Speaker 1: This episode mentioned suicide. Please take care while listening.
Speaker 2: Middletown have their skeleton. I mean they're not with that.
Speaker 1: Greg Thompson is fifty three years old and has lived
Speaker 1: within a forty five minute drive of Wagner, Oklahoma, his
Speaker 1: entire life.
Speaker 2: Wagner is a small town. I don't even remember what
Speaker 2: the population is here rad off In. I want to
Speaker 2: say three to five thousand people or something, but that
Speaker 2: could be totally out.
Speaker 3: I looked it up.
Speaker 1: It's about double that eight thousand. Still small, a place
Speaker 1: where everyone kind of knows everyone and neighbors act neighborly.
Speaker 1: When Greg meets Tealina, she's a recent transplant to the area.
Speaker 2: Outsiders don't normally take interest in what tier. With Tlena
Speaker 2: not being from the area, that made her even more special.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, Greg became friends with Telina because he's
Speaker 1: the guy you call when you've got odd jobs that
Speaker 1: need doing.
Speaker 2: She hired me for like candy man stuff like mowing
Speaker 2: and weed eat and hanging TVs and just all kinds
Speaker 2: there's handyman type stuff.
Speaker 1: In early twenty twenty, before COVID shuts the world down,
Speaker 1: Teleina is on the hunt for the perfect mattress to
Speaker 1: help her troubled sleep. This turns out to be a
Speaker 1: tedious task for the fifty three year old who buys
Speaker 1: and returns multiple mattresses in the process, but luckily she
Speaker 1: has Greg to help her with the heavy lifting.
Speaker 2: Telena wanted to change the mattress out in her bedroom,
Speaker 2: and she got a new mattress and needed somebody to
Speaker 2: unpack it and put it on and then haul the
Speaker 2: old and off. And so I did all that well.
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks later she said that she didn't
Speaker 2: care for the mattress, who wanted it return. She's got
Speaker 2: another one, Kevin.
Speaker 1: Finally, Teleina finds a mattress that checks all the boxes,
Speaker 1: but now she has an extra mattress on her hands.
Speaker 1: Luckily she knows a family in need.
Speaker 4: She was going to guess that bed to us. Our
Speaker 4: son is like six foot one now, so like make
Speaker 4: bed to word that for him.
Speaker 1: This is aris house, another one of Tolena's local friends.
Speaker 1: Aris had just closed on her very first house. Teleina
Speaker 1: had guided her through the process emotionally and sometimes even financially.
Speaker 1: In fact, the bed was just one of many things
Speaker 1: Teleina offered to help make Eris's new house a home.
Speaker 4: She was a part of the reason why we were
Speaker 4: able to.
Speaker 5: Get utilities turned on new law, new light. She had
Speaker 5: been saving up a Nashtag for I've ever since I
Speaker 5: told her that we were starting a profit to buy
Speaker 5: a house. I can't even put a name to all
Speaker 5: the kitchen appliances and trinkets and items that she's put
Speaker 5: in our house and added to our lives.
Speaker 2: The way she did.
Speaker 1: As COVID hits Oklahoma, Aris doesn't get to see her
Speaker 1: friend very often. Tuleina has rheumatoid arthritis and other health
Speaker 1: issues that make contracting the virus a real concern.
Speaker 4: She was a you know, compromised, so she was taking
Speaker 4: it very, very seriously.
Speaker 1: But Tealina still wants to hand off the mattress as
Speaker 1: she promised, and so on Friday, March twenty seventh, Tulina
Speaker 1: texts Eiris to organize a pickup.
Speaker 4: She was checking to see if we were coming to
Speaker 4: get to bed this weekend. That next morning, the twenty eighth,
Speaker 4: I got a message that said.
Speaker 6: A bort mission. I've got a terrible migraine. I've been
Speaker 6: staying in bed today.
Speaker 4: I said, okay out.
Speaker 1: A few days go by, having not heard from. Her
Speaker 1: friend Aris checks in.
Speaker 4: On a third and I said her that I hope
Speaker 4: you're feeling Betters wanting you know, if I get dropped
Speaker 4: by it.
Speaker 7: Yes, I don't.
Speaker 6: Want anybody coming to the porch and making the dogs
Speaker 6: bark because I'm sleeping a lot.
Speaker 4: I said, that's okay, maybe another time.
Speaker 1: This is her last exchange with Telena before she goes
Speaker 1: missing from iHeart Podcasts. I'm Melissa Jelson, and this is
Speaker 1: what happened to Teleina's oar.
Speaker 8: Hey everyone, I'm on day nine of this virus, and
Speaker 8: I am pretty sure it has reached my lungs.
Speaker 9: For her to just leave people with no way of
Speaker 9: contacting her and knowing if she was alive or.
Speaker 4: Dead was strange to me.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of secrets that were very hard
Speaker 3: to find, and no one wanted to talk about anything.
Speaker 10: I'm a really nosy person, so that's how I got
Speaker 10: caught up in all this.
Speaker 4: I was like, this is this is crazy.
Speaker 1: Episode two small town big Secrets.
Speaker 2: She wanted to help anybody and anybody.
Speaker 1: This is Greg, the local handyman in Wagner.
Speaker 2: She helped us volunteer picking up trash a few times.
Speaker 2: I'd heard of her giving food to people that needed
Speaker 2: it or giving them little jobs to do.
Speaker 11: Like me.
Speaker 2: You know, she knew that I needed something to do,
Speaker 2: so she'd give me jobs. And she had other people
Speaker 2: that would you know, do little odd jobs for or
Speaker 2: somebody he moved through the area from bigger towns and
Speaker 2: just take in the interest in what's going on here
Speaker 2: and trying to help people that live here that may
Speaker 2: impression on me.
