Kenneth Henry Sumner, 48, vanished from rural Hughes County after a trip to the ranch he and his wife owned near Gerty. At the time the friend thought it a prank. Kenneth never returned home. His brown 1975 Ford F-150 and two guns kept in the truck were also missing.

Investigators explored a local dispute over a fence, but attention shifted after two inmates, Claude Eugene Dennis and Michael Charles Lancaster, escaped the Oklahoma State Penitentiary the day before Sumner disappeared. The escapees stole guns and a yellow Datsun and went on a violent crime spree that left multiple people dead. About a month after the spree ended, the stolen yellow Datsun was found abandoned in woods behind a barn in Gerty, not far from Sumner’s ranch, prompting the theory the escapees may have encountered Sumner and taken his truck. No direct evidence has ever tied Dennis and Lancaster to his disappearance. Kenneth Sumner was declared legally dead in 2007.

Did anyone in the Gerty area at the time remember seeing a brown 1975 Ford F-150 or the yellow Datsun near the ranch?