The Unsolved Mystery Of Thomas Brown - Suicide or Murder? What Do You Think?
It takes a lot to shock me, but this case left me shaking my head. Thomas Brown lived in Canadian, Texas with his mum Penny, stepdad stepbrother, Tucker, who was home for thanksgiving. Thomas was 18, six feet one and 180lbs. He was hugely popular with his fellow students. As class president, he had time for everyone and people loved his quirky sense of humor. His friend Kaleb said they couldn't think of a single person who didn't like him.
On Wednesday, November 23rd in 2016 at around six in the evening, Thomas went to meet some school friends, Christian, Kaleb, and Michael. There wasn't a lot for them to do at night so they chatted, listened to music, and had a quick bite to eat. It was a normal night, and although Thomas had recently broken up with his girlfriend Saige, he seemed happy enough. At eleven pm the group went back to their retrospective cars which were parked in Canadian Middle School car park. At 28 minutes past 11 Thomas was seen on CCTV at the local fuel pumps filling up his truck with gas. By Midnight, Thomas's mother Penny got worried when Thomas was a no show. He never missed his curfew. In fact, he was usually home well before midnight, going online to play video games with his friends. She texted him a couple of times. No response. She tried again but it was undelivered as his phone seemed to be switched off. She rang around his friends but nobody had seen him. She hoped he had just broken down or got a flat tyre. This wasn't like him at all.
As the hours passed, Penny and her family became increasingly worried. They drove around the area. There was no sign. Police attended her home and Tucker, Thomas's brother did a drive around with the officer to look for him. While they were driving, Thomas pointed out a usually locked gate that was strangely unlocked. He asked the officer, Pyne Gregory, to investigate but he declined, saying he had to go off shift. As an ex-cop myself, I found this so strange. Wild horses wouldn't have stopped me investigating that open gate. Word spread in the community and people searched for Thomas. By 8.40am there was still no sign. Christian, Thomas's friend, persuaded her father to take up his helicopter and search the area. They found Thomas's truck in a remote area four miles from his home. Thomas's friends said that he wouldn't have even known about that spot, never mind drove down there. Police examined the car and Thomas's phone, laptop, backpack and keys were missing. But it's alleged that an empty 25 caliber bullet casing was found along with a 'smudge' of blood on the inside of the car and a debit card belonging to his friend Michael (although the debit card's owner is in question online). But no forensics were taken and the car was returned to Penny the same day (!)
The last location of Thomas's phone was pinged to Wildcat stadium in Canadian at 12.13 pm. Bloodhounds tracked his scent to the Canadian river, about a mile east of where his car was found. Hemphill County Sherrif's Chief Deputy Brent Clapp said there was no sign of a conflict and the general consensus seemed to be that Thomas had run away or committed suicide. But Penny did not accept this, and to be honest, neither would I.
Sheriff Nathan Lewis was new to his role in Canadian, although he'd had good results with drug busts, he wasn't familiar with missing person's cases like these. He asked Penny for her son's mobile phone password despite them not actually having recovered the phone. Penny also stated that Lewis showed her a close up photo of Thomas from that night and asked if it was him. She said it was, but Lewis later denied having any such picture. Lewis and Penny had a history, as Penny reported Lewis for an incident in 2015 (before he worked in Canadian) when he stopped Thomas, who was out with his friends. Apparently, Lewis was heavy-handed with the group and swore at Thomas, making him sit in his car as he told him off.
Lewis continued to push the narrative that Thomas had run away, or committed suicide or run off with an older man. Penny's family were adamant that Thomas wasn't gay, that he would never run away from home. Frustrated by how slowly the investigation was moving, Penny hired a private investigator. The investigators used Luminol to test the inside of Thomas's vehicle and discovered several more patches of what appeared to be blood. Two months after he disappeared, an electrical worker spotted a backpack next to a barbed-wire fence on Lake Marvin Road. This was around four miles from where the search dogs lost trace of his scent. Thomas's laptop was still inside but hadn't been used. No forensic evidence was found. It was said that the private investigator asked if the Cavadar dog could sniff the backpack but allegedly law enforcement refused. In October 2017 a mobile phone was found. A photo was shown to Penny and she said it wasn't Thomas's phone as his was plain gold, but the one found was rose gold. But law enforcement stated it did belong to Thomas and it's still held at the crime lab. On Jan 2018 Sheriff Nathan Lewis put in a formal request for the Texas Attorney General's office to take over the investigation, due to an online petition made by Penny. Several parties were later asked to take a lie detector test, which they did. Lewis claimed that when he was asked if he was involved in Thomas's disappearance, he said no, but felt he had been, due to his investigation around the case. The test said he was lying. But to be fair, these tests aren't 100% reliable.