Speaker 1: When Teleina moved to Wagner, Oklahoma, in late twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: she did it with her partner Tom. They left their
Speaker 1: longtime home in Indianapolis and purchased a brown ranch house
Speaker 1: in Whitehorn Cove, a lake community near the border of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: From the outside, the home is rustic looking, cozy, private,
Speaker 1: set back from the road and nestled among the tall trees.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to move to a totally new place
Speaker 1: when you're in your fifties and beyond. But the couple
Speaker 1: had their reasons for choosing Wagner, of all places, one
Speaker 1: being they had a group of friends who were already
Speaker 1: established there, Like Aris Howe, she.
Speaker 12: Could be exactly the person that she was here and
Speaker 12: that was a little weird, a lot filly a little
Speaker 12: queer Oklahoma had all the people who brought out the
Speaker 12: those aspects for her.
Speaker 1: The two women were several decades apart, and ers looked
Speaker 1: up to Telena like a big sister.
Speaker 4: She always left you kind of enraptured by what she
Speaker 4: was saying because she had a unique way of telling stories.
Speaker 4: She had a very dry wit, and it.
Speaker 1: Helped that they shared the same offbeat sense of humor.
Speaker 1: Aris told me about one time Telena was giving her
Speaker 1: some spices from her pantry that she no longer needed.
Speaker 12: I grabbed a bottle of dill weed and I said, oh,
Speaker 12: look at the bottom of my husband the dill weed.
Speaker 12: And we laughed really hard about it, and then she
Speaker 12: snatched the bottle away from me and a land of
Speaker 12: the other round.
Speaker 4: She had a label maker. She typed in that labels at.
Speaker 13: The bottle of Jason and clapped it on the bottle
Speaker 13: of dill weed and handed it back the look.
Speaker 4: Of absolute joy and mischief in her faith. When she
Speaker 4: handed me that bottle, it was like sharing the best secret,
Speaker 4: and we both fell apart in laughter.
Speaker 1: To her friends, to Lena was not only kind, generous,
Speaker 1: and hilarious, she was also super smart, here's Greg again.
Speaker 2: She was a self proclaimed computer I called her my
Speaker 2: own little hacker.
Speaker 1: Talina was a techie and a good one. She worked
Speaker 1: on Microsoft products, fixing code errors that no one else
Speaker 1: could solve.
Speaker 2: My wife was going to school at the time for
Speaker 2: her bachelor's and didn't know anything about powerpart presentations and
Speaker 2: Microsoft Office and all these things. In Tolena had worked
Speaker 2: for Microsoft and she dropped some of these program so
Speaker 2: she saw another opportunity to help my wife, and she
Speaker 2: started helping her with these presentations and showed her how
Speaker 2: to do it herself and things like that. She felt
Speaker 2: like she could help you out of the hole you're in.
Speaker 2: She was here, was all in.
Speaker 1: Telena was helpful to her community and also devoted to
Speaker 1: her partner to The two had been together for more
Speaker 1: than a decade.
Speaker 4: They had one of those bonds that you know, everybody
Speaker 4: could aspire to.
Speaker 5: You could see you could just look at him in
Speaker 5: a glance, the way they looked at each other.
Speaker 14: They were young fool anytime they looked at each other.
Speaker 1: But Teleina wasn't a homebody. She travels a lot for work,
Speaker 1: often swinging through Indiana, where she and Tom used to live,
Speaker 1: and some of her extended family remained, and then while
Speaker 1: she was on one of those routine trips, the unthinkable happened.
Speaker 4: They both went here and then like not even I
Speaker 4: don't even think it was a year later. Tom had
Speaker 4: a stroke while she was away on work, and when
Speaker 4: she came back from work, you know, they had found
Speaker 4: it on the floor. He was still alive. He had
Speaker 4: hung on long enough for her to say goodbye.
Speaker 1: Tom was only fifty nine. In his obituary, he was
Speaker 1: described as a twenty two year veteran of the army
Speaker 1: and an avid gun enthusiast. The family asked that in
Speaker 1: lieu of flowers, well wishers could donate to his favorite charity,
Speaker 1: for Love of Dogs.
Speaker 4: I remember after Tom and path and we went over
Speaker 4: to her house for the memorial. It was an intimate
Speaker 4: gathering with probably about twenty of us, and we all
Speaker 4: kind of said a word for Tom, and you could
Speaker 4: see around the house where she left ticket that they
Speaker 4: do not move, do not touch. The general assumption was
Speaker 4: so I was was the left eye inst he had
Speaker 4: cut and she wasn't ready for those to.
Speaker 1: Move Toalina was shattered by the loss.
Speaker 14: They were deeply connected and while she was able to
Speaker 14: regate her joy and find life again.
Speaker 4: It wasn't the same as she couldn't share it with him.
Speaker 1: Tom's death on moored Toelena, and for a long while
Speaker 1: afterwards she battled with a stubborn depression.
Speaker 4: And I actually spend a lot of phone calls together afterwards,
Speaker 4: because whenever you spend an amount of your life with
Speaker 4: somebody bouncing decisions off of them, or you know, looking
Speaker 4: for validation for a decision, you get kind of lost.
Speaker 4: And there were a lot of time where she would
Speaker 4: call me and ask me, Hey, what do you think
Speaker 4: about this? That happened a lot more after Tom had passed.
Speaker 13: I had her come afterwards, and I was a little nervous.
Speaker 1: This is Kim, a hairdresser and wagner who cut Telena's hair.
