On a late summer day, September 6, 1958, in the small town of Goliad, Texas, 11-month-old A.J. Campbell Jr. and his three-year-old sister, Myrisha Faye, were picked up by their father for a scheduled visit. Their mother, Jewel Bernay Campbell, had recently separated from their father, A.J. Campbell Sr., after an eight-year marriage described as abusive. She had moved with her children to Goliad and was supporting them with a teaching job. The court had granted the children's father visitation on Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., but on this particular Saturday, the children were never returned. The father, a World War II veteran, was accompanied by an acquaintance named William Randle Jr. when he picked up the children. Randle would later recount the unsettling events of that day to investigators, providing the last known account of the children's whereabouts.
According to William Randle Jr., after picking up A.J.
and Myrisha, he and their father drove through the nearby towns of Cuero and Gonzales. At some point during the drive, the children's father asked Randle to stop the car, stating he wanted to visit a friend. When Randle got out of the vehicle, the father drove off with both children still inside. He returned approximately 30 to 40 minutes later, but A.J. and his sister were no longer with him. Upon his return, the father appeared nervous and agitated, asking Randle if he had any blood on him and claiming he had been in a fight with a relative where he had left the children. The two men then drove to San Antonio, where they parted ways after the father borrowed Randle's car, promising to meet him at a bus station at midnight to return it. He never arrived.
The following day, the children's father was found deceased in the borrowed car on a rural road near Austin, having died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Before taking his own life, he had telephoned a minister in Fort Worth and implied that he had killed his children, stating they were "at rest with the world." A note was also found addressed to the children's mother in which he wrote that he had "buried both children." Despite this confession, an extensive search for A.J. and Myrisha yielded no trace of them, and their bodies have never been found. The case officially remains an endangered missing persons case. Over the years, the children's mother and their half-siblings from her subsequent marriage have continued to search for answers, holding onto the hope that the children might have been given away or sold rather than killed. The story of A.J. and Myrisha Campbell is one of the oldest missing children cases in Texas, a deeply sorrowful narrative of domestic turmoil culminating in a desperate and tragic mystery that has endured for decades.Last Seen: Sep 6, 1958
