The Disappearance of Billy Carver

Kyle Greene heard the limb snap at the same time his best friend, Billy Carver, screamed for help. Time slowed to a crawl as Kyle spun around and witnessed Billy falling, headfirst, through the air on the other side of the massive tree. There was a sickening thud when Billy’s fall suddenly ended, Kyle knew his friend was in trouble. Billy’s ball cap tumbled out into the clearing and rested a few feet away. Kyle shouted his buddy’s name but there was no reply, then the ten-year-old boy sprinted home. 

Tyler and Angela Greene returned to the park with their son a few minutes later. Kyle showed his parents the tree Billy had fallen out of. Angela was on the phone trying to contact Jake and Cindy Carver while Tyler walked around the massive oak and found Billy’s ball cap laying on the ground but not the boy.

Tyler looked, wide eyed, at his son and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Billy fell out of that tree!” Kyle said as he circled around to get a look at the far side where his friend landed. 

“Well he’s not here now. Is this some kind of a joke? Because it’s not funny, not funny at all!”

“No! He fell right there.” the boy frantically pointed to the hat on the ground. “I saw him. I saw him fall out of the tree. He should be right here. Dad, I’m telling the truth.” 

“Billy, where are you? Come here right now! This isn’t funny,” Tyler shouted. “Angela, did you get a hold of Jake or Cindy yet?”

“No, not yet. I’m still trying,” she replied.

“I’m gonna see if he ran into the woods. Keep trying Jake and Cindy. Drive over to their house if you have to. Kyle, come with me.”

Half an hour later three deputies and a tracking dog arrived to search for the boy. The dog easily found the boys trail as they entered the park, but there were dozens of other scents in the area and it made it difficult for the dog to determine which direction Billy might have gone. While the K-9 handler tried to find a trail, one of the other deputies spoke with Kyle and the boy explained how he and Billy came to the park to play in the big oak. 

The dying tree was over two hundred years old and stood on the edge of the park next to the woods. The lower limbs were just a few feet above the ground, so it was easy for smaller kids to scramble around on its branches. Kyle pointed out the broken branch Billy was standing on, nearly twenty feet above the ground. 

“I was standing right here, taking a leak, when I heard Billy scream. When I turned around, I seen him fall over there,” he said while pointing to the other side of the tree where they found the hat. “I heard him hit the ground, hard, and I took off running for home. I didn’t know what else to do,” he said as he began to cry. 

“Did you see who took Billy?” the officer questioned. “Can you describe him? Did you see which way they went?”

“I didn’t see anyone else, honest.” Kyle replied. 

A few minutes later Jake and Cindy Carver arrived at the park and another deputy took them aside to tell them their son was missing. The officer asked routine questions, “Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Billy? Do you have any enemies? Have you noticed any strangers in your neighborhood?” Jake answered the questions while trying to console his hysterical wife as people from town started gathering at the edge of the park to get a glimpse of the scene. 

The case was turned over to Detective Diaz of the Miami County Sheriff’s Office, who spent countless hours reviewing all the information about the kidnapping. Diaz soon formed a working hypothesis about what happened, he believed a man must have been watching the boys play in the park. When he saw Kyle run away after Billy fell, he moved in and swiped the boy. The boy was probably injured from the fall so it’s likely he would not have been able to resist his abductor. Nothing else made sense. 

Local authorities quickly exhausted all available options and soon called in state investigators for help with the case. A forensic artist sat with several people claiming to have seen someone suspicious in the city around the time of the disappearance. Drawings of several possible suspects were posted all over town and many people claimed to have seen someone looking very much like one of the men on the posters, but the man was never located. Three months later Detective Diaz travelled to Oklahoma to question an inmate in jail for kidnapping a young boy in Broken Arrow. The man looked eerily similar to one of the renderings the sketch artist provided. After a two hour interview the detective realized the man was not responsible for Billy’s abduction. 

In 1985, Billy Carver was the first child to ever be kidnapped from Devlin, Kansas. Nearly every citizen united around the Carvers to assist however they could with the search efforts. They raised reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever was responsible for taking Billy. Missing posters were displayed in the shop windows of every city and the surrounding counties for months after the disappearance. As leads came in, volunteers worked with law enforcement to organize searches of multiple locations around the area. However, the leads eventually dried up, so no more searches were conducted. 

Tyler and Angela Greene were so stricken with remorse for the Carvers loss, yet so thankful their own son wasn’t taken from them. From that point on, Kyle was never out of sight of one of his parents. 

The sight of the flourishing tree was a constant reminder of the loss of Billy that eventually became too unbearable. The Carvers started a movement to cut down the giant oak tree and a strong majority of the city council was in agreement, but a local historian petitioned the state to protect the tree. In the early 1800’s the oak had been at the center of the original settlement that would eventually become the city of Devlin. Before Kansas became a state in 1861, the tree was used as the gallows where convicted criminals were hanged. Because the vibrant tree was so significant to the early history of the state, the governor designated the giant oak as a historical landmark and was therefore protected. In 1988 the state held a dedication ceremony where a bench and plaque were set to commemorate the part the tree played in the development of the city. Jack and Cindy Carver moved to Lincoln Nebraska six months later. 

June 2005

The annoying sound of Detective Diaz’s phone rang three times before he finally picked it up. He recognized the number and was surprised to see it, he hadn’t heard from the caller in a long time. A few minutes later he hung up and walked rapidly out to the parking lot while dialing his supervisor’s number. 

