DUNCAN — Contents of a large manila envelope lay on Duncan Police Det. Dan Fletcher’s desk. Most of it are scribbled notes he has jotted down during the past five years from interviews and phone calls he’s had regarding one of the city’s cold cases.

It’s the one case that Fletcher would like to see solved so he could retire.

Gail Anderson has been officially missing since Oct. 27, 2004, but in Fletcher’s early investigation of the young divorced mother, he’s been able to trace her whereabouts to the evening of Oct. 23. Events of her activities during the day that she was last seen have just drawn more questions than answers in the unsolved mystery of the missing woman.

What Fletcher has managed to piece together of that day is that Anderson had visited a friend who provided her a loaner vehicle so she could drive to Geronimo to visit her mother for the weekend. After leaving with the vehicle, she stopped at another friend’s home for about two hours. After she left that friend’s residence, she returned to her home at 105 N. D. Street, a rental, which she shared with a male companion. He’s the one that reported Anderson’s disappearance.

Another person was at the home and had left because Anderson and her boyfriend were going to pack to leave for her mother’s home.

While her boyfriend was in the shower, she packed her bag, but when he came out, she was gone. The borrowed vehicle was not. It was still parked in front of the home.

Fletcher said the boyfriend thought he heard a car door slam, but when he looked out the front window, he didn’t see anything.

“It wasn’t unusual for her to disappear for a day or two,” Fletcher said.

As Fletcher shared what he knows, it seems Anderson, 26, didn’t have many strong ties to anyone in her life. She was divorced and had signed custody of one of her two children to her ex-husband in Kansas; the other child was adopted.

She was unemployed and even though her boyfriend had gotten her the rental home on  D. Street to live, she kept most of her belongings in large black plastic trash bags, Fletcher noted.

 “I ran across a lot of things that didn’t mean a whole lot. Like on Mother’s Day every year, some guy would send her flowers from a florist shop in Ardmore,” Fletcher said. Attempts to find out the identity of the man left Fletcher with no answers. Fletcher said apparently the man paid cash and never gave his name to the florist.

Anderson’s childhood centered in the Walters and Temple area. Her sisters live in Geronimo, Lawton and in Texas, but she wasn’t real close to them either, Fletcher said.

One thing Anderson was consistent about was calling her mother every year to wish her happy birthday. Since her disappearance, the phone calls have stopped.

As an adult, she seemed to have several acquaintance friends, but no true relationships. Except with one of the friends who had last seen her. During his investigations, Fletcher learned Anderson had spent about three years with this particular individual.

He was the same man that she had spent about two hours with after getting the loaner vehicle and before heading home.

“I’ve heard several stories. She had a leather duffel bag, the one she packed to go see her mother. It has never been found,” he said.

Fletcher went to many of her known hangouts, including a local establishment on Main Street.

There was one place that she would visit each year. Her father and grandfather were involved in a boating accident at Waurika Lake and Fletcher said that Anderson would go sit at the Corum bridge there when she was having a rough time. But again this was just another piece of the investigator’s puzzle.

“Her dad drowned when she was 3,” he said.

Anderson enjoyed dancing and was known to frequent bars. Tips ranged from Anderson possibly visiting one of those hangouts in Lawton the night she disappeared, to even going to Louisiana with a biker. But Fletcher believes strongly that her disappearance leads to individuals closer to home, closer to Duncan.

“I know somebody out there knows something, knows what happened to her. Whether it’s the person responsible for her disappearance or someone else,” Fletcher said. “I’m almost sure two people know. We just need to get some closure.”

That closure isn’t just for the detectives who want the case solved, but also for Anderson’s son, who lives in another state.

Fletcher said she is still classified as a missing person and without any leads, it’s hard to solve a person’s disappearance. Because there is no evidence, Anderson is not classified as a homicide victim.

“This is the one I have wanted to solve so badly. I’d look at it and think, ‘Did I miss something?’ This is the case that has frustrated me the most,” he said.

Fletcher said there are two persons of interest, but one is in jail and the other only recently returned to the county. Neither are talking these days, though both were interviewed during the early active investigation.

If anyone has information, they can call Fletcher at 580-251-7629.



— Toni Hopper is a reporter for The Duncan Banner. She can be reached at 580-255-5354, Ext. 132 or by e-mail at: toni.hopper@duncanbanner.com.