This report is the second installment of a four-part series on unsolved crimes in the region.

A teenage disappearance

Brandi Cole was 17 in July 2007 when she was reported missing. Her disappearance left a painful void in her family’s life as they continue searching for answers and closure.

Cole’s mother, Shellie Auchtung, told The Tifton Gazette then that she and her daughter had a “seven-day rule.”

The agreement was either Cole contacts Auchtung every seven days or Auchtung would call law enforcement. Auchtung said Cole had never broken the rule before.

Cole was supposed to have spent the evening with Auchtung on July 6, 2007, along with Cole’s daughter. She never showed.

Cole, hazel-eyed with short brown hair, was 5 feet, 7 inches tall.

“She was a lost child before she went missing,” Auchtung said. “I have asked people to help me get her off the street, but was told there was nothing anyone could do because she was 17.”

Auchtung said she believes her daughter encountered foul play.

Auchtung said Cole was last seen July 8, 2007, when she got into a white, four-door, king-cab truck with a black woman and four Hispanic men in the area of Puckett Park in South Tifton, disappearing without a trace.

Stories about what happened to Cole vary. Auchtung said she has heard Cole was randomly chosen to be the initiation into a gang.

Auchtung said even though her daughter had problems, she “is still my baby.”

To Auchtung, not only was her daughter a good mother, a straight-A student, happy, creative and a talented sketcher, she was also loved.

“She got involved with the wrong group of people, but I loved her,” Auchtung said.

The day Cole went missing, Auchtung vividly remembers waking up crying and screaming that someone hurt her baby.

“I can’t explain it, it’s strange and people were telling me that I was over-exaggerating, but I felt it and knew,” Auchtung said. “I don’t believe she’s alive. I knew it that morning when I woke up. The last time I saw my baby alive was on my birthday, a day before she went missing.”

Auchtung has been searching for her daughter ever since. She continues to search for her body near ponds hoping to find some closure.

Auchtung has done all she can to help find Cole by putting up missing person fliers around Tifton in the past for some information that would lead to a break in the case.

Cole’s daughter, Carmen, who was 2 years old when Cole went missing, vaguely remembers her mother

“(Carmen) asks if her mom is in heaven, and I tell her that she’s most likely looking over her,” Auchtung said. “She has questions, and people out there who aren’t talking have the answers.”

Mike Walker, who was a captain at the Tift County Sheriff’s Office at the time, told the newspaper that investigators have explored several different leads since Cole disappeared but without success.

They interviewed multiple local people trying to determine what happened to Cole, who had led a transient lifestyle and been involved with drugs.

Officials believe at one point Cole may have been as far away as Mount Olive, N.C.

Anyone with any information in the case is encouraged to call the Tift County Sheriff’s Office, (229) 388-6020, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 1-800-843-5678.

As for Auchtung, she said she just wants anyone with information to come forward so she and her family can lay the terrible ordeal to rest.

“I won’t stop looking for her,” she said.

– Eve Guevara, The Tifton Gazette

A Thomas County vanishing

Glenda Quisenberry has not been seen since 1989.

The last sight of her was at a women’s shelter in Cairo, being carried out by her estranged boyfriend, said Lt. Tim Watkins, Thomas County Sheriff’s Office chief investigator.

There was a history of domestic violence between Quisenberry and the man, Watkins said. The boyfriend told investigators Quisenberry had been asleep on a sofa at a mobile home on Lost Arrowhead Lane off Carter’s Road.

He went to an Egg and Butter Road residence to get clothing, and when he got back, she was nowhere to be found.

Quisenberry was not reported missing for several months.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents interviewed the boyfriend, who denied having a hand in the disappearance, according to Watkins.

The case was reopened in 2009, after what appeared to be blood was found in the mobile home.

Watkins went to the boyfriend’s Jacksonville, Fla., residence. He said the boyfriend told him what happened to Quisenberry was “between him and God.”

A murder warrant was issued by a Thomas County judge. After several months, the boyfriend was picked up in Texas.

Watkins said when deputies read the warrant to the boyfriend, he said, “‘That’s not how it happened.'”

Investigators searched several places where they believed Quisenberry’s body had been dumped. Her remains were never found.

The boyfriend was never tried and was eventually released from the Thomas County Jail. He moved to Washington state and has since passed away, according to authorities.

The case remains unsolved.

– Patti Dozier, Thomasville Times-Enterprise

The one that got away

December 6, 1999. 11:40 p.m.

Major Raymond Drennon, chief detective at the Tifton Police Department, got a call that there had been a shooting at what was then the Georgetown Apartments at 6th and Davis in Tifton.

Raleigh Wilson, 30, had been shot. Drennon found him laying in the grass in front of building 2.

TPD’s Garfield Rhaney joined him.

According to witnesses, Wilson had been shot between buildings 6 and 7 when two black males started chasing him. He had run across David Avenue trying to get away.

One of the shooters came after him and shot him again, and Wilson fell dead in the grass where Drennon found him.

The story the investigators put together was Wilson had gone to the store to get some things before he was shot. Drennon said they found some of the items at the initial spot where he was shot and more at the location where he died.

Another witness said one of Wilson’s friends was supposed to be at the apartment complex, and Wilson had been going to see someone in building 2, but that is where the story gets murky, said Drennon, who is now assistant chief at TPD.

“Several folks saw this thing,” Drennon said. “Of course, like in a lot of cases, you’ve got witnesses who aren’t willing to be witnesses.”

He said there were several stories floating around about happened.

According to one story, Wilson owed someone money, the exact reason changing from person to person, and that was why he was shot.

Some of the witnesses identified people who were supposed to have known what happened, but either the witnesses claimed to have no idea what had occurred or had left town completely.