Speaker 1: She remembered Telena's first appointment after Tom passed.
Speaker 13: I had my mom, who is a widow as well,
Speaker 13: come fit and be with us so that i'd have
Speaker 13: like them backup in case it got to too sad.
Speaker 13: I don't like to handle that stuff, and I'm not
Speaker 13: good at saying.
Speaker 7: The right word.
Speaker 2: But we got through it.
Speaker 13: There was just a few, you know, peers that were
Speaker 13: shed Tolena. She had even asked if my mom would
Speaker 13: maybe be her roommate for a while after, you know,
Speaker 13: because my dad had passed and she was living alone too,
Speaker 13: and she had been talking about finding a roommate to
Speaker 13: share in the bills and stuff.
Speaker 1: Telena didn't like living alone in the house she'd shared
Speaker 1: with Tom. Nicole, her friend in Tennessee, remembered how Telena
Speaker 1: navigated her new role as a relatively young widow.
Speaker 9: Of course, she missed him greatly and missed their life together.
Speaker 9: She was dealing with it with grace and moving on
Speaker 9: with her life the best she could. She had told
Speaker 9: me that she had taken in a roommate and that
Speaker 9: was mostly more for having someone around them necessity.
Speaker 1: It was in twenty nineteen that Lena invited Corey Bamiley,
Speaker 1: a fifty eight year old woman she knew through friends,
Speaker 1: to move in with her. Corey was also in a
Speaker 1: transitional period, in the middle of a divorce. I couldn't
Speaker 1: get Corey to speak to me, but from what I've learned,
Speaker 1: the two had a lot in common. They were both
Speaker 1: adjusting to life without a partner. They were both enthusiastic
Speaker 1: pet owners, sharing a singular love for animals, and they
Speaker 1: both dabbled in pagan culture and attended local renaissance fairs
Speaker 1: for fun.
Speaker 13: After they had moved in together, every time I cut
Speaker 13: Tolena's hair, the first thing I would say was, how
Speaker 13: was how's your roommate going?
Speaker 7: And she always answered the best I've ever had.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for Toleina and Corey's lives to
Speaker 1: become intertwined. Soon enough, Corey was over at Kim's getting
Speaker 1: her own haircut, while Teleina was adventurous with her hair,
Speaker 1: dyeing at different colors and even giving a perm Corey
Speaker 1: preferred a look some might call a mullet.
Speaker 13: We'd go short on the you know, straight across prop
Speaker 13: of the ears, and a little bit longer in the back.
Speaker 13: It wasn't anything that I wanted to do to her,
Speaker 13: but that's what she wanted.
Speaker 1: Corey quickly fell in with Teleina's social circle too. Here's
Speaker 1: Greg again.
Speaker 2: We'd had Telena and Corey over for dinner, and a
Speaker 2: couple of times went out with him. You would have
Speaker 2: thought they were best friends. Had had noting Cheddar for
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 1: Greg found a kindred spirit in Corey. She too was
Speaker 1: a handyman of sorts, strong, industrious.
Speaker 2: From the term that I met Corey Bromley, she was
Speaker 2: somebody that you know, I could relate to, and you know,
Speaker 2: at the time I was going to things that you know,
Speaker 2: I could talk to her about.
Speaker 1: Corey also found unique ways to make money, like buying
Speaker 1: people's old stuff and selling it on eBay and Greg's
Speaker 1: maybe he could do that too.
Speaker 2: I like, you know, pilfer and through stuff. I had
Speaker 2: done some other work elsewhere and accumulated a bunch of things,
Speaker 2: and she was helping me, you know, kind of take
Speaker 2: inventory and possibly help meself some of it.
Speaker 1: Telena seemed to really enjoy having a friend around too.
Speaker 1: It lifted her spirits. Here's ris again. Having Corey air
Speaker 1: improved their quality of life.
Speaker 4: He would go out in the yard and you know,
Speaker 4: play with the dog. They would go on car ride
Speaker 4: together and just take the bogs out of the lake.
Speaker 1: While Corey's presence was a comfort, there were clues that
Speaker 1: Teleina was still struggling with Tom's loss. In November of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, a few months before COVID hit, Tlena wrote
Speaker 1: a note to her friends on Facebook entitled Grief Etiquette.
Speaker 1: Here's a reenactment of some of that post.
Speaker 6: Over the last two years, many people have said they
Speaker 6: don't know how to interact with me ari Tom's death.
Speaker 6: The anniversary of Tom's death is approaching. I'm already struggling
Speaker 6: with that, combined with lonely holidays. What I do not
Speaker 6: need right now are unsolicited videos and picks of Tom.
Speaker 6: At this point, it's difficult for me to concentrate on
Speaker 6: work or have pockets of happiness if I see an
Speaker 6: unsolicited pick or video.
Speaker 7: During those times, I feel like I ran flat out
Speaker 7: into a wall. It's painful.
Speaker 6: If you ask first, I can respond when I'm emotionally
Speaker 6: and physically available to reminisce.
Speaker 7: If you post on your own feed, I can choose
Speaker 7: whether or not to serve that content.
Speaker 6: If you send me or tag me in unsolicited reminiscence,
Speaker 6: I will block you to save my sanity.
Speaker 7: Please don't slap me in the face with my grief.
Speaker 7: Thanks for hearing me.
Speaker 4: Heelena was never one to let anything do. She would
Speaker 4: say that head on and a threat it because you know,
Speaker 4: sitting in silence is uncomfortable. Let figure out what went
Speaker 4: wrong and how we can avoid it in the future.
Speaker 1: Aris described to Lena as assertive and good at setting boundaries,
Speaker 1: and so in April twenty twenty, when Telena posts on Facebook.
