscious with paraphernalia scattered around him. In Houston,

(12:28):
though Jimmy seemed defined some resolve. He talked about a
treatment center in West Palm Beach, Florida, where a friend
had turned his life around. He made the arrangements himself
and booked a PanAm ticket for April seventeenth. His mother
agreed to pay for the program, encouraged by his apparent commitment.

(12:50):
For once, it looked like Jimmy might be serious. But
when April seventeenth came. He never made it to Florida.
A few months later, his mother received a refund for
the unused ticket. She tucked it into a folder that
already held another boucher, a reminder of a Vienna trip

(13:10):
Jimmy had promised to take with her but skipped, spending
time instead in Corpus Christy with drugs. The pattern was
familiar to Sissy Grand declarations of change followed by collapse.
It was typical of those struggling. On April fourteenth, a
few days before the scheduled flight, Jimmy phoned a friend

(13:33):
in Fort Worth. He admitted he wasn't going to Florida. Instead,
he said he planned to travel to San Antonio to
meet with his brother in law, Alan Stewart, who had
been holding onto money Jimmy believed might help him start
a business. He talked about a fresh start, new car,
new job, new place to live. To the friend, Jimmy

(13:55):
sounded sincere, but that was the last she ever heard
from him. Alan Stuart later confirmed that Jimmy flew into
San Antonio on April sixteenth. Jimmy pressed him for money,
but Stuart resisted. He told Jimmy the family was willing
to help set him up in something legitimate, but only

(14:15):
after he completed the treatment. Jimmy, however, was already wavering.
He worried aloud that the Florida program would be too restrictive,
that he might need access to a car, and that
he had loose ends back in Corpus Christie. Despite those doubts,
he assured Stuart that he still planned to go. That afternoon,

(14:38):
Alan dropped him off at the airport, believing he was
on his way to Florida. From that moment forward, Jimmy
Farenthald was gone. There were no more phone calls, no
more sightings, no paper trail. The youngest son simply disappeared
into silence. In the weeks after April nineteen eighty nine,

(15:02):
the silence around Jimmy Farenthald began to worry those who
knew him best. An Austin couple who had long served
as one of his surrogate families noticed that his absence
had stretched unusually long. They had been in regular contact
with him for years and now found it strange that
he had not called. Around the same time, a friend

(15:24):
in Corpus Christi reported having spoken with Jimmy on April
twenty ninth. In that phone call, Jimmy said he still
intended to travel to the Florida treatment center and wanted
to meet before leaving. They made plans, but Jimmy never arrived.
When the friend went to his house afterward, no one

(15:45):
was home. On the kitchen table sat Jimmy's driver's license.
The signs grew more troubling. Although he had told several
folks he was headed to Florida, he never boarded a plane.
At the house he had been renting in Flower Bluff,
an area of Corpus Christie, Jimmy left behind nearly everything

(16:08):
his car, motorcycle, passport, clothing, and other personal belongings. He
simply disappeared. Weeks turned into months, and there was still
no word for his family. It was a familiar and
painful silence. Jimmy was thirty three years old, but in

(16:28):
many ways he remained defined by the loss of his twin.
Those who knew him understood how fragile his hold on
life had become. Mother's Day came and went without his
customary telephone calls to his surrogate families and own mother.
By June nineteen eighty nine, two months after Jimmy's last

(16:50):
known contact, Cissy and her daughter Emily went to the
San Antonio Police Department to file a missing persons report.
The officers reminded them that Jimmy was an adult. Even
if he were located, They explained he had the right
to his privacy. They promised to do what they could,

(17:10):
but the reassurance rang thin. Jimmy had disappeared, leaving behind
his possessions, his family, and the last fragile promises of
a new beginning. In nineteen ninety, a year after she
first filed the missing person's report, Sissy returned to the
San Antonio Police Department seeking updates on Jimmy's case. What

(17:34):
she found was another blow. Her son's name had never
been entered into the police computer system. The bureaucratic oversight
meant that for an entire year, Jimmy's disappearance hadn't even
been formally recorded into the state's databases. The gap underscored
just how quickly his case had slipped into obscurity. Another

(17:58):
absence brushed aside almost from the day Jimmy vanished, rumors
began to circulate. One tip suggested he was confined at
the San Antonio State hospital. A friend joined by George,
went to the facility to check. Officials denied he was there.