“It seemed that every time we turned around it was, ‘I heard it was this guy and this guy.’ Or the family would call us with what they would hear,” Drennon said.

Drennon said he was given four or five names of people who had supposedly done the shooting. He’s followed every lead, but they all led to dead ends.

Witnesses gave conflicting stories, or they changed their stories. Multiple suspects were interviewed, even polygraphed, with no results. Fingerprints were submitted but never matched.

There were guns recovered from the scene, but they couldn’t be tied to the crime.

“We never even recovered the weapon itself,” he said, which means the people who shot Wilson either took the guns with them or tossed them somewhere.

Drennon said he has spoken to Wilson’s mother in the past, which is one reason he wants to solve this case — even now, almost two decades later.

“I would like to go tell her that we finally got the guy who killed her son. They still call,” Drennon said, referring to Wilson’s family. “Every couple of years, they call to see if we have any new information.

“I can’t think of too many things that would be better than to go tell Raleigh Wilson’s momma that we found the guy that killed him.”

Drennon and Rhaney worked on the case for more than six months. They chased down a lot of leads, collected a lot of fingerprints and physical evidence.

Drennon is still willing to do more to close the case.

“I’d be tickled pink if someone called in and said, ‘I want to tell you what I know,’ ’cause we’d fire this thing right back up. Hell, I wouldn’t even retire till we got done.

“I feel certain that Raleigh Wilson’s killer is still right here in Tifton and there’s folks here that know it,” he said. “They could break this thing wide open, if they’d just come tell what they know.

“For me, it will always be the one that got away.”

– Eve Guevara, The Tifton Gazette

Just beyond the fingertips

In many cold cases, evidence will point strongly to a certain person, but there’s just not quite enough proof to arrest and charge. So the resolution of the case stays just beyond the grasp of investigators.

In Colquitt County, several cases, one dating more than three decades, remain unsolved.

But investigators say they are still beating the bushes looking for more information.

“In quite a few of these cases, we have people that we believe are responsible, but there is not enough to bring criminal charges at this point,” said Jamy Steinberg, special agent in charge of the GBI’s Thomasville office.

“We consult with the District Attorney’s Office when we receive information and discuss the viability of prosecution in each case individually.”

The most recent unsolved slayings are those of Anthony Tyshaun Keith and Willie “Chill” Bender Jr., both of which occurred in the city of Moultrie, and the fatal shooting of Sylvester Ricky Hill, which is being investigated by the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office.

Keith, 27, was fatally shot on the night of March 29, 2012, at an apartment complex in southwest Moultrie. He made his way to the nearby Woodmen of the World Park, where he collapsed.

The 29-year-old Bender’s death came a little more than two years earlier. His body, which had been stripped of his shorts and shoes, was found in front of his 504 Fourth St. S.W. residence.

Bender’s girlfriend reported hearing gunshots on April 14, 2010, and when police responded at 5:56 a.m., they found Bender, shot multiple times.

As the two-year anniversary of Hill’s slaying approaches, investigators are hoping to make progress on finding the 58-year-old man’s killer. 

A neighbor discovered Hill’s body inside his mobile home in the 100 block of Arrowhead Lane on the morning of June 26, 2015, after noticing his truck was parked there at a time when Hill normally would have been at work. 

Hill was killed by a gunshot to the chest. Investigators know the night before his death he had attended a party where he played cards. 

Some time after arriving home, someone went inside the residence and shot Hill in his hallway, sheriff’s Sgt. Chris Robinson said.

There was no sign of forced entry and the motive remains unknown.

Several people have been interviewed — including everyone at the card game — but there’s never been enough information to pinpoint a suspect, Robinson said.

Robinson believes that someone out there knows who killed Hill. 

“We’d like to give Mr. Hill’s family some relief, knowing the case is still open, and we hope one day to make an arrest,” Robinson said. “Somebody knows something or saw something. We just hope they come forward and will either contact us or contact the GBI.”

Investigations into Bender and Keith’s deaths are still active, Steinberg said, as is that of Throdger Johnson, who was found shot to death 15 years ago in the north end of Colquitt County near the Worth County line.

On Halloween night 1983, businessman Joey Miller’s body was found in the trunk of his car. No arrests have ever been made. 

The decomposed remains of a young woman found more than 20 years ago in northwest Moultrie have never been identified.

Steinberg is sure there are people out there with information crucial to these cases.

For a loved one, not knowing the circumstances or reason for a relative’s death is difficult, said Wilma Hadley, who is Willie Bender Jr.’s aunt. 

The night Bender was killed his shorts had been removed — and were never found — and his shoes were off and near his body, said Hadley, who is deputy assistant clerk in the Criminal Division of the Colquitt County Clerk of Court’s Office and a Moultrie City Council member.

“Seven years since the death, or murder, of Willie “Chill” Bender Jr., no arrests, no suspects,” she said. “But we’re still hoping that someone with information about the murder will come forward and alert the authorities.”

Bender left behind five children. Although he was not an angel and had his own brushes with the law, “He was still somebody’s child,” Hadley said.

The arrest and conviction of Bender’s killer would bring the family closure and perhaps knowledge about the motive.

“It won’t bring him back, but it will close the case,” Hadley said. 

– Alan Mauldin, The Moultrie Observer

This report is the second installment of a four-part series on unsolved crimes in the region. The first part ran June 11, and the other parts will print June 18 and 20.

The SunLight Project team of journalists who contributed to this report includes Thomas Lynn, Patti Dozier, Charles Oliver, Billy Hobbs, Alan Mauldin and Eve Guevara, along with the writer, team leader John Stephen.

To contact the team, email sunlightproject@gaflnews.com.