Speaker 8: I made the decision at the ownset that if it
Speaker 8: got bad enough, I would not go to the hospital.
Speaker 8: Please respect my privacy and give me my alone time,
Speaker 8: Aris does.
Speaker 4: There were a lot of parts of her life that
Speaker 4: she kept private, and we respected that, like we love
Speaker 4: the person that she gave us every time we got
Speaker 4: to see her. It did seem out of character, but
Speaker 4: considering the fact that she had lost her husband not
Speaker 4: so long ago. People can be consumed with Greece at
Speaker 4: different times, it would make sense to me.
Speaker 1: Quick note, you've heard most of Telena's cryptic Facebook post already,
Speaker 1: but there's a few lines I withheld that mentioned Tom.
Speaker 1: Now that you know who he is, this will make
Speaker 1: more sense.
Speaker 6: In and out of fever and chills with Tom just
Speaker 6: out of reach, I'm going to either beat this virus
Speaker 6: or be with Tom.
Speaker 7: I see it as a win win situation.
Speaker 6: Please respect my privacy and give me my alone time
Speaker 6: on the lake with Tom.
Speaker 1: In this part of the post, it resonates with those
Speaker 1: who knew Telena in real life, who had witnessed her
Speaker 1: debilitating depression after Tom's death. Here again is Nicole, who
Speaker 1: saw Telena just a few weeks before she went missing.
Speaker 9: I didn't take it as her being suicidal. I just
Speaker 9: took it to mean that if she passed away from COVID,
Speaker 9: she was at peace with it because she would be
Speaker 9: with Tom, not that she was actively licking doorknobs and
Speaker 9: trying to get COVID so that she could pass away.
Speaker 4: I took it that she was.
Speaker 9: Good either way, and I feel like I feel like
Speaker 9: that was true. Telena fashioned you know, well, if I die,
Speaker 9: I die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, There's not much I can do about it.
Speaker 9: And if I live, I'll hug you again.
Speaker 1: A week before Telena disappeared, she posted about her illness
Speaker 1: on Facebook.
Speaker 6: I called my doctor and was told to stay in
Speaker 6: bed and stay hydrated and self medicate and call back
Speaker 6: or go to the er. If my tempreach is one
Speaker 6: O two. I think Oklahoma's medicals system is stretched thin
Speaker 6: right now. I am thankful and grateful that I do
Speaker 6: have someone watching out for me and running the household.
Speaker 7: Back to bed. I'm exhausted. I love you all.
Speaker 1: Telena is talking about Corey, her roommate, running the household
Speaker 1: and watching out for her. Corey had been the last
Speaker 1: person to see Telena before she disappeared. On the day
Speaker 1: Telena posted her mysterious message, Corey said she'd been out
Speaker 1: running errands and came home to an empty house. The
Speaker 1: next day, Corey posted to her own Facebook page, alerting
Speaker 1: everyone to her missing roommate and asking for help. Here's
Speaker 1: a recreation of parts of the post.
Speaker 15: I called every taxi service I could think of last Eve,
Speaker 15: and drivers don't keep records. I also called our phone
Speaker 15: carrier to try and trace or track Telena's phone and
Speaker 15: was told of an app that could do this if
Speaker 15: the phone was turned on with location services activated. As
Speaker 15: of this morning, she hasn't called home and her phone
Speaker 15: still appears to be turned off. Anyone else hears from her,
Speaker 15: please update me.
Speaker 1: A day later, core posts again, this time sharing insight
Speaker 1: into what Telena's experience with COVID had been like.
Speaker 15: So this is my COVID nineteen rant and the state
Speaker 15: of affairs here in rural Oklahoma.
Speaker 7: Feel free to bypass this post.
Speaker 15: I just need to rant or I will scream.
Speaker 7: Maybe I need to do that. Anyway.
Speaker 15: When Telena first got a fever of one hundred point five,
Speaker 15: We packed up and went to the er. We expected
Speaker 15: to be able to get her a test. A tech
Speaker 15: met us outside, questioned all of her symptoms and sent
Speaker 15: us home without even allowing us to check in. We
Speaker 15: determined that the healthcare system, at least here in Oklahoma
Speaker 15: was not equipped to take care of everyone with viral
Speaker 15: symptoms and would only do so if you got bad
Speaker 15: enough to probably be admitted in Looking back, I think
Speaker 15: her attitude changed on that car ride home from the er.
Speaker 1: A few days go by. Talina's friends hear nothing and
Speaker 1: start to worry she's died of COVID alone in a
Speaker 1: remote cabin. But they also start imagining other worst case scenarios,
Speaker 1: like Greg who speculates that maybe Tolena was abducted.
Speaker 2: When she came up Methan and put this big Facebook
Speaker 2: post on there say I'm going to the wood to die.
Speaker 2: It didn't sound like her. We didn't, I mean me
Speaker 2: and my wife and talked about it. We live on
Speaker 2: the Highway sixty nine and Highways sixty nine goes from
Speaker 2: the heart attackes all the way into Tangas. At the time,
Speaker 2: you know, there was a lot of abductions and stuff
Speaker 2: from even walmarts. You know, over here in our area
Speaker 2: there was ladies picked up from Walmart for suspected sex
Speaker 2: trade type things. Me and my wife watch a lot
Speaker 2: of crime shows. We're armchair investigators over here. I mean,
Speaker 2: we get a little lead and we follow it and
Speaker 2: it you know, we're not trained investigators, That's what I'm
Speaker 2: saying it. So we just didn't know something like that
Speaker 2: could have happened to Colena.