(18:20):
Another story surfaced from Houston. Someone claimed to have seen
Jimmy in a restaurant, saying he was in the federal
Witness Protection program. George followed up with contacts in that
program and confirmed that Jimmy was not listed. The father
himself described his son as kind and generous, though also irresponsible.

(18:44):
When Jimmy had money, it never lasted long. He was
known to spend it quickly and freely, buying gifts for
his friends, while furnishing his own rented home with little
more than garage sale fines. George believed that before his
death disappearance, Jimmy had been making a sincere effort to change.

(19:04):
In the year prior, he had stayed off drugs for
a time and spoke enthusiastically about his planned trip to
Florida for treatment, Convinced he was ready for a new chapter,
but their relationship was strained earlier in nineteen eighty nine,
when George was moving property into a new house in
Corpus Christie, several valuable paintings disappeared. He accused Jimmy of

(19:30):
the theft, Jimmy was deeply offended by the suspicion, and
the hurt remained unresolved when he disappeared. Despite the fractures
between them, Jimmy continued to seek his father's approval. When
George suffered a stroke in nineteen eighty eight, Jimmy's fear
of losing him had been unmistakable. It seemed impossible to

(19:53):
believe that he would walk away for good without ever
checking back. In August of nineteen ninety twenty one, George
Farenthald hired Catherine Deyounger, a private investigator and relative from
the Bluntser Dougherty side of Cissy's family, to search for
his missing son. She spent more than four months working

(20:15):
the case, chasing down every lead that surfaced. One tip
suggested Jimmy was in Brazil. De Younger pursued it along
with other possibilities, but each trail collapsed into nothing. After
exhausting her options, she concluded something was wrong, though she
could not prove what, and resigned from the case. The

(20:39):
New Wace's County Sheriff's Department was also asked to look
into Jimmy's disappearance. Captain William Edge confirmed that friends of
the family had approached the department late the previous year,
but investigators reported no new leads. George, now seventy five
and living alone in Corpus Christie, pressed on with his

(21:01):
own search. From his rented home. He followed rumors across
Texas and beyond, from Houston to San Antonio. Every inquiry
came back empty. Uncertain of his son's fate, George could
only hold on to one hope that Jimmy was alive somewhere,
and that before his own time ran out, he might

(21:23):
see his youngest son again, just once. Jimmy Farenthald was
last seen in April nineteen eighty nine. He hasn't been

(21:44):
heard from since. Rumors certainly swirled, but within the family
the silence was heavy. For nearly three years, the disappearance
remained a quiet matter, contained inside private grief that ended
in the fall of nineteen ninety one, when George Farenthald,
six years divorced from Cissy, launched a public crusade to

(22:08):
find his missing son. George had always played a less
public role in the family than Sissy, but he carried
as much weight in shaping its atmosphere. He was a
heavy drinker, often verbally explosive after too many glasses, and
his anger frequently landed on his son's guilt nodded him.

(22:29):
Now living alone with his memories and advancing age, he
alternated between lashing out at the absent Jimmy and breaking
down in tears at family meetings. Sissy and the children
urged him not to go public. He ignored them and
gave his story to the San Antonio Express News. By

(22:50):
January nineteen ninety two, George found himself cut off from
Cissy and the children. The newspaper published unsubstantiated things gathered
from friends who resented Cissy's silence. They suggested she was
relieved Jimmy was gone, or even responsible for it. There
was no evidence of this, of course, and the story

(23:13):
deepened divisions inside the family. George admitted he was no
closer to answers, just pain and confusion. No one, not police,
private investigators, family, or friends, knew where Jimmy was. Eventually,
Cissy Farenthald did break her silence, acknowledging the pattern that

(23:36):
haunted her family generation after generation. The Bluntser Dougherty Tarlton
Farenthald line had been touched by some sort of tragedy,
whether it be addiction, alcoholism, manic depression, or early death.
Jimmy's struggles were part of that larger cycle, a family

(23:56):
story of self destruction that could not be denied. His
mother eventually spoke of him in the past, tense, convinced
he was dead. By July nineteen ninety two, George admitted
he was no closer to finding his son than he
had been when he began the search. He asked the

