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Buried Episode 04: A Party And A Fight

Years after Carey Mae Parker went missing, her family started hearing rumors about a party. And a fight.

In the five years after Carey's family filed its missing person report, the Hunt Co. Sheriff’s Office didn't interview her ex-boyfriend Cody. So, one day in May 2014, her son Brian took matters into his own hands. In a 7-minute call, Brian asks Cody about some of the things his grandfather told the family before passing away: rumors of a party in a place called Hawk Cove.  

Carey Mae Parker jokes around with her sister Patricia and then boyfriend Cody in July 1990.
Credit Courtesy of Mary Shelby
Carey Mae Parker jokes around with her sister Patricia and then boyfriend Cody in July 1990.

Cody tells Brian that’s what he remembers, too, the last time he saw Carey. They were at a party, and so was a woman known as Cactus. Carey approached him and asked if he intended to sleep with Cactus that night. When he replied in the affirmative, she threw her drink in his face. Everything cooled down after that, he says.

Patricia, Carey’s sister, finds this story hard to believe. Not the drink-to-the-face part, which sounds just like Carey. The part about things being fine between them afterward.

“I guarantee you it didn’t end at the drink,” Patricia says. 

She and Brian doubt another part of Cody's story: that Carey told him of wanting to become a “sex slave” in Mexico, whatever that means.

Brian wonders about a story Carey's father told him before he died: about a man from Alabama and a drug deal that went wrong. 

George Hale is a radio reporter for KETR and the host of its investigative podcast Buried.
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