Speaker 1: Her friends think hope, maybe Toleina will emerge over the weekend,
Speaker 1: But as Saturday and Sunday come and go, they're polite.
Speaker 1: Respect for her privacy kurdles into concern and dread, and
Speaker 1: there's consensus that the police now need to be involved.
Speaker 1: On Monday, April thirteenth, Corey goes to the shriff's department,
Speaker 1: but she's told that an adult woman leaving on her
Speaker 1: own is not considered a missing person, at least not yet.
Speaker 1: Four more days pass by Friday, Telena has still not returned,
Speaker 1: so Corey tries again. This time she's able to file
Speaker 1: a missing person's report. That same day, two deputies drive
Speaker 1: out to Teleina and Corey's house. Because of COVID, they
Speaker 1: play it safe and don't go inside. Instead, they talk
Speaker 1: to Corey in the driveway. They get the basic facts,
Speaker 1: like what Telena looks like and Telena's cell phone number,
Speaker 1: which they immediately try to locate. Surveying the property. The
Speaker 1: deputy's note a gray shed in front of the house
Speaker 1: and several vehicles parked in the driveway, two cars and
Speaker 1: a red truck with a trailer attached, and then they
Speaker 1: turn the case over the detective Joel Weber, who will
Speaker 1: lead the search. A few days later, he asks Corey
Speaker 1: to come back to the station to provide more detail.
Speaker 11: All Right, I just got cold in here.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm glad I wore a sweatshirt.
Speaker 11: I'm going to turn this up.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, two weeks after Telena's Facebook post, Corey arrives
Speaker 1: at the station wearing a COVID mask and gloves. We
Speaker 1: don't have a recording of the conversation, but we do
Speaker 1: have a transcript, parts of which we've recreated.
Speaker 16: Let me just get some background information from you, sure,
Speaker 16: and then we'll kind of go from there. And I
Speaker 16: don't want you to think that you're in any trouble
Speaker 16: because you're here, Okay, yeah, yeah, And that's pretty standard.
Speaker 17: It's just normally I would have come to the house,
Speaker 17: but give them the situation and all that.
Speaker 1: Detective Weber asks Corey how they met and came to
Speaker 1: live together.
Speaker 15: I've known Telena about fifteen years, but we've really just
Speaker 15: become close in the last couple of years since her
Speaker 15: husband died.
Speaker 11: How did you originally meet up with her?
Speaker 15: There was a festival here in Wagner, Oklahoma that we
Speaker 15: both attended fifteen years ago, and my husband and I
Speaker 15: went and met her and her husband. Then she had
Speaker 15: just gotten together with him, and it was actually a
Speaker 15: big weekend party. So that's how we all got to
Speaker 15: know each other first.
Speaker 11: Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Corey explains that she moved in less than a year ago,
Speaker 1: in May twenty nineteen, and the two of.
Speaker 11: You get together.
Speaker 17: Is it because of her husband dying that you rekindle
Speaker 17: or become closer?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 15: I was starting to have problems with my husband and
Speaker 15: initiated a divorce, and she had lost her husband and
Speaker 15: really lost an interest in living, and then we were
Speaker 15: getting to know each other better and better, and it
Speaker 15: just got to the point where she asked me if
Speaker 15: I would stay with her because she couldn't be alone.
Speaker 7: Sure, and then she was having I don't think she's
Speaker 7: ever been diagnosed as.
Speaker 15: Bipolar, but she had really up periods and really down periods,
Speaker 15: and she didn't want to be alone during the very
Speaker 15: down periods, Okay, so she needed a roommate.
Speaker 1: Corey tells the detective that when she moved in, she
Speaker 1: took on a lot of responsibilities for Telena, who had
Speaker 1: been struggling with her health. Corey ran errands for her,
Speaker 1: handled the household duties. They got close fast. They considered
Speaker 1: each other their emergency contacts. Telena even listed Corey as
Speaker 1: the executor of her estate in her will, and so
Speaker 1: when Telena got COVID, Corey went into full caregiver mode.
Speaker 15: The first thing that happened she gets bad migraines, okay,
Speaker 15: and she finished work on a Friday, went to bed early,
Speaker 15: woke up Saturday morning with a really bad migraine that
Speaker 15: ended up lasting two days. She pretty much stayed in
Speaker 15: bed for two days with migraine. Okay, Monday, she's due
Speaker 15: back at work. And Monday morning she asked me to
Speaker 15: come in and take her temperature, which I did, and
Speaker 15: she was running a one hundred point five, And so
Speaker 15: she stayed in bed with her temperature. I can't remember
Speaker 15: if we went that day or the next day, but
Speaker 15: she pretty much kept her temperature at one hundred one
Speaker 15: hundred point five. So we said we better go down
Speaker 15: to the hospital. We didn't know what this is, and
Speaker 15: so we went to the er at Wagner here and
Speaker 15: a tech came out and asked, you know what symptoms
Speaker 15: she was having and we told her that she had
Speaker 15: to migraine all weekend and now she was spiking the temperature. Sure,
Speaker 15: and they said go home and self medicate and look
Speaker 15: for these signs. And he said, if your temperature goes
Speaker 15: about one oh one or you start developing other problems,
Speaker 15: to call back.
Speaker 7: In or come back in.
Speaker 15: So we went home, and she was kind of at
Speaker 15: that point disheartened or kind of disgusted with things that
Speaker 15: she couldn't get any help or diagnosis or couldn't even
Speaker 15: check in.
Speaker 1: By this point, there are over two point six million
Speaker 1: confirmed cases of COVID globally. The US leads the world.
Speaker 1: In New York is the epicenter with over two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand cases, thousands of deaths, and hospitals beyond capacity.
