Kenneth Ray Weaver
The Vanished Podcast
Wondery
4.5 • 15K Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2024
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On December 25, 2000, 37-year-old Kenneth Ray Weaver failed to visit his mother for Christmas. Typically, Kenny and his siblings always made it a point to see their mother on Christmas. If, for some reason, one of them couldn't make it, they would always call, but there was no word from Kenny. While Kenny's family quickly jumped into action to locate him, they faced roadblock after roadblock.
Kenny's family heard from his roommate that he dropped Kenny off at a friend's home in Pocola, Oklahoma, on Christmas Day. Another friend later came forward and said he had seen Kenny sitting on the porch of that friend's house and gave him a ride to Fort Smith, Arkansas. This friend recalled that it was Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day, and this is where Kenny Weaver's trail went cold.
Very little is known about what happened to Kenny around Christmas in 2000. Authorities from Arkansas and Oklahoma initially refused to take the case due to jurisdiction debates, which stalled filing a report for five years.
Nearly 24 years later, Kenny's sister has never given up on her pursuit of answers, and today, she has new investigators digging into the case.
If anyone has any information about the disappearance of Kenneth Weaver, please contact the Sebastian County Sheriff's Office at 479-783-1051 or the Pocola Police Department at 918-436-2476.
You can follow Becky's efforts to find her brother on Facebook at Missing Kenneth Ray Weaver.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When Becky, his sister first tried to get him reported as missing, the old administration here in Pekola, I guess looked into it just enough to say look the last place he was seen is |
| 0:25.0 | Fort Smith so Fort Smith really needs to investigate this. Well Fort Smith |
| 0:31.1 | investigated just enough to say, |
| 0:34.1 | hey, the last place he was actually seen |
| 0:37.9 | was in Picola, and so this is Picolas. |
| 0:41.0 | And they batted it back and forth. |
| 0:43.0 | This is yours. |
| 0:44.0 | No, this is yours. |
| 0:45.0 | I don't know why or how it is that it got to arguing, |
| 0:49.0 | but it turned into my opinion one of the biggest travesties that I've seen in my career. This is absolutely |
| 0:56.8 | ridiculous that it got drug out for so long before we even got him entered into NCIC as a missing person. |
| 1:05.8 | I mean it was five years and what that does for any investigator anywhere |
| 1:11.8 | it makes everything twice as hard. |
| 1:15.0 | The twist in terms of this case are just, you get to where you don't know what to believe |
| 1:20.0 | and even who to trust. I've had to play detective through the whole thing and I've talked to people I never should have had to talk to. |
| 1:26.5 | So I've been doing this for 23 years. The anger will eat you alive if you're not careful. |
| 1:32.0 | You have to kind of learn to tempt all that stuff down. |
| 1:34.4 | It's a huge struggle to try to play catch-up for something that happened so long ago and |
| 1:39.7 | frustrating at the same time because something could have been done and it wasn't. |
| 1:45.2 | In late December of 2000, 37-year-old Kenneth Ray Weaver was dropped off at the home of a friend in |
| 1:52.0 | Picola, Oklahoma. |
| 1:53.8 | He may have been driven to Fort Smith, Arkansas later that evening, |
... |
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