Tashi Coleman

Thin Air podcast

Episode 3: THE SEARCH PARTY

NARRATOR: The days after Tim Taylor found the old Chevy truck on County Road 334, everyone was looking for Brandon. Family, friends, church groups, volunteer firefighters, Boy Scouts, police, and game wardens. Even a psychic from Tupelo. The psychic’s name was Miss La Tonya, a palm reader and fortune-teller who claimed she spoke to Native American spirits who roamed the Big Woods. Those spirits, she said, had seen Brandon—alone, tired, hungry, and calling out for his family. WREG in Memphis covered the story from the start, Brandon’s parents appearing haggard and worried on their front porch in the bright lights of the cameras.

RHONDA TAYLOR [SCRATCHY TV AUDIO FROM 1997]: I just want my baby home. I know he followed that dang big buck way too far and got himself turned around.

NARRATOR: A week later, a National Guard unit was dispatched to Tibbehah County. Helicopters with spotlights flew overhead as searchers worked eighteen-hour days. Dog handlers were brought in, the baying of bloodhounds ricocheting off the distant hills. The sheriff at the time commented on a radio interview about the scene.

SHERIFF HAMP BECKETT: This whole thing has been a nightmare for this family. I just pray to God we find the boy alive. If someone has heard something or seen something, please let us know. Right now, y’all just keep us in your thoughts and prayers. These workers haven’t rested a wink since that boy went missing.

NARRATOR: For the searchers, everything meant something. A broken branch, a footprint that might’ve come from Brandon’s shoe, a discarded wrapper from Brandon’s favorite candy bar. Which, by the way, was a Nestlé Crunch. Or a windblown tarp spotted covering a fallen tree, a spot some thought might’ve been used as a shelter.

The searchers worked in the wind and the rain. The nights were cold and wet that November, many in the county recalling another boy like Brandon who’d been lost in the woods almost a decade before. This interview came again from WREG in Memphis in 1997.

TEENAGE BOY: When I was lost, I just kept walking. I knew I’d cross a road or see someone. Everything was real dark.

REPORTER: Weren’t you scared?

TEENAGE BOY: No, ma’am.

REPORTER: And how old were you then?

TEENAGE BOY: Ten.

REPORTER: How did you eat? How did you live?

TEENAGE BOY: I carried a .22 with me. There were plenty of squirrels and birds to eat. A rabbit, if you got lucky. I know Brandon will do the same.

NARRATOR: That was the voice of Quinn Colson as a seventeen-year-old high school senior, before he joined the Army. He would later come home to replace his uncle, Hamp Beckett, as sheriff of Tibbehah County. Colson liked to hunt even more than Brandon Taylor—that’s something we’ll revisit in future episodes. Despite what the sheriff told us, some said he might have been the very last person to see Brandon Taylor alive.