Speaker 1: Oklahoma was preparing for the worst, predicting a surge in
Speaker 1: COVID cases any day now.
Speaker 15: She developed a really barking cough and sometimes she'd start
Speaker 15: coughing and couldn't stop coughing.
Speaker 7: She was starting to wheeze a little.
Speaker 15: Bit, and I said, you know, we do not want
Speaker 15: you catching pneumonia. So I asked her the night before,
Speaker 15: I said, let's take you back to the emergency room.
Speaker 15: I think you're bad enough now that they will admit you, right,
Speaker 15: And she said no, she just wanted to spend the
Speaker 15: night in her bed with one of the pops.
Speaker 1: On the morning of April seventh, Corey says, she asks
Speaker 1: again if she can take to Lena to the hospital
Speaker 1: and toe Lena again says no.
Speaker 15: She asked me to go out and do a few
Speaker 15: things and give her some more time to snuggle with.
Speaker 7: She's got a little yorky that she likes to stay.
Speaker 15: In bed with, and she just wanted to I don't
Speaker 15: know what she just wanted to do.
Speaker 11: Did she ask you to do something specific or just
Speaker 11: leave for a while.
Speaker 15: Yeah, she just wanted me to leave her alone for
Speaker 15: a while. I wish I had never gone and run
Speaker 15: errands that day.
Speaker 1: When Corey gets home sometime in the afternoon, she goes
Speaker 1: into Toelina's room to check on her, and Toelena's gone.
Speaker 1: Corey can't tell if Teleina has taken clothes or an
Speaker 1: overnight bag, but her phone is missing, along with some
Speaker 1: medication and Toleina's guns.
Speaker 15: She always kept a forty five magnetized to the bottom
Speaker 15: of her bed.
Speaker 7: Okay, that was gone.
Speaker 15: And she always kept a nine millimeter in the car, okay,
Speaker 15: and it was gone. She really she gets into these
Speaker 15: places where she just she just wants to expire, and
Speaker 15: so she doesn't really care.
Speaker 7: She always says, you know, I've got my DNA orders.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to let anybody you know, into vate
Speaker 7: me or whatever.
Speaker 15: Right, And she said, she said, it's a win win,
Speaker 15: I get to see Tom sooner. And she talked like
Speaker 15: that a lot. She'd have good days where she'd be
Speaker 15: really excited about her job and we'd be planning a
Speaker 15: trip and I think this is great, she's got a
Speaker 15: reason to live.
Speaker 7: It's all good.
Speaker 15: And then she'd say, yeah, and the first chance I get,
Speaker 15: I'm gonna check out. So she'd go really high on
Speaker 15: her job or a trip, and then she'd get really
Speaker 15: down and depressed and just not want to be around.
Speaker 11: Has she ever attempted suicide that you know of?
Speaker 7: She has not. She has not ever attempted it with me,
Speaker 7: and I would know.
Speaker 15: Has she talked about how she would do it if
Speaker 15: she did constantly?
Speaker 11: Well, what is the what's her general conversation.
Speaker 7: On that general conversation with me?
Speaker 15: That I would know when she had done it, that
Speaker 15: she had a favorite little spot that she was going
Speaker 15: to go to, and I think she was going to
Speaker 15: use a gun.
Speaker 1: Corey explains that Telena was very matter of fact about death.
Speaker 1: Telena had already organized her own funeral and made plans
Speaker 1: for her estate.
Speaker 15: Telena has always had an end of life game plan
Speaker 15: ever since Tom died. She prepaid her funeral, she planned
Speaker 15: her own music and the order of songs.
Speaker 7: She was going to do. She told not just me,
Speaker 7: but I think.
Speaker 15: All of her friends that you would talk to that
Speaker 15: sooner or later she was going to go join Tom
Speaker 15: on her own time.
Speaker 1: Still, Corey says she's holding out hope that Telena is
Speaker 1: alive and offer to help Detective Weber in any way
Speaker 1: she can. He asked her to watch the mail for
Speaker 1: credit card statements and phone bills that may offer clues
Speaker 1: to her whereabouts.
Speaker 17: What's tough about the situation that we're in is that
Speaker 17: we don't no. There's no clear evidence that a crime
Speaker 17: was committed, so because she everything points to her intentionally leaving.
Speaker 17: In other words, people are free to leave on their
Speaker 17: own accord anytime they want, and just because they're missing
Speaker 17: doesn't mean anything was nefarious.
Speaker 7: There's still part of.
Speaker 15: Me thinking that maybe someone will just call and say
Speaker 15: she's sick somewhere. Most of me is saying that when
Speaker 15: I get that phone call, it's gonna be because someone
Speaker 15: found her.
Speaker 7: I'm supposed to identify her.
Speaker 1: While the cops are talking to Corey, the online sleuth
Speaker 1: have their own sprawling investigation.
Speaker 10: It was super intense. I mean we'd stay up for
Speaker 10: hours late at night. During the day, I was always
Speaker 10: on my phone. We were always googling something, looking up
Speaker 10: people online, reaching out to people.
Speaker 1: Everybody had their roles. Brittany, as an Arkansas native, was
Speaker 1: trying to piece together Telena's movements and timing. Jess was
Speaker 1: the instigator reaching out to new contacts.
Speaker 10: I probably spent twelve fourteen hours on my phone or
Speaker 10: computer talking to people a day, cold calling strangers, We
Speaker 10: tried several times to break into her email. We asked
Speaker 10: her friend, Jim, who works night with Telena, if he
Speaker 10: knew her passwords, and he sent him to us passwords
Speaker 10: that he knew that didn't end up working. We talked
Speaker 10: to the neighbors. The guy across the street. I called
Speaker 10: him because he had a ring camera and we thought
Speaker 10: maybe like he's seen Telena leave. He said it was
Speaker 10: facing the wrong direction. He didn't see anything.