Diaz had never given up on the cold case from his earlier days as a young investigator. When the call came in from the El Dorado Correctional Facility he was spurred into action once again.  After an exhausting two hour drive, he was pulling into the parking lot of the state prison. 

A short while later, Diaz was in an interview room speaking with Robert Huffman. Huffman was awaiting the death penalty for the brutal rape and murder of two women in the summer of 1995. As the day of his execution was rapidly approaching, Huffman decided he needed to come clean about some skeletons in his closet. The prisoner claimed to have information about the kidnapping of Billy Carver and wouldn’t talk to anyone but Diaz. 

Diaz left the interview room disappointed with the information he had just received from the three hour conversation. Huffman never admitted to kidnapping the boy or gave any reliable information about where his body might be found. All Huffman could offer was the same information that was available about the case in the local papers at the time of the disappearance. Diaz did not come out of the interview entirely empty handed though. He now had another person of interest to look in to. Huffman was never a suspect in 1985. 

The Miami County Sheriff’s Office conducted an exhaustive search on the eighty-acre plot of ground owned by Huffman’s family at the time of the disappearance. Jake and Cindy Carver returned to Devlin and spent innumerable hours, along with dozens of volunteers searching the property for any sign of their son. An old tennis shoe was found during one of the searches, but no one was able to confirm whether or not it belonged to Billy. In the end, the search provided no new clues to the boy’s whereabouts. Diaz didn’t return to El Dorado to re-interview Huffman and he ignored all future requests to speak to the prisoner. 

In 2009 Robert Huffman was put to death by lethal injection. His final words were, “You’ll never find Billy now. He’s closer than you think.”

March 2021

The sky began to darken as an enormous thunderhead approached from the west. Lightening flashed in the distance but was still too far away to hear the rumbling thunder. Kyle Greene plucked his jacket from the picnic table and shouted to his two kids playing on the swing.

“Come on girls, the storm’s getting close. Mom’s probably got dinner ready for us about now anyways.”

Kyle had been bringing his daughters to the park as often as he could and thankfully, working for the city as a maintenance supervisor allowed him plenty of time to do so. He wanted his children to have as many opportunities to play and just be kids as long as possible. However, he wasn’t going to let his guard down. He knew how quickly a child could disappear so he insisted that his kids wouldn’t go anywhere without him or his wife. Kyle kept a watchful eye on his daughters, there would be no chance of anyone stealing them from him. 

The girls hopped off their swings and raced to the family’s green minivan and climbed in the back. Kyle closed the door and looked to the sky when he heard the first rumble of thunder from the encroaching gale. He stole a glance at the dying oak tree at the edge of the park and thought of his missing friend. Casually, he walked around the vehicle and sat in the driver’s seat, he swung around and made sure his daughters were properly buckled in their seats then he drove them home. Rain started spackling the windshield as Kyle pulled the ancient van into his driveway five minutes later. The girls squealed and giggled as they ran through the rain towards the front door of their home. Their mother was waiting on them with the door wide open, the smell of fried chicken greeted them as they entered the house. 

Heavy rain and high winds pommeled the landscape throughout the night. The Greene family moved to the basement after receiving the first of several severe weather alerts on their phones. This was their annual routine during the springtime storm season. The girls laughed and shouted with each crash of thunder as it rattled the windows of their small home. Kyle didn’t laugh as he heard the heavy reports of large hail stones as they crashed on his new roof. It was going to be a long, sleepless night for him. 

By the time the sun came up the next morning, the storm had dissipated and left a lot of insurance claims in its wake.  Kyle stepped out onto his soaked front lawn to assess the damage to his property. In the distance he could hear a chainsaw fast at work on one of the storm’s many victims. All up and down the street, trees had been knocked over, many of them laying on homes and cars while others sprawled out across the roads. Luckily there was little damage for Kyle to clean up at his place. He would have to spend some time picking up large branches in his yard and he would need to call a roofing contractor to schedule an inspection.  Before starting to clean up his own lawn, Kyle decided he would retrieve his chainsaw from the garage and help remove the tree in his neighbor’s driveway and another one in the intersection at the end of his street. He would have to work fast, his boss would be calling anytime now to have him start cleaning up storm debris around town. So much for his weekend.

An hour later, Kyle and his crew were clearing debris from the city streets when his radio squawked. His boss sounded troubled when he told Kyle to meet him across town.  

Kyle parked his work truck behind three other city vehicles then walked across the familiar waterlogged lawn to where his boss, Terry Caldwell, and two more city workers were talking next to a bench. The muddy ground sucked at the soles of his work boots as he plodded towards the other men, one of them was David Chapman, the chief of police. As Kyle approached, Terry turned, made eye contact with Kyle and said, “We’ve found him.”

“What? Who?” Kyle asked.

“Just come take a look,” Terry replied and he stepped to the side allowing Kyle to move between the men. 

Kyle looked questioningly at the storm damage around them, then he noticed the broken tree. The old oak wasn’t able to stand up against the fury of the previous night’s storm. Half of the main trunk had been ripped away and unceremoniously strewn across the lawn of the park. Near the base of the hollowed-out half that was still standing, neatly tucked in an exposed cavity, was the skeletal remains of Billy Carver. The boy was wedged, upside down, in the void he fell into nearly thirty five years earlier.