Wildcat81
06-04-2004, 04:28 PM
June 4, 2004, 9:14AM
Mysterious disappearance may be solved by chance
By CINDY HORSWELL
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
BEAUMONT -- For nine years, Cristy Graham wondered why her husband never returned home from a business trip to Houston.
But now, instead of waiting for her husband to walk through the door of her Beaumont apartment, she is waiting for DNA test results that may finally answer her questions.
How could she have guessed that the disappearance of her 37-year-old husband, Dennis, might now be solved through a freak chance?
Dennis Graham's truck -- containing skeletal remains and his wallet -- was pulled from the deep, murky waters of a bayou under an Interstate 10 bridge about 30 miles east of Houston.
Thousands of vehicles had rumbled over the bridge that crosses Turtle Bayou in Chambers County all these years without anyone realizing Graham's truck might be submerged. That is until May 14, when a second truck flipped over the same bridge's railing and splashed into the bayou, killing the driver.
The accident led to the discovery of Graham's truck.
When investigators telephoned to inform Cristy Graham of the news, she said, "I couldn't breathe. I felt relief and sadness. Then started crying, all at once."
Last message
The last time Graham heard from her husband was a message that he left on April 7, 1995, at their church. She was working there that night to prepare for a craft bazaar. He told her that he would return from Houston as soon as he could pick up some parts for their computer business and finish work on the stock car that he raced for a hobby. RESOURCES
• Graphic: Submerged Truck Found
Mechanics who helped Graham with the stock car said he left for home about 3 a.m. But he never arrived.
Although she didn't consider herself superstitious, Graham felt a strange uneasiness before Dennis left. Somehow, she thought, something bad was going to happen to him, as well as to their 2-year-old son, Dylan.
Using her nickname for him, Graham recalled telling her husband, "Daddy, please be careful. I just have a horrible feeling."
She cannot believe that she was right about them both. She lost her only child shortly after the second anniversary of her husband's disappearance. On April 29, 1997, Dylan was visiting a relative when he slipped through a broken fence to chase a puppy in a neighbor's yard and fell into a pool. He was put on life support but never revived.
After her son died, Graham thought, "I don't think I can survive this. My life has been so wrapped up in him since my husband's been gone."
She managed to cope by working nonstop at various jobs as a postal clerk and electronic sales clerk, while many nights she cried before she fell asleep.
Her husband was never officially declared dead, so she had never collected any life insurance money.
The Graham's computer business, Compusave, closed after a few months, and she had to work hard to remain financially stable. Her sense of loyalty, however, prevented her from thinking of remarrying as she continued to hope that her husband might return.
Route searched
For months after her husband disappeared, she and friends searched the route he should have driven to return home. She even used a long pole and solicited help from boaters to probe the rivers and bayous that bordered her husband's route along Interstate 10.
She used the pole in Turtle Bayou, but did not locate anything.
At the same time, she plastered the area with posters featuring a photograph of her smiling husband, holding their 2-year-old, pajama-clad son in his lap on Christmas morning, that asked: "Have you seen my daddy? Please help find him!"
She also filed missing-person reports with Harris and Jefferson counties. But investigators, who were juggling hundreds of cases, also left her with a cold feeling that they were not that interested in her case, she said.
After all, one Houston detective told her, people desert their families all the time.
She could not believe her husband was someone who would abandon his only child. But as years passed with no sign, doubts began to creep in.
"Surely," she thought, after her son died. "If he's alive, he'll come back for the funeral."
But he didn't, and afterward she had to fight off feelings of rejection. Yet she thought he would never leave her.
Her husband's 78-year-old widowed mother, Lillian, tried to comfort her.
"The Lord will help us live with it," she would say. Lillian Graham was always certain something horrible must have happened to keep her son from returning to his family, but that didn't make it any easier.
"He was my baby," she said of the youngest of her three children.
Diver's discovery
On May 14, James Franklin Wester III of Port Neches was driving his brown Ford pickup on Interstate 10 when he accidently smashed into the bridge's railing and flipped into Turtle Bayou.
The bridge's railings are 33 inches high, easily allowing drivers to peer into the waters below, especially since the bridge has no shoulders. It's a narrow bridge with two lanes in each direction.
Wester died after being ejected from the truck.
Six days later, when Chambers County sheriff's divers descended into the bayou to recover Wester's truck, the 20-foot-deep water was so murky that they could not see anything.
One diver, David Hatfield, said he had to use his hands to feel his way through the limbs and debris before he detected the outline of a truck. He attached a cable to pull it out.
But the truck that emerged was a green Mazda with a skeleton inside, not Wester's brown Ford, which was later found about 10 feet from the same spot.
Graham's wallet and some receipts for the computer parts were still inside the Mazda.
"I guess they both had wrecks that were nearly identical," Hatfield said.
Cindy and Scott Drier, who own a delivery freight company near the bayou, said numerous wrecks have occurred on that same stretch of highway.
"My son boats across that water and fishes all the time. We had no idea that anything was ever down there," she said.
If the DNA tests provide positive identification, the Grahams plan to hold a memorial service. Cristy's eyes tear as she picks up the last photo taken of her husband and son together at Christmas.
