Timmy Ray Hawkins, a 32-year-old over-the-road truck driver from Van Buren, Indiana, was last seen on March 7, 2004. Two days later his employer received a text believed to be from him saying he had quit and that his truck could be found at a Subway in Pendleton, Indiana. On March 10, law enforcement found his 1993 green Chevrolet pickup at that location with a broken driver’s side window, bloodstains and other evidence suggesting a struggle.

Months into the investigation Timmy’s ex-wife, Joyce Ann Hawkins, who had been living with him despite a divorce three years earlier, confessed to shooting him in his truck in a rural area of Grant County on the day he disappeared. She gave detailed accounts of attempting to clean the truck with hydrogen peroxide, burning remains over three to four days on property they owned, and throwing the gun into a river. Searches and a follow-up search of the river produced no physical evidence to corroborate her statements.

Joyce wrote letters about the incident and later was found guilty of murder and sentenced to sixty years in prison in February 2007. Timmy Hawkins’s body has never been recovered; his final whereabouts remain unknown. Anyone with information about Timmy’s disappearance or the property referenced is asked to come forward.