Speaker 3: Jess and some of the other girls felt more comfortable
Speaker 3: calling and talked to people than I did. I was
Speaker 3: not the person that called. I was sort of the
Speaker 3: fact checker.
Speaker 1: This is Rosie the small business owner in Ohio.
Speaker 3: So if people were telling me things, I would, you know,
Speaker 3: look things up and figure things out and try to
Speaker 3: see if these stories made sense. It got really fast,
Speaker 3: really intensely fast.
Speaker 1: Telena's real life friend Nicole starts taking advice from Jess
Speaker 1: and the sleuths.
Speaker 4: They were like, well, why isn't there a missing poster?
Speaker 9: And I thought, well, why isn't there and so we
Speaker 9: put together a missing poster immediately, you know, after that,
Speaker 9: in a post that we could share.
Speaker 4: Being in marketing, I kicked it up.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 9: I contacted a friend who has a friend that's a
Speaker 9: producer of Dateline. We started a missing videos. We put
Speaker 9: together all kinds of things. We put together a team
Speaker 9: in Wagner to do a vigil. We never let them
Speaker 9: forget the name of Telena.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, membership of the Fine Telena is our Facebook group
Speaker 1: grows rapidly to almost four hundred participants, and with the
Speaker 1: growth some growing pains.
Speaker 9: There were some people like good intentions and some people
Speaker 9: who I questioned their intentions.
Speaker 10: There was a lot of trolls. Somebody had posted that
Speaker 10: they saw Telen at a truck stop in Wyoming, just
Speaker 10: out of nowhere. Oh, we she's working at a truck
Speaker 10: stop in Wyoming at this diner. And so I think
Speaker 10: probably forty people reached out to this woman and she's like, hey,
Speaker 10: I'm joking. It was that's what I would do if
Speaker 10: I was going to disappear, And it was like, why
Speaker 10: would you post something like that.
Speaker 1: The group starts off public, but obviously that's a mistake,
Speaker 1: so they change it to private. Jess In some of
Speaker 1: the other original members do admin duty, vetting new requests,
Speaker 1: approving comments, keeping things civil.
Speaker 10: Some of these people are jerks, tempers were high. I
Speaker 10: think a lot of that came with being stuck inside too.
Speaker 1: Jess is a true believer in the power of the
Speaker 1: crowd source.
Speaker 10: I watched Don't Fuck with Cats on Netflix, and those
Speaker 10: people literally stopped a serial killer. They did. The internet
Speaker 10: came together and was like, look at this room, let's
Speaker 10: draw a map.
Speaker 1: And the investigation into Telena's disappearance was, she admits, kind
Speaker 1: of fun.
Speaker 10: I really enjoy the picking apart why, and the gathering information,
Speaker 10: and the talking to people and sometimes being the person
Speaker 10: that knows more than the other.
Speaker 1: Guy, scheming with a bunch of strangers, laughing, brainstorming together.
Speaker 1: It also makes Jess feel connected.
Speaker 10: I think the whole world did that, didn't they. I mean,
Speaker 10: I think everybody reached out to anybody they could because
Speaker 10: we all felt so isolated. Any kind of connection you
Speaker 10: could make with somebody, you kind of held on tight
Speaker 10: to it because you couldn't see most of the people
Speaker 10: in your life unless they lived with you.
Speaker 1: It's a new community, united by a common goal find
Speaker 1: to Lena's are, but it's hard to know just how
Speaker 1: trustworthy everyone is. And there's a name that keeps popping
Speaker 1: up in Jess's conversations. Has she talked to Toelena's close
Speaker 1: friend Marty just gets a hold of his number.
Speaker 10: I was sitting on the side porch I smoked at
Speaker 10: the time. I smoked cigarette, so I didn't smoke in
Speaker 10: my house. I have children, so I stepped outside of
Speaker 10: smoke and I just called him.
Speaker 1: Did you feel nervous about doing that? No, So I
Speaker 1: think most people would not cold call someone random whose
Speaker 1: friend dis disappeared.
Speaker 10: I'm very I hate to say impulsive, because it's not
Speaker 10: necessarily my entire personality, but a lot of stuff. If
Speaker 10: I want to do it, I just do it.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 10: I'm very direct. It doesn't help me make friends. Nicole
Speaker 10: had told him that I was going to call, and
Speaker 10: so when I called, he said, oh, hey, Darlin, how
Speaker 10: are you. He had a very grandfatherly Southern drawl, just
Speaker 10: very approachable, and I was like, oh, this guy's not scary.
Speaker 10: He sounds like anybody's grandpa. And I just said, tell
Speaker 10: me what's going on, and that's he just started talking.
Speaker 1: Connecting with Marty is like hitting gold for Jess and
Speaker 1: the online sleuths because he's on the ground in Wagner
Speaker 1: looking for Teleina too. And he's also been talking to
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's department. For whatever reason, he's willing to share
Speaker 1: everything he has with them. He's not skeptical of a
Speaker 1: bunch of strangers doing their own investigation into Teleina's disappearance.
Speaker 1: In fact, he welcomes it. The first big clue Marty
Speaker 1: gives them has to do with Telena's cell phone. The
Speaker 1: detectives tell him that her phone was last used on
Speaker 1: April seventh, the same day as the Facebook post.
Speaker 10: He had told us that the phone pinged in Arkansas
Speaker 10: by Lake Mamel and it could have pinged within a
Speaker 10: thirty mile radius.