"I want to bury my husband's remains in a baby casket next to Dylan," she said. "They were very close."
Mysterious disappearance may be solved by chance
By CINDY HORSWELL
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
BEAUMONT -- For nine years, Cristy Graham wondered why her husband never returned home from a business trip to Houston.
But now, instead of waiting for her husband to walk through the door of her Beaumont apartment, she is waiting for DNA test results that may finally answer her questions.
How could she have guessed that the disappearance of her 37-year-old husband, Dennis, might now be solved through a freak chance?
Dennis Graham's truck -- containing skeletal remains and his wallet -- was pulled from the deep, murky waters of a bayou under an Interstate 10 bridge about 30 miles east of Houston.
Thousands of vehicles had rumbled over the bridge that crosses Turtle Bayou in Chambers County all these years without anyone realizing Graham's truck might be submerged. That is until May 14, when a second truck flipped over the same bridge's railing and splashed into the bayou, killing the driver.
The accident led to the discovery of Graham's truck.
When investigators telephoned to inform Cristy Graham of the news, she said, "I couldn't breathe. I felt relief and sadness. Then started crying, all at once."
Last message
The last time Graham heard from her husband was a message that he left on April 7, 1995, at their church. She was working there that night to prepare for a craft bazaar. He told her that he would return from Houston as soon as he could pick up some parts for their computer business and finish work on the stock car that he raced for a hobby. RESOURCES
• Graphic: Submerged Truck Found
Mechanics who helped Graham with the stock car said he left for home about 3 a.m. But he never arrived.
Although she didn't consider herself superstitious, Graham felt a strange uneasiness before Dennis left. Somehow, she thought, something bad was going to happen to him, as well as to their 2-year-old son, Dylan.
Using her nickname for him, Graham recalled telling her husband, "Daddy, please be careful. I just have a horrible feeling."
She cannot believe that she was right about them both. She lost her only child shortly after the second anniversary of her husband's disappearance. On April 29, 1997, Dylan was visiting a relative when he slipped through a broken fence to chase a puppy in a neighbor's yard and fell into a pool. He was put on life support but never revived.
After her son died, Graham thought, "I don't think I can survive this. My life has been so wrapped up in him since my husband's been gone."
She managed to cope by working nonstop at various jobs as a postal clerk and electronic sales clerk, while many nights she cried before she fell asleep.
Her husband was never officially declared dead, so she had never collected any life insurance money.
The Graham's computer business, Compusave, closed after a few months, and she had to work hard to remain financially stable. Her sense of loyalty, however, prevented her from thinking of remarrying as she continued to hope that her husband might return.
Route searched
For months after her husband disappeared, she and friends searched the route he should have driven to return home. She even used a long pole and solicited help from boaters to probe the rivers and bayous that bordered her husband's route along Interstate 10.
She used the pole in Turtle Bayou, but did not locate anything.
At the same time, she plastered the area with posters featuring a photograph of her smiling husband, holding their 2-year-old, pajama-clad son in his lap on Christmas morning, that asked: "Have you seen my daddy? Please help find him!"
She also filed missing-person reports with Harris and Jefferson counties. But investigators, who were juggling hundreds of cases, also left her with a cold feeling that they were not that interested in her case, she said.
After all, one Houston detective told her, people desert their families all the time.
She could not believe her husband was someone who would abandon his only child. But as years passed with no sign, doubts began to creep in.
"Surely," she thought, after her son died. "If he's alive, he'll come back for the funeral."
But he didn't, and afterward she had to fight off feelings of rejection. Yet she thought he would never leave her.
Her husband's 78-year-old widowed mother, Lillian, tried to comfort her.
"The Lord will help us live with it," she would say. Lillian Graham was always certain something horrible must have happened to keep her son from returning to his family, but that didn't make it any easier.
"He was my baby," she said of the youngest of her three children.
Diver's discovery
On May 14, James Franklin Wester III of Port Neches was driving his brown Ford pickup on Interstate 10 when he accidently smashed into the bridge's railing and flipped into Turtle Bayou.
The bridge's railings are 33 inches high, easily allowing drivers to peer into the waters below, especially since the bridge has no shoulders. It's a narrow bridge with two lanes in each direction.
Wester died after being ejected from the truck.
Six days later, when Chambers County sheriff's divers descended into the bayou to recover Wester's truck, the 20-foot-deep water was so murky that they could not see anything.
One diver, David Hatfield, said he had to use his hands to feel his way through the limbs and debris before he detected the outline of a truck. He attached a cable to pull it out.
But the truck that emerged was a green Mazda with a skeleton inside, not Wester's brown Ford, which was later found about 10 feet from the same spot.
Graham's wallet and some receipts for the computer parts were still inside the Mazda.
"I guess they both had wrecks that were nearly identical," Hatfield said.
Cindy and Scott Drier, who own a delivery freight company near the bayou, said numerous wrecks have occurred on that same stretch of highway.
"My son boats across that water and fishes all the time. We had no idea that anything was ever down there," she said.
If the DNA tests provide positive identification, the Grahams plan to hold a memorial service. Cristy's eyes tear as she picks up the last photo taken of her husband and son together at Christmas.
"I want to bury my husband's remains in a baby casket next to Dylan," she said. "They were very close."