The case of man missing for nearly 20 years could be solved.
The Delaware County Sheriff’s office says a tip led them to a home in Colcord on Wednesday.
The community is about 80 miles east of Tulsa near the Arkansas border.
Deputies say they spent more than 14 hours digging up bones underneath a rental home.
However, it still hasn’t been determined if the bones are human or from an animal.
Fox 23’s Abbie Alford reports why the whole town is talking about the mystery bones.
For twenty years psychics, tipsters and rumors haven’t been able to lead detectives with the Delaware County Sheriff’s office to 60-year-old Johnnie Ball.
“In an area like this where nothing happens stories keep going,” says Colcord resident Amanda Volkmann.
59-year-old Billie Spyres says he’s lived in Colcord his whole life and says there’s always talks of Ball’s disappearance.
“I hear all kinds of stories, rumors, most of it’s not true. Most of it you can’t believe but I believe this down here,” says Spyres.
Spyres believes the six intact-mystery bones deputies say they found underneath the add-on to this home are human and could belong to 60-year-old Johnnie Ball who went missing in 1988 or 33-year-old William Reed who’s been missing since 1987.
“I don’t know really what happened to him. I don’t know what happened to him or to that other girl, or other boy I don’t know what happened to him,” says Spyres.
Undersheriff Robert Rowley says in the 20 plus years of the two missing men, Ball and Reed, he’s says he’s never received a tip like this.
“For this individual to say, ‘I know where Johnnie Ball is buried,’ is the way he put it to us, if they are human, I don’t know who else’s they could be,” says Rowley.
Rowley says you never know when it’s that one tip that finally solves a cold case.
“A lot of times small town rumors are more fact than they are fiction,” says Rowley.
