Tashi Coleman

Thin Air podcast

Episode 1: BRANDON

NARRATOR: Last year, Brandon Taylor’s sister contacted me through social media with a simple but urgent question: WILL YOU PLEASE COME TO MISSISSIPPI TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BROTHER?

It was written in all caps, with little information about who she was or who her brother had been. She said she’d heard our earlier podcasts about missing people, murders, and botched police investigations. Over the course of the next several months, Shaina Taylor messaged me with countless newspaper articles, family photos, and details of candlelight vigils and walkathons to find out who killed Brandon.

On the last day his family saw him, Brandon said he planned to go deer hunting after school, a regular pastime in north Mississippi. He came home, grabbed a cold ham biscuit and a Mountain Dew and his Remington rifle. He parked his Chevy Apache pickup off a county road and walked into a large parcel of land adjoining a national forest. He never walked out.

For days, rescue crews searched the woods, crossing over the same thick forest time and again. More than a week later, Brandon’s body was found, ravaged by animals, time, and weather. The local sheriff ruled his death a suicide after a brief investigation. His rifle was located nearby, fired once. A bullet in his skull.

His family and friends never believed it. His sister said every step of the police and forensic work had been a mess. A proper autopsy was never performed and possible suspects never questioned. Not to mention, she said, no one in their county ever wanted the case solved. The truth would only embarrass some important people and call into question the motive of the county sheriff, a good and decent old man named Hamp Beckett. Over a series of dozens of heartbreaking messages, Shaina Taylor turned to us and said we were her last hope.

We receive countless requests like Shaina’s every day from all over the country. Thousands of people disappear or die without solid answers for their families. Shaina said her brother lived an idyllic life in a small Southern town. She called him a normal fifteen-year-old boy, with loads of friends, a classic old truck, and a girlfriend he’d met over the summer. She said he was a great photographer with a keen eye, a talented guitar player who idolized Garth Brooks, and a blossoming journalist.

The last part is what got me. Brandon Taylor had been a student journalist and a valuable member of the yearbook staff. He could’ve been anyone on our team of reporters, had he grown up. His family deserved answers.

So last summer, I packed up the few belongings I have and met up with my producer, Jessica Torres, to drive from New York City down to Tibbehah County, Mississippi. It’s a rural place known for sweet potatoes and some recent sensational stories about drug dealers, bank robbers, and a young crusading sheriff—coincidentally or not, the nephew of the old sheriff. Some real Walking Tall meets Faulkner kind of stories. As always, we tried to make ourselves invisible as we worked, talking to Brandon’s family members, friends, and local law enforcement, both retired and present. What resulted wasn’t quite the story we hoped to find.

Instead, we uncovered something darker and more sinister, a true meditation on today’s society. What do we value? Lies or facts. Posturing or morality. But to explain all that now would be taking you way too far down the country roads of Mississippi.

First, I must tell you about this boy, Brandon Taylor, and his 1955 Chevy Apache truck. It was a cold, rainy day in November 1997, and there was a rumor about the largest buck in the county wandering somewhere near County Road 334 . . .