Afterword

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On November 23, 2019, two days after he spoke with a woman identifying herself as Crystal Mira, Brandon got on a plane bound for Kansas City. Security footage from a terminal in Kansas City International Airport shows Brandon exiting the jetway and making his way to the arrivals section. Another camera at the curbside pickup area showed Brandon waiting for approximately ten minutes before a black Chrysler 300 stopped at the curb where he was stood. An unidentified white male then exited the driver's side of the vehicle, shook hands with Brandon, and carried Brandon's bags into the trunk of the car. Brandon then got into the front passenger seat, and the vehicle pulled away from the curb. A luggage valet working that day who was later interviewed by Kansas City Police, said that he'd noticed Brandon before the car had arrived. The valet was reported as saying that Brandon had seemed tense while he waited, so much so that the man had been about to call the airport police when the car arrived.

That was the last time anyone saw Brandon Jones. Calls to his phone go directly to voicemail, though as the Read Receipt setting on his phone is enabled, it's apparent that the messages are being received. No one knows if it's Brandon reading the texts, or someone else with his phone. Either way, he, or they, I guess, know that people are looking for him.

In 2018, over 609,000 people went missing in the United States. Think about the size of that number for a second. That's over half of the population of the Bronx. It's the entire cities of Baltimore, or Seattle, or Memphis just up and gone. Vanished, never to be seen again. Brandon was one of those people–an anonymous face amongst a sea of anonymous faces.

The question now, for the people at The TARN Justice Project, and for myself is where do we go from here. Brandon's parents have reported him missing with the Archangel Sheriff Department, but neither his parents nor I have the slightest shed of confidence that the police will do any more to find Brandon than they did to find his sister. One only need listen to the podcast to know that Sheriff Donovic probably sees his going missing as a stroke of luck. As an officer of the court, I have a little pull within the legal system, but my sway doesn't go any further north than the Texas-Oklahoma border. That said, it's likely going to take someone pounding the pavement in Kansas City to get some real answers about what's happened to my friend, and with no one else around to do it, that someone is almost certainly going to be me.

Here's to hoping that my wife will understand.


Sean O'Connor, Esquire

Waco, Texas

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