On Jan 9th 2019, human remains were discovered near Lake Marvin Road by Pyne Gregory, the Deputy who drove around with Tucker on the night Thomas disappeared. Pyne said he was out searching for deer antlers, although he was on duty at the time. According to Penny, this was in the area that police advised Penny that they were not to search. Just to note, not everything here is 100% substantiated, just what I picked up while researching the case for my True Crime Channel on Youtube. There's a LOT more information in the video if you want to watch it here:
https://youtu.be/fa8R-fPBe2s The remains were identified as being Thomas.
It's said that Pyne Gregory was fired from the Hemphill County Sheriff's Office on May 2019. He had a criminal record as he was prosecuted in 2003 with regards an incident when he was off duty and pointed a gun at a pizza delivery driver who was making the rounds. But it's said his firing had nothing to do with this or Thomas's case.
Investigators put it to Penny that Thomas had killed himself and SHE hid his body as she was embarrassed by him taking his own life (!) Penny's father had killed himself years before, and while she recognised early on in the investigation that it was possible for any young person under pressure in high school to take their own life, she didn't believe this was the case with regards Thomas. A Facebook group, Moms4Tom put posters and banners all over town, although the words 'there is a killer amongst us' was ripped out.
In Nov 2019, Nathan Lewis resigned from his post as Hemphill County Sherriff after an investigation looking into him submitting falsified training records for his team. Colleagues have alleged that he also submitted false records with regards Thomas's investigation. He is also said to have thrown CCTV away because it didn't contain anything. Regardless of his motives, the case was mishandled from the start. It's been four years since Thomas's death and his family are still no further on. Penny has not yet been able to bury their son. As an ex-police detective, I'm always the first person to defend members of the emergency services as I know how tough this job can be. But I was left scratching my head with this case. The family deserved way better than this. I hope they find results soon.
submitted by
Caroline_Writes to
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JMIA is a joke and will need to raise cash, or die trying to become profitable. Yolo'd call last month up 700% now yolo-ing puts for DEC18.
Last month i bought calls for JMIA and made 700% on the calls. The stock has a predictable pattern of ups and downs so i bet up. was right. but now it's time for the down turn. However we are dealing with some unique forces because a few idiots like Citron and other MSNBC homos think it's going to be the next AMZN. Besides all of
u/yoinkedmustache points here (
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/jo4n9t/puts_on_nigerian_scam/ ) there are additional reasons why JMIA is a bad company, which i think is why they've had to release a beautifully-designed powerpoint deck full of irrelevant bullshit numbers (with a focus on percentages, not the magnitude of their paltry numbers) to keep the confusion and bs charade going.
-GMV is down by 15%. AMZN never once had a year where GMV was down from the year prior.
-They have EUR 147M in cash, but their 9 month operating loss is EUR 109M. They spend EUR 72M in G&A costs (tech, execs, etc.) in 9 months. They need to raise cash.
-They've slowed down on advertising (sounds like they're reaching their limit around EUR 150M in annual revenue)
-All of their bullshit about user growth is because they keep adding verticals like food delivery, JumiaPay, gaming, etc. which are not likely to be profitable either.
-Their 'business mix rebalancing' is a masterclass in stupidity. To turn the focus to fashion, beauty, home & living, FMCG away from difficult to find products like electronics is not going to work.
>The move to fashion, beauty, home & living, and FMGC seems smart for two reasons.
+Firstly, as a consumer, you don't really need to worry about the quality of fashion products or FMGC, either it's built into the brand (Proctor & Gamble) or its a t-shirt/shoes and you don't really need to be concerned with the 'quality' of a t-shirt or shoes (they don't cost $1000 nor are they going to explode upon opening). Trust is one of the two biggest issues facing JMIA, the other being the unnecessity of shopping online Africa, where small shops line neighborhoods.
++Study done which shows Africans have lower "interpersonal trust" than pretty much anywhere else in the world (
https://ourworldindata.org/trust), which is not good for e-commerce.
+ Secondly, the sellers of these products are typically smaller 'independent' businesses who JMIA can extract higher commissions from. 30% of total items sold on JMIA in 2019 were fashion or beauty products which are designed and manufactured by small local companies. The sellers also want an outlet to sell their products.
-With the pivot toward fashion/beauty product they've brilliantly increased their competition with Facebook's suite of products (FB, Instagram, WhatsApp), which are wildly popular in Africa.
-They're also competing with the millions of tiny little shops on the sides of the road, which are scattered across neighborhoods and main roads, which don't require you to wait, pay a delivery fee, or worry about delivery, waste your time opening the app, etc.
I'm sure there are 30 other reasons to short the shit out of the stock, but what is more a sign of death than slowing down growth when your an e-commerce platform in a market of 1.5B people (and you only have like 1-2% of the market as 'active users' which is a metric for anyone who bought something one-time in 12 months...to 'focus on profitability'.
submitted by
rocketmango411 to
wallstreetbets