Speaker 8: Please respect my privacy and give me my alone time
Speaker 8: on the lake.
Speaker 1: Lake Mamel is a three and a half hour drive
Speaker 1: from Wagner. Brittany, who happens to be in Arkansas, starts
Speaker 1: putting together a map.
Speaker 18: We looked at up the phone towers and stuff, and
Speaker 18: I went and like screenshoted the map of the lake
Speaker 18: and then put a radius over it.
Speaker 10: So we started like going on maps and finding out
Speaker 10: what could be within a thirty mile radius of where
Speaker 10: her phone pained, and just trying to figure out where
Speaker 10: she could be. What cabins or for rents where she
Speaker 10: could stay. What lake is over there, what tiny lake
Speaker 10: even if it's not the big lake mouth or something else,
Speaker 10: a pond or whatever.
Speaker 8: At one of my favorite idaways at one of my
Speaker 8: favorite lakes, and I've booked it for the remainder of
Speaker 8: this week.
Speaker 18: We had come to the conclusion that there might not
Speaker 18: have been very many airbnbs available at the time because
Speaker 18: of COVID, because of the time of the year, and
Speaker 18: because that area that her phone had pained in is
Speaker 18: not really like an area that people go to for vacation,
Speaker 18: like ma Mill is just like a business town, like
Speaker 18: that's where work and go to school and stuff.
Speaker 7: It's not like a vacation town. Didn't feel up to driving,
Speaker 7: so I hired a ride.
Speaker 10: We called all the uber and lyft hubs that we
Speaker 10: could to see if their drivers kept track of who
Speaker 10: they would pick up. Because she said she hired a ride.
Speaker 1: Pretty quickly, Marty becomes their main source, a person who
Speaker 1: seems to know a lot, who's just as committed as
Speaker 1: they are to finding to Lena. He goes around town
Speaker 1: passing out the missing poster, helps organize the vigil, even
Speaker 1: talks to the local press.
Speaker 13: I saw her my birthday on which is March twenty six,
Speaker 13: and then I spoke to her on the phone on
Speaker 13: the twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: During this time, Marty and Jess are in constant communication way.
Speaker 10: My text message is to twenty seven pm, three fifteen pm,
Speaker 10: same day as just bam bam, bam, bam, bam, throwing
Speaker 10: ideas at each other. It was obsessive.
Speaker 1: It's a mutually beneficial relationship. Marty likes to talk, Jess
Speaker 1: likes to listen.
Speaker 10: He would talk and talk and talk, so he'd give
Speaker 10: us information. He'd give us names, he would give us
Speaker 10: phone numbers.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, Jess doesn't know if she should trust Marty,
Speaker 1: and that's just her baseline. She doesn't trust anyone before
Speaker 1: they prove themselves to her. So she's kind of pretending
Speaker 1: with Marty to get him to open up to her.
Speaker 1: She'll say whatever to make him comfortable to get the
Speaker 1: information she wants.
Speaker 10: So all of us wear masks. Right at first, it
Speaker 10: was almost like copying the way he'd talk to me.
Speaker 10: I'd talk back to him that way to try to
Speaker 10: make it so it's easier for us to communicate. And
Speaker 10: then we go off on little talks.
Speaker 1: Even though she's acting friendly on the phone. Jess is
Speaker 1: double checking everything Marty says on Facebook. She can see
Speaker 1: that Teleina and Marty seem to be good friends. Like
Speaker 1: he said. They're tagged in each other's posts a lot,
Speaker 1: including in a phone koo taken at the Oklahoma Renaissance
Speaker 1: Fair in April twenty eighteen. It's Teleina, Marty and his
Speaker 1: wife Lorianne. It's a warm day. They're dressed in shorts
Speaker 1: and t shirts, all smiling widely. But in the caption,
Speaker 1: Marty refers to both women as his quote wives, which
Speaker 1: is confusing, and so is Telena's name or more accurately names.
Speaker 1: When Jess runs a basic background check, the kind you
Speaker 1: can pay for online, nothing comes up for Telenazar. Turns
Speaker 1: out her legal name is actually Teuleina Galloway, but even
Speaker 1: that name hadn't been her name for very long. Before
Speaker 1: Telena Galloway, she was Jena Lovic and before that Jenna Dillman.
Speaker 1: Ess doesn't know what to make of all this. With
Speaker 1: additional researches, learns that Telenazar is more of her online nickname.
Speaker 10: I'd done some Internet digging, you know, basic Google stuff,
Speaker 10: and I googled Telenazar, and then that popped up with
Speaker 10: the John Norman Gorrian novels, and I was like, literally
Speaker 10: not very polite of me, What the how are you
Speaker 10: people into? What is going on here?
Speaker 11: Gore was a world of slaves and beautiful women of
Speaker 11: human domination by the alien secret priest Kings. And it
Speaker 11: was also the world of Telena.
Speaker 8: Lena to Lena.
Speaker 7: Lawrence.
Speaker 1: That's next week on What Happened to Telenazar. What Happened
Speaker 1: to Telenazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's written, reported,
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with writing and story
Speaker 1: editing by Lauren Hansen. Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch.
Speaker 1: For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason English and Carl Catel.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Savannah Hugley. Zoey is our associate producer.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Thal is our editor. Original music by Aaron Kaufman
Speaker 1: with additional music by Jeremy Thal. Episodes are mixed and
Speaker 1: mastered by Carl Katle. Voice acting by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry,
Speaker 1: Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica, and Molly Maslin. Our logo is
Speaker 1: designed by Edo Moore. Thanks so much, for listening,