(24:17):
New Wace's County Sheriff's Department to take another look, but
he felt investigators quickly lost interest. To press forward, George
offered a ten thousand dollars reward through the Heidi Search
Center in San Antonio and hired Corpus Christi Police Captain
Sam Grenado to investigate privately, but the leads went nowhere. Exhausted,

(24:41):
George admitted he had spent thousands chasing false trails. At
seventy six years old, he said he could not wait
much longer. Despite the search, Jimmy was never found. George
also came to believe his son was dead, saying he
wanted to bury him next to Vincent, his twin. Jimmy

(25:04):
Farenthald's life was marked from the beginning by contrasts privilege
and absence, expectation and loss. He was born the youngest
son a surviving twin after Vincent's sudden death, that absence
defined him. Studies show that the loss of a co

(25:25):
twin can heighten lifelong risks of addiction, psychiatric disorders, and
self destructive behavior. Jimmy became a living example of those findings.
Through childhood. His mother, Sissy, was increasingly consumed by politics,
while his father, George was distant, volatile when he wasn't,

(25:46):
and critical of his sons. Jimmy drifted through school, through
surrogate families, and into addiction. He tried treatment programs, cycled
in and out of rehabilitation, and clung to the hope
of rebuilding his life. But in April nineteen eighty nine,
after making plans for a treatment center in Florida, he vanished.

(26:10):
He left behind his motorcycle, passport, clothing, and home in
Flower Bluff. At first, his disappearance remained private, the family
clinging to silence, but after nearly three years without word,
George went public, hiring investigators, offering rewards and chasing rumors

(26:30):
across Texas and even as far as Brazil. None of
it led anywhere. Cissy eventually acknowledged the painful truth that
drugs and self destruction had ravaged her family and that
Jimmy was gone. In two thousand and five, the family
held a funeral in Jimmy's absence, presuming him dead. George

(26:55):
would die in two thousand and Sissy in twenty twenty one,
never knowing what became of their youngest son. The Farenthold
story is one of dynastic promise undone by private grief.
Oil wealth, European titles, and political ambition built the family's

(27:16):
name into Texas history, but behind the public successes ran
a darker legacy loss, addiction, and tragedy. The Farenthald family
name has long carried both influence and infamy in Texas.
Son of murdered Randy, Blake Farenthald blended law and business

(27:37):
into a career that moved him into conservative talk radio
before he was elected to the US House of Representatives
representing Texas's twenty seventh congressional district. He first won the
seat in twenty ten, defeating longtime Democratic incumbent Solomon or Tees,
but Blake Farenthald's political rise and in scandal. He resigned

(28:02):
in twenty eighteen after it emerged that eighty four thousand
dollars in public funds from the Office of Compliance had
been used to settle a twenty fourteen sexual harassment suit
filed by his former communications director, Lauren Green. He denied
the allegations, but acknowledged fostering and overly permissive, unprofessional office culture,

(28:26):
initially pledging to repay the money before reversing course on
lawyer's advice. His image had already drawn scrutiny, most memorably
from a campaign photo of him in duck patterned pajamas,
and after Congress, he briefly worked as a South Texas
Port Authority lobbyist before returning to radio. He died in

(28:48):
Corpus Christi in twenty twenty five at age sixty three,
with his longtime consultant Steve Ray, citing liver and heart ailments.
This closed another chapter in a family history defined by wealth,
public life, scandal, and loss, a legacy as fractured as

(29:09):
it was prominent, It was Jimmy's disappearance that always kept
the circle closed. He was the youngest, the last twin,
the one who could not outpace the family's curses. His
absence remains unresolved, a void that carries the weight of
an entire dynasty's unraveling. Official records describe Jimmy as endangered missing.

(29:37):
He is a white male born on February eighth, nineteen
fifty six. He would be sixty nine years old today.
He was thirty three years old when he disappeared. Jimmy
stood five feet ten inches tall and weighed one hundred
and fifty pounds. He has brown hair, brown eyes, and
sometimes wore a mustache. If you have any information about

(30:01):
the disappearance of James Robert Jimmy Farenthald, please contact the
San Antonio Police Department at two to one zero two
zero seven eight nine three nine. If you'd like to
join Gon Cold's mission to shine a light on unsolved
homicides and missing persons cases, get the show at free

(30:22):
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(30:43):
for listening. Y'all
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